The Power of Stories

Why the Gospel is not just relevant, but urgent, today

    Prompted by the chaos in the US at the present, 
    and by a need to speak from what I know, 
    this series is an examination of the Gospel of Luke 
    and its message of liberation and inclusion.  
    To see the introduction to the series, click here. 

This week’s post is a pause in our exploration of the Gospel of Luke, in part so that we can catch our breath, and in part to present the case for its urgency at this particular moment in history.

Stories have power. The stories we choose to tell, about ourselves and the world we inhabit, become the frame within which we live, and move, and have our being. They are the lenses through which we see each other. They provide the goals toward which we aim all our efforts. Which stories we hear, and tell, and believe, and how we tell them, can determine the quality of our relationships, the depth of our suffering, and the harm or healing we bring to those around us.

The Christian community is collectively the inheritor of the story of the Hebrew people - the 5000 year history of the Jews - as well as the story of a particular Jew who lived in Israel/Palestine 2000 years ago. These stories of suffering, exile, liberation, and resurrection offer a worldview which embraces both individual identity and communal existence.

These stories have been shared in both oral and written form for centuries. As with all good stories, they have been subject to translation, interpretation, adaptation, exploitation, expansion, diminution, and outright distortion. Right now we are living in a time when the Christian narrative has been co-opted by those who would use it to enforce patriarchal and imperial codes of conduct. Strands in the texts that reflect ancient patterns of authority are being taken out of context to support the notions that women should remain subservient to men, that darker-skinned people are inferior to lighter-skinned people, and that certain groups of people are entitled to exercise power over other groups.

There are, however, other ways to interpret these stories.

In the first few posts in this series we identified the literary technique of verisimilitude at work in the text. This is the method of using anecdotes and details that sound realistic to make a larger point about the characters in the story, or the viewpoint of the writer. The story of Mary and Joseph taking the baby Jesus to the Temple is an example - most Jewish parents of that time would have done just that, so the premise of the story is believable. But the story itself is a set-up, a prop for the message of the two prophets they meet, Simeon and Anna, who foretell the triumph and suffering that await this child and his followers.

Verisimilitude is a wonderful literary practice - it gives narratives a sense of realism that draws readers into the story. But we live in such a literalistic society now that every detail of every tale is assumed to be historical and factual. We have no room in our thinking for symbolism, or metaphor, or any form of literary artistry. Everything now is either black or white, true or false. If something is presented in the form of narrative, it is considered to be either true in every detail, or a fiction, “just a story.”

But our stories are how we tell our deepest truths, truths that transcend mere factual reporting. Stories both tell us who we are, and are how we tell others who we most truly are. And how we tell those stories matters deeply.

In this series, I am looking directly at the stories “Luke” has chosen and crafted for inclusion in this telling of the Good News of Jesus the Christ. I am using three lenses to address those stories: text and context, reading back and forth, and ‘so what?’ Here’s why those lenses matter.

Text and context is a critical approach to understanding any narrative - if you try to read Ulysses without knowing anything about the city of Dublin you won’t understand what’s going on. If you try to read Tolstoy with no knowledge of 19th century Russian culture you’ll be hopelessly lost and unable to make sense of the plot.

When it comes to the Bible, the text exists within the context of ancient narrative practices and Middle Eastern socio-political life. If you know nothing about how the imperial forces of Rome, or Babylon, or Persia moved through the space we now know as Israel, you won’t appreciate the importance of the themes of oppression, exile, occupation, and liberation. If you aren’t familiar with the religions of the Middle East before the rise of monotheism you won’t catch the importance of references to the heavenly court, or to the poles of Asherah.

The preference for a “plain reading” of the words of the Bible is a facile assumption that what the words mean to me when I read them today is all they have ever meant and all they need to mean. While well-meant, that's just not adequate to the task. If we want to claim these narratives as formative for our life and faith, we need to do the work to understand where they come from and how they communicated to their original writers and readers.

Reading back and forth is necessary because the Bible wasn’t written straight through, like a mystery novel. It is a library bound together in a single volume, a collection of prose, poetry, history, prophecy, and proclamation. Later contributors knew what was already part of the collective narrative and consciously borrowed earlier themes and images to tell new stories.

Reading back and forth also means that it is not enough to grab a few verses or an isolated episode and memorize it because it feels good. We have to take a running start, notice how the writer leads up to that verse, or that episode, and where they go next. All of Scripture is an interconnected web - just like life itself - and pulling a piece out of the web does violence to the text.

And then my favorite part of the process — the ‘so what’ question. None of this work of examining text and context, of reading around each episode, is worth the effort if the story has nothing to say to us now. Some folks would point to the Bible as a form of moral guidebook, a set of instructions for daily living. I suppose that’s valid, but let’s be careful which bits you choose to use in that way. How many people are checking their clothing for mixed fibers, as regulated in Leviticus? That instruction-book approach is far too susceptible to a pick-and-choose method, and tends to make people who use it that way far too tempted to want to force others to behave exactly as they do, “for the Bible tells them so.”

‘So what?’ actually matters on a much deeper level. The people in the Biblical narratives, for the most part, aren’t kings and queens, rulers and executives. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in fact shows God trying desperately to get the people to NOT buy in to the desire for a king, then shows them what a disaster it is when they get one (or several in succession). The Bible turns out to be filled with the stories of everyday people who encounter pain and suffering, loss and grief, love of each other and their homeland, exile and return, death and resurrection.

These stories have power. They are universal narratives, themes that should resonate deeply for any reader, whether they revere the Bible as sacred or not. Finding one’s place in the world, as an individual and a member of the human community, is the essence of any sacred text. Apart from narratives of this type, we are merely cogs in a socio-political machine.

And this is why I am committed to taking this deep dive into this one religious narrative. There’s so much in there that we need to survive and thrive in a time when that machine is threatening to overwhelm us. Our present context is deeply challenging. In the midst of this I believe God wills love and belonging for us. Together with the narratives that nourish our souls, we can build the new reality.