Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd does a flock” [Jeremiah 31:10].
The Word became flesh and lived among us [John 1:14].
In the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction by Babylonian forces in 587 BCE, the prophet Jeremiah—who had long warned of impending judgment—turns to words of consolation. The scattered people will be gathered from “the farthest parts of the earth” (31:8). God will lead them “by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble’ (31:9). “Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,” he promises, “and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow” (31:13).
How strange these promises must have sounded to people whose world had collapsed, whose holy city lay in ruins, whose temple had been destroyed. Stranger still that this week the lectionary [see Jeremiah 31:7-14; John 1:(1-9), 10-18, the Second Sunday after Christmas, RCL, Year C] pairs Jeremiah’s ancient words of hope with John’s profound declaration: “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). Yet in this pairing, we encounter how God chooses to work in the world.
Throughout history, we have predominantly sought restoration through means we can ourselves engineer—through political victories, community organizing, social reforms, institutional changes, the triumph of our preferred solutions. Even when these repeatedly fall short, we tend to simply seek better versions of the same— more effective policies, stronger leaders, improved systems. Our default remains stubbornly earthbound, fixated on solutions we can devise and implement ourselves.
But God, as God is wont to do, confounds our expectations entirely. When Jeremiah spoke of God gathering His scattered people “like a shepherd with His flock” (31:10), who could have imagined that the Shepherd would become one of the sheep? When Jeremiah proclaimed God’s promise to “turn their mourning into joy,” who could have conceived that God would do so not by eliminating sorrow from above, but by entering fully into human sorrow from within?
This is the scandal at the heart of both the OT and Gospel readings for this Sunday: that God’s answer to human brokenness would come not through our expected channels of power and influence, but through complete identification with our human condition. When John declares that “the Word became flesh and lived among us,” he uses language that would certainly have startled his first readers and hearers. One of my commentaries reveals that the Greek word John chooses (σκηνόω) literally means “to pitch a tent” or “to tabernacle.” The word deliberately echoes Israel’s wilderness experience, when God’s presence dwelt in the tabernacle among the people. Now, however, God chooses not to dwell in a tent near His people, but to make human flesh itself His dwelling place.
I think C.S. Lewis comes close to capturing the essence of the Incarnation in his “Miracles,” where Lewis pictures this divine initiative as a strong man stooping lower and lower, disappearing beneath some great burden until he can lift it from below. The image is unsettling: the God of all creation voluntarily taking on the weight of human existence.
The Hebrew prophets had long spoken of God drawing near to his people: in pillars of cloud and fire (Exodus 13:21-22), in the thunder of Sinai (Exodus 19:16-19), in the whispers heard by Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-13). But even these dramatic manifestations kept a certain distance, maintained a separation between divine and human. Even in the Jerusalem temple, God remained behind the curtain, apart from the broken world of human experience.
But now, in the fullness of time, Jeremiah’s promises find their fulfillment in ways that transcend their original context. God gathers the scattered not by divine decree but through divine participation in human exile. The transformation of mourning into joy comes not through the elimination of sorrow but through God’s choice to bear it alongside us. The leading beside still waters (31:9) happens not from above but through the presence of One who knows human thirst.
I think this is why John tells us that “his own people did not accept him” (John 1:11). The incarnation was too scandalous, too humble, too different from expected forms of divine intervention. The incarnation isn’t a polite divine visitation that keeps a respectful distance; it’s God’s complete identification with human existence, a presence that transforms everything it touches. Even now, we might miss God’s restorative work when it doesn’t match our expectations of how God should act in the world. We look for power, and God offers partnership in our pain. We seek solutions, and God offers solidarity. We want rescue from above, and God chooses to work from within our broken condition.
Can we see that Jeremiah’s images of restoration—the dancing, the feasting, the transformation of mourning into joy (31:13)—find their deepest fulfillment not in political triumph or social reform, but in this mystery of God with us. The same God who spoke through the prophet of gathering scattered people now shares their journey of exile. The God who promised to lead beside still waters now knows human thirst. The one who pledged to turn mourning into joy now fully inhabits human sorrow, transforming everything through presence rather than power.
What might this mean for us, in our own experiences of exile and longing? For those who have faced devastating loss—the death of a child, the collapse of a marriage, the shattering of a family—the promise of restoration can seem hollow. Can we come to understand that restoration begins not with the elimination of our struggles, but with the recognition that we do not face them alone? God’s answer to human brokenness comes not through distance but through radical nearness, not through power exercised from above but through love embodied in our midst. This divine presence, while not erasing our pain, can somehow sustain and even transform us within it, enabling new life to emerge from places of deepest loss.
Both of this week’s readings—Jeremiah’s ancient promises and John’s profound declaration—continue to challenge our assumptions about how God chooses to work in the world. They invite us to look for divine restoration not in grand gestures or dramatic interventions, but in the mystery of God becoming present within the very circumstances from which we long to be delivered. This presence offers not the shallow optimism that everything will quickly be fine, but the deeper hope that comes from knowing that we are accompanied in our darkest valleys.
In these days after Christmas, as the world’s attention shifts away from mangers and angels, from stars and shepherds, we might pause to consider what it truly means that God chose to enter human history in this way. When Jeremiah spoke of God gathering the scattered and leading them home (31:8-9), could he have imagined that God would make this journey as a fellow traveler? That the promised restoration would come not through the expected channels of power but through the scandal of God’s complete identification with our human condition? Emmanuel—“God is with us”
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