It could be that after Jesus told the now eternal story of the erring son who was yet welcomed home by his father, one of his listeners asked Jesus, “Did that really happen, what you just told us, or did you just make up that story?” Jesus may well have said, “I just made it up. But it is a good story.”
While the ways we communicate have changed over the centuries, the human brain has not. We are a storytelling species. We think in story, talk in story and admire those who keep and spread our stories. Storytelling is the way all people give order and meaning to their experience. Because of this, there’s something special, more today than ever before, about attending a church service. Where else in today’s society do we go to sit down and hear a live, public speaker tell a story?
There is an Easter story in the Gospel of John about the risen Jesus appearing to his disciples. In this story, one of the disciples, Thomas, is absent. When the other disciples tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” he says “Unless I see…I will not believe.” A week later, Thomas was with the disciples when Jesus came and stood among them, and then Thomas believed. But Jesus told all of them, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We are those to whom this word is spoken. And do you know why? Because WE were not there that first Easter, just as Thomas was not there. We “have not seen.” But, we have heard the story.
Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor has written: “Scripture is the message our ancestors rolled and put in a bottle for us, because they wanted us to experience the person of Jesus—if not in the flesh, then in the word. Reading what they set down for us all those years ago, we are free to believe it or not. We are free to believe them or not, but one thing this story tells us is that seeing is not superior to hearing.
“Rooted in history, the stories of Jesus are more than history. Jesus is still alive in them, with power to make us weep, rejoice, hope, act. Maybe that is why we call both him and the stories about him the living word of God.”
Almost three years ago, the final episode of Game of Thrones aired, setting a record with 19.3 million viewers. In it was one of the finest speeches I have ever heard on the topic of storytelling. You needn’t have seen Game of Thrones to appreciate it. In a closing scene, the lords and ladies of the fictional realm of Westeros are seeking to select a new king. A speech is made by the character Tyrion, played by award-winning actor Peter Dinklage. He nominates a young man who has mystically been endowed to know all of pre-history and future history; a man who, in short, knows all the stories of the kingdom.
“What unites people?” Tyrion asked. “Armies? Gold? Flags? No. It’s stories,” he said. “There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.”
Nothing nor no one has ever been able to defeat the story of the resurrection of Christ Jesus and all that this story means to the hopeless and the hopeful, the victorious and the defeated, the living and the dying. Did it really happen? That is for faith to decide. But nothing is more powerful than “the old, old story of Jesus and his love.”
I pray that this Easter, you will find a way, through church or another means to hear again the greatest story ever told. And believe.
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