As a young child, I learned some grown-up speech-patterns just by listening to my elders. If I spoke to adults using those expressions, it sometimes got me laughs, and I liked that. Certainly an adult innocently added to my vocabulary this impatient question: "How did we get here?" Maybe I overheard that during a misadventure in the family car.
That was part of my disposition when, during my year in second grade, Sister Evelyn Paul told us a story about Thérèse of Lisieux, the late-19th-century saint known as The Little Flower. Thérèse and her Carmelite sisters were doing laundry by hand at side-by-side washtubs. A less careful sister consistently splashed soapy water into Thérèse's face, and Thérèse decided not to complain but to offer it up. I knew what it meant to offer it up, I knew the unpleasant taste of soap, and I knew what virtuous behavior was being proposed to me. My reaction was to ask, spontaneously and silently, "How did we get here?" I honestly wondered, in second grade, how we had got to the point where offering up the distaste of soap in my mouth was a good idea.
Skepticism like that, mild at first, became part of my story. Years later, I was pleased to learn in the seminary that the right way to start interpreting a Bible passage is to ask "How did they get there?" That's short for "What was going on in that ancient community and its surrounding culture that called for this response from the prophet or evangelist?" That's part of the genesis of this message-series. And for now, I'm finished telling parts of my story.
Thérèse wrote an autobiography, but we can sure that first she told her story to her community, and they listened with acceptance and love. Had they refused to accept her unique story, and tried to change her into their own image, the world may never have heard of Thérèse.
Second Isaiah (Sunday's first reading) reminded the Judeans that they had a story, which the LORD instructed Isaiah to tell again. Ostensibly it's a story about "events of the past" (Israel's Exodus from Egypt). Asking how Second Isaiah got there, where he had to retell an old story, reminds us he's prophesying during the Exile (what I recently called the anti-Exodus). As the captors' determination to hold onto the captives loosened up, a forbidding desert loomed between the exiles and their homeland. Isaiah's story is that God will be as powerful over desert threats as God had been over the Red Sea and the pursuing army of chariots. Pessimism and skepticism struggled with hope, but Isaiah prevailed, the exiles eventually made the journey home, and the episode became part of their story.
In Sunday's second reading, Saint Paul tells his story. He doesn't rehearse the blinding vision on the Damascus Road, but starts with a description of his state before the risen Christ called him:
Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee; as for religious fervour, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless.
Then Paul switches to a statement of his values post-conversion:
But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith, that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being moulded to the pattern of his death, striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead. Not that I have secured it already, nor yet reached my goal, but I am still pursuing it in the attempt to take hold of the prize for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
How did Paul get there? In a very particular sense, "there" is Philippi, a thriving, and we could add, thrashing, Christian community. The thrashing was a controversy sparked by Jewish-Christian missionaries who insisted Gentile converts to Christ must be made to observe the Law of Moses. In this passage Paul uses his own story of learning the futility of trying to make himself upright (or "righteous" or "justified") before God by trying to keep the Law.
But that's just part of Paul's larger story, which includes conflicts with Jewish leaders and Christian leaders. It's one thing to be converted, and quite another to become an un-vetted apostle for the Lord in the church you had been persecuting. Paul wasn't automatically granted a seat on the board. After his Damascus-Road encounter, Paul went to neutral "
Arabia" and probably experimented with preaching his new variation on Judaism there. Then Paul went to Jerusalem, and appeared before the already-established leaders of the church, the skeptical Peter, and James, the brother of the Lord. Paul was already pro-Gentile, and
had to work to make the Jerusalem church accept his broader understanding of Jesus as Christ and Lord. He got their blessing and went on mission. In every city he engaged both Jews and Gentiles, and in many of those cities, reactionary Jews followed up and tried to "correct" Paul's lax willingness to forego imposing the Mosaic Law on Gentile converts. That went on for the rest of Paul's life.
All that became part of Paul's story, and prepared him to tell it passionately in his letter to the Philippians. What made that telling more likely was the great love between the Philippian Christians and Paul, warmer than any other relationship between Paul and local church.
The community of John the Evangelist has a complicated story. It's a little like Paul's, in that this community's theology was more sophisticated than that of the mainstream church, and that made the mainstream skeptical of the followers of John. Scholars detect in the gospel of John some attempts to make the sponsoring community seem orthodox and acceptable to the older Christian communities.
What's on display in Sunday's passage from John is an astounding and controversial act of mercy on the part of Jesus. Nothing makes a man, or a whole patriarchy, more angry than an adulterous wife, or the accusation that one's wife is unfaithful. There are obvious evolutionary roots of this; it can explode into violence, or, as the Twitterverse has been prattling about all this week, into performative defenses of one's honor. But
our religion raises humane opposition to all violent expressions of revenge, and we can hardly return to being honor-driven if we're baptized into the death and resurrection of a crucified person.
Humane opposition was the way of the Johannine community. John must have had to remind his readers of the strong mercy and compassion of their Lord, which accounted for their opposition from Jews. John may also have been throwing that in the face of other Christians. The whole story of John's community is obscure. A pity, because it would clearly be most interesting.
Your community has a story. Does it include struggling with reactionaries? Does your story include an "Aha!" moment, a grasp of the bigger picture, a realization that you've been wrong about something pretty basic?
People get
to tell their stories in 12-Step programs. It's healing for them, and it cements them to the community. What can your community learn from 12-Step communities?
If you're in a Catholic Eucharistic community, there may be catechumens and "elect" persons going through the RCIA, and being in the spotlight of "scrutinies" as you worship on the Sundays of Lent.
They each have a story. They got there for deeply personal reasons. They deserve to have their stories heard, and to be accepted as they are, even before they commit to baptism. I venture that having their story heard, without judgment, is a condition for their staying with the community long-term.
In the late 20th century, the American church leader Carrie Kemp slowly, and by humble trial-and-error, developed a program for welcoming back to church Catholics who had fallen away. She realized she had to start by letting the seekers tell their stories and be heard, truly heard. As her program grew and others wanted to work with her or implement copies of the program,
Kemp wrote, "The most significant credentials for this ministry are freedom from certitude and the ability to live with the tensions that divide our church today."
Finally,
a story about Confirmation Story Corps. That's what my wife and I called a program that we devised for our parochial school's confirmation-prep program. We were to gather once a week, for 5 weeks, after school hours, in a comfortable church meeting room. For each week, we had prepared a video of an interview that we had done with an individual or a couple from our church. In the interview
we elicited the story of the interviewees' journey to adult Christianity. We didn't get anyone's whole story, but we got important moments, crises, decisions, losses and victories. The confirmation candidates watched the interview, then did some reflection on it in small groups, and some journal-writing about it. Then the interviewee(s) came into the room, live and in person, and
let the students interview them further. It was magical. Intergenerational candor, courage, and love were there. Stories were told proudly and heard with acceptance and wonder. When the series was over, we heard that expression that catechists in middle-school almost never hear, "I wish we could do this some more."
