Episodes
Sunday Apr 28, 2013
We’ll understand it better
Sunday Apr 28, 2013
Sunday Apr 28, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 24: 9-27
We will be having a congregational time together to talk about community business today before the end of the service so I want to do a short sermon this morning.
I want to say a few words about the power of stories … the stories we tell … the stories we live by.
One of the greatest influences parents have on children is through the stories they tell about them. Parents tell a child who he or she is by the stories they choose to tell others about him or her in the child’s hearing.
Fortunately I had parents who told stories about me being smart and courageous. As a result of the stories they told about me I grew up believing I could do well intellectually and academically and that I was brave enough to do what is right.
I wish they had also told stories about me being athletic and coordinated. Unfortunately they told stories about me being clumsy and uncoordinated.
But still … stories about being smart and brave were good stories to hear about myself.
Not every child hears such stories.
It has probably changed now, but I remember hearing some time ago that someone had done a study of tattoos worn by people in prison. At the time the number one tattoo worn by people who ended up in prison was a tattoo that said “Born to lose.” That was the story they had heard told about themselves.
Family stories are also important and formative. The stories I was told about the Snyders growing up were about Snyder family always working hard, stories about the Snyders giving away money to others in need even when they had barely enough themselves, and about Snyder women being in charge and making the Snyder men do what they wanted them to do. These stories about the Snyder family helped shape my understanding of who I am and am supposed to be.
I had a friend who used to love to tell stories about the outlaws in his family history … cattle rustlers and moonshiners and even a bank robber. He loved to tell those family stories. I remember when his children were teenagers how he complaining again and again to me about how hard it was to get his kids to obey the rules. I wanted to say to him that maybe he ought to rethink the stories he keeps telling them.
Stories shape us.
On the first Easter Sunday afternoon two disciples of Jesus were walking on the road to Emmaus. A stranger joined them. It was Jesus but they did not recognize him. They told the stranger the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and death. They told the stranger a story of their disappointment and defeat.
Then the stranger who unknown to them was Jesus “beginning with Moses and all the prophets” told them another story. “He interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” He told them another story.
One of the biggest questions in life that each one of us needs to ask is what essential story we are going to live by? What cosmic story will we live by? What eternal story will we live in?
Jesus invited his disci0ples to live in the story that begins with God listening to the prayers of slaves in Egypt and parting the sea so that they could be free and God sending them prophets and teachers to show them how to live with each other justly and lovingly.
Jesus invites them to understand his story and their story as his disciples in the context of this larger story of a God who enters into the human story to show us how to love.
And the question for you and me is what story will we choose to live in?
The world around us is always trying to sell us a story. Watch TV, explore the internet, listen to the music, read the covers at any magazine stand. On my way into church early this morning I stopped at the 24-hour CVS on P Street. I want to show you the first two magazines I saw on the CVS magazine stand.
Here is the first magazine cover: “From Startup to Millionaire: The 7 best pieces of advice to get you there.”
That is a story the world is trying to sell you.
Here is the other magazine cover: “Bikini Body Now: Flat Abs, Tight Tush, Lean Legs.”
That is a story the world is trying to sell you.
Then there is this book (a Bible) that is trying to sell you another story. It is offering you and me another story.
Nobody can prove their story is true.
The world cannot prove that you will ever become a millionaire no matter what you do. The world cannot prove that you will ever have a tight tush no matter how much you exercise and starve yourself.
The Bible cannot prove that you will find abundant life if you follow Jesus.
We have to choose by faith which story we will live in.
I did not go to seminary because I had a clear call to ministry. I went to seminary because I wanted to believe this story but could not bring myself to do it intellectually. So I went to seminary to read theology to see if Karl Barth and Emil Brunner and Paul Tillich and Jürgen Moltmann and James Cone and Leonardo Boff could convince me that this story is intellectually palatable.
I did not go to seminary because my faith was strong but because my faith was so weak that I needed all of the intellectual support I could get to believe this story.
It is a story that I do not fully understand yet but I believe I will someday.
All I want to say this morning really is that we all need to a story to live by. We can choose the millionaire story, the tight tush story; of we can choose this story … the story of a God who enters human history to bring us freedom, justice, inclusion and love. We choose.
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.