Click to hear this sermon  sermon20110116

  For anything I can gather, my grandfather Sid was quite a character.

I love to Tell God's Story - Psalm 78: 1-8; II Timothy 1: 3-7 - January 16, 2011- Cicero United
Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            For anything I can gather, my grandfather Sid was quite a character. He had thirteen sons
and daughters, which would make anyone a little off-center; but I'm told he was also colorful by
nature. I have a vague memory of seeing once a picture of a shed with a big hole in the side.
The story behind that was that one day way back one of my uncles brought home the first
Model T Ford in the family, and everyone gathered around to see it. My grandfather brashly
said, "Let me drive that thing." So he was given a brief orientation about the levers and pedals.
Next thing they knew, he was driving straight for the shed, yelling, "Whoa! Whoa!" And that's
how there came to be a big hole in the side of the shed.

            That story means a lot to me. My parents were a little older when I came along. Both of my grandmothers had died long before, and both of my grandfathers died when I was a child. So
there was no close connection to any of my grandparents, and not many memories. That story
of the Model T is one of the few stories about my grandparents that I know. If you asked me if
that really happened, I would say probably not. If you asked me if it was true, I would say
Absolutely. Because whether it ever happened just that way or not, it carries the truth about
where I came from, and who I came from - tough, stubborn rural people who had to adapt to
radical changes. My journey has gone a long way from the farm now, but when I tell the stories
I have about those folks, I am a little closer to the truth about who I am, and why I'm here.

            This morning I want to talk about three different ways of looking at your life. They are all
important, they all overlap with each other, but they each serve a different function. The first
of these is fact. This is the biographical information, the kind of things we might share on an
application form - our life resume. I was born in Fulton, New York, in 1952, to Raymond and
Esther, one of six children. I grew up on a farm, and went to school in Phoenix, and so on. For
some people, knowing those facts gives them everything they need to know about my life. But,
of course, they can know all those facts and still not know the truth about me. To begin to
understand the real truth about me, you'd have to enter into the second way to view a life;
you'd have to listen to my stories.

            And we see the power of that all the time. When two people want to get to know each
other, they sit down and tell stories about their lives. When a new person is introduced to a
family or a church or any group, learning the stories is essential to belonging. Families sit and
share, and often as not it becomes a ritual. "Remember the time when ... ?" "Tell us again the
one about..." "No, no, no --- I remember it like this." Usually everybody already knows all the
stories; but sharing them again is keeping the connection strong - it's re-weaving lives together:

            A primary example of the power of stories was given to us a few years back by Alex Haley, in his bestselling book Roots, which was then made into a masterful TV miniseries. It set off a major movement of people looking into their family histories. The story of Roots is nothing
short of a miracle. Haley's ancestors were slaves and desperately poor workers. The institution
of slavery in America was explicitly designed to take away all human identity. Routinely, the
last names of the slaves were changed; families were split up; traditional customs were
forbidden; learning to read and write was forbidden. You were property, commodity. You had
no personal identity. And yet, miraculously, Alex Haley was able to recapture his heritage. And
the reason he was able to do that was that every generation preserved the story, and added
their part to it. So when Haley was a boy he was told who he was and where he came from:

Your forefather was named Kunta Kinte. One day when he was a young man he went out into
the forest to find a log to make a drum. It was there that he was captured and put on a boat to
America where he was sold as a slave and given the name Toby ... and so on. That story echoed
down from generation to generation, and so Alex Haley was able to find his roots.

            Our stories - even the painful ones - are gifts to hold on to and pass on. They bind us
together. They carry the truth. My grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read about the
9-11 attacks in their history books - they'll get the facts, and that is important. But I also want
them to know what it was like to turn on the television and see those events; or to talk to a
firefighter who had been on the site, and witness his tears; or to drive down Route 81 and see a
man on the overpass waving a huge American flag. I want to tell them about the thousands of
messages of hope and love that were posted on the walkways up to Ground Zero, and what it
was like to look down into that gaping hole where great buildings once stood. I want to watch
the movie United 93 with them, and talk about everyday people called to be great heroes.
Because in those stories is the truth' beyond the facts. You can't get those truths from books;
you can only get them from people with stories. That's what I want them to understand.

            For the same reason, I want them to know the Bible. The Bible is many things - it is law
codes and wise sayings and songs and lists of names and poems and sermons. But most of all,
it is stories. Before a single word of the Bible was written down, stories were told and sung and
celebrated. "Our ancestors Abraham and Sarah came from the East seeking a land God had
promised them. Moses led our people out of slavery. The shepherd boy David slew the terrible
giant using only his slingshot." And then, later, "Jesus came from Nazareth preaching, and
teaching and healing, and eventually he died for our sins, and rose in victory." These are the
stories that formed the people of the Bible - our forefathers and foremothers in faith. And this
is the truth of who we are, and why we believe. People argue today over whether it is all fact -
did God create the world in six days? Did people named Adam and Eve really eat the forbidden
fruit? But whether they really happened just that way is not nearly as important as the truth in
the stories: that this world was created by a loving God; that creation is good and beautiful;

that human beings are special; that we are magnetically drawn to forbidden things; that the
consequences for our sinful ways are hard; but God is a God of infinite mercy, and he even sent
his own Son into this world for our salvation and our hope. This is the truth, and it's the stories
of the Bible, and the witness of people who have believed and retold those stories, that bring
that truth to us. It's so important to pass it on.

            And that brings up the third way of looking at our lives - the most important way of all. Yes, there are the facts that outline our lives. There are the stories that carry the truth beyond the
facts. But most important of all, there is the witness of what God has done in our lives. That's
the third way of looking at our lives - our lives are testimonies of the goodness of God.

            This is the spirit of the Psalm's teaching today. Psalm 78 tells the story of God and the
people of the Old Testament - how they wandered from God's ways, and God was called on
again and again to correct them, and how faithfully He watched over His people. And the
urgency of knowing this story is declared in the very first verses: "Give ear, O my people, to my
teaching .. .1 will open my mouth in a parable (a story) ... things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us." And then this verse that Jack and I have chosen as the theme
of the next few Sundays. It's printed on the front of the bulletin; I ask you to read it with me:

"We're not keeping this to ourselves, we're passing it along to the next generation - God's
fame and fortune, the marvelous things he has done."

            The people who wrote the Bible, and all the story-tellers before them, realized something
amazing - that when they recalled their life journeys, it was not just their story - it was God's
story. And these stories were meant to be told, because they are the stories of what God as
done. That's not something you keep to yourself. You are a witness of something wonderful,
have heard people say so often: "When I was living through the events of my life, right in the
middle of it, most of the time I was too busy, or too close to the situation to see God at work.
But when I look back over the story of my life, I can see clearly that it is only by the grace of God that I am here. I can see the lessons God was teaching me; I can see where grace showed up;
where God used this person or that person to guide me, and so on." What the writer of the
78th psalm proclaimed, and what I want to echo today, is that telling the story of God's glorious
deeds and wonders is our Number One job. Jesus said to his followers, "You shall be my
witnesses." He didn't write books; he didn't post any Tweets - he lived his life in front of
people - walking with them, eating with them, dying for them, rising before them - and then he
said, "Go and tell others what you have witnessed. That's the only way they will know the
truth."

            And we're here today because someone shared that story. And we each have stories to
share of what God has done in our lives. We are witnesses, and we need to let people know
about God's love in this world hungry for stories of hope and grace. To some extent, we have

forgotten how to do that - we've become nervous and shy about saying, "This is what God has
done for me." And consequently, perhaps, as I talk with people both inside and outside the
church, I can tell you that people don't know the story of faith anymore. Or if they learn the
stories of Jesus, or of God's love, they are learning them in distorted, negative ways. God needs
witnesses like never before. There's so much reason to be hopeful and loving in this world-
there is so much goodness happening in lives. We need to learn how to share it.

            So today is a kick-off. Jack and I want to preach in the coming Sundays about Claiming Our Stories. To some extent, we are responding to a recent change in the United Methodist
membership vows - where we used to pledge our prayers, presence, gifts, and service, we also

now pledge our witness. That we will share our faith. That we will bring a witness of hope and

life to a hurting world. What does that mean? Does it mean we will be the guy standing on the
street corner yelling at people who pass by? Does it mean we'll be the people who carry
offensive posters, or knock on doors, or call on the phone at inconvenient times? Not at all. It's
something much more basic and natural. It means telling our story. Or, more accurately, it
means telling God's story as it shines in our life. It's our first impulse when something great has
happened to us - I can't wait to tell somebody. It sends us to the telephone, or home a little
faster, or to our Facebook friends. You can say it, I suppose, with words like, "I can't believe my
good luck." But why not tell it like it is? "I can't believe what God has done. Thank God." I love
to tell God's story. 'Twill be my theme in glory. To tell the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.