Re-Storied--October 24, 2022

Re-Storied--October 24, 2022

"For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat of this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." [1 Corinthian 11:23-26]

I've read a lot of different definitions for being a Christian over the years, some good and some leaving much to be desired.  But I keep coming back to this one: to be a Christian is to be re-storied by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Well, maybe that's not a very helpful description if I don't also say what I think I mean by "being re-storied."  Let me put it this way: we are, each one of us, shaped by the storied that we tell over and over again.  They come to form the way we see the world, the ways we understand ourselves, and the ways we think of where we've come from and where we're going.  In a household, those stories might be literal family stories--the way Great-Grandpa came over from "the old country" and started over with nothing as an immigrant, or the way Grandma held the family together during the war and raised the kids while Grandpa was serving overseas, or the way Mom was the first one in the family to go to college.  Those stories are not simply records of "what happened," but they tell the rest of the family, "This is who we are."  The stories may tell the succeeding generations, "We come from immigrant stock, so don't ever bad-mouth those who come here from another country, and don't you dare shut the door on those who come after us, because someone first held the door open for us."  Or they may instill the value of hard work, or of family cohesion, or the importance of using the opportunity to get an education if you can get one.  One way or another, we teach our children and grandchildren something of who they are by the stories we tell--especially the ones that come to have an almost ritual way of being retold.

Nations and societies do the same thing--the stories we retell often come along with rituals and holidays we observe.  In the United States, we mark the formation of our country with the signing of the Declaration of Independence--a written statement of principles and ideals, rather than a battle--and yet we also celebrate with fireworks as a nod to the "bombs bursting in air" that are a part of our national story and anthem.  We tell our story as one of freedom from colonization in that national story, and it is invoked by politicians of every stripe, party affiliation, and generation.  Or, take the ways different states have told different stories about race in our history every third Monday in January--some states observe that day as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, in recognition of the work of the Civil Rights movement in the mid-20th century to end segregation and strive toward racial equality... while other states have continued to celebrate "Robert E. Lee" Day on the very same day in January.  They are not just interchangeable reasons for a day off from work--they each tell a different story, of who the people are that celebrate them, and who they are striving to become.  Even in recent decades, there is more storytelling going on in the ways we observe commemorations of September 11, 2001 [and with it, the oft-repeated reminder to "never forget"], or the move in recent years to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.  These are not neutral actions, but they tell stories, which shape who we are and how we see ourselves.

The same has always been true for the people of God, even stretching back to its earliest memories as a people.  When the wandering tribes of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt, the story of their liberation become a foundational piece of their identity. Every year it was retold and re-enacted in the Passover, and the memories of having been enslaved and oppressed as foreigners in Egypt left impressions on Israel's laws and values, too.  Every commandment about giving justice to immigrants, or treating foreigners the same as fellow Israelites, or making special provision to provide for aliens [and there are many such commandments] came with the fingerprints of that ancient story: "...for you were aliens in the land of Egypt, and you know what it was like to be mistreated when you were the foreigners."  Over and over, the psalms and hymns of ancient Israel remember the story of how God had set them free from Pharaoh, how God had provided for them in the wilderness, and how God had given them good and just laws.  The old stories kept forming the people, generation after generation, to become a certain kind of people with a certain way of life.  All of that is what it means to be a "storied"--or re-storied--people.

And for us who are claimed by the story of Jesus, the central story that re-makes us--even week by week--is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.  And very much like ancient Israel's practice of rehearsing its ancient story with a meal of storied bread in the Passover, the followers of Jesus do not merely listen to words about Jesus over and over again. We are reconstituted by the meal of Jesus, who inscribed the signs of bread and wine with the Story of his own death--and the hope of resurrection as well--so that we might be people storied in a new way.  When we share in the bread and cup that we call "Holy Communion," or "the Lord's supper" or "the Eucharist," we are being re-storied--remade and reshaped in light of the cross and empty tomb.  We are given a different--indeed, upside-down--set of values compared with the watching world.  Rather than being people obsessed with power, domination, success, or control, we are marked by the story of suffering love that defeated evil and death by being crucified, rather than by killing Jesus' enemies.  We are people now who don't trace our liberation through a war or a battle being won or even from a piece of paper, but through Christ's death and resurrection.  And to take that seriously will change the way we see the world and move within it.  To take the bread and to share the cup will re-story us.

For whatever else happens in the lived moment of our sharing the bread and cup of Communion--and there is plenty more we could say that "happens" there--we are restoried people.  We are reminded once again of who we are and whose we are, and that grounds us for facing the world as a unique people in the world.  Indeed, like Stanley Hauerwas says, we become "God's countercultural option" in the world--to live lives that are otherwise unintelligible except for the death and resurrection of Jesus.

That's why, among all the things that the first Christians could have made sure to pass down to the next generation, among the most important were the Storied Meal of bread and wine by which we are restoried ourselves as the cross-marked community of Jesus.

Lord Jesus, remind us again whose we are--week by week at your table, and day by day in this life.