| Jason Interview (6) | | Date Created: Oct 24, 2006, 08:42 AM |
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JASON: As your book Jesus Asked illustrates, Jesus was great at telling subversive stories, stories that challenged people's presuppositions. We often retell parables in a modern context but do we also need to find ways of telling our own stories -- like the narrative sermons you deliver -- that help us either see the biblical story afresh or challenge our presumptions about faith today?
I think you missed one... we sometimes need our presumptions about faith challenged but we also need to find ways of letting the biblical story challenge our presumptions about life today.
So, once again, yes. By all means we need says of merging our stories with the biblical story. But given the way that we live, what I don't think we need is more encouragement to take ourselves and our own lives more seriously. What we need is encouragement to take God's story more seriously than our own.
For all their weaknesses, and there are many, that's one of the things I like best about those narratives -- retelling the Bible story from the perspective of a minor character in the story. They help me get outside of myself and my story, to spend some time being confronted personally by the biblical events in order to come back to my own world seeing things slightly different.
I don't want to approach God and the Bible as a client, with my categories as fundamental, looking for relevance, as if with an ultimatum: The solid thing is my job, my relationships, my life, God. Me me me. What can you give me that will work in it? What can God and church do to enhance me? And if he shows me that he can improve my quality of living, then I'll let him stay.
I want to approach God and the Bible in an attitude of love. I want to be willing to lose my life, to give him permission to mess up my neat priorities. To seek him. You you you. What will you give me that I can work toward? It's not what can I find in the Bible that's relevant to me me me? It's how can I change "me" to be relevant to God's purposes?
Yeah, we want our own stories to merge with the biblical story. We need to do that without rigging it so our story and categories will win. |
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