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Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Incarnation. The word gets thrown around this time of year. Rick Serdynski mentioned at the Friday morning prayer meeting this week that he noticed on a list of college basketball scores the name of a school: Incarnate Word. By the looks of it, they are not having a good year. What does Incarnation mean? What relevance does it have for us today? Does it matter?

This sermon did not begin with me thinking about the Incarnation. It began with a question: What are we hoping for? I realize we are hoping for the fulness of the kingdom of God, but what would it look like if it came? I began in Isaiah 9, with the promise of a child given as an answer to the darkness of this world, whose governance would bring about shalom and justice and would never end. My thoughts went shortly to Matthew where Isaiah 9:2 is quoted at the onset of Jesus’ earthly ministry. If one wants a picture of what the kingdom of God in fulness would look like, one needs to look no further than the earthly ministry of Jesus… up until his final experience in Jerusalem.

After a couple of weeks of thinking about that, I heard a reading of the opening verses from John’s Gospel (1:1-14). And that very last phrase caught my attention. “Full of grace and truth.” I realized that this is another way of answering the question: What would it look like if the kingdom of God came in its fulness? It would look like a king and his people full of grace and truth. I was immediately pricked in my heart that “full of grace and truth” would far too often not describe me.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/12/20211226.pdf