4/13/14
We Christians learn our faith mainly by means of stories. Certainly there’s plenty of material in the New Testament that’s not story, that’s theologizing, and instruction, and exhortation; but of course it’s all based on the story of Jesus Christ that’s told in the four gospels. We inherited this method of communication by means of story, from our parent faith, our Jewish forebears, for whom we give thanks to God; and there’s a good reason for why we both do it this way. It has to do with how we humans are built; how God created us.
If you wanted to know about a particular person, and you asked me, who is this guy, tell me about him, the usual thing would be to answer by giving you some simple biographical details: how old the person is, what he does for a living, his family situation, that kind of thing. But if you were persistent, and wanted to know more deeply just who that person is, if I was smart, I’d say, OK, you really want to know about this guy, this is him, and I’d tell you a story about him. I wouldn’t tell you about particular qualities of his, like, he’s thoughtful and generous of spirit; I’d tell you a story that demonstrated those qualities. That’s a much more truthful and meaningful way of communicating, because it doesn’t involve you having to accept my opinion: it invites you to form your own. In this way a story, a truthful story, has a life of its own, because it takes root in each of us in its own way – and in our own way. It’s a proper treatment of the uniqueness of every human being.
This is especially true of the gospel stories, for two reasons. The first is that everybody comes into church with a different life experience: different from everyone else that’s here, and different from the life experience each of us came in with a year ago, or a week ago: at least I hope that’s true: and that’s because we’re alive; and over time, even little increments of time, we’re slightly changed people. We evolve. This is why we can hear the same stories year in and year out, as we do in church; and every time, if we’re alert and alive, we can hear different resonances, different aspects of the stories present themselves to us.
And the second reason is that these stories in the gospels are about Jesus Christ – what he said and did - and therefore have infinite depth, infinite power, infinite capacity to reach into our lives and change us.
I don’t know if any of you were fortunate enough – or old enough - to have seen, in the 1970’s and 80’s, the great British actor Alec McCowen perform The Gospel According to St. Mark. This was not a simple reading of the text: it was a one-man show. McCowen had memorized the whole gospel and acted it, as a man who had witnessed these events and was telling the story, from beginning to end, to a roomful of people. McCowen performed this in theatres all over the English-speaking world, for over twenty years.
I did see it, and it was an unforgettable experience. It was particularly overwhelming to hear the whole story, at one sitting, and done so truthfully – this character was a man who couldn’t wait to tell the story, nothing could stop him from telling the story. At the performance I saw, McCowen came out beforehand and gave a little curtain speech about the history of the production. And he said that once, someone came up to him backstage after a performance and said that he wasn’t a Christian, or a religious person of any kind, he had come because he loved the theatre and had always been a big fan of McCowen’s; but that the experience he’d had that night was as powerful as any he’d ever had in the theatre; and where could he get a copy of the script? McCowen told him: Any hotel room.
Hearing the whole story, from beginning to end, all at once, is a different experience from hearing it in little chunks. Today we had something of that experience because we heard the whole story of the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. And it’s a hard story to hear. Traditionally we call it the Passion of our Lord Jesus; and that’s not because Jesus feels deeply about things. It’s called that because the Latin word passio means “suffering”; and it’s a story of unrelieved suffering: Jesus suffering first the betrayal by one of his own; suffering the knowledge that the meal he shares with those he loves will be his last; suffering doubt in Gethsemane; suffering his trial and condemnation in the name of God, which he knows is wrong; suffering the scourging, and crucifixion, and death. And through it all, suffering perhaps most because he always knew it was inevitable, he’d predicted it to the disciples many times, and now the time has come, and it’s happening; and Jesus suffers for the world in its terrible brokenness.
In our Episcopal church we experience this story as we do no other. We all participate in the telling of it; we take parts and we live it out, all of it. We do it because only in this way can we truly understand the enormity of the story, its awful unstoppable momentum. Only in this way, in treating it as a present reality, can we truly behold not only our helplessness to prevent it, but our complicity in bringing it about. We’re the good guys and the bad guys, all of us together, simultaneously; just like in life.
We all know next week is Easter. We all know the story has a happy ending. We live our lives as Christians in the joy of that knowledge. But we cannot truly understand that joy, we cannot truly feel the dimensions of what God does for us, if we don’t let this story take root in us, if we don’t live through the story to the end, the end that we heard today: at a tomb, with a great stone rolled in front of it to close it up, and guards putting wax seals on the stone, to certify that the story is over. It’s not a matter of beating ourselves up: it’s a matter of preparation. Today is the beginning of Holy Week; a beginning, that everyone who was there thought was the end. Let us, each of us in our own way, live with this story this week, the story which ends where it ends; and so prepare ourselves for God’s new beginning.
We Christians learn our faith mainly by means of stories. Certainly there’s plenty of material in the New Testament that’s not story, that’s theologizing, and instruction, and exhortation; but of course it’s all based on the story of Jesus Christ that’s told in the four gospels. We inherited this method of communication by means of story, from our parent faith, our Jewish forebears, for whom we give thanks to God; and there’s a good reason for why we both do it this way. It has to do with how we humans are built; how God created us.
If you wanted to know about a particular person, and you asked me, who is this guy, tell me about him, the usual thing would be to answer by giving you some simple biographical details: how old the person is, what he does for a living, his family situation, that kind of thing. But if you were persistent, and wanted to know more deeply just who that person is, if I was smart, I’d say, OK, you really want to know about this guy, this is him, and I’d tell you a story about him. I wouldn’t tell you about particular qualities of his, like, he’s thoughtful and generous of spirit; I’d tell you a story that demonstrated those qualities. That’s a much more truthful and meaningful way of communicating, because it doesn’t involve you having to accept my opinion: it invites you to form your own. In this way a story, a truthful story, has a life of its own, because it takes root in each of us in its own way – and in our own way. It’s a proper treatment of the uniqueness of every human being.
This is especially true of the gospel stories, for two reasons. The first is that everybody comes into church with a different life experience: different from everyone else that’s here, and different from the life experience each of us came in with a year ago, or a week ago: at least I hope that’s true: and that’s because we’re alive; and over time, even little increments of time, we’re slightly changed people. We evolve. This is why we can hear the same stories year in and year out, as we do in church; and every time, if we’re alert and alive, we can hear different resonances, different aspects of the stories present themselves to us.
And the second reason is that these stories in the gospels are about Jesus Christ – what he said and did - and therefore have infinite depth, infinite power, infinite capacity to reach into our lives and change us.
I don’t know if any of you were fortunate enough – or old enough - to have seen, in the 1970’s and 80’s, the great British actor Alec McCowen perform The Gospel According to St. Mark. This was not a simple reading of the text: it was a one-man show. McCowen had memorized the whole gospel and acted it, as a man who had witnessed these events and was telling the story, from beginning to end, to a roomful of people. McCowen performed this in theatres all over the English-speaking world, for over twenty years.
I did see it, and it was an unforgettable experience. It was particularly overwhelming to hear the whole story, at one sitting, and done so truthfully – this character was a man who couldn’t wait to tell the story, nothing could stop him from telling the story. At the performance I saw, McCowen came out beforehand and gave a little curtain speech about the history of the production. And he said that once, someone came up to him backstage after a performance and said that he wasn’t a Christian, or a religious person of any kind, he had come because he loved the theatre and had always been a big fan of McCowen’s; but that the experience he’d had that night was as powerful as any he’d ever had in the theatre; and where could he get a copy of the script? McCowen told him: Any hotel room.
Hearing the whole story, from beginning to end, all at once, is a different experience from hearing it in little chunks. Today we had something of that experience because we heard the whole story of the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. And it’s a hard story to hear. Traditionally we call it the Passion of our Lord Jesus; and that’s not because Jesus feels deeply about things. It’s called that because the Latin word passio means “suffering”; and it’s a story of unrelieved suffering: Jesus suffering first the betrayal by one of his own; suffering the knowledge that the meal he shares with those he loves will be his last; suffering doubt in Gethsemane; suffering his trial and condemnation in the name of God, which he knows is wrong; suffering the scourging, and crucifixion, and death. And through it all, suffering perhaps most because he always knew it was inevitable, he’d predicted it to the disciples many times, and now the time has come, and it’s happening; and Jesus suffers for the world in its terrible brokenness.
In our Episcopal church we experience this story as we do no other. We all participate in the telling of it; we take parts and we live it out, all of it. We do it because only in this way can we truly understand the enormity of the story, its awful unstoppable momentum. Only in this way, in treating it as a present reality, can we truly behold not only our helplessness to prevent it, but our complicity in bringing it about. We’re the good guys and the bad guys, all of us together, simultaneously; just like in life.
We all know next week is Easter. We all know the story has a happy ending. We live our lives as Christians in the joy of that knowledge. But we cannot truly understand that joy, we cannot truly feel the dimensions of what God does for us, if we don’t let this story take root in us, if we don’t live through the story to the end, the end that we heard today: at a tomb, with a great stone rolled in front of it to close it up, and guards putting wax seals on the stone, to certify that the story is over. It’s not a matter of beating ourselves up: it’s a matter of preparation. Today is the beginning of Holy Week; a beginning, that everyone who was there thought was the end. Let us, each of us in our own way, live with this story this week, the story which ends where it ends; and so prepare ourselves for God’s new beginning.