True Story

 

Psalm 78:1-7

Life is more than just our experiences, it’s the stories we tell – to ourselves and to others – about our experiences. Story is how we understand them and the meaning we make of them.
 
We are in the middle of a big experience right now.  A new president has been elected.  A new chapter is opening up for our country.  But what you think that means depends on the stories you are listening to, and the ones you are telling yourself.  The future in front of us is either terribly hopeful or horribly terrifying.  Same set of facts, different stories. How we face the world, the choices we believe we have, the choices we will choose to make, depend on the story we are telling about this moment. 
We are part of this story. This is part of our story. Absolutely.  It shapes who we are as Americans; it will impact the experiences we have with each other in the coming months and years. But this is not the whole story.
 
There is a bigger story. A longer trajectory. A deeper narrative that holds us. 
Beyond the 244 years of this country’s existence, and the 45 presidents we’ve had, you and I are part of a people and tradition that extends over two thousand years, and we are shaped by those who’ve gone before, even as we are connected by the God who holds the universe in love to all those around us and every human that has ever been or ever will be, so our story is even broader, deeper, wider: it’s timeless and eternal.
 
We live inside our experiences, but they are not our story. The Psalmist encourages us to remember this, and to tell the bigger story.  
The rest of Psalm 78—nearly 70 more verses past this encouraging part—gets specific and uncomfortable. It goes into great detail to tell the Israelites story through the Exodus and wilderness into the generations that follow, up to King David. And it’s not too flattering. It tells the story of a people who over and over again doubted and turned away from God, and a God who over and over again cared for them.  God provided and they complained. God delivered them, and they chose captivity. God gave them what they asked for and more, and they chose scarcity and turned on each other. God led them and they refused to follow. 
 
Back and forth the Psalm goes, like a boat rocking on the waves: the people complain; God gets angry and still provides. The people turn away; God gets angry and punishes them. Then God comes to God’s senses and restores them again. They repent and say good things about God, but they don’t mean it, and they continue tearing each other down and turning their back on God. God gets angry and calls them out, and then welcomes them back in with great compassion and provides for them once again.  Over and over the people are unfaithful. Over and over, God is faithful.
 
That is our story. That is the ancient story of humankind and the ageless story of our faith, and our scriptures don’t sugarcoat it. The bible doesn’t make its protagonists shiny and perfect. It tells of their failures and their infidelity and God’s consistency and salvation nevertheless and always. Telling this story is what the Psalmist is suggesting we do, and with the rest of this Psalm, he shows us how.  Humans are unfaithful and inconsistent. God is faithful and trustworthy.
 
Our experiences and the things that have happened in our lives, in our families, in our country, in our world, they are the ingredients, but they are not the story. How we tell them – to ourselves and to each other, to the next generation, and the one after that – that is the story. And sometimes we get the story wrong, and we need to go back and look at what happened again and tell a different story. And sometimes we think the story goes just one way, but the real story, God’s story, is always bigger than our premature conclusions. And God’s story – the true story – is always about hope and redemption. 
 
We are in an important moment as a country – and our children are watching and listening. They are watching us go back and look at how we’ve told the story of race and equality in this country, how we’ve told the stories of economic opportunity and fairness and justice for all and they are seeing us realize we weren’t telling ourselves the truth, we weren’t facing the whole story. Our kids are watching us start to listen more carefully to our past, and listen more intentionally to our siblings in this country whose experiences are different than this story, and different from our own. They’re watching us sort out what all of this means and begin to wonder what it might be like to tell our story differently, and to try to figure out how we go forward together into a different story, how we build a nation together that is what we all long for it to be.
 
But even as we do this work, we are part of a bigger story – one that puts this smaller story into context. The Story we are living in understands that human beings are consistently unfaithful and God is consistently faithful.  And in order to live in hope (which is always from God) and not despair (which is never from God), we need to tell the bigger story. The story of God teaching us that we belong to God, no matter what, and we belong to each other, no matter what, and nothing we do or don’t do can break that belonging – even when we pretend it’s not true, or forget it is true, or actively argue that it can’t possibly be true. It remains the true story. 

So we will claim this story, and let it claim us, and will live in this story, and tell this story to each other to help each other remember.  And we’ll tell those who come after us so they can live in it too, and they can tell those who come after them, so they can set their hope on God and not forget who they are and what God does, and they too can live in God’s way instead of the way of fear.   
 
Our kids need to hear about when we messed up, when we said something that hurt someone deeply, when we didn’t come through for someone, when we lied, or cheated, or turned our back on someone, or turned our back on God.  They need to hear about when we gave up hope, and lost our faith, and forgot who we were and whose we were.  Because the true story is about what God does.  They need to hear about forgiveness, and redemption, and healing, and fresh starts and new beginnings – because they need to know that who they are is not defined by their failure and unfaithfulness but by the love and faithfulness of God.
 
This is who Church is - those vulnerable and brave enough to tell the stories about our own unfaithfulness and God’s faithfulness even so, working through it all, to move us into life, with and for each other. 
 
One day we will tell stories about this time– about our country and about the pandemic, about the seismic changes happening in the world, the climate crises and catastrophes, and all the upheavals of this time.  And if the stories we tell are true, they will not be about good verses evil, or us verses them. They will not make us look good or cover over our mistakes. They will be about God’s faithfulness through our unfaithfulness. About how normal humans came alongside each other in our brokenness and God worked through us to achieve remarkable things. How we were saved not through might and power, or by violent acts or vile words, but by God acting through our smallness, and sameness, and willingness to look each other in the heart and recognize that the one I want to hate belongs to me too. 
They will be stories of how we forgot that we are meant to care for each other, but then God spoke through a photo of a child in a cage, or the cries of a man with a knee on his neck, and turned our hearts back toward each other. 
Or how we forgot we are meant care for this earth and its creatures, but God spoke through a fierce child from Sweden, and terrible raging fires in Australia and California, and restored us to our place of responsible stewardship for creation. 
Or how we forgot that we are not invincible and indispensable, on demand at every moment, but God spoke through our quarantines and lockdowns and suddenly, when our busy was taken away from us—and it was terribly disorienting, and we were afraid a lot of the time and bored just as often—God woke us up to the deeper life that can only come to us when we’re moving slower and listening more closely, and God showed us how much we mean to others, and what they mean to us, and God gave us new and different ways to stay connected, and the Holy Spirit helped us to hang on tighter and love more deeply, and God reminded us that we are not indispensible but we are integral. 
Or how we forgot that our neighbors are beloved children of God until they got sick or we did, and with masks on someone brought soup and bread to someone else—someone learned how to make soup and bake bread and then brought it to someone else—and God touched our lives through culinary contributions, and through needing each other this way God helped us start seeing other people we need too, like doctors, and nurses, and mail carriers, and teachers and grocery store workers, and garbage collectors, and we realized that the people we’d taken for granted were the essential ones all along, and God showed us that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other, and we listened and obeyed and let God change our hearts.
 
No matter what happens next or what comes after that, we follow a God of unfailing faithfulness and infinite compassion who works even in our consistent unfaithfulness and through our weakness to bring hope and life to us all. This is the true story, ancient and eternal. And we will keep telling it.
Amen.

PRAYER
God, please show me the stories I am telling myself
that are holding me back from the fullness of life you have for me.  
Destroy my stories of self-protection 

and make me vulnerable and open.
Heal my stories of injury 

and make me a conduit of your healing.
Forgive my stories of enemies 

and make me a courageous peace-maker.
Break open my stories of irreconcilability 

and make me a willing listener. 
Redeem my stories of wrong 

and help me join in your ongoing justice.  
Release me from my stories of grievance 

and help me to grieve.
Break my stories of despair 

and teach me to hope.
Set me free 

to know and share your joy,
to receive and share your love,
to bear and share your hope.
Help me to live in your true story.
Amen.