What Story?

Rev. Seth Patterson

July 14, 2024

Scripture: Matthew 13:34–35

Last Sunday, our friend and pastor Beth, lovingly offered us an invitation. “Beloved Community,” she said, “we would do well to acknowledge our grief. For indeed, ours is a shared story of sorrow.” That invitation continued with “The only way through grief is to acknowledge it and live in to all the lessons grief teaches…. The balm which we seek can be found in the love this community shares, even when we are weeping, especially when we celebrate tender silence, always when we acknowledge the pain and sadness of another.”[1] Then at the 10 am time she and our chaplain friend Birdie facilitated a time of naming grief together in the Chapel. This was, by all accounts I have heard, an incredibly important moment of acknowledgement, sharing and acceptance. A beautiful and probably overdue invitation for us all. Thank you.

A wise Argentinean poet and printing press owner named Antonio Porchia once said: “I know what I have given you. I do not know what you received.”[2] On the surface this invitation was about acknowledging grief, but what I received from Beth’s message was an invitation to share our stories and listen to the stories of others.

What stories do you share? And how do you share them?

Storytelling is at the heart of our human experience and this fact is having a bit of a journalistic, academic, cultural and advertising resurgence. As poet Amanda Gorman says, “We tell stories because we are human. But we are also made more human because we tell stories. When we do this, we tap into an ancient power that makes us, and the world, more of who we are: a single race looking for reasons, searching for purpose, seeking to find ourselves.” This isn’t new and it isn’t just cultural. Our faith tradition has a rich foundation of storytelling, as we will hear in our scripture for today.

Let us take a deep breath together . . . and I invite you to open your hearts, minds and ears to the words of our spiritual ancestors from the Book of Matthew.

Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.

That translation was from the New Revised Standard Version which is typically the version we use here. But we could have also read from the King James Version:

All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.

Or the First Nations Version:

Creator Sets Free (Jesus) would use only stories like these when he spoke to the crowds. He taught nothing to the crowds without using a story. This brought full meaning to the ancient prophecy, “I will tell many stories, stories of the ancient ways, things hidden since the beginning of the world.”

Or The Message Bible:

All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.

Which version grabbed you? Did one way of hearing this land more meaningfully than another? While they are all the same story, the way that they are told illuminates different meanings, intentions and hopes. How we tell our stories is important.

As you well know, our society is currently experiencing significant changes and upheavals and with that comes an urgent desire to try and discern the future. We are trying to tell the stories of what will come next based on where we are now. It seems to me that most of these stories being told tend to be dystopian: speculations that foresee collapse, disintegration and suffering. Rarely are there stories of a hoped-for future that imagines collaboration, repair or healing. Some try to explain this away by saying that there may be more entertainment value in collapse or that we are preparing ourselves for worst-case outcomes. Or even that hoped-for future stories are utopian or naïve or boring.

But because we humans are narrative beings and make meaning from stories, how we tell these stories matter deeply. They are not frivolous or empty, they are the very tools at expanding our imaginations. If we only speak of dystopia, I wonder if that accelerates the movement towards that feared outcome? If we were to speak of a hoped-for future, would that help us to imagine a new way that we can then help make real? How much influence do the stories we tell have on the future we co-create?

What stories do you share? And how do you share them?

Stories are the connective tissue of our lives together, central to knitting individuals into an ‘us.’ “Stories can bridge chasms, connecting us in our common ridiculousness.” says Yale University Law Professor Amy Chua. When we invite others into our stories, we are inviting them to join us in our lives, an act of vulnerability and courage. When we receive another person’s story we are acknowledging their humanity, building compassion and seeing the kindred spirit of God that resides in us all.

It is also how we connect the past to the future. When acknowledging and telling the stories of our grief we are connecting a significant moment of our past into the present which informs us into the future. Stories are how we make connections in our multi-layered lives. NASA Astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller takes it even further saying, “Reality may be nothing but connections. There may be no events or places, no space or time as we understand them…This is where the deep nature of stories is revealed. What we think of as a universe extending into space and time is just how our limited brains perceive an underlying structure of pure connection.”

Actor Wendell Pierce, an expert in embodied story-telling reminds us that, “Storytelling is also the gateway to truth-telling, which helps inform our opinions, decision-making and self-views. Sharing our stories allows us to come together, declare what our values are and act on them. Without storytelling, we would not have the layers of history that impact our present and influence the future. It’s impossible to imagine a world in which our ancestors did not share their journeys of enslavement, persecution, horror, honor, hope and triumph.”

To share stories is to be present with all those who have come before us. Both because we are participating in the same human tradition as our ancestors but also because they and their stories come back to life when we tell them. To tell a story is to re-member, to reanimate, to re-enliven that which may no longer be physically present. To borrow from the beginning of the book of John, in telling stories the word becomes flesh and once again dwells among us.

Jesus was a storyteller through parables. Parables are short stories used to open the listener to find a lesson hidden in the framework of a story about something else, like sheep or plants or mustard seeds or yeast. Their point is deliberately obscured so that greater perception is needed to interpret it. These are stories with a clear invitation and an unclear resolution. Yet, like the Message Bible says: All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.

What stories do you share? And how do you share them?

We have received an invitation to acknowledge, hold and share our grief, both individually and collectively. This opens us to share our stories and listen deeply to the stories of others. It matters, I think, how we share them. Do you share your story to point at despair or hope? Do you share your story to break apart or to heal together? Do you share your story to destroy or to build? To tell a story is a powerful act, an act rooted in the foundation of our humanity, an act that can knit us together in our shared sacredness.

In a different life, when I was a professional actor (or embodied story-teller) I was taught that to fully play a character, I needed to love them. This included characters with whom I disagreed, disliked or had done awful things. I still needed to love them in order to portray them. The only way to begin to merge my life with theirs was through love. Without love the story would be empty and shallow. Love was the way in.

I wonder if the same goes for our own storytelling. To tell the stories that need to be told, to share our griefs and journeys, we need to do so with love. To love ourselves, to love our mistakes, to love our losses, to love those we may disagree with or dislike. We may even need to love the hurts, discomforts and unfairness that we have encountered. Jesus shared stories with an intention of love, of abundance for the oppressed and forgotten, without judgment. These stories invited the listener to respond with depth, openness and love.

As we continue to respond to the invitation to acknowledge and share our grief—and to listen deeply to others—may we do so with love. When we tell our stories with love, then we may be participating in a hoped-for future and not dystopia. We can participate in creation and not destruction, healing and not disintegration.

Whatever story you share and however you share it, may you do it with love. May we continue practicing this together.

[1]Beth Hoffman Faeth, “Communal Grief,” July 7 2024

[2]https://appel.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NASA_APPEL_ASK_29i_power_story.pdf