It Begins With Us

Our stories help us follow Jesus into the death and resurrection that will change the world

“Because God is God, because God is infinite, because none of us who are creatures will ever fathom the infinitude that is God, heaven is going to forever be a place of new discovery. I would say, ‘Oh God, You’re so beautiful!’ And I would call, I would call to others, ‘Come, come and see!’ And this other one would say, ‘Have you seen just how beautiful God is?” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking on what heaven might be like.

Holy Week is a particularly appropriate time to consider what is actually going on in the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached about, lived as an example, and for which he died. The Lenten journey leading up to our Easter celebration should be challenging, disturbing, and provoking. Our fasting, scriptural reading, church going, and private praying should have produced in us a revived understanding of our frailty as mortal beings and our dependence on God as our Source for truth, hope, and life.

If we round the corner toward Easter lazily, unmoved, and in a business-as-usual mindset this may be because our brand of Christianity, our faith communities, and/or our lived experience of God might be failing to yield the kind of fruit Jesus promised would come with the Kingdom of God.

And if we aren’t yielding Kingdom of God fruit, is it any wonder American Christianity isn’t compelling enough to keep people in our churches or to help form disciples of Christ unique enough to stand out as salt and light in the world?

Where we are and where we’re going

We’ve discussed the profound loss of trust prevalent in our current cultural climate, and how living in a ‘post-truth’ society is contributing to the downfall of institutionalized Christianity, both liberal and conservative. What we need, it seems, is a collective return to our moral roots.

I’m not talking about the social justice of liberal politics or the traditional values of conservatives. I’m talking about the kind of morality that focuses on what’s best for the ‘we’ instead of the ‘me.’ This kind of morality will challenge and upend both liberals and conservatives, as well as humanity across the spectrum of life experience and creed, because it forces us to consider what is best beyond our own comfort, convenience, biases, and preferences.

Restoring a morality that focuses on the ‘we’ instead of the ‘me’ is essential because, as moral philosopher Jonathan Sacks posits:

“Trust cannot be restored by the market or the state, because these are arenas of competition, not cooperation. It cannot be restored by smartphones and social media, precisely because these are not face to face. When I use social media, I am presenting myself, not encountering you in your full and distinct otherness. When I use them to acquire information about the world, I have no immediate way of knowing whether the message I receive is true or false, objective or manipulative. When I use wealth or power to achieve my purposes, I am advancing my interests as an individual, not our interests as a moral community. This does not help the cause of trust. It further damages it. The beautiful thing about morality, though, is that it begins with us. We do not need to wait for a great political leader, or an upturn in the economy, or a new mood in society, or an unexpected technological breakthrough to begin to change the moral climate within which we live and move and have our being.”

This final installment of the series we’ve been exploring together at The Golden Thread will pull everything together that makes storytelling a legitimate way to bring forth the change we long to see in Christian communities in this country, a vehicle for re-establishing the kind of morality that is so rooted in God’s love for ‘me,’ and for all humanity, that I am free to focus on what is best for ‘we.’

Photo by Ugo Mendes Donelli on Unsplash

Though the Bible is replete with examples of the importance and power of storytelling, the fourth chapter of Joshua affords insight into how telling God’s stories creates a God-centered community. After crossing the Jordan, God instructed Joshua to have representatives from the twelve tribes erect memorials of stone to stand as a physical sign of God’s faithful character. God’s people were to make meaning of life by centering their attention on God’s actions. Theologian James Mays suggests that they were to ask questions about the character and qualities of God and find their answers in “storying” to one another about all that God was continuously doing in their lives and the world ^[1]. This wasn’t the first time God’s people set up memorials to keep the conversation about God’s activity among humanity alive; but this event was unique because representatives from all the people were intentionally included, creating precedence for honoring, and protecting, story in a communal setting.

Strikingly, these stones were to bear witness to what God had done, and would continue to do, in and through His people, offering a visual and oral method of producing generations of believers to come. Oral history was, and is, intended to collect, preserve, and interpret God’s movement in the world and God’s relationship to humankind and all of creation.  To put it simply, their God-stories became their unwritten, sacred oral tradition – a way for them to know and be known in the deepest spiritual sense. These oral traditions, added to and passed down through time, would become the sacred Hebrew Bible, which would be composed of all kinds of stories, poems, and songs, with various compelling plots and inhabited by unlikely human characters. These histories collected, preserved, and interpreted what God was doing and gave hope for what God would continue to do. These stories were seeds meant to change the world, a mission they ultimately did accomplish.

From the Psalms to the Lord’s Supper to the tribulations of Hosea to the spiritual songs of Moses, the Bible uses story in its various forms as a “bigger and better container for the whole of the truth than propositions, concepts, and dogmas.”^[2] Rather than merely engaging us on an intellectual level, stories contain the larger picture painted by heart and instinct. Stories provide nuance and texture, rather than presenting only cold facts. By engaging our imaginations and emotions, stories expand our understanding of humankind and our position to God and one another.

Much like their Creator, God’s people are intended to share God’s stories with themselves, with one another, and with the world; thus, adding their individual voices to the larger chorus of the Family of God, past, present, and future. The late spiritual theologian, Eugene Peterson, calls to mind the importance of God-story to the Christian community:

“The moment we formulate our doctrines, draw up our moral codes, and throw ourselves into a life of discipleship and ministry apart from a continuous re-immersion in the story itself, we walk right out of the concrete and local presence and activity of God and set up our own shop.”^[3]

Thus, collective remembering supplies an identity of belonging and a grounding in the immediate work of God, even amid diversity. 

As you share your story with me, and I share my story with you, and as together we enter the Grand Narrative, we discover new aspects of God that we couldn’t have known otherwise. When we share our stories, we carry God’s presence and activity to one another.

When we refuse to contribute our stories to the Grand Narrative, when we hide from one another, or refuse to welcome the stories of the other, we set up our own religious game grounded in ego and fear instead of the freedom and vulnerability that come from knowing our stories never belonged to us alone anyway.

Dogmatic agreement is not required

It’s unrealistic to expect diverse Christians to find agreement on dogma. It’s not only naïve, but dangerous to demand uniformity of belief in the name of Christian kinship. Yet, we can all agree that God is real, present, and active in the world. And we should all be able to agree that God’s Spirit is always working toward what is best for all humankind. If we can rekindle our curiosity in what God is doing in the world, and in every human heart, we can find the common ground necessary to build a Christian kinship that fulfills the deepest desires of Christ’s heart (John 17) and reveals the diverse beauty of God to a beautifully diverse world. As I shared in my last post, Story Communion is a practical, repeatable, simple, and powerful method that diverse Christian communities may come together for transformative dialogue.

Sacred Space & Meaningful Feasting

Imagine coming together as equals, all bearers of the Image of God and choosing to actively respect, believe, and receive from one another for the time we are together. Sharing storied food together invites us to embody hospitality and breaks down walls as we remember we are all human, hungry and thirsty and dependent on God and one another. Humility is invoked.

Transformative Conversation

Imagine sharing conversation with others who will offer you wisdom and experiences that you could not gain on your own, asking thought provoking questions with the goal of learning from one another rather than correcting, teaching, or rebuking. What could be possible when we dialogue with humility, honesty, and openness? What will shift inside of us as we learn that those we previously found threatening or repulsive are, in fact, fellow sojourners on this spiritual journey?

Deep Listening & Powerful Storytelling

Imagine diverse people suspending their own judgments, beliefs, and opinions long enough to enter into the story of another who has carefully and prayerfully prepared to share what God has been to them in their lives. Imagine leaving this kind of sacred space, picking back up your own beliefs and opinions, and allowing them to interact with what you’ve learned about God’s activity and presence in the lives of others so unlike you. What growth and wisdom awaits us on the other side of something like this?

The Spirit is Calling Us All

Our world is in a time of upheaval and our young people are looking for a firm foundation to stand upon as they face unprecedented challenges. We are lonelier than ever, we don’t trust anyone or anything, we are struggling emotionally, relationally, physically, and economically to survive. Amid this chaos, our churches are emptying.

No wisdom, no solace, no hope, no inspiration, no salvation are to be found in our Christian communities.

Or, at least that’s what many people mistakenly believe.

The truth is that Christ is the hope of the world and we, as Christ-bearers, are fully anointed and equipped to answer the call of our times. Yet, if we get distracted by our differences, our beloved doctrines, our petty squabbles, and our cognitive biases, we fall into the trap set by Satan to keep us from our holy work.

The way forward is found in our stories. Who is God? What is God doing, here and now? How does the life, death, and resurrection of Christ impact us today? What is different about the reality of God versus the pseudo-reality of the domination systems of this world? These answers can only be found in our stories, and in the sacred dialogue that takes place between Spirit-filled people who have followed Jesus into death and resurrection themselves. Our religious boundary maintenance must go, as we learn to value the ‘we’ over the comforts, conveniences, and preferences of ‘me.’ This is our return to home.

As we walk through Holy Week together, may you ponder the beauty of God through your own God-stories more deeply and may you open to the God-stories of the ‘other,’ the unexpected sister or brother who is calling to you to come and see just how beautiful God is through their eyes too.  Amen.

(If you’d like more information on how to host a Story Communion between your own Christian community and another, feel free to contact me directly via DM)

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[1] James Luther Mays, Harper & Row Publishers, and Society of Biblical Literature, eds. Harper’s Bible Commentary. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).

[2] Christine Dillon. Telling the Gospel Through Story: Evangelism That Keep Hearers Wanting More, (Denver Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2012), 24.

[3] Eugene Peterson. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), 225.