Friday, December 27, 2002

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...full of grace and truth. John 1: 14

I have been thinking so much about words and about the Word, as I have reflected on the prologue to John. Words are the love of my life, anyway. What some folks hear and feel in music, I derive from the use of words. When a great wordsmith puts them together and captures in them, subtly and truly, a concept worth thinking about, a concept with weight and import, what thrill and delight there is! Such use of words challenges us as human beings to become the best we know.

John is, of course, one of the great wordsmiths of all time. The Prologue is pure poetry and in it is the gospel that follows, not yet expounded in all its human detail and divine implications, but foreshadowed in the first 18 verses of the book. The Word who is God, who made light and gave life to all, who dwells among us as God and as brother so that we are all children of God this Word is full of grace and truth. The words are true the Word is true now we have received grace and truth so that we, too, can be channels through whom God's truth is heard and seen.

But what have we done with words in our time? Are we careful to use them to make truth known? Or do we bend them to conceal the truth, to cloak the real intent behind words we have come to trust, only to mislead and misrepresent. What deceit there is in some carefully crafted phrases. What does it matter if a child is killed by "friendly fire" or a village across the world destroyed by one of our "Peacekeeper missiles?" Are not death and destruction the result? Are we reassured to find a "sanitary landfill" coming to our town or comforted when we are victims of "benign neglect?" Do we not suffer the effects just the same? Does calling killing and genocide "ethnic cleansing" or "collateral damage" change its horror or our outrage? When the very words we use to communicate with one another and to explain our thoughts and actions become intentionally deceptive, we do not have to look much farther for the roots of the moral decay and ethical disasters which right now are gnawing at the fabric of our society.

"The Word became flesh...full of grace and truth...grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." When Jesus claimed, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" he laid out a path by which we are to walk all the days of our lives. Honesty, integrity, a yes for a yes and a no for a no are the heart of it. Such speaking and living is the only way to allow God to make us authentically human and faithfully channels for the Divine.

Prayer: Holy Word, give us the courage to search for truth everywhere in our time. Help us to speak with integrity to each other and bind us together into communities who will challenge deception and dishonesty so that our humanity may learn to reflect God's grace and truth as we see them in Jesus Christ. Amen

Hazelyn McComas

All contents copyright 2002 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.