Which Narrative Are You Living?
Sermon by Steve Edington
September 21, 2008
As I briefly noted in our opening service a couple of weeks ago, one of my summer projects was to thin out the rather large store of books I've been accumulating for, well, most of my life. Bibliophile that I am, I was prepared for a gut wrenching experience only to find that it wasn't that difficult or traumatic at all. It was just a matter of deciding which books I felt would be of value to me and which ones wouldn't for the rest of my life. There might be a sermon somewhere in all of that, but this one isn't it. I'm only leading off today with one of the books that made the cut and stayed on the shelf.
It's called The Story of Your Life by Dan Wakefield and it's mostly a how-to manual for writing one's spiritual autobiography. I use it in the spiritual autobiography workshop series that I run here from time to time, which is one of the reasons I kept the book. The purpose of these workshops is for those participating to create a narrative of their lives - to uncover their story and learn some of its meanings. Wakefield's definition of spirituality that he runs with here is "that which gives life to the physical organism in contrast to its purely material elements; the breath of life."
The idea, then, is to create a personal narrative that lifts us those things - the experiences, the relationships, the wisdom you've found, the meanings you've pursued - that have truly given life to your life; the ways in which, that is to say, you've taken some real deep breaths of the breath of life. It can be a very powerful process. If the fronts piece to the book Wakefield cites a line from Michael Blumenthal that I use when I kick off one of these workshops: "Deep down in some long encumbered self is the story you've been writing all your life."
Just so it all doesn't get too ponderous or heavy I also give it a more lighthearted angle by asking "If your life were a novel would anyone want to read it?" It's a question I ask more of myself than anyone else really. The answer, in large measure of course, has to do with how well the story is told, and from what angle or perspective. Most so-called works of fiction are actually parts of the author's story, or narrative, that he or she has shaped and crafted in such a way that allows it to connect with other lives and other life stories. This raises the question, which I won't pursue here, of whether or not there truly are works of fiction, since practically all writing comes in one way or another from the author's life experience.
I took a writing seminar this past summer out at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley that was taught from that angle, and it was a very good and rich experience for me. About a dozen of us spent a week, under the supervision of a very capable instructor and author, by taking certain snippets of our lives and writing them up as if they were a part of a book - or in some cases, a poem. Our instructor, a very wonderful woman named Pat Schneider, emphasized in the very first session that she was not leading a therapy group. By the end of the week there was general agreement among those of us in the group that it was the most therapeutic thing many of us had done in some time. Ms. Schneider, by the way, just lives over in Amherst, Massachusetts where she heads up an outfit called the Amherst Writers Group. So yes, I went clear to California to take a writing seminar led by a woman from over in Amherst.
To move on from that, I want to take what I've said so far now and link it up with another bit of learning I picked up over the summer that also has to do with this business of narrative. In this case it was from a very learned and esteemed Old Testament professor, now retired from the Columbia Theological School, named Walter Breuggeman. Dr. Breuggeman gave a very outstanding presentation to quite a large gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers and religious educators at the Ministry Days portion of our annual UU General Assembly back in June. GA this year was held in Fort Lauderdale. Unlike Berkeley, which is a great place to wander around, all you can do in Fort Lauderdale in the summer is move from one air conditioned building to another. Geographically speaking I could have been anywhere since practically all I saw while I was there were conference rooms, my hotel room and an airport.
Dr. Brueggman's address - which I'll get to in just a moment - did make my trip to Fort Lauderdale worthwhile. It also reinforced for me the essential truth that you cannot really examine and live out your personal narrative or story in any meaningful way apart from the larger narrative or story within which yours, and mine, is contained and located. And what do I mean by that? It's fairly simple, really. John Donne said it some 400 years ago: "No man is an island." No one individual lives entirely apart from other individuals. We each live out our lives in a particular time and place, and in a particular historical setting. And we are related, in ways both known and unknown, to those with whom we share that setting and context. Even the most personal of narratives is never completely personal. It's part of a larger story. And it order to really get at your story you also have to be aware of the larger story within which yours is contained, and the piece or role you have in that greater narrative.
This was the point of Dr. Brueggman's Ministry Days lecture, and he went back about 3000 years and halfway around the world to make it. Remember I said he's an Old Testament, or Hebrew Scripture, scholar. And I do mean scholar. As I've said many times, while the Bible is not central to my ways of thinking and believing, I still find much wisdom in it provided such wisdom is brought forth in a reasonable and compelling way. I found Professor Brueggeman both reasonable and compelling as he talked about two competing or contrasting narratives that run through much of the Old Testament. Now he had over two hours - with a couple of breaks thrown in - to spin all this out. I've got about five minutes to distill it down if I'm going to bring this sermon in under budget - under a time budget that is. I'll give it my best shot.
In very broad terms, the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scripture, is a theological narrative of the history of ancient Israel. By that I mean it is the narrative of a nation as seen through a certain religious - and in this case Yahweh-centered - lens. Like most such narratives it's a blend of myth, legend, literature and poetry, along with some actual historical data. Most nations, in fact, including our own, tell their stories with a similar kind of blend. We can, for example, read the text to George Washington's Inaugural Addresses and get a pretty reliable account of what he actually said. That bit about his chopping down the cherry tree, on the other hand, is pure mythology. It's a similar kind of thing with the Bible - a mix of history and myth.
Beuggeman, as just noted, finds two competing narratives within that history/myth blend which he primarily sees being played out during the reign of King Solomon. They are the narrative of power and wealth and dominion and empire on the one hand; with the counter-narrative being that of the original covenant the Israelites made with their God, Yahweh, which commanded them, in the words of the prophet Micah, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly on the earth with Yahweh/God.
Solomon's reign took place roughly 900 years BCE - Before the Common Era, before the birth of Jesus. In terms of the world that was known in those parts and at that time, Israel under Solomon became a world power. The chapters in the OT Books of Kings and Chronicles that describe his reign are pretty close to the mark, when compared to other texts from that time, about the extent of Solomon's power and rule. He formed alliances that paid off in vast amounts of gold and other precious commodities. He controlled large armies and extensive territories - military might and dominion as it were. What is generally referred to as "the wisdom of Solomon," was, according to Dr. Breuggeman, also a monopoly on knowledge and information; and then, as now, knowledge is power. Solomon had his palaces. He did build the Temple in Jerusalem for the worship of the Hebrew God Yahweh; but he covered his bases by building temples and shrines to the various other god and goddesses, mainly in order to keep him in good stead with his allies who worshipped them.
Then there were the women. First Kings, 11th chapter, 3rd verse indeed states that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. It does boggle the mind. But, keeping it in context, having 1000 women at your beck and call wasn't primarily about having 1000 sexual partners. Having women under your dominion was really another representation, another symbol, of wealth and power and control; they were part of the deal along with the gold and the land and the armies and everything else. Anyway, the next time you hear someone extolling the virtues of "Biblical Family Values" you might try laying I Kings 11:3 on them and ask how 700 wives and 300 concubines fits that bill! But I digress...
All in all, it was a great time to be alive if you were a part of the Court of Solomon, or one of his favored subjects, or if you even had just some piece for yourself of the empire over which he ruled.
Well, that was the Solomon narrative, and for all it's glory it didn't have a very happy ending. After his death two of his sons struggled for power which resulted in a civil war, which in turn resulted in separate Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, both of which were eventually conquered by other powers. What happened after that makes for an even more interesting set of stories than those about the reign of Solomon, but we have no time to go there now. We have this other narrative we've still got to get on the table.
The second narrative, which was put in place well before Solomon was born, was also that usual mixture of history, myth, and legend. This one was about a group of slaves who escaped bondage and sought a place where they could live as free people. In pursuing their freedom they made an agreement - a Covenant - with the God whom they believed had freed them, with a little help from a man named Moses. The Covenant was that once they got to their land of freedom, and set up shop as a nation there, they would treat one another in just and caring and merciful and righteous ways. In ways that were antithetical, that is, to how they'd been treated as slaves. This, in fact, is the story or narrative that is told whenever Passover is celebrated to this day.
In certain places this Covenant even got down to some pretty specific details, like saying all debts were to be cancelled every seven years, so everybody could start out equal again; or saying that widows and orphans and poor folk would be permitted to glean the fields of landowners during harvest time so that all could have enough to eat. Whether it always worked out the way it was supposed to is another matter, but the idea of the Covenant was that we're all in this together and we'll all take care of one another in accordance with the will of Yahweh.
So, even as the narrative of wealth and power and dominion came to gain the upper hand, particularly during the reign of Solomon, there were others in the land who saw it as their mission - their mandate from Yahweh, actually - to hold up that earlier narrative about love and justice and mercy and righteousness and humility. These were the Hebrew prophets and poets. They were the ones who stood who stood outside of the halls and corridors of power and control and dominion and said: "Remember how you got here; remember those promises you said you'd keep," even as those promises, and that Covenant of love and justice and righteousness, were violated or forgotten. Some of these prophets and poets didn't even get a chance to stand near the seats of power. Many of them were banished and exiled to the hinterlands when their message became too sharp; and some were just killed. And it was these prophets and poets who were also the ones who were there to call their people back to their original Covenant after their nation - their two Kingdoms - were vanquished.
To finish this out, when you get down to the time of Jesus you find, basically, an itinerant Jewish teacher who opted for the Prophetic, or Covenant, narrative. Rather than attempt to overthrow the dominant power of his day - the Roman Empire - and re-establish the glory of David and Solomon, he instead just chose to move about the countryside, the hinterlands, offering whatever deeds of love and kindness and healing that he could, and speaking words of justice and mercy to all who cared to listen to him.[Even then he still got himself killed as an enemy of the state.] But Jesus made his point pretty clear, and showed which narrative he'd chosen to live out, in that wonderful passage in the Gospel of Luke where he tells his followers to look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air in all their beauty and splendor, and then goes on to say, "Even Solomon in all his glory (and wealth and might) was not arrayed like one of these." This is why I really do believe that Jesus, and the prophets who went before him, were actually latter day beats.
That probably took a little more than five minutes so let's move this thing along. Dr. Brueggeman, who is also a United Church of Christ minister, did not come to Fort Lauderdale last summer just to tell Bible stories to a roomful of Unitarian Universalist ministers and religious leaders. What the good minister/ professor was really attempting to do was put a challenge before us, and by extension, before the congregations we serve. He wasn't even primarily talking about Solomon and Ancient Israel and all of that either, even though he knows more about the subject than most other people on the planet. His challenge, rather, was also the title of this sermon: Which Narrative Are You Living? You, who are citizens, and ministers to citizens, of a nation whose wealth, power, might, and global reach make Solomon's Kingdom look like that of a pauper.
Recall I said earlier that we really cannot discover and live out our personal narrative without also having some sense of the larger narrative or story that it's a part of. That's the point here.
Most of us, myself included, actually have one foot in each of the narratives that Brueggeman sets forth. Most of us, in one way or another, partake of the fruits of the empire, of the global power, within whose borders we live. And most of us are just trying to make it for ourselves and our families as best we can as we go about our daily tasks and duties and responsibilities relying, as we must, upon those very fruits of empire for our livelihood. None of us, I don't think, are actually driving the bus of global power. Given what's been happening with our financial markets over the past week, so of us are probably getting whacked by the bus instead! And none of us, as best as can tell, are out wandering the countryside in sackcloth and ashes, calling upon America to repent from its opulent and indulgent ways.
What I'm trying to get at is something more subtle and nuanced than a strictly either/or situation when it come to determining the narratives we choose to live out. The best way I can speak to it is to come at it personally. If you can indulge me on that level for a minute I believe can get past the personal as well.
Like all of you, I've been given a life to live for as long as I'll have it. I've been given a particular historical setting in which to live this life. I've been given certain resources, and have gained others for myself, to help me live it. Most of all, I've been given people I love and trust, knowledge I can turn to, beliefs I've worked through, and a store of experiences I can turn to, when it comes to deciding how best to live. These very precious gifts. I want to use these gifts in ways that will make my life meaningful and enjoyable, and use them in ways that will find me on the right side of history.
The right side of history. That's a tricky phrase and a tricky concept. We cannot know with absolute certainty if that is where we're standing at any given moment. But I believe that being on the right side of history is what we should be ultimately aiming for if our personal narratives are also going to be a part of that larger Covenantal narrative that Brueggeman identifies. Those prophets and poets he spoke about often found themselves out of step with the ethos of their time. They were often "mis-fits" in the most literal sense of the term when it came to the times in which they were living. But they were on the right side of history. The truth of their message was still there even after the power structures they were confronting had collapsed.
I think of any number of more contemporary prophets who were in the same situation. Susan B. Anthony died without seeing women get the right to vote. She was out of step with her time, but in her larger narrative she was on the right side of history. Martin Luther King was killed at age 39 before seeing many of his goals about racial equality and economic justice realized. However out of step with his time he may have been, in his larger narrative he was on the right side of history. Nelson Mandela was for those 27 years he spent in the Robben Island prison, going dangerously against the tide of his time, but he has lived long enough to know he was on the right side of history. This list could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.
The point, as I presume you also get, is not that we, not that any one of us, have to be any of these brave and wonderful people. Not at all. What we have to do - each of us - is be brave enough, and filled with enough wonder and hope and imagination, that however at odds with our times we may be, we're also living out a larger narrative that will keep us on the right side of history.
As I said a moment ago, we cannot know with absolute certainty just which side of history our actions today will place us on. That is what it means to live by faith. I'm not talking about the kind of faith wherein you try to force yourself to believe what you know is un-believable. Rather I mean faith that the story you are telling with your life - both your personal story and the greater narrative within which your story is contained - will be the right, and the just one, and the loving one, for those who come after you; and the right one for the world that will continue to unfold once your time with it is done.
Stephen D. Edington
September 21, 2008
