Sermons at St. John's Presbyterian Church
St. John’s Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705 Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837 http://www.stjohnsberkeley.org

Think Word

Transcribed from the sermon preached January 2, 2010

The Reverend Marilyn Chilcote, Parish Associate

Scripture Readings: John 1:1-18

In 1954, my Sunday school teacher decided to introduce us to first 18 verses, the prologue, the book of John. I was intrigued, fascinated – I didn't understand it but I was convinced that there was something so supremely essential there, maybe mystical, some truth I wanted and with all the fervor a 10-year-old could muster I was hooked.

57 years later and it's my job to try to figure out what these the first 18 verses of the book of John have to do with us here. With Gloria and Cherokee, with Andy and Zelosie, Helen, with Howard and Martha, Annabel. What does it mean for the Lynch family their suffering... with Coraima who turned 15 yesterday and in her culture become a woman, Why is it important for Anna, for all three of the Nicks, for my 67-year-old self, and for this community of faith this body gathered today on the second Sunday of Christmas, 2011 – with our personal mixtures of sufferings and joys, and our deep pain and the gloom of hopelessness over political and economic catastrophes, ecological disasters, the dawning recognition that our nation is now an Empire now larger and every bit as heedless of the consequences of its actions for the most powerless of our planet?   What could these verses mean when by any practical evaluation the world is going to hell in a hand basket?

Hmmm. Now, anyway you slice it the Prologue to the book of John is challenging material. Written for a community of Greek speaking Jews, late enough in the first century that no one living would have known Jesus personally. I picture a congregation of nascent Christians, our spiritual fore-parents struggling to be faithful to the Gospel so recently handed to them, making sense of the good news in the midst of the tribulations of first century Palestine. And I'm grateful that someone there put it in writing. And now it has come to us. Let's see what we can hear.

In the beginning was the word

A, Think WORD: speak, articulate, enunciate, pronounce, utter, vocalize, communicate, convey, declare, express,

B. Think WORD like law… Moses, Commandments, tablets, strictures, canon, decree, ordinance, regulation, rule. (As the Jews would hear it.)

C. Think WORD like story… Tradition, chronicle, history, narrative, spirit directing fiction, gospel, vision,

D. And most importantly for the Greek speakers who would hear it, think WORD like wisdom…SOPHIA, brilliance, insight, profundity, sagaciousness

I need to insert caution here: most often when looking at this prologue, preachers and even commentators equate "word" with "Jesus" from the get-go. I certainly grew up with that understanding but that's not what's going on here. It's clear to me that Jesus doesn't even enter the text until we get to verse 14. We need to walk through it to see that and I'm going to use a slightly different. There a few copies scattered around pews. Or follow in pew bibles.

1-2 The word/wisdom was first,[i]

The word present to God,  (she)

God present to the word.

The word was God

in readiness for God from day one.

3-5 Everything was created through word

Nothing – not one thing! –

Came into being without the word.

What came into existence was Life,

and the Life was Light to live by.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;

the darkness couldn't put it out.

Do you hear the universality in that! There is a light woven through all creation –from the farthest unimaginable reaches of space to the tiniest sub atomic particles, and back to what for us is the center of experience, this complex aggressively intricate ecosystem. All of it infused with inextinguishable wisdom.

Do you hear the hope in that? These first century Christians knew about death and destruction, repression, persecution at the hands of Imperial power – firsthand, – well, like Iraq, like Afghanistan and yet they claimed that there was a life-light so brilliant, so persistent, (like one of those birthday candles you just can't blow out?). John's community holding hold fast to this assertion that Sophia, Word, Life-Light is intrinsic to creation and has been with us since the very beginning and no matter what will not be put out. Love stronger than hate, life stronger than death, light in the darkness. An astonishing faith. Listen picking up that verse 9:

9-13 The Life-Light was the Real Thing:

Every Person Entering Life,

Word Brings into Light.

Word within the world,

and the world existed because of it

and yet the world didn't even notice.

Word came to its own people,

but they didn't want it.

But whoever did want it

who believed in its name

and who would live according to Word

were made to be their true selves

their child-of-God selves.

These are the God-begotten,

not blood-begotten,

not flesh-begotten,

not sex-begotten.

Hear that! All of creation, every person ever born comes into being through this glorious Word, and has the potential to manifest it. This erases all my silly 10-year old fears that people who lived before Jesus could not be "saved" or that my friend down the street, Margarita, who was a Catholic (OMG) or my playmates Eddie and Buddy Yamani who were Japanese Buddhists might go to hell. We Christians don't need that kind of exclusivity. I read verses 9-13 to indicate that every person, indeed all of creation is infused with this life-light, a definition and a blessing, a possibility, a hope even stronger than darkness.

Does it not follow then that this light also inspires people of other faiths?  I think so. Gautama Buddha under his fig tree, Guru Nanak of the Sikhs, the prophet Mohammed, the Jains, Hindus, Gandhi, surely the fire of the knowledge of God is in each of these faiths. Most of us know this from personal experience.

And if each child born into each of these faiths is made by the word, each of them is brother or sister to each of us.

So, what distinguishes us as Christians? It is that we, through our spiritual forebears have a specific testimony to render to the world (NOW, finally some will say, we come to Jesus): we can testify that, picking up with first 14:

that the Word [Sophia, life-light] became flesh and blood

and moved into the neighborhood. (Our neighborhood, right here)

We saw the glory with our own eyes

the one-of-a-kind glory,

as of the father's only child

generous inside and out,

true from start to finish.

And, verse 16,

we all live off his generous bounty,

gift after gift after gift.

We got the basics from Moses,

and then this exuberant giving and receiving.

This endless knowing and understanding –

this we know through Jesus, the Messiah.

No one has ever seen God,

not so much as a glimpse.

This one-of-a-kind God-Expression

who exists at the very heart of the father,

has made God plain as day.

Wow. I wish I could've seen how this early congregation lived out their lives; what were they doing to be light amidst their darkness? Any community, which could claim the word has been made flesh and dwelt among them, that they have already seen it with their own eyes! Jesus is dead but the Jesus who was word/Sophia/light/life – that Jesus lives! That Jesus lives resurrected in their experience in the living faithful lives. They were able to tell/live the story in such a powerful way that it has come to rest in our hands. Hear that Coraima and Davy?  Now this is your story -- yours to live and yours to pass on.

What's more, near the end of the book of John, Jesus, at the end of his life tells his disciples that he must leave them so that after he is gone they may do even greater things than he has done. What a frightening and surprising predicament! What a challenge to his followers.  Umm, that's us. So You, Tamara, Lois, Diane – are to enflesh the holy one as well! I think Jesus goes ahead of us as model, older brother, and we, in our lives, are also to make God as plain as day! Johann, Pascaline, you can show forth the wisdom of God, relieving suffering, bringing joy and reconciliation to the world--I believe that. Don't you Don and Andy?

I have experience that holy hope in the darkness, flickering around the bedside of a dying woman, at the foot of the ancient Nicaraguan elder reciting the struggle puebito for justice and peace, holding an orphaned Salvadoran baby in my arms in 1985, kneeling at the feet of police or soldiers full riot gear while protesting the manufacture of needless nuclear weapons, or demanding that our nation not begin the Gulf War. Jesus' light was there. I expect you know it too, Helen, David, Fred and Glenda, don't you? It is important that we share these things with each other.

And so what does this mean for our community, for Bruce, for Lynn, for our baby Calvin, for Zelosie, for Leon? Is there anyone of us who is who is too young or too old to let the word/wisdom which is the source of your being shape the way you relate to friends and enemies? Is there anyone of us who is too incapacitated or disabled to radiate affection? Cannot we all find ways to comfort the afflicted, speak a kind word to the homeless, break down the barriers that separate us from our brothers and sisters? Wherever we see acts of bold love, determined resistance of evil, clarity in the face of temptation –we see Jesus. Every time we speak truth to power holding up the light of wisdom in the face of a political evil Sophia smiles upon us. The story is entrusted to our hands, Jennifer, Paul, Michael, Carl.

We have to be brave, Kenny. Living an honest truth-telling-the-face-of-injustice life is dangerous.  What do we expect when we play follow the leader with a man headed toward the cross?  I cannot imagine even attempting it alone!  So will you come along with me Nellie?  Will you join us Virginia? Got our back. Mark? Perhaps we can make Jesus visible, right here in our neighborhood – as plain as day!

We are the spiritual descendents of John's community. All of us. We are the carriers of the light, the real thing just as Jesus is real to us, as real as the bread and wine of the communion we are about to share. We incarnate justice and righteousness in that sharing, Tammy; we symbolize the radical equality which each created being deserves when we pass to one to another the bread. We exemplify the bountiful grace of God. This is nothing ethereal, esoteric. This is fleshy, crumbly reality. We are Jesus to one another. You are Jesus to your neighbor. Let's practice our faith in the ritual of holy Communion – which begins now – with song and prayer.