Story

A preview of my upcoming column in the Baltimore-Washington Connection

You need to know, I tell a lot of stories in my preaching. Mostly they are stories from my life or the church’s life. The stories that you find when you Google or, God forbid, from sermon anecdote books, make my flesh crawl. My actual life is way more interesting than those stale Saltines.  Stories have always been important to me. They are the way I learned lessons, from the time I was a wee tyke.  Family stories, mostly, that all start with “The Time…”  like The Time Mama Rowe Wanted to Learn to Drive, The Time Uncle Roscoe Shot the Rope, and The Time Daddy Left Me in the Tree.  Stories, to be good ones, had to have recognizable, fallible, flawed, hopeful, characters, somehow kin to me, and moments of great conflict , and satisfying resolutions. From those stories, I learned who I was, where I came from, and what was important in life.

So much of the gospel is told in story form.  Scripture is, at base, a story of God and people, a story of covenant and consummation and the life and work of Jesus Christ. In that larger story, we see ourselves, and when preaching works, we come to see that the story of faith is our story. We see ourselves in Israelites and Egyptians, in  Peter the Doubter and Peter the Rock.  The best part of the preaching moment is when we come to see how the Jesus we hear about in Scripture is the Jesus who woos us and works in and on us today. It’s a wide-eyed recognition  that, in the blink of an eye, we are the women, running from the tomb, running from the sanctuary, saying “He’s not here. He has risen.”

In every church, we must tell the story of the gospel and we must tell how the gospel is being lived out in our midst. What are some of your church’s stories of God at work?  The Time Our Church Fed our Neighbors in the Park, The Time John Went into Rehab and We Prayed for Him, The Time We Marched for Justice? The Time the Power Went Out and We Worshipped Anyway? I promise, you have a story to tell, about God’s love and mercy, about faults and failures and God’s redemption.  You have a story because God had a story first…that  “old, old story of Jesus and his love.”

Independence.

As I write this, I’m watching the sun rise over the ocean while my vacationing family sleeps.  We are at the beach celebrating our 20^th wedding anniversary.  As July approaches, and I’m asked to reflect on independence, my first thought, after 20 years of marriage is, it’s overrated.  Relationships are very quickly about interdependence, in my experience, or they don’t last very long.  I remember counseling a newly married person, and being asked, “Do you mean I have to just give up being RIGHT?” Her quarrel with her husband was about something tiny, like when he put the dishes away, he didn’t stack the bowls in the manner that she wanted. “Oh, baby girl,” I wanted to say, “this good man here loves you and wants God’s best for you, and you are screaming at him over bowls?”  Of course you have to give up “being right” all the time if you want to have a happy marriage.  There are more important things than being “independent.”

Our life with God is certainly about freedom from bondage. Our God is the God of the Exodus, and the God of Christian freedom.  God certainly has strong opinions about worshipping stuff that isn’t God.  In our baptisms, we promise to use the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.  But all of the freedom we have is a gift that is designed to help us choose God.  We raise up our kids in the church so that when they become independent, and can make their own choice, they may be led to “accept God’s grace for themselves, profess their faith openly and lead a Christian life.” (Baptismal Covenant).

Independence exists so that we can have the chance to choose be dependent on the right things, and so that we can choose to love God and each other.  What if we shot off fireworks at baptisms?  OK, too scary for the babies.  What if we played the 1812 Overture at clergy retirement parties?  There should be sparklers at every church meeting where folks choose Jesus over being right, where they listen and disagree and love one another anyway.  Let’s have a parade down Main Street because people who are hungry are being fed and the oppressed are being set free.  

May God bless us all so that we love Jesus and each other, and all our neighbors, more than just “independence."