word outside the box, The

Lutheran, The, Feb 2004 by Ginn, Jennifer

Bold believers tell Bible stones in their own voices

Monte Albert's voice began to tremble as he read Esau's despairing plea to Isaac: "Have you only one blessing, Father? Bless me, me also, Father" (Genesis 27:38). After he and other members of the Bible storytelling group at Zion Lutheran Church, Gowrie, Iowa, finished reading the entire account, Albert blurted out, "That was me! Esau is me."

The youngest of three brothers, Albert explained how he had felt keenly his father's refusal to show him the affection and favor he had shown the oldest brother. More drawn to sports than the arts, his father attended many of the brother's football games, but he consistently failed to appear at Albert's plays and concerts. Albert grew up believing he was bad because of his artistic bent.

Years later while reading Esau's story aloud, Albert felt that childhood hurt sweep over him with a terrible force. The rivalry of the brothers Jacob and Esau validated his story and freed him to tell it to the small group gathered around a table in Zion's basement.

Albert's encounter was true and life-giving. just as it did in that moment for him, the word comes alive at the most timid of invitations. It breaks out of its box-the Bible's pages-and takes root with unsettling accuracy in open hearts. If you hunger for a closeness to the word that goes beyond the usual Sunday-morning two-step of worship and Sunday school, invite yourself and a few other hungry hearts into a Bible storytelling group and watch what happens. But be careful-you might unleash more than you're ready for.

How Jesus taught

Why invite the word out of the box? Because Jesus did. he reinterpreted the Jewish word, the law, and added his perspective. On his lips the word took on a new life and made uncomfortable claims on God's people. On their lips, it became both a protest and a praise that couldn't be silenced. Luke's Gospel reports that during Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, the Pharisees ordered him to quiet the loud praises from the crowd. Jesus replied that the shouting couldn't be silenced: "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out" (Luke 19:40). he knew the word couldn't be contained.

After the Word-Made-Flesh was gone from the world, still the word would not be silent. Jesus' words, remembered by those who knew him, lived on and gained momentum as they were told by one believer to another. When the Jewish elders ordered Peter and John to stop teaching in the name of Jesus, they answered,"We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). Nor could the new believers in Thessalonica and other places where Paul founded believing communities restrain themselves from joyfully passing the word along. Their persistence in telling the story proved to Paul that their words were in fact God's word at work in them.

Grandmothers understand

The word continues to intersect with the human story and work within it. Great writers have known that truth and for centuries have used it to depict humans grappling to make sense of God's story in the face of their own.

Grandmothers know that truth too. I remember my grandmother who held passionately to her family stories. She realized, I am sure, that the key to her heart and the heart of God lay in stories. She knew Jesus as a daily companion, and in many of her narratives her words and the living Word that is Jesus came together.

Many of us love our grandmothers' stories. Most of us tell stories to our children, grandchildren and godchildren. Family stories and Bible stories: We love them-in their place. Sadly, many adults assume that the place for stories is only in the lives of children. They suppose that once children grow up and become thinking beings, they will "stop telling stories and start telling the truth," as Thomas E. Boomershine wrote in Story Journey: An Invitation to the Gospel as Storytelling (Abingdon Press, 1988).

Even we adults who, like my grandmother, know that stories hold truth often resist the notion of telling Bible stories in the way they tell family tales.

To do what my grandmother did with a family narrative- ease into it by setting the scene, embellish as seems appropriate, play and laugh with the characters, move smoothly from that story into others with similar antics and related characters -to do that kind of telling with a Bible story seems to us ... well, wrong, somehow. Most of us prefer to leave the word safely in its box, the pages of the Bible, where it remains solid and reliable.

Exploring the stories

At Zion, we agreed to explore Bible stories together-not discuss them, but read them aloud, take them apart and put them back differently. We would live with them a few days and look for ourselves in them. We started with a list of narratives that included miraculous healings, close brushes with unclean characters, sibling rivalries, post-Resurrection encounters with the Risen Christ, feedings of great crowds and the callings of prophets.

The group began with the story of Jacob and Esau, starting by simply reading it together, each voice taking a different part. We read the text from typed pages instead of opening the Bibles in front of us, a first step in inviting the story out of its box. It was during that first reading that Albert heard Esau's pleading as his own.