Stories define us and our calling
As an early riser I often start the day singing, humming or whistling without thought or awareness. It just seems natural to offer a melody. Natural, that is, unless, say, someone is not an early riser; someone perhaps like Gloria Waggoner, who occasionally will say as kindly as she can before daybreak, “Please stop, that tune will get into my head and stay with me all day.” Now I don’t take this personally because I know she is not sufficiently awake to appreciate the gift being offered. Truth is, in this case retaining it doesn’t much matter.
There is, though, that which can get into our head and stay with us that does matter – and matters a lot. I am thinking specifically this special season about the Christmas story, not the one shown annually in marathon fashion about Ralphie who yearns for a BB gun for Christmas, but the one about God who comes into the world in the flesh, born as a baby in a manger, to be with us, God’s beloved. If we are lucky this story will get into our heads and hearts, and will indeed stay with us.
First, because stories matter. They not only inform us, they shape us and make us who we are. When asked what led to Toyota’s success, the company’s president said concisely that the people of the company, at all levels, know the corporate story. It is their story. They tell it and live it, and in doing so they find a unique identity, unusual strength, and a future filled with hope.
Second, the Christmas story is the story of the Christian community – the truth that God comes out of love, not obligation, to be with us wherever we are; that in Jesus, who is love incarnate, light comes into darkness and life overcomes death. The Christmas story is a promise whose name is Emmanuel, “God with us” and for us.
In the movie “Amistad,” John Quincy Adams, played by Anthony Hopkins, asks a former slave, Theodore Joadson, played by Morgan Freeman, to tell his story. When Joadson begins to give historical facts such as where he was born, Adams quickly encourages him to tell the story of which he has become a part, of what has shaped his identity, eventually saying, “Whoever tells the best story wins.”
At Christmas we have again been invited into the best story one could imagine. May it get into our heads and our hearts and stay with us. For unlike the surely loving, yet not fully appreciative response to my morning music, this story is profoundly personal and is intended to be taken exactly that way.
