Dock Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 7 December 2025
Summary
This week Brigid spoke to us about the wonder of the Incarnation — the extraordinary truth that the eternal Word, present at creation and the light of all humanity, became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood. Drawing from John 1:1–18, she reminded us that Jesus is not simply God’s messenger but God’s own self-expression — God’s mind, heart, character, and power in human form. Through the Incarnation, God becomes knowable, tangible, and present in the ordinary and messy places of our lives, inviting us not only to receive Him as children of God but also to participate in witnessing to His light. We were encouraged to savour this familiar passage anew, to practise noticing God’s presence in everyday moments, and to carry the echo of the Incarnation into our world.
Key Points & Takeways
The Incarnation Reveals Who God Truly Is - John begins with creation language (“In the beginning”) to show that Jesus is the eternal Word — Creator, Life-Giver, Light-Bringer. If we want to know what God is like, we simply look at Jesus.
God Comes in a Form We Can Understand - The Word didn’t appear or visit — He became flesh. Fragile. Touchable. Killable. God communicates in a language we can grasp because He wants to be known, loved, and encountered up close, not at a distance.
God’s Presence Is for the Everyday, Not the Extraordinary - Because of the Incarnation and the Spirit’s ongoing presence, we can meet God in the mundane: commuting, washing dishes, managing chaos, facing disappointment, or simply making coffee. God is with us in every room of our lives.
Light Shines Into Darkness — Even the Darkness Within Us - Jesus comes not only to illuminate the world but to pierce the shadows in our own hearts. His light brings clarity, healing, and new life — but we must be willing to recognise and receive Him.
The Incarnation Sends Us Out as Witnesses - Like John the Baptist, we aren’t called to be the light or the Word — but to point to Him. The Incarnation forms us into people whose ordinary lives “gossip good news, leak out love, and choose generosity,” bearing Christ’s light into the world.
Dock Discussion Questions
1. What part of John 1:1–18 stands out to you most, and why do you think this passage is so central to understanding who Jesus is?
2. Brigid talked about God coming in a form we can understand. Where recently have you sensed God’s presence in the ordinary or messy parts of your life?
3. “To all who received him… he gave the right to become children of God.” What makes receiving Jesus easy or difficult for you in this season?
4. In what ways could you practise “witness” this Advent — not by perfection or performance, but by simple acts of kindness, presence, or “gossiping good news”?
Long-form, edited transcript
Advent
Presence.
John 1:1-18
Last week we started our Advent series for this year, looking at the theme of incarnation, of God with us. We looked last week at the promise of the incarnation, found in Isaiah and throughout the Old Testament. The promise that God would send a saviour who would be light that breaks into darkness.
This week we are looking at that promise fulfilled. The promise of God’s presence being fully with us. God’s presence is not just hinted at, not just a concept or a symbol but God in flesh with us. To do that we are going to read an iconic passage of Scripture:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:1-18)
Paula Gooder, theologian at St Paul’s Cathedral, says this about John 1.
“So much has been written about it that it would be almost impossible to say anything new at all. So profound is its theology that any attempt to explain it must run the risk of diluting what it has to say. So beautiful is its poetry that any words we might use will run the work of trampling its own words underfoot. Despite this, it is important to stop for a while and savour again its beauty and profundity.”
So with that, that’s what we’ll do. Savour this passage. Savour truths that perhaps you’ve heard a thousand times before. This passage isn’t a standard box of celebrations that get wolfed down during one showing of Love Actually. This passage is your grandma’s mince pies with the secret recipe where she only makes one batch a year. You have them every year, they are an integral part of Christmas. So we need to enjoy this passage, tasting each mouthful and reminding ourselves how great it is.
John’s gospel starts in this unique way. It’s a different start to the other eye witness accounts of Jesus’ life. Mark jumps straight into the action of Jesus as an adult. Luke describes his careful research. Matthew traces Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham. But John does something different. John takes us back before Abraham, before Adam and Eve, before time itself even. In the beginning…
Do you recognise those words?
John 1:1 - “In the beginning.”
Verse 1 of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, the book that describes creation begins with “In the beginning.”
John is pointing out that Jesus isn’t just the next in a long line of prophets to speak God’s word. He’s deliberately echoing the creation narrative. “In Genesis 1, the climax is the creation of humans, made in God’s image. In John 1, the climax is the arrival of a human being, the Word become flesh”.
This is creation revisited. Creation reinvigorated, through Jesus. This book is about the creator God acting in a new way in his much loved creation. John begins not with a manger, not with an earthly genealogy, but with the cosmos itself, reminding us that Jesus is far bigger than we often imagine.
And all this happens through the word. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. The word for “word” in Greek is logos. It’s where we get our words logic and logical from. For Greek speakers listening to this passage, they would have understood that John is talking about the wisdom, the reason, the ordering principles behind the universe. To Jewish listeners, the word of God meant God’s creative, life-giving power. The same word that spoke and there was light, who spoke all of creation into being.
John takes all of that meaning and builds on it. He is saying this isn’t just an idea or a concept. The logos is a person - God’s own self-expression. The one through whom everything was made, who brings life and light into creation. And then John identifies this word. This word is Jesus.
I know this can all sound a bit hard to get our heads around and we are allowed to admit this, because it is something extraordinary. Part of the stunning nature of the incarnation that John is describing in this passage is that it is miraculous and supernatural and out of the ordinary. It’s not something we can neatly explain. But it is something we can begin to grasp. And I promise it enriches our faith when we do.
Words are so important, aren’t they? For most of us words are at the centre of how we exist in the world. Words are how we express ourselves. They carry our thoughts, our intentions. Words create worlds - they fire up our imaginations, inspire courage, they can both wound and heal. Words have power. And words make relationships possible. Words build bridges between people. Words are what bind relationships together.
It would be extremely difficult to sustain a friendship or a marriage without words. I wonder if you’ve ever used the wrong words in the wrong moment.
I did music at A-Level and one of our case studies was Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber. We had to write an essay on it during an exam and when we left the exam hall, a friend of mine came out saying she was exhausted from writing out his full name every time she referred to the musical’s composer, so she’s shortened it to ALG.
ALG, I thought. Andrew Lloyd Webber should be ALW, right? Well it turns out she’s been writing about Andrew Lloyd Grossman. The pasta sauce brand had been credited with composing Jesus Christ Superstar the whole way through her exam. Very much the wrong word at the wrong time.
Jesus is the ultimate right word at the right time. The Word has ultimate clarity on shaping, creating, transforming and healing reality but we’ve been fumbling for the right words to talk about it ever since. John gets the closest in this amazing passage I think.
At the very heart of God is communication, relationship, expression, self-giving. The full, perfect expression of God’s life, love, character, and power comes to us in the person of Jesus. Jesus is not merely the messenger of God’s Word.
He is God’s Word. God’s voice, God’s heart, God’s mind, God’s character, God’s power, in human flesh.
So that’s who he is. And what has Jesus come to do?
In the creation narrative in Genesis, God separates light from darkness, calling it day and night. That separation brings order and clarity and life to the world around us. Now John is telling us something even more profound. God will separate the light and darkness within us, within his creation too. Not by mere moral effort, not by abstract laws or human wisdom, but through Jesus, the Word who is Light for all people.
Jesus is the One who shines into the darkness of our hearts, our lives, our world. He brings revelation, joy, and the possibility of new life. And this light isn’t limited to a select few. It’s available to anyone who receives him.
But how?
Verse 14 - the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
The Message version of this passage says, the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood. John has identified Jesus as the one through whom all creation was made, who makes it possible for us to know the glory of God, who will bring light to the dark parts of us and yet he becomes flesh.
Not the word appeared, not the word seemed like flesh, or visited us here on earth for a bit. The word becomes flesh. Fragile, vulnerable, able to bruise and bleed. The eternal creator God takes on a body that can get tired, hungry, lonely. A body that can be broken.
Why did God do this? Perhaps because God wanted to communicate to us in a language that we understand. BPastor Caitlin Trussell explains it like this: We are sensate creatures: we see, we hear, we touch. So God calls through the cry of a manger and the groans of a cross. God wants to be known. God wants us to flourish with him. To communicate that, God comes in a form we can comprehend. The incarnation is the length to which God will go to get through to us.
A few months ago my brother called me out of the blue to tell me that there was a pigeon trapped in his living room and what should he do. I’m not sure what he was hoping for from me at the opposite end of the phone line and 100 miles away. Nonetheless, I encouraged him to speak in a calm tone and find an empty box to guide it towards the window. In the end he just shut the door and waited til a more grown up adult could come and help him. I was reminded of this daft incident when I read about this fable earlier this week.
There was once a farmer watching birds in a winter storm. They were flying again and again into a locked barn window, trying to get inside for shelter. The farmer wished he could tell them, “Stop smashing into the glass! The door is open — go through the door.” But every time he walked toward them to help, they scattered in fear. He thought: “If only I could become a bird, then I could speak their language. I could show them the way.”
If my brother had been able to speak to that bird trapped in the living room, he could have simply shown him the way back to the garden.
That is a bit like incarnation. God saying, “If I come too close in my glory, you’ll run. So I will become like you. I will speak your language. I will draw near in a way you can understand.” This isn’t the first time that God has dwelt among his people. Back in the Old Testament, we see constant ways that God is drawing close, being present. Giving his people the gift of his presence.
Through Israel’s history, God’s presence was first housed in the ark of the covenant. Then as God’s people become more established they build a temple. The temple was designed to be the meeting place where God and his people could come close. But only certain people at certain times could go behind the veil into the holiest place, where God’s presence was closest.
In Jesus, John is showing us that this all is changed. This kind of presence was not enough for God. Jesus comes as a living temple. The Word made flesh is the fulfillment of God’s dwelling with His people, not in a building, but in human flesh. He doesn’t remain distant or abstract. He walks, talks, eats, touches, heals. Fully present in the messy realities of life.
Where the temple’s access was limited, Jesus’ presence is available to all who ask for it. So that which was most enduring - the word - becomes that which is most vulnerable - a normal human. Jesus becomes the baby born in a manger, surrounded by his young parents and socially ostracised shepherds and strangers from a far away land, the magi. He becomes the one who touches the sick, washes feet, breaks bread with impolite company.
The friend who weeps at death, speaks forgiveness even to those who betray him. The teacher who said things that we are still trying to figure out how to live out. That reveal the continually upside down nature of his way of life. Blessed are the poor of spirit, love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you and of all things: your sins are forgiven. You are completely freed and forgiven and you are not defined by your mistakes.
God in flesh right in the middle of our physical, embodied, earthly reality. God’s radical, subversive action in terms we can grasp.
So what does this mean for us? So how does this outwork itself in our lives? Tomorrow morning, how does starting to grasp the incarnation make a difference?
Firstly, it means we can know what God is like. If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. The one we know as Jesus is the same as the word who was there at the start, who contains life and light, from whom all things are made. The word challenged darkness before creation, and now challenges darkness in creation itself.
And he’s also the one who ate breakfast with his friends and cared for his mum and laughed and cried. It means that God’s presence isn’t distant. God is not an abstract idea, not a cosmic force we have to reach up to. God is with us, in our embodied humanity, our struggles, our everyday lives. It shows us that God’s love is tangible, messy, real. God doesn’t love us from afar. He loves us up close in our tiredness and our failings and our honesty.
Secondly, it means that you can know God’s presence with you, intimately, as you head to work or drop the kids off or open your textbook. It means that through the Holy Spirit, you can sense God’s presence, hear God’s voice, taste and see God’s goodness outworking in our Mondays and Tuesdays and so on.
There is a challenge to this, as John outlines in verse 10. He was in the world but the world didn’t recognise him. Sometimes it’s hard for us, the created beings, to recognise our creator. Sometimes we prefer to live in darkness. To ignore what is good. To keep going with patterns of behaviour that harm us. Sometimes darkness happens to us and it can be hard to see where God is.
So let me ask you this morning, without judgement or cynicism, are there parts of you that have forgotten that the arrival of Jesus to earth is very good news? Have you been dulled by time or by life to the startling, transformative, world-changing news that God has become flesh?
If that’s you this morning, you’re not alone and you’re not shut out. John goes on to say, in verse 12:
“To all who received him… he gave the right to become children of God.”
This great drama has a place for you. The Incarnation creates family. And it’s a family where you are welcome no matter who you are. Brother Lawrence was a 17th-century French monk who spent most of his life working in a monastery kitchen. He became known for something he called practising the presence of God. Simply learning to turn our attention, again and again, to the One who is already with us. He taught that we don’t need special moments or spiritual highs to meet God; instead, we can cultivate awareness of God’s nearness in the smallest, most ordinary tasks.
For him, washing dishes or repairing sandals became places of prayer. He described it as gently returning the heart to God whenever it wandered. Over time, this simple habit forms us: it steadies us, softens us, and teaches us that there is no part of our day where Christ is absent or uninterested.
What might that look like for you?
Maybe turning your commute — the overground, the bus, the walk to the station — into a quiet space to breathe and acknowledge God’s presence, or as you make your first cup of coffee in the morning, simply being still and allowing yourself to become aware of God with you. But as Jesus was present in the mess, it also means God is present when your child pours breakfast down their clean school uniform, and when you burn your meal prep, or when you don’t get the job or receive the health diagnosis.
Practicing noticing God’s presence isn’t just for the serene, candlelight, quiet moments. It’s in the ordinary, messy moments too. It isn’t complicated or for the really advanced Christian. My experience says that because God is so kind and so wants to be known by you, give God one moment of your attention in the midst of your ordinary, and your circumstances may be exactly the same. But you’ll know God’s everlasting presence with you.
And finally, this means we are called to participate. We are called into relationship, into transformation and into witnessing to this light we’ve found. John describes one of the key witnesses to Jesus - his cousin, John the Baptist. He was a voice pointing not to himself, but to the Light that gives light to everyone.
As Paula Gooder puts it:
“The message of the incarnation is so wonderful and hard to comprehend that the human race needed help in discerning it and working out what it all meant.”
God sends divine and human messengers - angels and John the Baptist and others to help us see. We aren’t called to be the word. To have all the right words. To live some kind of perfection. But we are called to join in the witnessing to that Word. And that stretches us. It stretches the limits of our tired love. It stretches who we think belongs inside God’s story.
As Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we were given grace upon grace to become children of God. And in doing so, you, dear people of God, you are now flesh become Word.”
In other words, we carry the echo of the Incarnation into the world.
Sarah Yardley who leads Emmaus Road church in Surrey, gives this great vision for what witness can look like in ordinary life:
“Let us gossip good news, leak out love, be distracted by kindness, choose generosity, live in wonder.”
This is what it looks like when the Incarnation begins to take root in us. This is how the promise of last week becomes the purpose of next week. This is how Christ continues to shine in the darkness - through people who have encountered the Word made flesh and now, in their own flesh, bear His light.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, Word made flesh, we thank You that You moved into our neighbourhood and stepped into our humanity so we might know the Father’s heart.
Where we have grown dull to the wonder of Your coming, awaken us again. Where darkness has crept in, shine Your light.
Teach us to notice and to savour Your presence in the ordinary, to turn our hearts toward You throughout our days, and to live as children of God who carry Your light into the world.
Fill us with grace upon grace, that our lives may echo the beauty of the Incarnation.
Amen.