This Is For The Radical Ones

This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 12/28/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: John 1:1-14.

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This is for the radical ones. The prologue to John’s Gospel is for the radical ones. It’s for those of us who want to get down to the root of things, to the pillars of the cosmos and beyond.

This is a passage that takes us back to the beginning of Genesis, where it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John takes us back to that point of origin and says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The creation happened through him. All of it, every single thing that has come into being, came through the Word.

This is the common thread that explains our whole story from A to Z. The light is shining in the darkness. The darkness that came before the creation. The darkness that emerged again in the fall from grace and persisted through all our corrupt ages and civilizations. The light shines in that darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

Throughout these ages of darkness, God has sent witnesses – prophets like Moses and Elijah. Finally, God sent John – the voice in the wilderness who testified to the light so that all might believe through him. He came to announce that the true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.

The light was coming into the world. We had seen this before. This light shone on the mountaintop with Moses and gave us the law. God had spoken through his prophets. And we held out hope that one day God would send a savior who would deliver us from the evil empires all around us and inaugurate an era of justice and peace.

But after all this waiting, we still weren’t prepared for him. He was here before we even knew it. The cosmos came into being through him, but we didn’t recognize him when he arrived. His own people rejected him, thinking he was just another troublemaker.

But the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. The Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory: the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

And to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Let me say that again, because our faith is very clear about this, and it is not merely poetic language: For all who receive Jesus, who put their trust in him, he gives us power to become sons and daughters of God.

I thought that understanding the Trinity was hard, and it sure is. But I am finding the incarnation possibly even harder to understand. What does it mean that the Word of God that was with God in the beginning? What does it mean that everything that we see and know was created through him? What does it mean that this pre-existent, eternal Word has also become a human being, whose name is Jesus and who was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, and who was crucified in Jerusalem at a particular date and time 2,000 years ago?

The community of Jesus followers spent centuries trying to make sense of this event and this reality. They came up with a lot of fancy terms like “hypostatic union”. And all of that’s really interesting. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week as I’ve been preparing this sermon.

But what I keep coming back to in this passage is not the mystery of who Jesus is – as incredible as that is to think about – but rather the mystery of who you and I are to become as we receive Jesus and receive the light that shines in the darkness.

Because to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Are you a child of God?

Don’t answer too quickly. When John says that Jesus gives us power to become children of God, he doesn’t mean it the way that the world today means it.

In our modern society, it is very typical to say things like, “Everybody is a child of God.” And in a certain sense, that’s true. All of us have been created by God, and all of us are loved by God. God loves each and every one of us, without exception.

But that’s not what John is talking about here. When John says that Jesus gives us power to become children of God, he is talking about something much more radical. And this is central for John, it’s a message that John comes back to, again and again, throughout his gospel account: When we receive Jesus and believe in His name, we are given power to become an entirely new creation in God.

The word became flesh and lived among us, and it changed everything. God’s whole relationship with humanity shifted forever when he became one of us. It’s incredible to think about: The infinite eternal God assumed human nature.

Why did he do it?

The infinite eternal God assumed human nature so that we, finite human beings, could partake in the divine nature. As Saint Athanasius wrote in his work On The Incarnation, “the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”

So you see that John was saying something much bigger than some vague platitude about how God abstractly loves us. When we receive Jesus and believe in his name, we discover that God loves us very concretely and specifically. God became one of us so that we can become like him.

Jesus is the bridge between the divine nature and the human nature. He has them both. He is both, forever. God will always be one of us. Just like the rainbow that God left in the sky after the flood to say that he would never again flood the earth, God has made an eternal covenant with humanity in his own flesh. He will always be one of us. He will always be in solidarity with us. He will always be with us and we will always be with him when we receive him and believe in his name. He  gives us power to become children of God who are born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that we might become children of God.

This is for the radical ones. This is for the ones who aren’t satisfied with Sunday morning religion and polite morality and reasonable charity to socially responsible causes.

The Gospel of John is for the radical ones who are no longer content with doing their jobs, and saying their prayers, and paying their taxes. This is for the radical ones who feel that the call in their hearts is to become fire, to become something brand new, to become something that is born not of blood or the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 

Our destiny is to become children of the Most High, to be remade in the image of Jesus.

If you’re ready to hear it, the message of John is that Jesus is not a magical God-man superhero who does things that you could never do. God has humbled himself to become just like us so that we might just like him. Jesus is not just a hero. He’s not even just an example. He is the Way. 

Jesus is a real path that you can walk. He is a true life you can live – partaking in his power, his glory, his miracles, his love, and his cross.

The Christian faith is so much more than they told us it was. It’s so much more than reading the Bible. It’s so much more than showing up to church on Sunday. It’s so much more than being a good citizen. It’s so much more than being a nice person.

Glory. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory, as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

This is the story that we have been invited into. This is the path that lies before us if we will receive him and trust in his love.

This is how life really is. This is the reality of things. Even in the face of all the challenges that we experience in the world today, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

This is the good news. This is the promise of the incarnation. This is the invitation for us gathered here today: The Holy Spirit wants to move through us, flow in our lives, and do miracles. We don’t have to rely on our own strength and we don’t have to be limited by what seems reasonable or safe or realistic.

Will we open ourselves to that power? Will we put our feet in that way, which Jesus has prepared for us? Will we entertain the possibility that perhaps, just maybe, the Gospel is true and we can become like Jesus – sons and daughters of the living God, light shining in the darkness?

How do our lives need to change if we really believe that? What does it look like for all of us here this morning to embrace that power to become children of God?