“A Story”
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 6
16 June 2013
The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour
Mill Valley, California
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Psalm 32
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3
INI.
My father was a storyteller
As kids we loved nothing
better than to literally sit at my father’s feet and ask him to tell us a
story. Rather than telling us one of the
classic stories collected by the brothers Grimm, or collected in the Bible, or
structured by the Greeks, he chose to tell a story of his own fabrication. They were redolent of his growing up in South
Eastern Colorado, and were full of mines, mountains, mountain ghosts (which he
surely got from his singing of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig) and other elements that
combined his American-German upbringing with our then current living in New
Mexico. The story didn’t matter. It was the connection that counted – our
connection to him and to brief snippets of his story.
My father’s mother, my Großmama, told stories as well. I remember this occasion quite vividly. I sat with her in her new Denver apartment,
awaiting the movers to bring furnishings from the house she and my Aunt Louise
shared in another part of the city. As
we waited there, she told me stories.
She told stories about her youth, about her pastor father, and his
waiting for a horse drawn carriage to take him in frock coat and top hat to
preside at a funeral. Unlike my father’s
stories, her stories connected me in a rather concrete way to her own personal
history and to my own. In these stories
she projected the values, and mores that had grown out of her Christian
upbringing, that were important to her.
In her voice I saw and experienced these values – implicit in the sound
of her voice.
I tell you these things
because we have lost something in our culture that is related to the sound of
our voices. It is no accident that we
think and talk about our God in terms of words – “And the word became flesh.” It is equally important that we remember that
this were originally not written words, chiseled into stone, or pressed into
clay, or written on parchment. They were
spoken – they were remembered.
As I was struggling to
retrieve and image that might prove helpful in grasping what I want to share
with you this morning, I thought about the Navajo “Storyteller”. Although produced for the tourist market in
New Mexico and Arizona, the image, usually made of pottery, is of an older
woman surrounded by tens of children as she tells her story. The story imparts a sense of place, history,
connection, and values. We are a people
of the written word, sometimes inscribed with ink upon a page, and lately
written with pixels on a tablet’s screen.
Walter Ong, Jesuit, historian, philosopher and cultural critic reminds
us of the importance of speech and a time before writing.
“Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer
outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer.”
The sounds of the story and the chants of our
story/song are the stuff of our liturgy, and the voice of our prayer. So on this father’s day we will look at the
stories of two prophets.
Nathan was a storyteller
He was also a prophet,
both a call and an office that required him to speak God’s word to a specific
moment or time. Unlike our mistaken notion
of prophecy as being a kind of fortune-telling, the prophets were actually storytellers,
telling God’s story to God’s people.
Nathan had a tough assignment.
The king, David, had committed a great sin in stealing his neighbor’s
wife, Bathsheba, and then sending her husband, Uriah, to the front, into the
heat of battle, to be killed. We know
this story – but Nathan tells another story.
Nathans story is about a
rich man and a poor man, and about a visitor who comes to visit the rich
man. He tells that the rich man, who had
many lambs, could not bear to part with one of his own, but steals the poor
man’s lamb and serves it to his guest.
Nathan’s story is David’s story, and in it David recognizes his guilt in
taking Bathsheba and in killing Uriah.
Nathan’s story accuses and probes deeply into the soul. It is powerful stuff. It convicts.
Jesus is a storyteller
We know about the stories
of Jesus, often-called parables – because their words arch around the truth that
needs to be told. Sometimes Jesus’
stories were told to convince others of a difficult truth. In the Gospel which we just heard Jesus wants
to counter the stigma that Simon, his host, seeks to assign to the woman, “who
was a sinner” who is anointing the feet of Jesus. It is a case of guilt by association. Simon thinks of Jesus, “If this man were really a prophet, he would know what
kind of woman this is.” Jesus counters
with a story that does not condemn or convict such as the story of Nathan, but
rather points out the forgiveness of God.
The essentials of Jesus’ story are two debtors; one owed a lot, one owed
a little. Both are forgiven. Jesus asks, “Who will love the one who
forgave the debt more?” Simon is forced
by the story to see the woman’s faith and righteousness.
Our own story
We tell our stories here
– in a formal kind of way. To whom do
you tell your stories? Hopefully you
tell your stories, featuring your failures and your successes, your missing the
mark, and your forgiveness, hopefully you tell these to your children, or your
wife, husband, or partner. You tell them
because you need to hear them again – you need to both speak and hear your
story of faith. Last Wednesday, after
Eucharist, several of us sat around the table and told stories about faith,
about others, about ourselves. It is
what God has called us to do. If you
have any concerns about the vitality of this place, then this must be a place
informed by God’s story to us, and our story to one another. The people who live around us should be aware
of our message – of our story, and we need to be yearning to hear and
understand theirs.
You will be surprised in
telling your story of faith. Not doing
it, you will think it difficult and embarrassing. Telling it you will find connection with
yourself, with your God, and with your neighbor. Remember that commandment – the summary of
the law? “Love the Lord your God with all
your might, and love your neighbor – as you love yourself.” This is the essence of our story. It is a story that we need to be comfortable
in telling, for it has good news for our communities, our families, our
friends, and our enemies.
Now, what were you
saying?
SDG
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