We Believe: A sermon on John 1:1-18 (Christmas II)
The Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas
December 30, 2007

In 1968, a teacher in Iowa decided that her students could not go through life without understanding the racism of their culture. The children in Jane Elliot’s class were all white, like the town they grew up in. When they heard that Martin Luther King had been assassinated, they couldn’t begin to imagine why anyone would want to kill him.

Elliott was inspired to create a simple and powerful exercise. She stood before the class and told them that people with blue eyes were better than people with brown eyes. From now on, blue-eyed children would sit at the front of the class. They would walk at the front of the lunch line and get five extra minutes at recess. Brown-eyed children would not be allowed to play with blue-eyed children. They could not use the jungle gym or ask for seconds at lunch. If they wanted a drink of water, they couldn’t drink from the water fountain. They had to put their water in a paper cup.

The blue-eyed children relished in their new privileges and quickly began using “brown-eyes” as a put-down for their classmates. By the end of the day, the brown-eyed children had trouble concentrating. They acted out in class and their scores plummeted on their phonics drills.

The next day, Elliott switched the roles. The brown-eyed children were delighted to be on top and the blue-eyed children suddenly found it hard to keep up with tasks that had been easy the day before.

With just a few words, Elliott transformed a classroom of equals into a society divided between the oppressors and the oppressed.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Word, and without the Word not one thing came into being. What has come into being through the Word is life.

Our gospel makes a bold claim for Jesus. John declares that Jesus is the Word of God, the very same voice that spoke at the beginning of time. All was still and dark and then – with one Word – God brought forth light and life. Ages pass and God’s beautiful creation falls into discord. Then, by the grace and power of God, that same Word comes into the world again, this time as a human being. The Word that created the world comes again to make all creation new.

Jesus does not just speak the word of God. He is the Word. His meaning reaches far beyond his teachings, because his whole life, his whole being, is a message from God. He is the spark of creation, the source of all life and all hope, right here in our midst.

And then John makes an even bolder claim for us. We, too, are children of God, because we have become one with Christ. As we gather at this communion table, we claim this powerful identity for ourselves. We are the Word of God, and with God, we create this world.

As Jane Elliott showed us so clearly, words have the power to break us apart. The minute I use the words “we” and “they”, “us” and “them”, I have separated myself from some of my brothers and sisters. I have decided that some people are like me and deserving of my admiration and my care, and that others are different from me and can be held at arms’ length.

Even in a community as small and as close-knit as ours, we are not immune from the power of us and them. Perhaps you feel like you’re on the fringes and you wonder why they do things this way. Or you’re deeply embedded in this place and you wonder why people aren’t joining in with the same commitment. There are countless opportunities to separate ourselves from one another, to say that those people, whoever they might be, won’t pitch in, or don’t worship the right way, or aren’t really welcoming. It is so easy to look at a project someone else is starting or a decision that’s been made and think well, that’s her problem or his big thing, but it’s not really mine.

But there is no church apart from you. There is no “them” here that doesn’t include you, no ministry that isn’t done on your behalf. I wonder what would happen if, every time we hear the word “they” in our thoughts or on our lips, we stopped and said the sentence again with “we” instead?

We don’t always worship the way we did before. We don’t always pitch in when we could. We could be more welcoming. We are starting a new project. We have made a new decision.

Maybe this simple discipline of choosing a new word will help us discover a deeper connection to one another. Or maybe we will realize that some decisions or projects really don’t feel like they belong to all of us. If the community we dream of hasn’t come into being yet, we can use our words to create it. We can ask questions, raise concerns, find new understanding, think together about new approaches. We can keep working together until we find a way to speak with one voice, to say “we at Calvary” with our whole hearts. And then we can take that spirit of unity with us into this world which is so hungry for it.

We are at the turning of the new year. We are at the beginning of a new day. We have before us the next breath, the next moment that God gives us. What will we make with it? What world will our words create?

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