The Stories We Tell

(This was written for our parish newsletter as part of our capital campaign, but I hope it speaks to a more essential element of our humanness and our blessedness and our call to be who we are created to be. If it inspires you to be more generous with what you have to give, no matter what it is or whom you give it to, good. If it inspires you to make a gift to our capital campaign, well, thank you, but that's not the only thing it is about. )

When you stop to think about it, the stories we tell say more about us than they do about the characters, plots, and conflicts (every story contains conflict or it isn’t a story) they relate. It’s not a stretch – especially when we’re talking about church – to say that the stories we tell define who we are. We choose the stories and then we choose how we tell the stories. We embellish or omit certain elements. We embrace one character’s point of view over another’s. We hurry the crescendo or delay it. We do have a lot of choices. 

The story I want to tell is about a smallish church on a hill with an amazing view and delightfully quirky people and etherial music and bright children and generous workers and nearly always yummy food somewhere to be found.

It’s a story that has been in the telling for about thirty years now, and we are nowhere near the Happily Ever After where stories tend to stop. In fact, I think we are just now really gathering momentum.

How did this congregation get to be here? What were the resources that fueled and fed us to the point where we are seeing all this energy, all this hospitality, all this glad and gleeful service to the world? Let’s get all gimmicky and say it’s all about the I’s.

v  Imagination: In my book one cannot have too much imagination. Imagination is always looking, not contentedly or wistfully toward the past, but faithfully and expectantly toward the future. It is driven by joy, not fear. Imagination says, “I think I can,” and we all know what happened to the Little Engine that Could.

v  Innovation: While we revere our traditions, they do not have a stranglehold on us. Actually our traditions are like cherished heirlooms that resist gathering dust in the museum of the past but rather add beauty and depth to everything we do that is new and different. Sometimes those new things need to be traded in. Sometimes they need to be repaired. Sometimes they become new traditions, but we never get rid of what has true value.

v  Inspiration: Inspiration is nothing less than the indwelling of the spirit. It is literally what happened to the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. They became aware that the Holy Spirit had taken up habitation in their own bodies and had empowered them to do what they could never have done on their own. Even though we may not feel our own Upper Room filled with wind or see flames dancing over each other’s heads, the Holy Spirit is very much resident within each of us and can give us power to fulfill God’s dreams for us as individuals and a parish family.

v  Incarnation: This is why any of this is important in the first place. God’s love exploded into creation out of need for something to love. And God’s love entered into the body of a little baby boy who grew up to show us – and the motto of every great storyteller is ‘show, don’t tell’ – what God’s love looks like and what God intends for each and every one of us to be. When we look at Jesus, we are looking at how God sees us. Incarnation means ‘in the flesh’, and the flesh was Jesus way back once upon a time and is us now and is going to be somebody else in the future, and we need to give them the best we can.

v  I: Yes, I. Each of us is an “I,” the subject of the sentences of which our story is comprised. Each of us has gifts to share – gifts of our talents and our resources. And each of us grows into our likeness to Christ as we share from those gifts, as we stretch ourselves by giving a little more than feels absolutely safe. It’s a pretty good guideline that if we don’t flinch just a little, it’s less than our best gift. The gift that not only provides for the future of our parish, but the gift that grows our souls.

So I want to tell you a story about a smallish church up on a hill, where the hawks soar and the bluebonnets bloom and the moon,when it is full, rises brightly over the labyrinth .

Once upon a time the people of this church declared that they were so filled with gratitude to the people who gave them their church that they wanted to give as they had been given. They were having such a good time letting their imaginations go wild – let’s build a Parish Life Center and fill it with curious people coming to small groups, children learning about Jesus, youth flipping pancakes and staying up all night, babies being rocked in the nursery, people eating yummy food; let’s invite the world to come up here and listen to Handel’s Messiah with an orchestra and soloists an wine at the reception; let’s give away 1740 storybooks to children; let’s bless everybody’s pet; let’s shred people’s papers and take food to the food bank, let’s furnish a whole apartment for a family from Burundi (where’s Burundi?) whom we’ve never met – they were having such a good time that they wanted to give that good time to the people who would come after them.

But they looked around and said, “Where will the children play?” so they built a playscape. And they said, “Who will pay our debts?” so they paid off their debts. And they said, “Who will repair our buildings?” So they repaired their buildings. Each and every “I” said, “I can. I will. I want the next generation to be able to follow their imagination because imagination is holy and a gift from God." Don’t you wish we could look in the crystal ball and see what they will do with the resources God will give them?

It’s not for us to dictate to them what we would have them do. It is for us to equip them with what we have to share. And it is for us to give them the freedom from our debt. And the well-maintained buildings they will need for the sake of their ministries. And their playground, because many of them are children now, and play is how they become their happiest and healthiest and most creative selves. So that they can tell their own stories.