"From Cosmos to Cradle to Community"
John 1:1-5, 9-14, 16
Rev. Bruce Epperly, Westmoreland UCC
Jan. 4, 2026
On this eleventh day of Christmas, we find ourselves looking back to the celebration of Jesus’ birth and forward to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany and the Coming of the Magi, Zoroastrian worshippers of the divine light, who journeyed from Persia to Judea following a star to worship the Light of the World. In the interplay of Christmas and Epiphany, we experience God’s cosmic revelation embodied in an infant’s cradle and going forth to create Beloved Community.
John is the theologian of the gospel writers. There are no angelic visitations, holy family, shepherds, or magi, and there’s not even Bethlehem, in John’s portrayal of God’s word made flesh. For John, Christ is a cosmic figure, whose impact goes far beyond Judea, Christianity, or planet Earth. John sees Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, as the Word and Wisdom of God, Logos and Sophia Incarnate, through whom the universe is created. God creates in love, divine wisdom brings forth the stars and the galaxies, and Christ in the flesh represents the moral and spiritual nature of God and God’s light and love bursting forth in every life.
For John, the Infinite is Intimate, the Cosmic is Companionable, the Spirit is embodied and our bodies are inspired. Early on, some followers of Jesus, often described as Gnostics, believed that divine perfection could not be contaminated by the messiness of the physical world, aging and diseased bodies, hunger and thirst, and the complications of sexuality. Heavenly in nature, the Divine One’s presence in our world was an optical and theological illusion, you might say a hologram of the Spirit. To these early followers, Jesus only appeared to be born, grow as a child, and die on the cross. Spirit could not enter flesh, and perfection had no intersection with aging, sin, and death.
Yet, in his theological prologue to the Gospel, John proclaims that God loves the world, the creation of planets and people is the gift of love, and that God is incarnate in our ever-changing world of the flesh. Our salvation depends not on a distant God, too pure for the messiness of our world, but God with us, in the flesh, giving birth, taking care of a child or an elder, and resisting the powers and principalities of a broken and blessed world.
The Word becomes flesh because God loves bodies. God rejoices in healthy intimacy and delights in the color purple and a child at play.
Yet, John struggles with the reality that somehow this beloved world becomes broken. People prefer darkness to light, power over love, self-interest over sacrifice, and violence over companionship. Freedom, creativity, and agency are built into the nature of God’s world, and our freedom can cure cancer or traumatize an immigrant child, sacrifice for generations to come or succumb to greedy consumption. Yet, the Word is made flesh in God’s moral and spiritual arcs running through history, science, politics, religion, and our lives and this congregation. God does not abandon our world to chaos and darkness but is incarnate in our flesh and blood healer and savior Jesus of Nazareth.
We are broken, and yet God’s intent is to heal and save everyone. “The darkness cannot quench God’s light” and “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” We are all lights of God, but we simply don’t know it. As theologian and pastor Ernie Campbell says, “There are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who are in God’s hands and know it, and those who are in God’s hands and don’t.” The task of followers of Jesus and our church is to let our light shine, to see God’s light in us, and let everyone we meet know that they dwell in God’s light, regardless of our current life situation.
We are loved but often don’t know it. We are all saved but are oblivious to our salvation. We have everything we need, if we trust God and let God’s love flow through us to the world around us.
We choose darkness, chaos, and greed only because we don’t know the love that casts out fear and brings joy to our lives. John knew that darkness of spirit leads to the disparity of wealth and poverty, to the need to dominate and destroy, and the addiction to the love of power rather than the power of love.
And yet our turning from God’s way cannot overpower God’s light and love. God is out to love you and not to harm you. Just as you are, you are God’s beloved and blessed with a love that knows neither beginning or end, a love that encompasses each of us and all of us.
This love, for John, takes flesh in the Bethlehem cradle and in the birth of every child. As the Celtic saint Pelagius asserted, you can see God’s face in every newborn. The magic of Christmas, celebrated in our Christmas pageant, is simply that God loves our cells as well as well as our souls and takes birth in our DNA and in the love of parents and grandparents for a newborn.
Yet, amid our world’s sin, there is the promise of salvation, healing, and enlightenment. Those who see the light, who learn that they are God’s beloved, receive the power to become God’s children. This isn’t an exclusive club or perhaps it’s the most exclusive club: God’s community that includes everyone, and without exception calls each one of us by name, “Come home, see the light, bask in my love, and be my lights in the world.”
From cosmos comes the cradle birth and from God’s birth in our world, we discover our power as God’s children and our home in God’s Beloved Community and Peaceable Realm. The power of being God’s child is the energy of love. Remember Philippians 2, have the mind of Christ, who did not Lord it over us, but became one of us, sacrificing his very life that we might experience the fullness of God’s abundance today, tomorrow, and forevermore. Our power is the power of love, the power of sacrifice, the power of solidarity, the power of being one in the Spirit with our neighbors and all creation. It’s the power of Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ.
Just one light conquers the darkness. Just one act of love heals the world. As Margaret Mead says, challenging our sense of impotence in a world of power-hungry potentates, “Never Doubt That a Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Can Change the World; Indeed, It’s the Only Thing That Ever Has.” A small child’s lunch can feed five thousand, eleven male disciples and their women companions can transform the world, a young girl Ruby Bridges can desegregate a school system, a neurodiverse teen Greta Thunberg can wake up the powerful to the need to confront climate change, and right where you are, you can let your light shine and conquer the darkness of racism, homophobia, fear of immigrants, and divisiveness. In the spirit of John’s words, we can embody the words of youthful Amanda Gorman, as we join cosmos, cradle, and community:
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen God’s glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
On this fourth day of January, the eleventh day of Christmas, we don’t need a politician’s permission to still say “Merry Christmas” and “Joyful Epiphany.” See God’s light and share God’s light, and shout Glory Hallelujah! Let your light shine! God’s truth is marching on!
