PC: Jeffrey Kluger
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. 9The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1–14).
Recently, I had the immense privilege of preaching the homily at the memorial service for one of America’s true heroes, renowned astronaut Jim Lovell. Lovell is perhaps most famous for commanding the Apollo 13 moon mission, in which he and his crew, with the expert help of the NASA ground team and the constant prayers of our nation and the world, turned a potentially disastrous situation into one that bore eloquent witness to what mere human beings are capable of when they work together for a common good. But even beyond that particular mission, Lovell was a man of many impressive accomplishments who inspired millions of us to see farther, dream bigger, dig deeper, push harder, and do better.
For me, one of the most important moments in Jim Lovell’s illustrious career was his participation in the flight of Apollo 8 in 1968, the first time a manned spacecraft reached and orbited the moon. On Christmas Eve, during one of their circuits around the moon, in a live television transmission, the Apollo crew took turns reading the creation story from the book of Genesis. In that moment, amid the vastness of space, with the moon below and the brilliant blue marble of the earth in view above it, the world got a true sense of the immensity of creation, the smallness of mankind, and the incredible greatness of the God who made it all.
As I reflected on Lovell’s life and on the many milestones and records he set, some of which endure to this day, I could not help but think that, impressive as his accomplishments were, as inspiring as his own life and legacy had been, he, like all of us, could not escape the gravitational pull of his own mortality. Traveling the path of all flesh (1 Kings 2:2), his death brought an important question squarely into focus: Where do we turn for comfort and hope in the face of death? For, no matter who we are or how great our accomplishments, some journeys simply outstrip our frail human capacities.
This is not the case, though, for the triune God, who holds the beginning and the end in his hands. The Scriptures teach us that God’s son also undertook an amazing journey. But this was not a journey of ascent; his would be a descent into the realm of the earthly, with a goal greater and more far-reaching than any human adventure ever undertaken. We learn something about that journey in a passage that in many ways recalls and reflects the beauty and the power of Genesis 1. John 1:1–14 outlines the contours of this most important mission.
In the most sublime of words, John recounts the epic condescension of our Savior and Lord, who, out of his great love, laid aside his heavenly glory (Philippians 2:1–11), taking to himself our earthly flesh for the purpose of our salvation. John’s words “in the beginning” are deliberate, echoing those first verses of Genesis. Here, though, John heralds a different purpose. These verses are not about a new creation story, but about a long-planned redemption story.
Just as the light of that first creation shattered the darkness, so now, a new light has dawned in a sin-darkened world. Verse 5 thunders, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Of course, Jesus Christ has become this divine torch. Elsewhere, he declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
To become this saving light-bearer, the divine Son, the only begotten of the Father, took to himself our flesh, becoming a living human being. John also reminds us that this enfleshment served another purpose—that Jesus might “dwell” among us. Better translated as “tabernacled,” this is a clear reference to the Temple, the place where God dwelled with his people in ancient Israel. Yet, now, wearing the garment of our humanity, Jesus has become a living embodiment of the Temple of the Living God. Truly, our God is Immanuel, “God with us.”
Importantly, the incarnation is not another familiar myth from the ancients about gods wishing to experience something new and different among the throngs of humanity. Far from it. The triune God is inherently satisfied within himself. He cannot be more fulfilled than he already is. His was not a journey toward something more, but one that flowed out of the inexhaustible reservoir of his being, making his grace and truth understandable to a broken world.
This is the good news of the gospel. Out of his great love, the living God became a living human being, that he might fulfill perfect righteousness and become a perfect sacrifice for our sins, so as to defeat the curse of sin and death that weighs heavy on this world. In his coming, his life, his atoning sacrifice upon the cross, and his resurrection and ascension again into heaven is the power to bring people dead in their sins back to real life.
One of humanity’s greatest achievements was to ascend from this earth, to escape its gravitational field and burst forth boldly into that last frontier of space. But as great as their journey to the stars was for Jim Lovell and the crew of Apollo 13, the nearly fatal nature of their mission reminds us that the most important journeys are always those that take us safely home again. In Jesus Christ, our God descended to accomplish for us this most important of all journeys. Now, all who look to him and believe in his name are brought home—as John says: given the right to become children of God and promised resurrection and life eternal in the loving presence of our great and glorious Savior.
Because Jim Lovell knew his Apollo 8 mission would keep him away from his wife, Marilyn, that Christmas of 1968, he arranged to have a wonderful gift brought to her in his absence: a beautiful, lush mink coat, delivered to her via a specially hired Rolls Royce. It was a sign of his deep love for her, and a gift that she wore and treasured for the rest of her life.
In a far greater way, our Father in heaven has given us the most beautiful, most perfect gift of love imaginable: his Son. By his grace, his gift was putting us on—taking our humanity to himself. In his mercy, though, this descent went further, all the way to the cross, that he might atone for our sins and reconcile us to himself because we could not do it ourselves.
Do we believe this? Do we live this? This advent season, I invite us all—I exhort us all!—to look again to the glory of our Savior, who died that we might live, and to live by faith in his powerful saving gift of love. No story is greater than this, and no adventure more exciting.
Thomas C. Gibbs is president of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. This reflection is adapted from the homily he gave at Jim Lovell’s memorial service at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in October 2025.