Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16, Mark 8. 31-end
Human beings are natural storytellers. We tell stories about where we’ve been, what we’ve done, who we’ve met and how we’ve felt about it all. We tell stories about what happened today – “the traffic was horrendous on the way here” . That’s a story – albeit a short and probably not very interesting one. We tell stories about what happened long ago – “And just after that photo was taken, I took a step back and fell in the duck pond”. We tell stories about things that never happened at all, made up stories, legends, jokes, lies. In a way, even our factual stories are made up, because we can’t tell everything in all its detail. It would take too long. So we shape our stories and select the bits we think will get our point across. The horrendous traffic explains why we are late. The childhood reminiscence conveys something about who we are and why.
Sometimes people belittle stories – it’s just a story, they say, but stories are powerful. Witness the effect of the ITV drama “Mr Bates vs the Post Office”. The facts of the Horizon software scandal, and the wrongful convictions of those who’d had to use it were already in the public domain, but it was only after the story had been told, that it took hold of the public imagination and things really started to change.
Stories matter, but they aren’t straightforward collections of facts. They are shaped by the teller, and the hearers, by where, when and why they are told.
That’s why Biblical scholars spend so much time and energy trying to pin down the context of Bible stories – who was the author, who were they writing for, when was it written, what might the original agenda have been?
Today’s readings are a case in point. The Old Testament story of Abraham, the founding father of the Jewish people was first written down in the form we have it today while they were in exile in Babylon. Jerusalem had been destroyed, and they exiles didn’t think they would ever go home. They thought it was all over for them as a nation. How could they recover from this?
So the writer of the book of Genesis took some stories that had been circulating orally and told them afresh so that people could hear God’s voice speaking through those stories into their own time. “You may think,” he is saying “that your situation is hopeless, that there is no way back from this cataclysm that we’ve suffered, that we’re too few in number to survive as a people, but listen to this story, the story of a very old, childless man, trekking across the desert with his almost equally old childless wife, on a promise from God that he would become the ‘father of a multitude’? How hopeless was that, and yet, here we are – his descendants. We’re only here at all, lamenting what we’ve lost, because of the faithfulness of God to that old man and woman, and their trust in him. We are the promised “multitude” that came from them. If God could bring so much into being through one man and woman, why should we assume it is all over for us?”
That’s what this Old Testament storyteller wanted his hearers to grasp.
And just as we’ve put ourselves in their shoes to understand the story of Abraham, we need to do the same to hear the message of the Gospel story too. Mark’s Gospel was written between about 65 and 75 AD. Like the other Gospels it was written for the scattered groups of people across the Mediterranean who made up the early church, people who were living through times of great hardship. The emperor Nero, who died in 68 AD had just brutally executed many Christians, probably including Peter and Paul, prominent leaders in the church. Nero’s successor, Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in AD70 and exiled its inhabitants, both Jewish and Christian. If you had been one of those early Christians, with all this going on around you, you would surely be forgiven for wondering what hope this new movement had of surviving, never mind changing the world. We all need a bit of encouragement now and then to feel that we are on the right lines. We need to see some signs of success to keep us going, but everything around them screamed “failure” in worldly terms.
So, Mark, through his stories, called his community back to where it all started, to the ministry of Jesus. Forty years or so had passed since the crucifixion, but stories told about him by eyewitnesses had circulating orally ever since then, and Mark drew on these for his Gospel. “If you feel hopeless, he is sayings, just imagine how Jesus’ first friends felt when they saw him die on the cross, the death of an outcast criminal, surely a sign of failure and disgrace? Listen to this story. Jesus warned them that he would be killed – of course he would, because what he said and did brought him into conflict with the powers that ruled his land. But they couldn’t get their heads around it, just as you can’t get your heads around what is happening to Christians around you, and what might happen to you too. Even Peter, the great Peter, our first leader, couldn’t believe that a painful, humiliating death could be God’s plan for his Messiah, no matter how hard Jesus tried to persuade him. And yes, Jesus talked about resurrection, but who was going to believe that? But it all happened just as he had said. Jesus rose. And sceptical old Peter was so convinced of it that he was willing to stake his own life on it too.”
That was Mark’s message.
The stories of the Bible aren’t reportage or history in the modern sense, simply a record of what happened. They are expressions of the living faith of their tellers, intended to encourage a living faith in their hearers. They are told to help people look back and remember God’s presence with them in the past, so that they can open their eyes to the possibility that he is with them in the present, and will be with them in the future too, however bleak things look? And the stories worked. The exiles returned, and that tiny, battered early Christian Church wasn’t wiped out by the wrath of Rome; it survived and grew and spread to an extent that Mark’s hearers could never have imagined. We often fail to live up to our calling, but God doesn’t stop calling us. Whatever else has changed – our circumstances, the world around us – God has not changed. As God said to Abraham, his covenant, his promise of love, is everlasting.
That’s a message which is just as necessary for us as it was for those who first heard these ancient stories. We’re confronted daily with situations that seem hopeless, humanly speaking; climate change, war, the rise of extremism and conspiracy theories, the breakdown of common humanity, as well as the personal challenges which shake our confidence and drag us down. Our readings today, though, call us to look back – not just to Abraham and to Peter, but closer in time, to our own story. They call us to spot the presence of God in what we have been through, to remember the blessings as well as the disappointments, to acknowledge the love that has surrounded us, and the moments when we’ve been drawn beyond ourselves into the wonder of God. When we are swamped by the human things which lead us to despair, God calls us to see the divine things, the golden thread of his love which was, and is, and will be for ever.
Amen
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