And the Word Became Flesh

A Christmas Day Reflection – John 1:1–14

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai

What does Christmas mean when the world is breaking?
When grief is fresh, when violence shatters ordinary days, when war grinds on, when floods wash away homes, and when some suffering never even makes the news.

First, it is important to say this plainly:

Christmas does not explain suffering.
Christmas does not excuse violence.
Christmas does not magically erase grief.

If it did, it would be a shallow story, unworthy of those who mourn.

So what does Christmas mean—for families shattered by shootings, for those living under occupation or bombardment, for refugees, for communities drowning or burning, for people whose names are never spoken aloud?

Christmas means God comes there.

Not above it.
Not protected from it.
Not after it is cleaned up.

The heart of Christmas is not sentimentality—it is incarnation.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Flesh that can be wounded.
Flesh that can be afraid.
Flesh that can bleed, flee, and grieve.

God does not arrive with armies or answers, but as a vulnerable child born into an occupied land, under an empire, to parents who would soon become refugees themselves. That matters, especially now.

For families living with sudden loss

Christmas says: God knows the sound of mothers weeping.
Rachel’s cry echoes through Scripture and into our own headlines. God does not turn away from that cry—God is found inside it.

Christmas does not say, “Be strong.”
It says, “You are not alone.”

For those living with war and displacement

Christmas says: God sides with the displaced, not the powerful.
With civilians, not missiles.
With children, not borders.
With those who sleep lightly, listening for danger.

Mary and Joseph knew fear.
They knew flight.
They knew what it was to leave home to survive.

For those whose suffering is unseen

Christmas insists that no life is invisible to God.
Even when the cameras are gone.
Even when compassion fatigue sets in.
Even when the world moves on.

The manger tells us that what the world calls insignificant, God calls holy.

And what about hope?

Not the fragile hope of “everything will be fine.”
But the resilient hope of “love still refuses to die.”

Christmas hope is not optimism—it is defiant love.

Light does not deny the darkness.
It enters it.

So what does Christmas mean?

It means:

• God chooses presence over power.
• God chooses solidarity over safety.
• God chooses love that risks being broken.

And for us, it means this:

If God is born into such a world, then our calling is not to escape the world’s pain, but to meet it with compassion.

To be light where things are cracked.
To be shelter where people are exposed.
To be tenderness where the world has grown hard.

And one gentle correction

You asked what Christmas means for them in 2025.
But perhaps the truer word is this:

This is what Christmas means in every year where the world is hurting.
Which is to say—every year.

Christmas does not arrive because the world is ready.
It arrives because the world is not.

And still—the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

In the beginning was the Word.

Before the sirens.

Before the headlines.

Before the names were spoken aloud in trembling voices.

Before the Christmas tables with empty chairs.

This Christmas will not feel like Christmas for everyone.

For the families of those killed at Bondi Beach on Sunday the 14th of December.

For families shattered by shootings at Brown University,

and in other places across our world where violence has spoken louder than reason or love.

For them, Christmas arrives quietly, awkwardly, painfully.

It comes whether they are ready or not.

They wake to a season that insists on joy

while their hearts are learning how to breathe again.

They hear carols of peace on earth

while their own world feels anything but peaceful.

Lights are everywhere—

yet they live in shadow.

All around our world, there is salvation and there is war.

There are people who do not know

where their next drink of water will come from,

when the next piece of food will arrive,

or when the fighting will finally stop.

There are families marking Christmas

in refugee camps and ruined cities,

and families marking it with silence, shock, and grief.

And into this world,

John dares to say something astonishing:

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Not hovered above us.

Not shouted instructions from a distance.

Not wrapped in safety or immunity from pain.

The Word became flesh.

Which means God did not choose distance over solidarity.

God did not avoid the ache of loss,

the cruelty of violence,

or the grief of families whose lives are now divided into before and after.

God entered the fragile, breakable, vulnerable human story.

The Word became flesh

and moved into the neighbourhood of sorrow.

John tells us that the light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness has not overcome it.

Not because the darkness is small.

Not because grief is easily healed.

But because light does not need permission to exist.

It simply shows up.

For some this Christmas, light will be small and fragile.

It may be the courage to get out of bed.

The kindness of someone who does not rush their grief.

The permission to cry in the middle of a carol.

The memory of a love that violence could not erase.

Among the brokenness of our world,

we catch glimpses of light—

like sunshine through cracked glass.

Not enough to erase the fractures,

but enough to remind us

that the darkness does not have the final word.

And so the coming of the Christ child

is not a denial of the world’s pain.

It is God choosing to enter it.

Hope is born not into perfection,

but into poverty.

Love arrives not with force,

but with vulnerability.

Light does not wait for the darkness to disappear—

it shines within it.

And Christmas calls us

not only to admire the light,

but to become it.

Let us be the light that shines

through the brokenness of the lives of others.

Let us be hope where despair has settled,

kindness where fear has taken hold,

presence where words are inadequate.

And when we ourselves are broken—

when the cracks feel too wide

and the night feels too long—

may we find the light of others

arriving at just the right time.

This is the gift of Christmas:

not that the world is suddenly healed,

but that God is with us in it.

The Word made flesh.

Grace and truth dwelling among us.

Light shining in the darkness.

And the darkness has not overcome it.  Amen.

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