Story

Imagine our tribe around a fire
on a dark night and ask yourself:
do stories matter? 
- David Guterson, author

We are inextricably involved in the Story, so it is absolutely crucial that we understand what that Story is.  We must always have in mind the themes and threads that we have been woven into, that mix and mingle around us and through us.  We are called to co-weave the Tapestry that God is telling, and we can’t do that unless we know where we’ve come from…and where we’re going.

CREATION
From nothing, God created everything. From Him all things came, and on Him all things depend. With His Word (or Voice) he desired into reality atmosphere and minerals and particles that bound together, creating soil and water and sky. And he made seed-bearing plants, giving them the ability to produce more of their kind.  He gave the same ability to birds and mammals and insects and fish and every other living thing.  He instilled in creation energy, a sort of forward motion in which all things cycled and turned and experienced flux and movement.  And it was good. 

In the middle of it all he placed mankind, one who was a created creature, but made imago Dei: in the image of God.  The Greek word for this would be eikon.  We were placed in the midst of all of it and given a mission, a purpose:  creatively order and care for it all, consciously steering and guiding the forward-moving energy of this new reality and Story, constantly helping good to bring about more goodness.

CRISIS
One ancient writer describes the relationship between the first humans by saying that they could stand in front of each other naked and feel absolutely no shame, no fear, no awkwardness, no emberassment. In their abundant relationship with their Creator, Sustainer, and Provider, they were completely fulfilled. Completely valued. The differences between them (whether physical or emotional) were respected.

Love is based on trust, on boundaries and respect.  In one tragic event, the first people chose to cross a boundary that their Creator told them not to…and in an instant, “they realized they were naked.”  In a moment of intense knowledge, they became aware of the ways in which they could be abused and marginalized, how their differences could be used against them.  They felt the fear of an infinite number of ways in which the other could hurt them, use them, disregard them.  The eikons cracked.

And they covered themselves.

The abundant relationship they had with their Creator had been severed.  They chose to live outside the boundaries and limits that had been put in place.  They chose to tell the Story their own way, and in doing so, decided to seperate themselves from the pure outpouring Source of life.  Their way would now become unspeakably difficult.  Their responsibilities were still the same, but now when they tended creation, creation itself would seem to fight back with thorns and weeds and draught.  Because mankind was apart of creation, their decision affected all of creation.  And its forward motion and pursuit to produce and continue would result in pain and frustration.  Men would now bleed and women agonize as they helped creation in being fruitful. 

The fateful wheel that was set in motion by the Voice was still rolling…only now it had jumped the track and was careening rapidly into chaos.

CALLING
One day, around 4,000 years ago in a remote area of the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, the Creator of all things spoke to a man named Abram. He invited Abram to leave his life in the valley, to leave behind the safety of his community and status it provided, and to set out with his family toward a new place He would show him.  They would become the Creator’s crisis-response team, bringing assistance, resources, encouragement, support, and love (e.g. blessing) to all peoples and all nations. The God who created was enrolling them as helpers and collaborators in the ongoing creation of good in the world. They would help restore it, help mend the splintered and fractured parts of the world and its people.  In doing so, they would be given a new identity and become a new kind of people in the world…a people whose numbers would one day be greater than the stars themselves.

CONVERSATION
Over the course of a couple thousand years (give or take a century or two), a lot happened with this group of peope. From famine to freedom, covenant to exodus, they slowly became a distinct culture and community, gaining an identity as a special people with a special relationship with God. Throughout all of this, they sometimes forgot this identity, and God fanned the flame by inspiring certain people from among them to keep the communication flowing, to keep the conversation going between He and His people. Four basic types of people from within the nation (now called Israel, or “God-wrestler”) served as conduits for conversation:

priests were the day to day educators and guardians of the people, helping them to sustain and strengthen their faith through regular rituals and holy days.

prophets rose up unpredictably, siezed with passion by God to convey a message from God (don’t think “future teller”…but someone who proclaims forth a message). They confronted the people of Israel about their moral and ethical failures, crying out for justice and mercy and confronting hypocrisy wherever it happened.

poets captured the experience and emotion of the people: their laments, hopes, joys, praises, fears, doubts… This group articulated the hearts of the people toward God and tried to capture the heart of God for the people.

philosophers were concerned about a way of life that was marked by a passionate pursuit of wisdom (in the Jewish culture, Wisdom became another way of describing the Voice or Word of God–it was another way of talking about God’s desire and dream for the world). Living wisely was about living in a way that made God’s intentions for creation a reality. The Jewish philosophers grappled with the hardships and mysteries of life, not necessarily to clarify those mysteries, but to simply explore it.

From this grand Conversation came writings that were compiled together, creating a collection of stories and narratives and accounts that served to draw people together (in relationship) to converse about the most important issues in life. In doing so, they more fully engaged the Story of God and were drawn more deeply into it.

MESSIAH
For nearly 600 years the people of God had been enslaved or ruled over by some other nation–they were prisoners, even in their own land. For a time, the prophets talked of a coming king, an anointed one (messiah), one who would be like a son of man but wouldn’t rule like one.  He would be fair and just, compassionate and merciful.  He would finally defeat Israel’s enemies and break the chains of injustice.

As the centuries passed on the conversation grew more quiet, the people began to worry.  They began to ask why God wasn’t returning, why He wasn’t defeating Israel’s enemies and once again dwelling among His people.  And they began to come up with their own answers.

One group of people, the Zealots, said that God wasn’t returning to His people because they didn’t want it bad enough.  If Isreal would just rise up against their enemy and oppressor (in this case, Rome), then God would give them the victory, just as He had with their ancestors.  Another group, the Herodians and Sadducees, felt that Rome was much to powerful to ever defeat.  Their solution was to just hunker down and make the best of things, living off the fat of the Empire and all it had to offer.  A group called the Pharisees felt that the reason God had left them alone was because the people of Israel, the people of the Covenant, weren’t living up to their end of the deal.  The nation was full of drunkeness and prostitution and national betrayal–if the people would just start living more purely, then God would come back.  Still another group, called the Essenes, felt that the entire system was corrupt, from the priestly system in the Temple to the political system in the courts.  Their answer was to seperate themselves from it altogether, and they formed ‘pure’ communities in caves above the sea and in the wilds of Palestine, waiting for God to return and purge the people and their defiled systems.

In the midst of these belief systems and political philosophies and empires, an obscure rabbi begins attracting crowds by the things he says.  People want to know his affiliation, which group he ’sides’ with, and by whose authority he speaks.  His message is nothing short of revolutionary:

“Change the way you think; be reborn in the way you approach things.  You’re all so preoccupied with the empire of Caesar and the oppressed nation of Israel that you’re completely missing the point: the Reign of God is here and now…and it’s available to everyone.  This is the reality that matters most.  Believe this fantastic news and follow me…”

His name is Jesus, and he seems to be introducing some new and revolutionary alternative that is about seeking and receiving a new reality that he calls the kingdom or reign of God.  This new kingdom directly challenges the supremacy of Caesar and the kingdom of Rome.  This new kingdom breaks through the social lines and boundaries that had been set up within Jewish culture, and Jesus regularly dines with and enjoys the company of the poor and destitute and socially unnacceptable. 

Eventually, Jesus is tried and killed for being a conspirator against Rome.  He takes upon himself the worst that mankind’s empires and systems had to offer: death.  He exposes the greed and corruption and injustice that humankind’s version of the story is build upon. 

NEW CREATION
If that were the end of the Story, it would all be quite depressing, with the desire and dream of God being snuffed out by man’s most brutal act of violence.

But it’s not.

A few days after ‘the end’…it starts over. And like it did before, it begins in a garden. By the very Breath and Power and Voice that created all things, Jesus was raised from death to new life. Resurrected. Restored. And in that moment, the entire cosmos changed. A new seed of hope and healing was planted within creation. The message of restoration went out to everything that grew and flew and walked and swam. The desire and dream of God had come, taken on skin and blood and bone, and from death emerged unquenchably alive. Now all people, everywhere, were and are invited to step into this way of life, this truth and reality, to follow in the newly inaugurated reign of God. In this new kingdom, parties are thrown. The forgotten are remembered and valued. The lost are found and welcomed in. The outcast are invited to feast at the table. People are healed. Creation is restored. And slowly, bit by bit, like yeast through a ball of dough…the glory of God begins to saturate His creation, spreading over and under and through it as the waters cover the sea.

…

“The story of the Incarnation is the story of a descent and resurrection…one has the picture of a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get.  This thing is human nature.”    
C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle