Sermon Preached By: Rev. Mac Schafer
Date: Oct. 21, 2007
Scripture: 2 Timothy 3: 14-4: 5
Sermon Title:

"Being the Storyteller"

I’m sure many of you have a parent or sibling or spouse or relative that loves to repeat stories, over and over and over again. And every time you are around them, you know you’re going to get one of the same stories you’ve heard for the past twenty or thirty or forty or even fifty years. The person that does this story–telling might even be the person sitting next to you today here in this sanctuary. And it’s particularly hard when a spouse or a parent is the storyteller because you’re with them more, so when you’re with a new person, you know when the old faithful story comes out, you’re not going to be able to escape from hearing it. And when it’s the parent telling a story about you when you were a child, for the five billionth time, you just want to crawl under a rock. But what’s funny about this is as much as I get annoyed from hearing the same story over and over again, there’s a side of it I like – even love. I like that I’ll never forget these stories about my family or about me because they’re always told. I like the fact that my relatives telling these stories give me a permanent reminder of who I am and where I come from. I like that the story always reminds me of the relative who tells the story.

So why do tell stories as human beings? Why do we like listening to stories? Well, we share our stories to be known, and we listen to know. We share stories to teach, and we listen to stories to learn. We share our stories because they help us to create community – people feel connected to us when we share our stories. We share stories because they make people feel like they are accepted, that they belong, that they matter. And we share our stories because it gives each of us our own identity.

2 Timothy, our scripture today, reminds us of the importance of storytelling. Paul writes this letter from imprisonment, to his trusted, talented young assistant Timothy. Paul reminds Timothy that from his childhood, his grandmother and mother taught him the stories of the scriptures and the instructions the scriptures gave. Paul reminds Timothy that the scriptures gave us several things: One, they help us to understand who Jesus is in our lives and His saving work. They teach us and correct us in our living and in our life. They train us, and these scriptures give us boundaries and guidelines to live by.

This summer I saw that the seventh Harry Potter book hit the stores when we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And obviously we were around a ton of other people on vacation in Jackson Hole. And everywhere I turned it was not kids who were reading the new Harry Potter book, but actually adults. And I decided to find out what the buzz was all about – as I’m not a very trendy person and didn’t hop on the Harry Potter bandwagon early. So since July I’ve listened on CD to the Harry Potter books in my jeep as I go from one place to another, and I’ve just started on the seventh book. And I now understand why so many adults and children have attached themselves to the Harry Potter books. It is because they speak very vividly of the human experience. Beyond the magic and the wizardry and the magical creatures and the fantasy, we see ourselves in the character of Harry and his friends. Harry and his friends have experienced new love, they’ve discovered things, they’ve experienced deep love of people they love, and they enjoy curiosity – just like us. The author JK Rowling communicates so vividly what we feel going through the highs of life and the lows experienced over the death of a loved one. I have found myself literally shedding tears on a few occasions as I listened to the Potter stories because I related so closely to the human experience communicated in her writings. We read stories like Harry Potter because we like that we are not alone in what we feel. The Harry Potter stories make us feel as if we have company in the human experience.

I think many of us are searching for who we should be. We are searching for who we are. As children we do it on a certain level, and as teenagers we really experiment with different identities. And as adults we often try to reinvent ourselves. We invent and reinvent ourselves around careers, around hobbies, faith practices, physical appearance, personality traits, and so much more. But all of us gathered here today have a particular foundation. To get in touch with that foundation, I invite you to pull out your pew Bible for a moment. Go ahead on open it up – touch its pages, flip through it, maybe even go to our scripture reading today.

Do you hear that? Do you hear that sound as you are flipping through those pages? What a great noise. That’s the sound of 125 people opening the Bible together. The Bible, the bestselling book ever, is probably the most unread – the most unflipped–through. 2 Timothy urges us that we need to know this story. And why do we need to know this story? Because it is our story. Like Harry Potter, the Bible has our story in it. It is one culture’s take on what it means to be human and in relationship with God. The problem with this unread bestseller is that sometimes we don’t know how to get into it – where to begin. Some of our parents didn’t teach us how to get around the Bible, maybe because they didn’t know. We may never have gone to church school as a child, or had a good church school teacher who helped us figure our way through the Bible. Because of this we don’t know how to teach our children, how to read or find the stories of the Bible.

So what do we do? Well, I long for each of you to be comfortable with that book. And in November Shelly Core will have an orientation on something we’re going to do in this church called The Year of the Bible – an opportunity for us as a congregation to commit as individuals and as a community to read through the Bible in a year. And I challenge all of us to do this. Shelly will offer different reading tracks, some more intensive, some less than can fit to your lifestyle and schedule. And as an introduction to this idea, I have left plans by each of the doors of the sanctuary today as one way to get familiar with the high points of the Bible. And I encourage you to pick one of these up as you leave, especially if you are someone who has never felt really comfortable with the Bible and doesn’t know where to begin. I want us to do this because the Bible is a part of our history – our faith story – and we continue the faith tradition by knowing and telling the stories in this scripture to our families, by discussing these stories with each other, and by wrestling with the stories within ourselves.

But there’s something else. The Bible you have held and are holding has a beginning and an end. It begins with Genesis and ends with Revelations. And one of the questions that is debated in various circles at times is whether the Bible should have an ending at all. And after all, how can the Bible not have an ending? It’s right there – it’s got a beginning and an end. But don’t we believe that God’s spirit is still moving and working in the end? One church denomination has its marketing phrase: “God is still speaking – come …”. And if that is true – if we really believe that God is still speaking in our time and place – then the Bible doesn’t have an ending at all. Every day we are still writing the Bible with our lives and with our faith experience. We are writing it with the moments we experience God and them moments we really struggle with our relationship with God. Thus this is even more of a reason for each of us to be a storyteller. My sermon title is, “Being the Storyteller”. And the first word of the title is “being”. Being is an active word. Your job as a Christian is to know your biblical story. Parents and grandparents, please continue to read and tell bible stories at bedtime to your kids, your grandkids, and your great–grandkids. Talk about the biblical narrative with your spouse, with your friend – with whoever you like. For in that you learn it and you know it. As I have said, your job is also to share your unique story as the new chapters to the Bible. Your life is biblical – God is still speaking in and around your life. You need to have confidence in your story, even if others do not. So be the storyteller of your life with you spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your great–grandchildren, your friends, and your strangers. Children and teens – share your stories of your day with your parents, even if you don’t want to, because your parents care about you and they want to know what is happening in your life. Share your story and listen to other stories because it is the core of our human experience and it’s what God desires.

Now in a few weeks we’ll be coming or going in our Thanksgiving time of celebration. And in your home or in a relative’s house you may meet up with somebody like Uncle Jimmy yet again. And Uncle Jimmy is going to launch into that story about how you and he were too heavy for that fishing boat you rented in 1967 in Cape Cod. You sunk it, your pants got soaking wet, your wallet got soaking wet, you lost your fishing gear, and you stood there in the mud calling for help. And he’ll tell that story just like he always does. And in that moment, instead of having that internal eye roll at Uncle Jimmy and his same old story, you may want to thank God for him and his silly stories. Thank God for all our stories, and our stories combined with God’s stories of faith, which creates the beauty of who we are with God. Yes, indeed in the details of the stories of our lives, God is still speaking. In the telling and re–telling of our biblical stories through the generations, God is still speaking.

So friends, go forth, and be great storytellers each day – for your own sake, and the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen and Alleluia.