St. David's United Church

Saved by a Good Story

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.  Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.  And he told them many things in parables, saying,
“Listen!  A sower went out to sow…”

The other day I was talking with Vi Davis before the UCW Strawberry Tea.  Vi was recollecting her love of Ireland, her homeland, and though she loves the people and the beauty of Vancouver, she’ll always have a special place in her heart for her home country.

As we were talking, I remembered a story about Irish immigrants during the potato famine about a hundred and fifty years ago.  Because so many people died on these ships, and so many of these poorly built ships were lost in the Atlantic, they became known as coffin ships.  Nevertheless, the potato blight in Ireland caused starvation and compelled people to leave their beloved home on dilapidated ships bound for Quebec City or New York.  As mothers waved good bye to their teenagers and young adults whom they would likely never see again, they sometimes would hold a large ball of wool.  Their son or daughter would hold the other end of the yarn from the edge of the ship, and as the ship pulled away the yarn would unravel.  The one on the ship would wind the yarn and as they did so, it would be pulled through the briny sea, leaving the salty fragrance of the Irish sea on the wool.  On the rough sail to the new land, the son or daughter would pass the long and lonely hours knitting a sweater with the wool, which would forever hold the feel and smell of their homeland.

My heart aches every time I think of that story, the anguish of families separating, the loneliness of those leaving the shores of their beloved homeland because they had no food, no money, few clothes.  It’s the kind of story that falls into the category of a “life-story.”  A life story, it seems to me, is a story about a certain place in a certain time with a certain people.  It’s a story of particularity: location, time and names matter.  Life-stories are the family stories told around the dinner table or on long walks; they’re about heritage, identity, heroism and adventure.

There’s the story of my uncle Denny who had gone to the bakery to get a cake for my brother’s 6th birthday.  We were all staying in my grandparent’s cabin in the Rocky Mountains, and my uncle needed to cross a stream to get home from the bakery.  The rocks in the stream were wet, smooth…and slippery.  As he splashed into the water, soaking himself completely, with the grace of an acrobat he somehow managed to keep the cake above the water.  Denny made it home soaking wet, but smiling, because the birthday cake had been saved.

In life-stories, place, time and names matter.

There’s the story of my aunt who was a pediatrician and medical missionary in the Congo, Africa.  Because of the hardships she endured, the nursing school she directed, the hospital she ran, and the medical visits she made to remote villages, she was recognized as a chief of a tribe.  The leopard skin she was given hung in our house for decades, reminding us of the work she did in the Congo and the respect the people had for her.

Life-stories remind us who we belong to, and who we are part of.  Stories teach about identity, purpose, and place.

A land can hold a life-story.  My friend Dan and I just returned from hiking around Glacier National Park in Montana.  That land holds a wonderful story in its grandeur and beauty, a story seen in rock formations and told by geologists who can read the landscape like a book.  It’s a story of thousands of years ago, long before global warming, when glaciers roamed North America like enormous buffalo herds that moved by inches, grazing on the rock and soil beneath them, carving immense valleys, ripping off the edge of a mountain and polishing it smooth again as the immense glacier crept by.

Even the land and sea have stories to tell.

There’s another kind of story.  We might call them “core-stories.”  Unlike life-stories, these stories don’t really care about details.  Who, what, when, where and why are not of ultimate importance, other than providing something to hang the story on like a hanger for a coat.

These stories are about our core identity.  They point to who we are beyond our name, our birthplace, or any identification number.  Life-stories root us, ground us, give us a face and a name.  Core-stories free us from all limitations of place or name.  Life-stories tell others “who I am.”  Core-stories remind us that that’s not all of who we are.  Life-stories are about the words.  Core-stories are about the silence underneath the words.
The Gathering Time story of the wolf and the lamb is an example of a core-story.  It’s not about a particular person at a particular time in a particular place.  It’s about all of us and points to the potential within us all.
When Jesus said, “you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth,” he was speaking to the core of who we are and the potential within us all.
Core-stories are found in every tradition.  Even Zen Buddhism, which focuses on the enlightenment that is beyond time, place and name, loves a good story.  Here’s one:
A crusty old samurai approached a Buddhist monk and said, “Tell me the difference between heaven and hell.”
The monk replied, “Why should I offer this pearl of wisdom to you?  You’re nothing but a filthy, stinking man who knows how to play swords but knows nothing about eternal truth.”
The samurai flew into a rage.  His face grew red with anger as he rose to his feet, drew his sword, and screamed, “You apologize, or you’re head will roll on the ground!”
To which the monk calmly replied, “That’s hell.”
The samurai lowered his arm, the insight penetrated to his heart.  Calmly, he returned to a seated position.
The monk said, “And that, my friend, is heaven.”

The names in the story don’t matter.  That the story is set in Japan is really secondary and could be any soldier and any monk in any country at any time.  But the story points to an essential human truth, reminding us who we are and that we can live in a state of hell, or we can choose heaven.
Another one from the Zen tradition:
Keichu,  the great Zen teacher of the Meiji era, was head of a large temple in Kyoto.  One day the governor of Kyoto called upon him for the first time.  His attendant presented the card of the governor, which read: Kitagaki, Governor of Kyoto.
“I have no business with such a fellow,” said Keichu to his attendant.  “Tell him to get out of here.”
The attendant carried the card back with apologies.
“That was my error,” said the governor, and with a pencil he scratched out the words Governor of Kyoto.  “Ask your teacher again.”
“Oh, is that Kitagaki?” exclaimed the teacher when he saw the card.  “I want to see that fellow.”
Life-stories give us an identity.  They’re important to us, often treasured by us.  Most often, the most meaningful part of a memorial service are when stories are told of the one who has died, stories that help us remember the essence of that person, stories that keep that person alive, in a way, in our heart, and stories that reinforce our sense of connection with family and friends.  Life-stories are precious.
Core-stories are equally critical.  To use a dramatic example, a person with a childhood of abuse, or a child who was deserted by his father, or a child who somehow suffered an awful trauma, does not want to be chained to that story for the rest of his or her life.  You can serve a meal at First United on the downtown eastside and every person who walks through those doors in search of a dinner and perhaps a word of kindness carries on their shoulders the burden of a story.  Everyone has their sad and broken story.  No doubt it’s a story that shapes a person’s identity, but an abusive mother or a dead-beat dad doesn’t need to be the end of the story, and core-stories open possibilities that go beyond both the best and the worst life-stories.
Jesus focused on core-stories.  The parables he told were often obscure.  He knew what Emily Dickenson suggests, “Tell all the truth but tell is slant.”  Jesus approached the blazing truth of God indirectly, remembering what Yahweh had told Moses, “No one can see my face and live.”  So the stories Jesus told often befuddled people.  They didn’t fit neatly into the compartments of their worldview.  Stories of prodigal sons being forgiven rather than punished, stories of the despised and untrustworthy Samaritans given pride of place and honour, stories of poor widows who set an example and tax collectors who are more virtuous than religious priests jar the mind.  They stop the brain dead in its mental tracks.  “What?  How can this be?  Does he know what he’s saying, this Jesus?”

“I have not come to abandon the law, but to fulfill it,” Jesus told those who were interested enough to hang around to listen.  I have not come to add more to your pile of life-stories, but to tell you a few core-stories that remind you who you are in this world and beyond, and who God is.

We tell stories of Jesus, and many of those stories have become life-stories.  The name, the place, the action and words of that person matter greatly to the story.  It is a particular story and in it people have for thousands of years found meaning, hope, inspiration, purpose, and identity.  But Jesus himself didn’t focus on the life-stories of time, place and name.  He proclaimed the kingdom of heaven on earth, and told core-stories that helped those with ears to hear how to allow that seed to grow.

Every Church around the world tells those stories because we all know it’s a good story to tell, and we are saved by stories.
Introduction to the Scripture

The scripture reading this morning is just one of hundreds that might have been selected and I’ll tell you why.  We’re nearing the end of a sermon series on the 5 marks of the Church, which began with the overarching theme: Remember who you are, and then turned to the marks of the Church as delineated by long-standing tradition.  The 5 marks are:

• Koinonia – community
• Diakonia – Hospitality/service
• Didache – teaching
• Kerygma – proclamation
• Leiturgia – worship

So anytime you’re wondering whether or not a group of people is

really a church, the Christian tradition says, “look for these characteristics.  If they have a genuine sense of community, if they offer hospitality and service, if they teach in such a way that people go deeply into their faith and have a clearer sense of God, if they proclaim the good news in their words and actions, if they wholeheartedly worship, then they’re a Church gathered in the name and Spirit of Christ.”
So today we’ll look at the 3rd and 4th marks of the Christian Church,

teaching and proclamation.  They really deserve their own sermon each and I feel I’m giving them short-shrift lumping them into one brief sermon but today I do this because they have one important thing in common: they both are grounded in story.
The Christian tradition begins and ends with stories.  In the gospels, we begin at Christmas with the story of Jesus’ birth, and end with mysterious appearances of the resurrected Christ.  The Bible begins and ends with stories: the story of creation before all time, and the end of an apocalyptic vision of a new heaven and a new earth.
So this morning, I had hundreds of stories I could have selected as the scripture reading for today.  Our book is filled with stories that most people heard told around camp fires or late at night or whispered in catacombs or told and retold on a dusty Roman road to Corinth or Ephasus or Phillipi.  Stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of how God has been present to the Israelites through thick and thin; stories in the New Testament that either Jesus told or were told about Jesus and then after him the disciples.
The scripture reading this morning is an example of how Jesus taught: by parables, aphorisms and stories.  He didn’t lecture on systematic theology.  He didn’t pull out a long list of new commandments to tell people what to do or what not to do.  Rather, he told stories of who God is and who we are and what the kingdom of God is like and who will be invited to share in that abundant feast.
So here’s an old story from Jesus and about Jesus.  Listen:
(Matthew 13:1-9)