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Third Sunday after Epiphany

 Luke 4

14Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Soon he became well known throughout the surrounding country. 15He taught in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17The scroll containing the messages of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll to the place where it says:
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"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
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and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.[1] "
20He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. Everyone in the synagogue stared at him intently. 21Then he said, "This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes!"

Thomas King, writing for the 2003 Massey Lectures, begins each chapter in the same way:

There is a story I know.  It's about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle.  I've heard this story many times, and each time someone tells the story, it changes.  Sometimes the change is simply in the voice of the storyteller.  Sometimes the change is in the details.  Sometimes in the order of events.  Other times it's the dialogue or the response of the audience.  But in all the tellings of all the tellers, the world never leaves the turtles back.  And the turtle never swims away.  

One time, it was in Prince Rupert I think, a young girl in the audience asked about the trutle and the earth.  If the earth was on the back of a turtle, what was below the turtle?  Another turtle, the storyteller told her.  And below that turtle?  Another turtle.  And below that?  Another turtle.  

The girl began to laugh, enjoying the game, I imagine.  So how many turtles are there? she wanted to know.  The storyteller shrugged.  No one knows for sure, he told her, but it's turtles all the way down.  (The Truth About Stories, p. 1)

In the line that follows this wonderful story, King gives us both the title and the thesis of his lectures: "The truth about stories is that that's all we are."  The stories we tell, and the words we choose to share with one another, define who we are and what we value.  

We have each listened to the storyteller retell a personal story or the news item or the thing that their brother-in-law told them last Saturday night.  We have each listened to the telling as the narrative forms and the events are described and the inevitable moral is presented:

What is the world coming to?

Who can you trust anymore?

It was never like that in my day.

I suppose I could have included a positive example of the moral lessons people present in their stories.  I could have mentioned "kid's say the darndest things" or "maybe there is hope for us afterall," but in truth, is this my sermon, and like the storyteller I want to take you to a particular place, and it would only confuse the issue if I got all soft and gooey at this point in my story.

***

Jesus read from Isaiah 61:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors."

Or did he?  He read from the first two verses of Isaiah 61, but to took some small liberties with the telling.  In addition to proclaiming the release of captives, the original passage has the Lord's servant "comfort the brokenhearted," speak to those who mourn, and announce the day of God's anger against the enemies of the people.  If this were not enough, Jesus adds 'sight to the blind' in his telling, and creates a distillation that while similar, is certainly in the realm of the storyteller's prerogative.  

Should we be alarmed at this?  Does this make the telling inaccurate or invalid in our hearing or in the hearing of the first audience?  The answer is no.  The telling happens in the context of fulfillment, and as the ancient words become true "in their hearing" they fulfill the Lord's liberating activity that day.  The Lord of life chose that day to refine and distill and clarify in order that there be no mistake: The day of the Lord was at hand, and what were once words on a scroll were now happening in their midst.  Liberation from blindness, physical and metaphorical, was the order of the day, and the storyteller weaves this seamlessly in our hearing.

***

Thomas King also shares a quote from the Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri: "We live by stories, we also live in them.  One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted--knowingly or unknowingly--in ourselves…if we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives." (p. 153)

In this sense, we adopt stories and make them our own and they make us.  We were created in the image of the storyteller who would never allow the world to drift aimlessly in space, but chose rather, to support our fragile world with turtles all the way down.  We are created in the image of a storyteller who sent his child to give voice to ancient words and make them our own.  We were created in the image of a storyteller who seeks freedom for us and for all his children.  

Thomas Merton, the storyteller, told the story in this way: "Mercy is the thing, the deepest thing that has been revealed to us by God.  A mercy that cannot fail." (p. 88)

Freidrich Nietzsche told the story with Jesus at the centre: That as redeemer, his entire being was fixed on "an inner world of blissful feelings that arise from knowing oneself to be a child of God." (Breech, p. 139)

And what about you, the storyteller?  What will you tell?  Will you speak of mercy and liberation, of being a child of God in a world endlessly supported by a loving Creator?  Will you speak of those in captivity, and the many ways they need release?  Will you tell the story of those with no voice to tell their own?  The poor, in a society of outrageous wealth; the addicted, in a society that seems only to feed addictions; or the blind, in a society with ever narrower visions and too much intentional blindness.  What story will you tell?

May God enter and bless your stories, may they challenge and entertain, and may they reveal the truth of a loving God, and blessed redeemer, and the Holy Spirit, which enters each word we speak.  Amen.  

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 4:18 AM