The Reason for the Storytelling--April 16, 2020
"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." [John 20:30-31]
In times like these, sometimes it is all we can do simply to keep telling the stories. The stories are our act of defiant memory against the circumstances of the moment. The stories are the seed of our resilience. We keep telling the stories because through them, we are brought to life.
I have been thinking a great deal these days about how much our work as "church" has been changed--if not outright stopped--by shelter-in-place orders across our country. Sometimes it is easy to feel defeated, or like we have been stopped from fulfilling our mission. It is easy in times like these to think that we aren't doing anything important because we aren't able to gather in the same place on Sunday mornings.
And then it occurs to me, especially hearing these words that come late in John's Gospel like an epilogue, that sometimes the most important thing we can do is to keep telling the stories of Jesus... because in the stories we are brought into the presence of the One to whom they bear witness. And in the stories, we come to fall in love all over again with this One who has loved us first. And in that love, trust is kindled... and in that trust, John tells us, we are brought to "life in his name." We keep telling the stories because they sustain us, even if sometimes it seems like all we have are the stories.
The Christian movement began, of course, just as a handful of small house by house gatherings, where stories were told. Around the tables where they shared bread and recounted the stories of Jesus, faith was kindled, and a revolution began. They didn't need big fancy buildings, and therefore they didn't have big mortgages to pay off or capital campaigns to finance. They didn't need expensive instruments, elaborate vestments, or screens to project the trendiest worship songs onto--and therefore, they could simply be centered on the story of the homeless rabbi who brought people to life. They didn't worry about attracting the "right demographic," and so they could simply welcome everybody--women and men, slave and free, poor and rich, Judeans and Samaritans and all-out foreigners, cultured intellectuals and illiterate fishermen, and everybody else, too. And they lit a fire that spread across the empire--indeed, right under that bloated blowhard Caesar's very own nose.
I've been thinking lately about the final scene of my favorite Star Wars movie lately. At the end of The Last Jedi, we see this back room in a racing stable on a luxury planet where a bunch of poor kids work cleaning out stalls for the creatures that the rich place bets on. And this circle of kids is enthralled as one of them tells the other of the story he has been told, apparently, of Luke Skywalker's great victory against a huge imperial army. And in a moment, their master shoos them back to work, but not before the story of hope has been shared... and remembered once again... and passed along to others. It is a small moment, but it is, as the movie describes it, a spark that will light the fire that will burn down the powers of the day.
In so many ways, I see this moment of our history like that. Right now, we cannot do very much all gathered together to be "out" in the world, on account of state-wide stay-at-home orders and the concern to let healthcare professionals not be overwhelmed with a surge in cases of COVID-19. We can't gather on Sundays in the same place for worship, and we can't organize for the kinds of projects we usually do at this time to help others--no money raised for the American Cancer Society at special fundraiser events for the Relay for Life... no trips to the local state psychiatric hospital like we often take to spend time with patients... no community meals or sheltering the homeless. Those losses are real, and we feel the grief of them daily. But we do have the chance to keep telling the story, and the story sparks hope, and the hope can be tempered into resolve, and the resolve will mean endurance through this season and passion to get out into the world again when the time is right.
Sometimes we forget how often the people of God were called just to keep hope alive by telling the stories that brought them to life. That's how the descendants of Jacob held onto hope and identity during centuries of enslavement to that greedy dictator Pharaoh in Egypt. That's how generations in exile remembered who they were during their days under the authority of that pompous buffoon Nebuchadnezzar, who wanted to put his name on everything and to have everyone worshiping him. That's how the first generations of Christians kept the movement alive under the radar of arrogant Caesars who wanted to feed us to lions and nail us to crosses. And it's how enslaved people in this country held onto hope when their "Christian" "masters" told them that God willed for them to be someone else's property... or how Christians meeting in underground gatherings resisted against Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. It started simply with small groups, often literally just in households, telling the stories of Jesus once again, both to remember who we are and to find ourselves brought to life again in that act of memory.
Today, then, maybe it's enough for us simply to find someone else--maybe someone just in your house, or someone you can call or email or text with--and share one of the stories of Jesus that brings you to life every time you tell it or hear it. Maybe the act of remembrance will spark something in the other person; maybe it will bring you to life in the telling.
That may seem like it's not much to do in the face of so much else going on... but it's what is ours to do right now. And it will turn out to be just enough.
Lord Jesus, keep us centered in the stories of who you are, so that we can be brought to life in you.
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