“Stories the Enchantment of the Bible”

September 17, 2006

Scripture Reading:   Isaiah 55:6-13

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

 

The Bible is full of stories.   To name a few in the Old Testament, we have the story of the God creating the world which we just used at the beginning of the service.  Then there is the story of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden.  Then there are the two fighting brothers, Cain and Able.  Then there is Abraham leaving his home to follow where God leads.  Then there is Noah and the Ark.  There is Moses, the burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea.  There are the great stories of the rise of King David.  In the New Testament we have all those stories about Jesus.  The Christmas Story and the Easter story.  The stories of Jesus healings, stories of his disciples, stories of his death.  Jesus himself taught in stories.  Jesus constantly asked, “What is God like?”  He would answer this question in stories called parables.  After Jesus ascended to heaven there are stories of the beginning of the Christian Church.  The story of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples with tongues of fire.  The last book of the Bible is an epic story about the end of time itself and the beginning of the eternal reign of God. 

The theme for this fall is storytelling from the Bible.  We weren’t there at the time of the Bible.  It is thousands of years later.  We live in a land far away from the Bible.  But, if we sit in our arm chairs and just know the stories that is enough.  Knowing the stories of the Bible is enough to bring us close to the God revealed in the stories and to help us deal with what we as a people have to deal with even here and now.

Let me tell you a story about the importance of stories:

When the great rabbi Baal Shem-Tov felt that his people were threatened, he would go to a secret part of the forest to meditate.  There he would light a special fire, say a special prayer, and the disaster would be averted.

When his successor faced similar circumstances, he would go to the same place in the forest and pray:  “Great Master of the Universe, I do not know how to light the special fire, but I am able to say the special prayer, and this must be sufficient.” It was, and the disaster was averted.

 

When his successor faced difficult times, he would go to the special place in the forest on behalf of his Jewish people and pray:  “Great Master of the Universe, I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know how to say the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.”  It was sufficient, and the disaster was once again averted

When it feel to his successor to deal with the misfortune of  his people, he sat in his armchair with palms uplifted.  “Great Master of the Universe,” he prayed, “I am unable to light the special fire, I do not know the prayer, I cannot even find the place in the forest, but I can tell the story, and this must be sufficient.”  And it was

This fall we will be telling a lot of stories to the children.  They also will be learning to tell the stories of the Bible to each other.  We will be having a story teller come and teach us how to do this.  Our first family intergenerational worship service will be all about story telling. 

Why is this important?  Children put their world together through stories.  Remember the children’s television show “Sesame Street?”  The show had the loveable characters of Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookies Monster.  I loved “Sesame Street”  However, “Sesame Street” was not based on a story format.  Rather it was based on the idea that kids couldn’t really follow an extended narrative.  That they could only handle short sound bites, the size of a commercial.  But, then they discovered that this was not true.  In fact, psychologists now believe that stories are absolutely central to children.  Jerome Bruner, a psychologist at New York University says, They are not able to bring theories that organize things in terms of cause and effect and relationships, so they turn things into stories, and when try to make sense of their life they used the storied version of their experience as the basis for further reflection.  If they don’t catch something in a narrative structure, it doesn’t get remembered very well, and it doesn’t seem to be accessible for further kinds of mulling over.

So, another TV show was developed after “Sesame Street.”  It is called “Blue’s Clues.”  Every episode of “Blue’s Clues” is constructed the same way.  Steve, the host, presents the audience with a puzzle involving Blue, the animated dog.  In one show the challenge is to figure out Blues’ favorite story.  In another, it is to figure out Blue’s favorite food.  To help the audience unlock the puzzle, Blue leaves behind clues.  Throughout the show Steve and the dog, Blue, lead the viewer on a journey of discovery.  “Sesame Street” was successful because of the warmth of the Muppets and the zany humor and songs.  But, children remember “Blues Clues” better. 

Stories are how kids put their world together.  For instance, Emily was almost three years old.  Every night when she went to bed her parents would hear her tell herself a story about what was going to happen the next day.  It was the way she put her life together and understood her life.  Tomorrow when we wake up from bed, first me and Daddy and Mommy, you, eat breakfast eat breakfast like we usually do, and then we’re going to play and then soon as Daddy comes, Carl’s going to come over, and then we’re going to play a little while.  And then Carl and Emily are both going down the car with somebody, and we’re going to ride to nursery school (whispered), and then when we get there, we’re all going to get out of the cr, go into nursery school, and Daddy’s going ot give us kisses, then go, and then say, and then we wills ay goodbye, and the he’s going to work and we’re going to play at nursery school…  

How do you teach kids about God?  Not by abstract ideas.  Rather it is by stories.  Often ministers, including myself, have used object lessons for children’s sermons.  For instance, “Do not let your light hide under a bushel.”  This is something Jesus said meaning that we should let the goodness in us that comes from God shine in the world and not be hidden.  So, for an object lesson a minister might put a flash light under the blanket.  But, a child will not get the connection.  He or she will just think I am hiding a flashlight while talking about Jesus.  So as a minister, I am moving away from object lesson children sermons to telling all kinds of stories.  These are what our kids will remember.  Moreover, they imagine these stories and play act these stories.  These stories eventually become part of who they are. 

Let me tell you another story.  Many centuries ago, a rich caliph in Baghdad gave a banquet in honor of the birth of his son.  All the nobility who partook of the feast brought costly gifts, each one except a young sage named Mehelled Abi, who came empty-handed.  He explained to the caliph:  “Today the young prince will receive many precious gifts, jewels and rare coins.  My gift is different.  From the time he is old enough to listen until manhood, I will come to the palace and tell him stories of our Arabian heroes.  When he becomes our ruler, he will be just and honest.” 

The young sage kept his word.  When the prince was at last made caliph, he became famous for his wisdom and honor.  To this day, an inscription on a scroll in Baghdad reads.  “It was because of the seed sown by the tales.””

With children learning the Bible stories as we tell them and as they tell them to each other…all these stories are sowing the seeds of faith.  As the sage knew, the greatest gift we can give our children, is not material things, but these stories.  For how they act and who they become will be shaped by the Bible.  When they are scared they will imagine how David felt fighting Goliath.   When a kid on the play ground is being bullied, they will imagine Jesus sticking up for the woman who was about to be stoned.  My favorite Jesus story when I was a kid was Jesus telling his disciples that they should quit being fishermen because he would make them fishers of men.  Back then I just liked that story a lot.  I didn’t think, oh I am going to be a minister because of that.  The story just worked in me, like a lucky rabbit foot in my pocket until I ended up here 40 years later.

Stories are important not only to children but to adults also.  As every preacher knows, people hardly every remember the great abstract theological points one strains so hard to make.  They don’t remember the subtle distinctions and dexterity of mind that one spends hours accomplishing.  They don’t go home and recount justification by faith or justification by works at the Sunday dinner table.  People go home and say, the minister told a good story today.

Adults need stories as well as children.  In fact, fantastic and incredible stories are spontaneously generated by our brains.  We all dream at night.  Dreams are stories.  As a counselor and minister I love dreams.  They are not only the royal road to the unconscious, as Freud maintained, but I feel they can be the royal road to God. 

 Want to hear a dream of one minister had when he was writing his sermon.  This was dreamt by Rev. Gordon at the end of the 19^th century and it effected him the rest of his life:

He was writing his sermon and he fell asleep.  He dreamt that he was in the pulpit and the church was full.  He was just about to begin his sermon when a stranger enetered and passed slowly up the left aisle of the church looking first to the one side and then to the other as though silently asking with his eyes that some one would give him a seat.  He had proceeded nearly half way up the aisle when a gentleman stepped out and offered him a place in his pew, which was quietly accepted.   

His face was very serious, as if he had known some great sorrow.  His bearing was exceedingly humble, his dress poor, and plain, and from the beginning to the ned of the service he gave the preacher  respectful attention.  Immediately as the preacher began his sermon the preacher’s attention became riveted on the man.  If he reverted his eyes for a moment they would instinctively return to the man.  The man held his attention while he preached rather than the preacher holding the man’s attention. 

The whole time the preacher was wondering, “Who is this stranger?”  But, at the end, the man left before he could reach him.  The preacher asked the man who had given him his seat  who he was.  In the most matter of course way he answered, “Why, do you not know that man?  It was Jesus of Nazareth.”  The preacher told him how disappointed he was  that he did not meet him.  And in the same off the cuff manner he said, “Oh, do not be troubled.  He has been here to-day, and no doubt he will come again.

With a rush the minister was overwhelmed with self doubt, about his sermon, about the sanctuary about their whole religious tradition.  However one thought ended up comforting him, “He has been here today, and no doubt he will come again…”  He repeated these words over and over again and gained great comfort. 

Rev. Gordon knew that Christ was present among us in the abstract.  But only when his dream brought home the truth in a story of Christ walking down the aisle of his church did become a living truth for him that affected his preaching ever after.    The story in his dream even continues to speak to me as I read it. 

Scriptures are full of stories.  To know the Bible we need to tell the stories over and over to each other.  Of course that is how the Bible started really.  It didn’t start as a book, bound in paper, or leather.  It didn’t start as a papyrus scroll either.  The bible started as stories told around a camp fire. This is known as oral tradition.  The key to preserving all the tales was the story teller.  For while parents told their children of long-remembered events, Abraham, the Exodus, etc.  There were also gifted individuals who performed the role for their community.  It might have been a shepherd who was admired for his anecdotal expertise and who told his tales to his extended family in an open field, or perhaps it was a celebrated artist who recited by request at festive gatherings.  His stories were more than entertainment they were to preserve the identity and collective memory of his people.  Before writing, memory was invaluable, since without it, ideas were lost forever.  Thus the ability for total recall was formidable among the ancients.  A great story teller might memorize an epic of 30,000 lines.

The Bible is full of stories and is one great collective story.  It is has been saved for us through a collective memory over thousands of years.  It is a work of ten thousand censors poets and great story tellers.  It is a journal of forgotten, reworked and remembered holy moments, too awesome to be simply described in everyday language.  They must be described in the language of story.  It is what remains of the most penetrating incursions of God into the Christian realm.  It is the great archetypal dream of us all.

The story moves beyond our belief systems and becomes part of our very being.  As we tell the stories to each other and to our children.  As our children tell their favorite stories to us, these stories penetrate and peel away layer after layer.  Until we realize that the voice speaking in these stories come from within us and not only from without.  The story becomes true not just because it happened at a particular place and at a particular time but because it is about us too.  This is how the story redeems. 

I love tell the story, because I know it’s true;

It satisfies my longing As nothing else would do.

So, with the importance of stories in mind, let’s sing the hymn, “I Love to Tell the Story” #317.  You notice this hymn is not classified under the “Children's’” section of the hymnal.  Rather the story is under “Gospel Call and Response.”