The great scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who lead the team to develop the atomic bomb, was supposed to have said, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." The fancy theological word for that is incarnation, which means "in the flesh." Jesus was the incarnation of God, or the way that God sent his idea to humanity. One of the early 2nd century church fathers named Ignatius explained that " by the Incarnation, God broke his silence." A little girl who was not so theologically astute put it this way: "Some people couldn't hear God's inside whisper, so God sent Jesus to tell them out loud." Which leads us to the Gospel writer John's words, "The Word became flesh and lived among us." (1)

Now a word is something spoken, or written down for readers to speak, not just to read. Words are not something that we keep silent or inside. A word is meant to be spoken aloud, shared with others, especially the words about what God has and is doing through Christ Jesus. So it is that John begins this old poem: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This Word, John identifies as Jesus Christ, "the Word who became flesh and lived among us."

But notice verses 2 and 3. "He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." John further identifies Jesus, the Word, as being one and the same with God. John says this explicitly later in his gospel. Jesus and God are the same. In Jesus we see and know God because Jesus is God. God became flesh and blood and dwelt among us.

So the Word is Jesus and Jesus is God and the Word is God. All things came into being through him, so states John. If we go back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and read the first chapter, God created everything. And how did God do this? The author of Genesis 1 says that God said, "Let there be..." and there was. Creation came into being, things were created, because God spoke words. And there was light and dark, and sun and moon, and land and water, and vegetation and animals, and human beings. God spoke words out loud that said there will be these parts of creation.

God spoke. God has never been silent. Words are meant to be spoken out loud. God's Word, Jesus Christ, sent into the world, was not meant to be silent or hidden, but revealed for all to see, in the form of a human being. And like the words of creation, The Word, Jesus Christ, creates new things, specifically new life. A person who changes his or her life to live differently has spoken loudly that it's not business as usual, that I am a new person because of the way I now live. Believe me when I say that that speaks loudly to the people around us about who we are now, that we belong to Christ Jesus.

Words are meant to be spoken, especially the Word of God. So I ask: do we share the Word with other people? Someone has said that actions speak louder than words. Do the words that we say and do the actions that we do speak to others about the love and grace of Christ?

God sent the Word to us that the world and all of existence has now changed. You and I need to speak that word to a contemporary world so that they too might hear this Word and be changed, changed into believers in Christ and disciples of Christ. We have Good News to speak to the world, because God spoke Good News to us in Jesus.

"The Word became flesh and lived among us." Well, the Word is with us this morning in the Holy Communion. The bread that we eat and the juice that we drink represent the presence of Christ inviting us to eat and drink with him. The Word is concrete and visible to us. But are we just going to eat and drink? Or are we going to speak the Word of Love to the world around us?

Join me now in receiving the Word, celebrating the Word, and speaking the Word to one and all. Let us share in this Word of the Communion table and like the Home Communion Servers, let us take this Word into our community to share loudly with others that our God lives among us in truth and grace.

(1) William Bausch, A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers, (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1998), p. 300.