Rachael Newham's Blog

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John 1:1-14 is one of my favourite passages in scripture. 

I partly I love this passage because I am a writer, and words are my thing, so the idea of the word becoming flesh makes sense to me on a level I can’t quite articulate – but I love it more because it was this passage preached when I was sixteen that showed me that in the depths of what felt like my deepest darkness – I was not alone and never would be. 

And isn’t that a message we all need to hear in our darkness? That we aren’t alone?

It’s what my little boy needs, when he wakes in the night – disorientated and tangled in his duvet – he calls out to us not necessarily because he can’t fix his duvet on his own (he probably could) but because he needs to know he isn’t alone.

And aren’t we the same?

We are living in what feels like dark times; we see it every time we turn on the news, check on the referral or our bank balance, every horror we see unfolding before us. We need the truth of the incarnation – of the word becoming flesh now more than ever – and for me, whilst I know our hope is in the resurrection and recreation of all things – my comfort in the here and now is in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  

The incarnation is the truth that we are not alone because Jesus came to join humanity’s sorrow and pain. Incarnation is a word that means ‘taking on flesh’; it means that God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus. 

It is a mind bending paradox – that our creator became clothed in humanity – and more so, is that it’s how God chose to save the world, not with might and majesty, but with the vulnerability of a baby, then the death of a man on a criminal’s cross. 

And this passage in John’s gospel tells us the story of how Jesus saved the world through the paradox of his divine humanity. 

It’s because he joined us.

These first words of John’s gospel echo the very first words in scripture – “In the beginning” – when God spoke creation into being and now he’s telling us that Jesus was there in the beginning, too – that he was in the words of creation before he was in the womb of Mary. Jesus was there when the world was nothing but formless and darkness – and he would be the light that could never be extinguished by the darkness. 

This means that Jesus was more than the baby in the stable and the man weeping over his city – he was, and is God. Jesus joined humanity -but he never left God.

And that is good news.

It is good news for us in our weeping, in our longing, in our confusion and our emptiness – and it’s still good news in our joy and our celebration. 

Because in Jesus humanity and divinity are not two sides of himself that can be separated – but they are two realities knit together until we cannot distinguish one thread from another. 

Philippians 2 tells us more about what God enfleshed looks like; and The Message translation puts it like this:

“He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.”

The original text of this is set out like a hymn, there is a rhythm to it that I think we are meant to repeat and remember in the same way we might remember the words of “All things Bright and Beautiful” from school, because the truth of the incarnation is the truth of Christianity.

The truth of it is that Jesus did not stop being God, stop being divine, but he chose to set aside his majesty to join us in the mess and mire of human life. Like a parent getting on the floor to play with their child and setting aside their sensibility and boredom of playing the same game twenty times, Jesus came down to us, not just so that we would never be able to accuse God of not knowing what it’s like to live in this broken and beautiful world, but so that it could one day be remade.

It’s this truth that changed my life when I was sixteen. Sitting in bed on a psychiatric unit with the noise, the pain, the confusion of it all I took out my iPod touch and searched for something to block out the terror that surrounded me and I listened to a sermon given a few weeks before to our church after a much loved member of our congregation had died, unexpectedly and tragically. It was the Christmas story, but unlike I’d ever heard it before – because this wasn’t about the shepherds or the angels or even the wise men, it wasn’t;’t even really about the baby in the manger – but it was about what Jesus had done in leaving heaven to come to earth. 

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a sermon more than I have listened to that one – because I understood for the first time that Jesus was the Word and the light in the darkness – and that meant that darkness really could never have the final world – in the world or in my own life. 

And it was a risk, for Jesus. To become human, God incarnate was a risk, because as author Scott Erickson writes

“Incarnation is the process of becoming seen. To be seen is to allow yourself to be known. To be known is to risk being loved…or not.”

Jesus took that risk and He made himself known.

That’s what this next part of the passage is about. “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not recognise Him”. 

Being seen, being known, being recognised are needs set into the human heart from the very beginning. We’re made to recognise the voice of our mother when we move from the womb to her arms, we give out a cry so that even though we can’t speak we can make sure they are near. 

Jesus came so that God could be seen; his risked rejection, the separation from His Father, he risked getting up close to creation in a way no other gods of this world ever have dared to. 

He moved into the neighbourhood.

I love this phrase in verse 14;  ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.’ The Message translation says that he “moved into the neighbourhood”, but the original text uses words that basically say God pitched his tent among us.

Now, I’ve only been camping once, but when you camp – you see the best and worst of people, don’t you? You see them at their morning breath and rain drenched worst and (apparently, although my one experience of camping I personally did not experience this) the best of their triumphant exhilarated self. 

The incarnation was not just that Jesus came to earth to observe it, to nosily see for himself was this humanity thing was all about – but to be plunged head first into the reality of humanity – to make the Father known to us.

“The incarnation is the intervention that saves the world. When everything is on fire, my greatest comfort is the assurance that the world will be saved. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world. Yes, the world will be saved by the intervention of God.” 

Brian Zahnd

This is the truth of the incarnation. But why? What was the point? Why go to all this effort and agony?

The answer is love. 

He loves us.

And not the love that we’ll see on Valentine’s Cards everywhere this week, fluffy and sentimental (not that I’m averse to valentines cards and flowers if my husband is listening) – but the love of St Valentine who was executed because of his love for Jesus. It’s the invitation buried in these verses that we get to be called children of God.

It is perhaps what I’ve learned this past year, which has been tricky for a number of reasons.

That the love God has for us, the love that sent one who was there when the foundations of the earth were laid down to live our messy and muddled humanity, is one worth the risk of being wrong about.

The divine becoming human was Jesus making his home with us – and inviting us to make our home in him as wait we for the world to be made new. 

It is the greatest love, unfathomable and unshaking even as as we ourselves try to fathom the mysteries of God coming to earth in frailty and fear. 

It is the love that set a hope and dream in the heart of my broken sixteen year old heart, that runs towards the prodigals and welcomes those we sometimes wish it wouldn’t, it’s a love that welcomes even us, the one who we see the worst in. 

And that is my prayer this evening, perhaps that you see the beauty in the paradox of Jesus’ divine humanity, perhaps, in the words of KJ Ramsey, paradox is the only table strong enough to hold this truth – of the Word becoming flesh. If we didn’t have paradox there would be no incarnation.

And love is the power of this paradox. Love is the power that saw God become man; coming to us in our darkness and death to point us to life and light.

We only allow those who love us to get to know who we really are; and Jesus offers that to each of us, here and now, that we are loved and known, yes – but also that we may love and know God through him. 

And I want to draw to a close with a blessing this evening for each one of us:

May those who who fear being known may be lavished with the love that drives out fear. 

May those who fear to love may be emboldened by the risk of the incarnation God took for us. 

May those who feel this faith is a burden too heavy to bear, be refreshed by the one who bears our burdens.

And may each of us be filled with the courage to risk the paradox of the God who is divinely human, to welcome him to make his dwelling in us and rest ourselves in him. 

It is rare that I get a specific word of encouragement for a year; in fact I think the last one was 2018, which considering the events of the years since then, seems like a distant era. At the end of 2022, however, I began to feel the stirrings of something, noticing a theme in what I was reading and hearing, but also just that inexplicable feeling that sits within me when I feel like God may be saying something. I don’t know if it’s relevant for you – but I hope it encourages you like it encouraged me.

“Don’t despise the small things”

I read it first in my secret Santa gift of a beautiful crossway edition of Charles Spurgeon’s “Encouragement for the Depressed” (it was accompanied by chocolate unless you now think the list I provided on the website was the most depressing known to man!)

I read the small volume in a single afternoon, and it was those words that I kept circling back to: don’t despise the small things.

Perhaps the reason they have so captured me is part conviction; because the year that has just gone has been a year of small things. My world has shrunk geographically, socially and in pretty much every other way. I have longed for the days in my twenties when I travelled the country every weekend with a banner stand and my Cath Kidston suitcase as I attempt to seek order from my exhausted mind.

It’s so easy, especially in the kind of work I do to focus on the shiny bits of the job; the speaking to crowds and seeing words I’ve written come to life. But I was reminded that God is in the admin, the copywriting, and the resting in the same way that he is in the events and shiny things that we can so often crave like magpies.

Perhaps even more than that is the fact that we don’t need to do anything at all – even a small thing – to be loved by God. He doesn’t need us to be useful – He just wants us to call ourselves His.

He loves Elijah as much when the angel is giving him rest and nourishment as much as he does when Elijah winning battles – and he speaks in the small voice- not the mighty blaze.

Zechariah 4:10 too, reminds the Israelites that we can’t dismiss how God works – and all too often he works in the small, in the dark, in the seemingly useless and the invisible.

“Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings? They’ll change their tune when they see Zerubbabel setting the last stone in place!

What begins in the darkness, in the unremarkable, in our frailty, in the mustard seed and our brokenness is transformed by the power of God – not our effort or ability – however small.

Small things may lifting our head from a pillow or a pen to a page – but we remain loved and we remain part of God’s plan for redemption – however small we may feel. It encourages me, and it’s my hope that it encourages you.

I’m leaving you with the words from Charles Spurgeon that first inspired me:

“We see it every day, for the first dawn of light is but feeble, and yet by-and-by it grows into the full noontide heat and glory. We know how the early spring comes with its buds of promise, but it takes some time before we get to the beauties of summer or the wealth of autumn. How tiny often is the seed that is sown in the garden, yet out of it there comes the lovely flower!”

Charles Spurgeon, Encouragement for the Depressed, Crossway Books.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right?

And yet the arrival of Jesus changed everything for those he encountered – but not in a way anyone was expecting. The Israelites were, most probably, waiting for a triumphant King who would overrule the Roman, and what they got was a baby born to an unwed mother and a carpenter father. 

The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ – but all too often we only think of good news as ‘happy news’ – when actually we’re talking about real, unshakeable joy. 

Jesus came to upturn so many long held believers – because the most joyful news of all – that he was born to save us – came into the world in poverty and obscurity and told those who were listening that there would be trouble in the world, that the blessed amongst them would be the mourners. It’s not the kind of news that makes good encouraging instagram posts!

That idea that Jesus came to give us a good and easy life, dare I say it a prosperous life, has crept into our theology without us even realising it. However hard we try, we often have our own prosperity gospel hidden in our hearts. We may think that our tithing somehow guarantees some kind of financial privilege, or that if we just have enough faith we can curate our lives like our photo albums. 

The joy that Jesus brought however, is one which doesn’t seek to eliminate all pain and discomfort, but that faces it with honesty and with a God who doesn’t abandon us. We aren’t promised a life without pain – but a life with him. A life where we aren’t alone in the pain of this life because through Jesus, God has experienced every emotion, and through the Spirit we are comforted, encouraged and challenged. 

Jesus is our joy and yet he was also called “Man of Sorrows”; so perhaps he is reminding us that happiness isn’t the goal – that joy is – and that we can’t have joy apart from him. 

Nothing was ever the same again when Jesus came; not for Mary and Joseph, not for the disciples and not for us. 

Christmas reminds us that in Jesus’ incarnation he made him home on earth and he makes his home in our hearts – and that’s the greatest reason for our joy. 

As The Message translation of John 15 reminds us: 

“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me…“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.”

Nothing will ever be the same again; but we are invited to make our home in Jesus’ love, because he made his home with us. 

In the words of Henri Nouwen:

“Home is what the incarnation is all about.”

So amidst all the chaos and celebration of Christmas this year; whether it be full of sorrow or jubilation, let us be reminded that Jesus wants to make a home in our hearts – and nothing will ever be the same again when we make our home in the heart of our Creator.

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”

Isaiah 9:2

Before there is light, there is darkness – uncreated, unformed – and yet it is from the formless darkness that emerges the light of new life. 

We cannot ignore the darkness that the people of Israel – that we are living in as we wait for the unquenchable light of Jesus’ return.

In the days we live in, we don’t need to engage with the dark like our ancestors did; we have electric lights to elongate our days, allowing us to work longer, sleep less and detach ourselves from the rhythm of nature in a way that generations before was impossible. So the first step in facing the darkness; is accepting its presence, acknowledging the sin and the evil that we would wish to airbrush out of our lives. 

The world is dark, sometimes it feels as if it grows darker with every passing year as wars and rumours of wars, poverty and deception seem to rule. 

As Fleming Rutledge writes:

“[Advent] encourages us to resist denial and face our situation as it really is.”

In the dark, we have to admit that we don’t know it all, we have to admit that there are cracks in our facade, healing that hasn’t happened yet, sins that we don’t know how to bring into the light. 

And yet.

The good news is that God does not abandon the darkness in creation- and he doesn’t abandon the darkness in us – instead he puts boundaries around it. 

There is night and dark, yes – but there is also light and day. 

In the Northern hemisphere, Advent happens in the darkest days, the longest nights of the year, but they lead to the winter solstice which changes the direction of our days back towards the light. 

And yet, in accepting the reality of our present darkness, we can also find the treasures that we might miss among the bright lights.

Darkness isn’t to be demonised – because even here – God came. He experienced the darkness of Mary’s womb through Jesus and he returned to his body in the pitch black of a sealed tomb. 

In Isaiah 45 we are promised treasures in the darkness – but these treasures can only be found when we know the God who brought forth light and boundaried the dark. 

“I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.”

Advent tells us that the darkness is real, it tells us to face up to the darkness; but it also tells us that it will not rule, it will not have the final word –  because God himself reaches into the darkness, placing his treasure there and never failing to bring forth new life. 

 When I was ten, I played Mary in my school nativity; and I’ve remembered the words of my solo ever since (twenty two years at the last count!)

“Lord as you’ve spoken, let it be, may your will be known through me”

Just a few years younger than it’s believed Mary herself was when she was tasked with becoming Jesus’ Mum, I found her reaction astounding. It is certainly not how I would have reacted to the news that I was going to become pregnant outside of marriage (which alone could have seen me sentenced to death). What Mary understood, was that being chosen to carry the Son of God, of being ‘greatly favoured’ was to be feared and embraced. She understood that her position was one of gravity and grace, The Magnificat, her song shows us that and she trusted in who she knew God to be. 

I wonder if it’s meant to remind us of Hannah’s prayer for Samuel, another song of bittersweet joy. Both women understood that mothering their sons would involve losing them – and the same is true for anyone who mothers today, whether that be through parenting or the nurturing of young faith and life. 

Mothering and Advent have been closely intertwined in my life; my husband and I both lost a pregnancy and brought home a baby in those dark fairy lit days of the year; the grief and joy of those times magnified by the season. 

I have often thought about what Mary’s birth was like; it was probably full of pain and fear, because birthing is almost always a breaking. Whether or not it’s physical child birth, it’s a breaking of an old way of life; perhaps beginning to parent god-children, going through the adoption process or seeing an idea planted in the dark break through to reality. There will be breaking, there will be pain and yet through it God will bring forth something new. 

We see the birthing and breaking again when they present Jesus at the Temple. They are greeted by an elderly couple, Simeon and Anna, who have been waiting for the Messiah their whole lives. But theirs isn’t a message of congratulation, it’s another warning that this child who has been born will be like no other. Simeon tells Mary that “a sword will pierce her own soul, too” which is surely the kind of prophecy no mother wants to hear about her newborn, that the child she has borne will turn the whole world upside down. 

Our lives will see birthing and breaking, none more so than in our faith. We will experience the revelation of divine love through Jesus – but this love will break our hearts for the lost. 

And yet if we dare to allow ourselves to be broken before God, we will see how his love for each one of us revealed through Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection as we wait with baited breath for his return and our recreation.

There is something about advent that captivates me, perhaps more than any other period in the christian year. It seems to faithfully reflect the world we live in; the vast chasm between the world we long for and the world we live in, the despair we feel and the hope we cling to. 

Advent invites us to recognise the ‘yets’ throughout our lives; the world is darker than we can bear and yet God is kinder than we can imagine, the kingdom of God is now and not yet, Jesus is fully divine and yet fully human. 

The wait between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the  New was four hundred years; four hundred years of silence and longing for the Israelites. Advent both signals the end of that period of waiting for the Messiah and the the beginning of a new wait – for the recreation, the end of crying, mourning and pain. 

It’s reflected in the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah; advanced in years their hopes for a child must have been long gone and much like Abraham and Sarah, the news that they would conceive a child in their old age was greeted with disbelief. Whilst Sarah laughed at hearing from an angel that she was to bear a child, Zechariah was silenced until his son, the man who would herald Jesus’ arrival, was born. 

In this life we do not receive all we long for; arms may remain empty, prodigals don’t always come home, losses will be borne. And yet we see here not just stories of promises fulfilled, but of hope that cannot be extinguished – even by the darkest despair. 

We may not have a choice in what we are waiting for, or how long the wait, but we do have a choice in how we wait. 

Tanya Marlow writes in her book “Those Who Wait”;

“I wanted fulfilment; instead, God repeated the promise”

Every time I’ve read those words (and I’ve read them a fair few times) I’ve been reminded that as we wait God reveals more of himself to us. He shows us more of his character, his compassion and shares the hope he has set before us all. 

So often in my life I’ve raged at God because He isn’t doing what I want Him to do – only to look back and see the way He worked in (and sometimes in despite) how I have waited. God does not promise to give us everything we want – He promises us Himself -and if we can wait on Him in our waiting, we can be transformed.

Waiting without hope can consume us, twisting our desires into idols and our longing into bitterness; but if we dare wait with hope, if we dare wait in the silence for his voice or the dark for his illumination, He will never fail us. 

” if we dare wait with hope, if we dare wait in the silence for his voice or the dark for his illumination, He will never fail us.”

The words of 12th century carol “O Come O Come Emmanuel” capture the agony and expectancy of waiting with hope; that we are not left in our despair but have had eternity engraved in our hearts.

“O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.”

We wait, in our mourning and our loneliness – and yet:

Not a tear is wasted in the wait as we fix our eyes on our God who waited in a womb for us.

So let us not rush the wait of advent, let us tune our hearts to it, and watch as the light of the world is ignited in our darkness. 

There are some days which begin entirely ordinarily, and yet end with the dates engraved in hearts, minds and history books. Thursday 8th September became one of those days when it was announced that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had died, peacefully at Balmoral. 

People from across the spectrum of politics and position have expressed their grief at the loss of a woman whose life was devoted to service, and whose presence has been a constant amidst the rapidly shifting times we’ve experienced over the past few decades. 

The question for us all, is how then do we grieve? 

For some of us, it might be by consuming all the content produced in memory of the Queen, assimilating ourselves with the reality that the only monarch we have ever known has now died.

Others of us may need to take a step back from social media, to limit the near constant stream of rolling news and take our own time to adjust to the new reality. 

There is something about collective grief that can nudge those bruised and scarred parts of us which are still grieving our own losses – even if the loss was long ago. It’s important that we are able to acknowledge that pain, and recognise that we don’t need to feel guilty for this very public loss reawakening our own private grief. 

Times of great grief demand great gentleness and kindness, towards one another and ourselves. It’s important, therefore to respect the ways in which other people may be experiencing this strange time. 

Where we can be united, however, is that we are invited to express our grief to our Creator.  All over the country, churches have opened their doors to be places of prayer and reflection, and it is important that we are creating spaces in which people can process their feelings before God. Throughout scripture, we see people expressing their pain before God both individually and communally – we have permission to do the same through lament. 

Lament allows us to hold together the twin realities of our grief and God’s goodness in the pattern of the Psalms. For example Psalm 116 begins with an expression of love for the God who hears us, but also speaks of the ‘cords of death which entangle.’ 

Over the coming days and weeks; we need to make space for lament in our church services and small group gatherings. This might be by holding a service of remembrance for the Queen, or making space within our small groups to talk and pray about how the Queen’s death may be affecting our own grieving. 

It’s also important that we don’t forget our children and young people; for many children this may be the first experience of death, so taking the time to speak clearly about the Queen’s death; using the language of death rather than more abstract terms like ‘passed away’ or ‘gone to sleep’. 

Our young people have experienced a great deal of loss and uncertainty during the past few years, and the death of the Queen may bring up those feelings of unsettledness for them in particular. We can reassure them that whilst we do seem to be in a period of great change; the love of God and the love we have for them remain the same. 

Those with pre-existing mental illnesses and vulnerabilities may also be feeling fragile over the coming days and weeks. Our communities can be offering support for those who need it and ensuring that those who are really struggling know where to go to get extra help. 

The legacy of Her Majesty in one of service; and I believe that her death is an opportunity for us to serve one another with the kindness and gentleness of our God who is close to those who are brokenhearted. 

This article was originally published on Woman Alive.

The tomb is empty – and nothing has ever been the same since. 

And yet.

We live in the tension of victory of Jesus over death – but the reminders of our frailty, our sin and our grief. 

The call to “rejoice always” that we see in Philippians is one that can feel impossible when we’re faced with the reality of our pain, but it wasn’t one that Paul made glibly. He wrote imprisoned from a Roman jail – he knew discomfort and struggle – and yet he implores the Philippians (and us) to rejoice.

He doesn’t tell us to put on a brave face, to pretend that everything is okay; but to allow ourselves to be filled with the love of God and live from the knowledge of our belovedness. 

We aren’t being told to rejoice in our pain or because of it – rather we are implored to rejoice through it – to keep praising God even when it’s the last thing we feel like doing, because remaining connected to him is the only way we can experience real and lasting joy. 

Lament does not stand in opposition to joy – very often it can be the thing that enables joy. 

And in the words of Poet Mary Oliver “joy is not made to be a crumb” – it is made to be abundant and shared. 

A blessing allows joy and hope to be shared; where once they were conferred only through families, we are free to share our blessings with one another. 

Author John O’Donohue writes that “the language of blessing is invocation: a calling forth” – as the spring sunshine coaxes the buds to bloom, so blessings encourage us to offer our belovedness to one another. 

A blessing is the language of ‘yet’ – which hopes against hope that in the darkness around us light will come – that new life will bloom from what seems dead and everlasting life has come to us not through our struggle for perfection, but Jesus’ sacrifice of grace that leads us home.