God, the Storyteller

Well, hello again, this is Dick Boath for Known, stories to make sense of it all. And Ruth and I wrote this book a couple years back that is called Known, Finding Deep Friendships in a Shallow World, and over the last number of months we've been sort of reading through it with you. And we took a little break over the Easter season, but coming back now, I want to pick up on chapter five, I think it is, and it has to do with story because the theme of this whole podcast, of course, is stories to make sense of it all. But where does the idea of story come from? Where is the need to tell story come from? Where does the desire to hear a story come from? I have a bias, total bias, I'd say, I think we are built for it. It is built in. We have natural receptors so that when we get information in story form, it has a Velcro feature that sticks better in our brain than just getting a one liner or a principle. We're moving into chapter five that I hope speaks a little bit at least to the idea of why is it the stories fascinate us so much? Here we go. Storyteller. Story is the soil from which friendship grows. Chapter five. God, the storyteller. Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories. Madeline Lengel walking on water, reflections on faith and art. Story is the big thing in relationships. We don't just have stories, we are stories, and story is rooted in God himself. Genesis tees up the big story within the beginning. Promises the long view, it's the original once upon a time story of love gone wrong and love redeemed. This is the Indianapolis 500 announcer saying drivers, start your engines. We can't wait to see what happens next. There's a villain and a hero and you and I make an appearance too. And nobody does story like God. The culture of the West has been shaped by ancient stories from the east. They are the earliest images of life. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, David and Goliath, Jonah in the big fish, Mary and Joseph in the birth of Jesus, Jesus walking on water. The themes are good versus evil, the power of good and bad choices, winning against great odds, and sometimes the need for miracles. All those pieces make up the grand story. It's a template for our own. So when one of my professors would intone, don't get your theology from the narrative. It made me a bit crazy. I've discovered that there is abundant solid theology in the narrative. Truths come alive as you trample through the wilds and barons of life. It's through the stories that you come to understand the joy and anger, and frustration, greed, generosity, and sorrow of the players. It is there that the love and lust, history and dreams, the human and the divine battle it out. Story wraps flesh around truth. We see it most in the life of Jesus. The hours before Jesus died are crammed with the core things that he wanted as followers to know. He poured out his heart to them. John's gospel captures his words. My command is this, love each other as I've loved you. Greater love has known than this that he laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I've called you friends for everything that I learned from my father. I have made known to you. He spent three years with them, and they watched him perform miracle after miracle. They saw him tender. They saw him angry. They heard his stories again and again. The secret of his father's heart is revealed in those stories. None were clearly than the tale of the lost son. You're mortalized in oils by the Rembrandt of the world. It may be the best short story ever told. Jesus continued. There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, give me my share of the estate. So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country. And he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to a senses, he said, how many of my father's hired men have food to spare and here I am starving to death? I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men. So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son through his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to a servant's quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate for the son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field and when he came near the house, he heard music and dancing so he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. Your brother has come, he replied, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound. The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him, but he answered his father, look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. You never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when the son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you killed the fattened calf for him. My son, the father said, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. Now, that's a story. My Western mind gets the overall gist of it, but Middle Eastern listeners would have been stunned. Living in a world of traditions and tribal thinking rooted in centuries of practice, Jesus paints a picture that blows out tradition. He wants us to feel how God responds to things like greed and betrayal and lack of honor. He wants us to see people the way that God the Father sees them. He tells us a story so flagrant, so opposite to my understanding of honor in a tribal culture that it's almost impossible to listen to, let alone hear it. When I read this story, 2000 years later in a Western setting, even I can feel the emotion. As a father and grandfather, I'm on the edge of my seat. This is father and son stuff. It had been forever. How many days have the old man scanned the hills looking for his wandering son? How many nights have he prayed to Yahweh to keep him safe? How many servants that he sent to distant places seeking word of his boy? And suddenly there he was. The Jewish lad who had profaned his faith and spit on the family name comes to himself slopping hogs in a foreign country. The only safe place he knows is his father's house. So he heads for home. Dignity left at the door, the father begins to walk toward the distant figure. He walks faster. He begins a hobbling run, shouting, my son, my son, your home at last! If use of joy explodes from long nights of longing, prayer and hope, the self-pitying, easily offended or embarrassed person would long ago have given up, but not this tenacious father, one who loved his son no matter what. And now the old man has his boy back. Neither his old age nor his son's stupidity would deny him. The account says that while he was still a long way off, his father's son was filled with compassion form, ran to his son through his arms around him and kissed him. This was no rush to judgment. This was a rush to celebrate. What a picture! It captures the love and lust and pettiness and intrigue that brackets so much of life. The pain shows up in real people with real flaws. But to Middle Eastern years, nothing about this tale makes any sense. It's about a younger son, who by asking for his inheritance says to his father, I wish you were dead. He takes off to squander his dad's hard earned monies and while living, he is literally throwing away his father's life like there is no tomorrow. The word prodigious is defined as extensively great in size, extended degree. That's where we get the traditional title for the story, the prodigal son. The self-centered boy is a spender, and he ends up in the worst place a Jewish kid could end up, feeding pigs in a foreign land. He's down in the mud with a Gentiles hogs. According to tradition, he deserves to die in his hometown, the ancestral village. More to the point, he should die at the hand of his father. He has humiliated not just his father and the family, but the entire community. It doesn't get worse than that. But in this story, the old man hikes up his robe and runs to the boy. No elder does that. It isn't done. It's not right. The perpetrator is supposed to come and grovel, but the father will have none of it. In my mind's eye, the boy's willingness to grovel is silenced by a father's finger on the boy's lips, but I'm not worthy as muted by the father's voice. That's my call. Not yours. You had your day and your say, this is mine. Servants, bring the robe, the shoes and the ring. You wish me to make a judgment? There it is. Take it or leave it, but you will not change it. What's wrong is made right. The lost has been found. The dead has been raised to life. At that moment of truth, the listeners are in shock. They get the opposite of what they expect. Instead of a killing, they get a killer party. Mercy wins the day. What's that about? It's about the entrance of a new kingdom. It is antithetical to all they have known for generation. It makes no sense. The new kingdom introduces a new king with new rules and new outcomes. I've read the narrative scores of times over the years and have asked myself the question, who are you in this story? In a story like this, it's almost natural to try to place ourselves in the place of the prodigal, or even see ourselves in the scornful eyes of the elder brother. But in the story of the gracious father, the real kicker to the story isn't where we fit. Instead, it's what our father sees when looking at us. Through the words of this parable, we hear everything we need to know about who he is and who he believes us to be. When he tells that story, we absolutely see the heart of the father. And if we respond, we can never get over it. Nobody told a better story than Jesus of Nazareth. It's true that he walked into culture of rabbis and parapetetic teachers who taught by parable and anecdote. But according to his listeners, his stories rang with disturbing originality and authority. He defined what it means to be original. At the heart of it all, he is connecting with us by revealing himself. Along the way, I get to decide if I believe him. Like Frederick Beakner says, it is to choose to believe that the truth of our story is contained in Jesus' story, which is a love story. Jesus' story is the truth about who we are and who the God is, who Jesus says loves us. It is the truth about where we are going and how we are going to get there, if we get there at all, and what we are going to find if we finally do. The late Southern storyteller and novelist Pat Conroy once said, and a great story changes the world for you, changes the way you look at life. Why do you think that might be? I think it's because God put the love of story at the heart of humankind. He gave us a way to share our lives and memories that depends on nothing, but the willingness to speak and listen. It is not Greek rhetoric, it is not a classroom lecture, it is the thing of history and imagination. God telling his story says, come know me. The story is built into the fabric of humanity. So there you have it. In a nutshell, I think that story is the story of mankind in a lot of ways, the story of humanity, and I have a free before you. I want to give you something free, and it's not from me exactly. If you want to read the story of Jesus of Nazareth in a distilled form, and by that I mean, it's taken from the four gospels in the New Testament, and it's very well put together, elegantly bound, in a small little book that you can get by going to this website, plusnothing.com, plusnothing.com. And my friend, Josh Richardson, that you met some months ago on the podcast, he is making these available to you free. So you can order one, or you can order five, or you can order a dozen, and you'll get them free. So it's not often, this may be the first time in our podcast history that we've had a giveaway, and there it is. So as we wrap this up, I just encourage you to subscribe to this podcast on the platform and which you're listening right now. It would be great to stay connected, and we'll look forward to catching you the next time around. But until that time, God bless you, have a great next week, and we'll catch you soon. Bye.