The Greatest Story

.As you can likely tell, I am a storyteller. This is largely due to my age and being a product of the generation (Boomers) that grew up on stories of the Greatest Generation. I sat for hours listening to grandparents and elders telling stories of their lives, and it wasn’t just for the story – that’s how I got to know who they were as a person.

I think that the reason we are now often surprised by “friends” and acquaintances alike is because we don’t know their story. We place everything within the context of what we’ve seen but know nothing of “the before time”. Our very generations are formed by the contexts of the various stories we are told. I have written graduate papers on generational differences and similarities, and this week’s reading lends me yet another new perspective.

"I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story do I find myself a part?"'[1] This is almost poetic in its inquiry. What follows is, in so many ways, the way I learned to know people. In a micro way: that is to say - on an individual or personal level many people no longer have the patience to listen unless it comes across in the form of 20 second TikTok videos!

That said, in the macro (world) view, Bartholomew and Goheen correctly posit that understanding the world and our place in it “the way it actually is”[2] is still accomplished through a (his)story and address the difference between that and a humanistic (his)story. It is difficult for me to understand the people who buy into the “random product of chance”[3], because their own desire for the order of science delivers them into a chaos theory. It is the ultimate irony in scientific thinking. There is perfect order in God and His Word. Alpha and Omega are order. Law and gospel are order. The perfection of our very physical existence in God’s own image (and man’s physical law) is order. So, why the desire to believe in chaos?

As a young boy and later man, a skeptic for a time, and laity, I can understand why: we are told short stories and have short experiences from youth and that forms our way of thinking. Critical thought comes with putting those stories and experiences together in a grand scale as one large story of our life. It is in understanding that God’s Word is just that – Alpha to Omega, Genesis to Revelation, “covenant to kingdom”[1]: “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, given to us by our Father. We must, as teachers and leaders, emphasize and teach the story from beginning to end. While starting in and often focusing on the Gospels and Pauline Epistles is where we learn the specifics and teachings of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, as well as the lives and sacrifices of the early apostles – the "Christ" in Christian to be sure, the story does not begin with the Gospel of John. It begins with the God of creation, the fall, the covenant, and the prophecy and promise of redemption in the Old Testament. It is crucial that we preach this as equal part of the story.

In the most precious name of Jesus, Amen.

[1] Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2004, 19.

[2] Bartholomew & Goheen, 2004, 18.

[3] Bartholomew & Goheen, 2004, 20.