Issue #4
We take the Bible, His Story as revealed in Scriptures
as the meta-narrative to locate all our stories.
Hence, God in our stories, Our stories in God’s Story.
The Bible – The Story of God in which We Locate Our Stories
In our last issue, we share that in CSF, we have shifted from reading the Bible as a source book for theology or doctrine to seeing it as a record of many stories about real persons encountered by God in another time and place.
Let me further introduce two persons whose writings we adapted to establish this view and posture. Eugene Peterson, in a synopsis of a course he taught on Biblical Spirituality wrote:
“The Bible, not our experience, provides authority and context for understanding and developing our spirituality. This course will train us to bring our personal experience into the large world of the Bible where it has room to breathe and expand, rather than squeeze the Bible into the cramped confines of our sin-stunted experience.” (Regent College Spring 1998)
I love this articulation of the relationship between the Bible and our experience. Or in CSF’s appropriation, of Scriptures as the over-arching and biggest story that holds all of our individual stories.
Peterson identified the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt as the main historical event and context in which their life and story, and by extension ours, as a people of God began.
“The Sinai event is a kind of axle for holding together two basic realities: one, everything God does involves me (election); and two, everything I do is therefore significant (covenant). Because I am chosen, I have consequence. … Sinai, in short, is a realization that we count and what we do counts.”
(Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, page 78-79)
As followers of Christ, we too have our salvation stories of God’s deliverance and wilderness experiences. Like the Israelites, God chose us and we counted. Only people with stories have history. Stories tell of happenings both of faith and failures, trust and doubt, devotion and disobedience.
In this perspective, all of our stories are sandwiched, enfolded, recorded and incorporated into God’s story. No experience is ever “wasted” in God’s spiritual formation of our lives. God chose, delivered, saved, took time and pain to form, transform us to become His special possession so that we may declare His praise (1 Peter 2:9). We are, our stories are, in His Story.
Another writer, Rolf Jacobson* highlighted how practitioners in diverse disciplines had surprisingly arrived at a consensus that we experience our lives as stories. These disciplines include philosophers, cognitive psychologists, theologians, anthropologist and sociologists.
We access, store, remember our experiences as stories. We experience reality as a story. In fact, we are our stories, says Jacobson. But he further asserted that our stories are not enough. What then? We need a story outside of ourselves. We need the story of God. Provocatively, he wrote, “We need this story to come alongside our stories and be a story that can tell the truth about us and thereby kill us and thereby raise us from the dead.” This is the Story of God in the Bible.
The Bible is brutally honest about human nature, desires and deeds. The story of David is no better than the story of Samson, if not for the story of God’s election and His coming alongside these two strongmen. And the story of God in the stories of humankind continues down the centuries. Augustine is not better than Pelagius if not for God’s inclusion in His story. Nor the unnecessary dichotomy between the monks and the missionaries. All are stories of committed, zealous, fallible and feeble human persons, chosen, saved and included in God. When all the stories (including ours) are told, the One on stage is not any of the heroes or villains of faith, but the triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. History is His story. In His goodness, our stories are now part of His history.
The Word of God in our community lived experience
So, how is this value translated and experienced in our community life?
First, we pause daily at noon time to listen to scriptures and sit with the triune God. The Lord’s Prayer guides our daily focus to pray for the needs of the Father’s world. On Sunday, as we pray “Our Father in heaven”, we focus on the needs of our churches and families. On Friday, as we pray “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”, we pray for issues and struggles of individuals, families, countries and nations. Each day, we try, in our faltering attempts to read the news and pray for the Father’s world through the portal of the Lord’s Prayer.
The Word of God in our spiritual accompaniment
Second, during spiritual accompaniment, we often use the words of Jesus to draw the seeker to talk directly to God. We would say, if Jesus were to ask you “What do you want me to do for you?” (Luke 18:41), how would you answer? Jesus’ words including questions are life and spirit, probing and pointing the seeker forward, both provocative and comforting.
This question has evoked a wide range of responses and answers, each revealing the spirituality of the person. We ask this question repeatedly. Each new reply can become a pivot to plumb into the next deeper level of self-awareness. The pseudo-spiritual answer “I want what Jesus wants” while sounding pious, is really spiritual laziness. As the seeker questions for himself what he wants, we examine deeper the inner motivations, moving the wants beyond the physical and material. We often urge the seeker to listen more deeply to herself, and then unintrusively usher her to the Presence of Jesus for her to answer Him directly.
There are many other passage of scriptures we used often in spiritual accompaniment sessions as well as in retreats. Another is the powerful parable of the compassionate father in Luke 15. Let me share two different real life anecdotes:
- About the prodigal’s homecoming, I would ask the brother or sister, “Where will we sit after the Father brought you back into His house?” The answers often will include, in the kitchen, with the servants, in the servant’s quarters! Really? I would then share that in the Father’s house, we do indeed sit at the table WITH the Father. And as often as the Spirit brings illumination to reframe the incomplete servant mentality, I have the joy of seeing the seeker experiencing rest, acceptance and joyful tears in the realization – that each of us is a beloved son and daughter, beloved of God, not sinners and servants.
- Another time, in a retreat, a participant asked this intriguing question: “Will the prodigal son leave home again? And if he did, will he be received back by the Father?” When I asked the retreatant why he asked that, he said he works with drug addicts who often fall back into their addiction. So, will the father in the parable receives back his prodigal son. We know the answer is a resounding “Yes, of course!”
The Word of God in our offering of spiritual formation courses and retreats
Third, we designed our courses following the Christian Year, which essentially is following the life of Christ, the Word made flesh. Our retreats are always anchored on a scripture passage chosen according to the season of the year. So, in Advent, our retreats themes are drawn, for example, from the advent stories of Zechariah & Elizabeth, and Mary.
We have also used various other scriptures to serve as a stepping stone, a springboard, a portal to lead participants into God’s stories:
- “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9)
- “What are you doing here?” (1 Kings 19:9,13)
- “Come aside and rest awhile.” (Mark 6:31)
- “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15)
- “This is my Son, whom I loved. Listen to Him.” (Luke 9:35)
- “Do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15)
Praying the Word (Lectio Divina) and Listening A Story Into Being
Two more lived out expressions will be shared briefly as we close. First, the practice of lectio divina has been the way we read scriptures for nearly a decade. This process of immersion, rumination and deep dwelling in one scriptural passage over a sustained period achieved what Peterson wrote about letting the larger world of the Bible to frame our reflection of our lived experiences. In the process, we come to love the Bible as a portal to meet God, as the habitation to sit with God. There is no need to seek application or achieve knowledge. The Word is sweet and sufficient in and of itself.
Second, because God honours our story, so, in turn, we honour each other’s story. Through the Word of God, we draw the seeker’s attention that she is not alone, nor is hers the only story that there is. There is a bigger story that can hold, shape and give meaning to her particular individual’s story. By honouring the seeker’s story through a quiet holding of space, we listen a story into being, ushering the seeker into God’s presence using God’s Word.
All these efforts and offerings are inspired by the Word of God. Two verses from the Psalms sum up beautifully this enlivening life that comes from the Word of God.
“The entrance of your Word gives light.”
“For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.”
(Psalms 36:9; 119:130(a); 36:9)
Such is the Bible as the Story of God, from everlasting to everlasting. Our stories, even if told over three scores and ten plus ten more years would still be like dusts, vapours, temporal moments. It is God’s story that we find our place and home for our stories. So plain and simple, wonderful and underserving. So blessed to be homed.
* Rolf Jacobson, “We are our stories ~ Narrative Dimensions of Human Identity and its implications for Christian Faith Formation” in Word & World Vol 34 No 2 Spring 2014, p.125, 126.