Stories About God

This is the homily I preached this morning in church. The texts were 

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that the most important reason we go to church is to tell stories about God to one another. I believe that’s true. When I was thinking about standing up here and telling you a story about God, I suddenly felt the urge to describe to you a way I have of imagining that the Bible is reading me instead of me reading it. I believe that this way of reading or listening to Scripture has the power to change our perspective.

The Celtic peoples, who were great storytellers and poets, called certain places “thin places.” They were trying to describe places where the veil between heaven and earth is worn thin; places where the holy and the ordinary brush up against each other.

When I visited the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, many years ago, I felt something like this as I looked through the window of my room at the inn. This is what I wrote about that experience: “Sometimes, looking through a window or into a mirror, there is a sense that the world has somehow gained an unseen dimension; and through this frame it seems as if the walls and roofs of the houses are about to speak, or that there is some unheard melody behind the clouds, so beautiful it brings the tears to our eyes.”

These ‘thin places’ are places where the boundaries of the physical world are transcended; they are places where people speak to one another without words.

They are places in which we earth creatures feel moved to pray; to take off our shoes; to stand lost in amazement; to take a deep breath and hold it in wonder.

They are places where all disbelief is suspended; they are places where our hearts overflow.

They are places where we need nothing more than a look to say everything we want to say.

They are places where joy has danced in the moonlight and worn a circle in the grass.

They are places where tears of grief have burned a barren spot in the earth and nothing grows there anymore.

They are places we can sit down in peace and know that nothing and no-one is ever in a hurry there.

So, I want to tell you a story from a Thin Place— the kind of place where we don’t just listen to the readings, the readings listen to us.  

I don’t think this story can possibly be only a story about me, or only a story about you. I think it has to be a story about all of us.

I think that whenever we sit together in church and listen we are in a Thin Place.

We are stopping to let God’s Holy Word listen to our story, and at the same time we are listening to it tell us our own story back again.

When the text from Joshua was listening to me, I told it about the times in my life when I was so humiliated that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I said I recognized that sensation; the feeling of disgrace as a huge crushing weight. I remembered how, whenever my shame and embarrassment were finally relieved, it felt exactly like a huge stone wheel had rolled off my chest; and how, when I took that first deep breath, it made my eyes sting with tears.

The Psalm nodded its head in sympathy when I told it about the three months that my housemate refused to speak a single word to me, and I also was afraid to open my mouth and say anything to her. It really felt as though my bones were disintegrating, and that a heavy hand was pushing down on my shoulders. I told it how, after she moved out, I slowly and gradually stopped waking up terrified in the middle of the night; how, little by little, the empty house began to feel safe and warm again. Then, I told it about my childhood hiding places, and it smiled at me and reminded me of some good hideouts that I had almost forgotten. Most of them were real places, like the tree I used to climb to read books, or my secret hide-away under the stairs. (Yes, I really did have a little nest in the closet under the stairs, long before Harry Potter was even born!)

When the text from Corinthians listened to me, I told it the story of how, just a little while ago; when I listened to Padre Pablo talk about his sermons and why he doesn’t want them recorded or printed out; I realized I needed to start over and write this homily in a whole new way. He said his sermons were like love letters to the people who are right in front of him, right now. At that moment, I suddenly saw everything differently— I understood that it’s all about trust; and I realized that trust always has to go both ways.

When the passage from Luke listened to me, I’m not entirely sure what story I told. I’m pretty sure I told it about the time when I was about eight years old and my mother got tired of me whining about a neighborhood girl who was bullying me. She locked me out of the house and told me she wouldn’t let me back in until I dealt with the problem. I ran around to the back door but Mom beat me to it, and locked the back door too. I sat on the carport and cried for a long time, but finally I got up and went looking for that bully. I dealt with ‘the problem’ pretty thoroughly, even though the way I did it would not be considered appropriate in the present age! I felt such a tremendous relief when I came home and my mother opened the door and welcomed me in. I suspect Mom was pretty miserable the whole time I was gone, and she probably worried that I would never forgive her for locking me out. I do know this, with absolute certainty— she was overjoyed to let me back in.

The stories we tell, and the stories we hear, are not happy stories… and they aren’t sad stories.  They are real stories.

They are stories about people who know what it’s like to be so humiliated that it feels like there’s a huge stone wheel crushing our chest.

They are stories about people who know how it feels when that stone starts to move and it gets even heavier for a brief second, right before it rolls away and suddenly we can take a deep breath.

They are stories about people who know what it’s like to keep our mouths shut, even when we feel as if our very bones are disintegrating.

They are stories about people who know the relief of finally opening our mouth and saying the unspeakable words.

They are stories about people who like to retreat to our hiding places, but who also love the sound of friendly voices calling from all around, as if looking for someone who is lost.

They are stories about how our hideouts are always there, reliable and safe, even when we can hear those welcoming shouts in the distance.

They are stories about people who write love letters to each other; people who understand how to give up our treasured ideas about the way things ought to be; about how seeing things in a new way shows us how to reach out and take hold of God’s bewildering gift of freedom.

They are stories about people coming home.

I want to share a poem with you that I believe is also this kind of story. It was written by one of my favorite poets, the late Mary Oliver.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

            love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

The stories we tell one another are about us; about all of us. How did we come to know how to do that— how is it that we learned to tell these stories?

It was Christ who taught us how to tell these stories, and God is the one who’s been telling them all along, since from before forever.

It’s not just us telling them here and now—

it’s Christ who goes right on teaching us how to tell them.

It’s not just us who listens to them here and now—

it’s Christ who goes right on teaching us how to listen to them.

It isn’t just about us trusting God here and now—

it’s about God who goes right on trusting us.

Even more than that,

It’s about a God who entrusts us with the whole substance of Christ’s love and sacrifice—

a God who keeps right on giving ALL of it to us—with no strings attached—

No matter whether we keep it with great care,

or lose it through ignorant neglect;

No matter whether we heedlessly betray it, or

            mindfully sustain it;

No matter whether we faithfully remember it,

or recklessly disregard it.

Again and again, we come together to tell each other stories of our God; and today the story is of a God who is always telling us this: 

“I will roll the weight of disgrace off your hearts. I will hide you, and I will call you out of hiding. I will entrust you with my integrity, and make you my agents of renewal. I will always come home to you, and trust you to open the door. I will always be waiting for you to come home to me.”