This Week's Sermons

Sermons for the Month
"The Greatest Story on Earth"
DATE: March 15, 1998
SERVICE: Lent III
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

What do you think it would have been like to have been alive during the "Renaissance?" Beginning in the 1400s, the arts and sciences suddenly shook off the despair that had gripped them during the dreary centuries of the so-called "Dark Ages." European culture came alive with new ideas, colors, visions, and concepts. Creativity blossomed everywhere. An extravagance of giftedness blessed multitudes of artists and craftsmen and thinkers.

You already know what it's like to live through a Renaissance, for about ten years ago we entered a new period of renaissance -- one that has transformed our everyday lives in untold ways. In fact, we are now entering a period of artistic and intellectual exploration and discovery similar to the Renaissance in Europe in the 14-17th centuries.

We are on a daily basis witnessing tremendous advances in space, medicine, manufacturing and technology. We have a greater ability to shape the future than ever before. There is an extension of the human life span beyond our wildest dreams. The greatest technological developments are occurring in the redefinition of size at both the gargantuan and the minuscule level. The nanotechnology revolution, which can build anything and everything, is making possible machine parts the size of atoms and molecules.
In short, God has chosen you and me to live in a new time of renaissance: a time of galactic imaginations, artistic flowerings, outrageous styles, financial energies, individual geniuses mining rich new intellectual veins for exploring life and truth and the universe.
Some of this tremendous flowering of talent and technology goes by without being noticed. Why? Because it can arrive in an all too commercial package. Take the example of Disney's The Little Mermaid, released in 1989. In this one movie the art of animation was re-born. A long, dry spell of "cartoon movies" -- short on beauty, lacking in memorable music, cinematographically anemic -- had filled our movie screens with forgettable stories and stick-figure, alley-cat characters.
A renewed commitment to two very different tenets provided the foundation for Jeffrey Katzenberg's rededication to animation excellence. First, technological advancements, specifically the phenomenal developments in computer imaging and graphics, made it possible for traditional animators to bring more life and depth, more fantastic reality and more real fantasy, to their meticulously crafted cartoon characters.
But at the same time Katzenberg (who was the person responsible for Disney's change of direction) chose to reach backward in time. He fixed state-of-the-art technology on bringing to life some of the oldest, most beloved, time-tested fairy-tales that had ever been told. The Little Mermaid was followed by Beauty and the Beast, then Aladdin. The new tale of The Lion King was actually rooted in traditional African folk lore and was such a success that it now holds the record for grossing the largest amount of revenue in the history of film.
Hercules (the first Disney film not done under Katzenberg's leadership), now being released on video, brought the characters of ancient Greek mythology to life for the twenty-first century. This fall Katzenberg, who joined with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to create DreamWorks, will be releasing in animated form what he believes is the "greatest story ever told" -- the story of Moses. After four years of round-the-clock work by 200 animators, the first animated feature of DreamWorks will be The Prince of Egypt.
The old stories are still the best. They continue to engage and enthrall us because they embody truths about life that remain constant throughout the ages. "Storytellers" --whether they are Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Tom Clancy, Toni Morrison or John Lennon -- provide us with tale-hooks upon which to hang up our own life experiences. We identify their stories -- filmed, written or sung -- with our own lives. The headline "stories" haunting our daily papers and nightly newscasts are the tales of increasing violence and criminality among yet younger and younger children. Children are no longer seen as just children. They are instead "gangstas," child-molesters, amoral super-criminals, conscienceless kid killers. Our economy may be growing and thriving. Our technology may be becoming more accessible to more and more people. Our standard of living may be increasing. But our children are slithering down an increasingly steep slope towards an abyss of antisocial, amoral actions and attitudes.
You tell me. What is lacking in the lives of our kids that makes it possible for . . . a girl to give birth in the bathroom during her prom, dump her newborn, and then return to the dance floor? two boys to order a delivery pizza solely with the intention to murder the driver and so experience their first "thrill-kill"? an elementary school child to trap and rape a classmate in the bathroom between classes? a 10-year-old boy to declare himself resigned to the fact that he will be dead on the streets before he reaches the age of 20?
We can scream about the moral failure of society. We can blame an absentee parent- class. We can point to a general cultural glorification of violence. But the greater problem may be that inside this burgeoning generation of frightened and frightening children, there is a huge hollow in the heart where all the stories of our ancestors, all the tales of woes and warning, all the familiar recitations of dreams and hopes should reside. Without these kinds of comforting, guiding, threatening, promising, teasing, telling stories, our children have no landmarks, no moral maps, no hitching posts to guide them on their way.
In January, Faith hosted the Barberton Magic Children's Theater. Youngsters from our congregation and their friends watched as three actors shared some of the classic stories of our American folklore. The sharing of such stories keep us joined together at the heart, even when our paths seldom cross. Common stories that foster communal beliefs keep a strong message of ethics and expectations flowing from one generation to the next. The story-gap between generations has been noticed by child therapists and social scientists as well.
Mary Pipher, writes in The Shelter of Each Other [New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1996], 86)."Public space has disappeared as well. I thought of this recently at a check out counter. I watched tired, stressed teens who barely knew each other waiting on lines of customers whom they didn't know. The customers didn't know each other and were clearly in a hurry to get their cones and be out of there. I contrasted these teens' experience with my own as a photographer in college. The other employees were my classmates. We knew the customers; they were our friends, our classmates. We joked as I took their pictures. Work was connected to the rest of our lives. We worked hard because adults we knew were watching. But we had fun, too. We were at the center of our town's social scene."
There is no structure, no institution, no entity more charged with the responsibility for storytelling than is the church. When Barnum and Bailey's circus came to town in the nineteenth-century it proudly touted itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth." The church seems to have forgotten that it has been charged with proclaiming "the greatest story on Earth" -- the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Jewish culture, storytelling has always been the predominant way each new generation has been invited to personally step into the stream of Jewish salvation history. The rabbis never retold a biblical tale using the word "them." The experiences of the patriarchs, the enslaved Hebrews, the wandering Israelites, the citizens of the newly established Israel, or the exiled audiences of the prophets are always referred to as "us." Historical stories become new and alive, vital and significant to each new generation of Jewish children because they are personally brought into the biblical tales of wonder and woe.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists are now studying orthodox Jewish child-raising practices because they seem to be so successful. These professionals have concluded that the potent combination of storytelling and highly ritualized celebrations that continue to act out ancient history in contemporary life work together to provide each new generation with a secure sense of who they are, where they came from and what is expected of them.
It has been really fun for me overhearing all of you discussing this or that story from the Bible. Hopefully, knowing these stories will encourage you and free you to tell a Bible story to your kids? It seems that once our children grow too old for the simplified texts and pictures in their beginner-Bibles, we stop "telling stories" to them. Instead we start focusing their attention on "real-world" issues and psychologically-sensitive answers. We substitute for the stories of prophets, sages and the Savior the "advice" of the latest social commentators. The "stories" of the politically-correct pundits rarely feature notions of sin, evil, pride, idolatry, lust or envy to explain human failures -- or encourage faith, repentance, trust, selflessness or sacrifice. Instead our children hear mushy, grey-hued mumblings -- poor stories that make excuses instead of making examples of our poor behavior. We offer refuge from the whole truth about human nature by depending wholly on half-truths presented by the "dysfunctional family story," or "the abuse story" or "the inner child story."
In today's text, Paul retold to the Corinthians their own stories. He helped them reach back into their common story and then wove into it the present. "All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." This was his prescription for healthy discipleship and a healthy church, to tell this time the greatest story on earth, weaving into it how that story is alive today. Like Paul, we need to retell the stories that give our children and give our culture a distinct picture of who we are and why we are here. Paul had no problem finding God's final chapter in the greatest love story of all time -- the gift of a loving, saving, redeemer Savior in Jesus Christ. Paul even found this story present in all stories from the beginning of time.
Just as Paul wove Christ's story of sacrifice and salvation into the "examples" he presented to the Corinthians, 21st century congregations must tell out the story of Christ's continuing work in his still living body, the church. We must tell our own stories of how Jesus is present today.
Last Sunday, we held what for some of you has become the story of "The Longest Worship Service Ever at Faith." (I assure it wasn't. I've experienced longer here at Faith: three and four hour services overseas.) The primary reason for such a long service were the number of people who joined our church which included five baptisms, several Affirmations of Faith and still more transfers both infant and adult. (I have colleagues who have gone their entire life without a performing a single adult baptism.) Hopefully, the story that will be told in future years about our Longest Service Ever will be not that we made our confession of faith in Jesus Christ twice but that we welcomed and heard so many new brothers and sisters make their confession of faith in Jesus Christ for the first time
We -- The Church of Today – will someday become the ancient stories of faith in future generations as we now live and breath in our world today. The Good News story of Jesus Christ only goes out and creates a new generation as we tell and live out the story of the gospel before our children's eyes. . The story I will tell about Faith is that it is a welcoming place, a joyous place to find God in Jesus Christ.
AMEN