ETHOS // STORIES (GALATIANS 1:11-24)

We’re concluding our ETHOS series this morning.

Over the past several weeks, we have been looking at the things that matter to us at MCC as we seek to express the centrality of Jesus.

We have looked at Scripture, Seekers, Spirit, Service, Sabbath and, last week, Sanctuary (You can catch up with the previous weeks via our blogs and YouTube channel).

This morning, we’re going to look at importance of Stories.

READ: GALATIANS 1:11-24

STORY TELLERS

As a big Spider-Man fan, I have had an exciting week. A new trailer for the upcoming Spider-man film got released on Thursday, and already, based on what the trailer is teasing, theories and speculation of what is come in this latest episode of the Marvel/Sony Cinematic Universe abound. I’m excited, not only because I’m a Spider-man fan; I’m excited because I’m a fan of stories full stop.

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved stories. I can’t get enough of them.

I am addicted to stories, and I don’t think I’m alone.

When I look around our world, stories are all over the place. I’m not just talking about books, or movies, social media, television and music—even though they’re all a means of storytelling. Each of us is a story that finds itself intertwined within all the other human stories around us, a story that has emerged from the story of our families, our communities, our world’s history; a story that will impact the story of our families, our communities, and our world’s history.

In a manner of speaking, each of us is a story that is in the process of being told.

Additionally, all of us are storytellers. We tell stories all the time. We can’t talk about anything of any real significance to your life without telling a story. We can’t even talk about the insignificant stuff without telling a story.

You can try, if you like. But, no matter who you are, you cannot go a day without telling a story. By the way, even if you try to complete that challenge by avoiding people, you will still be with your own thoughts, and you will, I promise, tell yourself a story. You will recollect events, or think about how tomorrow will ago, or even imagine conversations between yourself and others.

Like cows produce milk, spiders spin webs and bees secrete honey, humans generate stories. It is what we do. It’s how we make sense of it all. We are all storytellers.

Like cows produce milk, spiders spin webs and bees secrete honey, humans generate stories. It is what we do. It’s how we make sense of it all. We are all storytellers.
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We are addicted to stories—we need them, we can’t exist without them, because the stories we tell, the stories we listen to, the stories we involve ourselves in, they shape who we are and we shape them, and, in turn they have the power to shape our world, in both bad and good ways.

As someone once said, if you want to change the world, tell a story.

It is little wonder then, that the Bible is the way it is. When we look at the make-up of the Bible, there is artistry in this collection of sacred writings. The Bible is not some dry textbook full of data, or lists of bullet points, or a series of truth statements. What we have is narrative—intricate, multifaceted stories, that summon us, as readers, as listeners, to engage with them, to emerge ourselves within them, and to be shaped by them.

These stories contain real people—not superheroes, or perfect people. But complex, imperfect humans, like you a me, who have problems and hang ups, doubts and hopes, who experience catastrophes and opportunities, tears and joy.

And unlike the fairy tales we may read, these stories do not begin with the words ‘Once upon a time…’, and they do not conclude with the words, ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ Instead, these stories—like all, real human stories—are consistently defined by the words, ‘but then something happened.’

Interruptions create and shape our stories. Things happen which change the course we were on, things that affect us.

In the Bible, those interruptions are sometimes a conflict, sibling rivalry, or calamity. Sometimes, the ‘then something happened’ is more joyous, like the birth of a child, a marriage, or liberation from slavery.

But throughout these stories, there is another, all-encompassing version of ‘but then something happened’ that transforms the stories of many, and that continues to transform the stories of many, today: when humanity encounters God, and God encounters humanity.

Some of us are here today, because our stories have had this sort of ‘but then something happened’.

If we wanted, we could call these sorts of stories ‘conversion’ stories, because they generate a change, a conversion in the people involved.[i] There’s nothing wrong with that term. However, I’m going to call them ‘convergence’ stories—when our stories run into God, and we begin this process of linking our stories with God, and merging our stories with the stories of many others who have also run into God, and when together our stories speak of God.

If you prefer, we could also call them our stories of faith.

BUT THEN SOMETHING HAPPENED…

In the passage we’ve just read, Paul the Apostle writes about his own convergence with God. And his story is very much defined by the motif of ‘but then something happened.’

Actually, if you read these verses in the New Living Translation, Paul’s words in verse 15 are translated, ‘But then something happened!’ (Alternatively, you may have, ‘but then God…’ or ‘but when God…’)

Paul is telling a story—his story of faith. It may be very different to our own, but we all have a story of faith if we call ourselves followers of Jesus. To be a Christian, is to be someone who has a ‘but-then-something-happened-story’ involving Jesus Christ.To go further than that, to be a follower of Jesus is to be continually engaging in this ‘but then something happened’ process.

Galatians is not the only time Paul tells his story. You can read of Paul’s ‘convergence’ in Acts 9:1-19, but Luke (the writer of Acts) also records Paul sharing his own story in Acts 22:1-16 and Acts 26:4-23 (we could also maybe include other parts of Paul’s writing such as Philippians 3:4-14, which also has Paul emphasizing that his own story is still very much in process).

Wherever you read Paul’s story, it always contains three parts, three acts, if you like: 1) Where he had come from, 2) the ‘then something happened’ stage, and 3) the effects this happening, this ‘convergence’ had on him.

In Paul’s case, he was persecuting people—Christians, because of the message they were preaching about Jesus. Paul tells his story truly, he doesn’t sanitise it or attempt to hide what he used to be like. Paul admits that he was a person of violence. More than this, he was a religiously violent person—he did what he did because he thought he was doing it for God, which, even in our own time, is a terrifying combination. In Galatians (v.13), he admits that he tried his best to destroy Christians. As he describes it in Acts 26, ‘Backed with the full authority of the high priests, I threw these believers into the Jerusalem jail right and left, and whenever it came to a vote, I voted for their execution. I stormed through their meeting places, bullying them into cursing Jesus, a one-man terror obsessed with obliterating these people. And then I started on the towns outside Jerusalem.’ (Acts 26:10-11, The Message)

But then something happened… Paul has this extraordinary encounter with Jesus. And this encounter affects Paul deeply. It touches him right to the core of his being. As he writes in Galatians 1:15-16, something of God’s kindness, and grace, and undeserved mercy converges into his life, and into his understandings of God. All Paul thought he knew about God and God’s purpose is suddenly turned upside down and inside out. To such an extent, that he had to go away to Arabia in order to wrestle more deeply with God and think through what all this means.[ii]

In the case of Paul, the effects of this convergence were huge. He was a violent man, who became willing to give his life for others. Paul went from inflicting suffering, because that’s what he thought God had told him to do, to being someone willing to suffer on behalf of others in order to demonstrate to them what God was like. He used to travel in order to persecute others, now he travelled to teach and encourage others.

He was once a proud man—a man who valued having a prized reputation, proud of his training and heritage—who was humbled and now thought that all those other accomplishments were garbage in comparison to knowing Christ (Phil 3:4-9).

He was a man who had strict ancestral traditions, who realised that those things could wrongly become walls and whips to others. He was a man who had boundaries, when it came to who he would consider sharing a table with, a home with, but now he was willing to become all things, to all people, in order that they, too, would link their lives with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 9:19-23).

Most of all, as Paul says in verse 23-24, people saw the change God had brought about in Paul’s life, and gave glory to God because of it! ‘The one who used to persecute us now preaches the very faith he tried to destroy.’ (Galatians 1:23).

Our own story may not be as dramatic, that’s OK. However, all our stories of convergence, our stories of faith follow the same pattern: 1) Who/Where we were, 2) Then God happened, 3) What that did to us.

If we took the time to consider our own stories of faith, even if we took the time to consider the stories of faith recorded in the scriptures, they all have the same components as Paul’s story.

One day, Moses was just guarding sheep in the Sinai wilderness, but then something happened…

Gideon was hiding and threshing wheat, but then something happened…

Mary was going about her normal routine life, but then something happened…

In my own case, an eighteen-year-old Tristan, an atheist, went to church to show some vague interest in what his girlfriend was interested in, but then something happened…

The pattern is always there. Furthermore, as we continue our daily walk with God, as we continue in this journey of linking our lives with God, this pattern continues on repeat. Our stories are never stagnant.[iii]

THE POWER OF STORIES

I’m saying all this, because I want us to understand that our stories of faith are vital. Our stories ground us, and shape us, and if we forget or lose sight of what God has done and is doing in us, if we neglect the journey we have gone through, then our identity is at stake.

If we’re not careful, we place other things at the centre of our stories. If we don’t remind ourselves of our stories of faith, of how God’s grace found us, then you will end up swapping out and replacing the ‘then God happened’ segment of our stories with something else. We will make something else the pivot point in our identities.

Maybe we place a grudge as the defining ‘then something happened moment’ in our lives? Or disappointment? Or personal failure, rejection, shame? Or worse, maybe, like the Apostle Paul prior to his own convergence moment, maybe the centre of our stories becomes our strict religious observance and our own accomplishments—and we all know what sort of life that produced?

Whatever it is, it will define, not only you, but also how you relate to others.

The Apostle Paul certainly understood this. He is writing to the Galatian believers because, under the influence of other voices (voices suggesting that they need to be circumcised or follow Jewish traditions in order to become “real” followers of Jesus), they were forgetting that the ‘then something happened’ part of their story—the part that changed everything and that was central to their identity—was that God’s kindness and undeserved mercy was revealed to them through Jesus Christ.

In other words, they were forgetting that the person and actions of Jesus are the centre of their lives, and the centre of the church, the centre that drives how they were to relate to their communities and their world.

The church at Galatia were losing their senses (Gal 3:3), forgetting who they were in Christ. Paul writes because he wants them to refocus their story on Jesus in order to stave of the spiritual weakness and confusion that was affecting them.

As the Christian author, Frederick Buechner said, ‘to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished, not only humanly, but spiritually.’[iv]

‘to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished, not only humanly, but spiritually.’ – Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
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I want to ask a serious question this morning: What have you placed as the ‘but then something happened’ centre of your story, and how is it defining who you are and how you feel? And furthermore, how is it affecting your relationships with the people and spaces your currently find yourself surrounded by?

Some of us, maybe, need to recall our stories of faith. Maybe, some of us need to refocus them on God. Not only for our own sakes, but also because your story of faith is a gift to all of us.

MISSING PIECES

When Paul, in Galatians shares his story, he understands that his story of faith is important to others. He understands, as we all should, that God chooses to tell his wonderful story through our own ever-changing stories. My story, your story, our story is taken into God’s story as a means of telling the story of Jesus Christ.

During this past year, I read a book by Rob Merchant, entitled Broken by Fear, Anchored in Hope. It’s a book full of Rob Merchant’s own powerful and personal stories of faith, as he explores the experiences that have crashed into his world, and how the transforming love of God has become an anchor to his identity. In one chapter, Rob really presses home the importance of our stories:

‘Stories of faith are a vital resource in sustaining confidence and assurance as we make our journey through life. Stories of others are helpful, but just as important are our own stories of faith. Our stories of how we encountered Jesus and followed him are the bedrock of our faithfulness in living out our calling. I wonder how many times the first followers in the earliest days of the Church recounted their stories of Jesus? Stories to encourage one another, to nurture and uphold. Stories to remind them who they are in the midst of great challenge and persecution. Those stories were gifts to be shared among the community of believers.

One of things I encourage people to do is to share their stories of Jesus; to tell each other their story of faith, because in retelling their story they recall again the love of Jesus and encourage their own continued faithfulness. You can tell when the disease of individualization has infected a church community: nobody knows each other’s story of faith.’[v]

‘You can tell when the disease of individualization has infected a church community: nobody knows each other’s story of faith.’ – Rob Merchant, Broken by Fear, Anchored by Hope.
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That final sentence really struck me—I don’t want to be that kind of church.

At MCC, knowing each other’s stories, sharing our stories, and understanding that they are all vital pieces in God’s great story, is something we want to champion and encourage. Churches should be places of where stories are told, places full of storytellers, because we are all storytellers, with stories to tell.

And the fact that our stories are different, the fact that they are particular to each of us, is not a weakness, but a strength. You may feel that your story is not as dramatic as someone else’s story, but your story of faith doesn’t need to be dramatic. Whatever shape you story takes, it’s about Jesus calling each of us just the way we are. And that’s a story that speaks to everyone!

God uses the particular nature of our stories, bringing them together like a symphony, a collage, a jigsaw, even. And as our stories interlock with one another, as community develops, they display something larger than themselves, revealing something of the greatness of the breadth, height, depth and length of God’s love.

God uses the particular nature of our stories, bringing them together like a symphony, a collage, a jigsaw, even. And as our stories interlock with one another, as community develops, they display something larger than themselves, revealing something of the scale of God’s love.
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A few weeks ago, Steph and I were doing a jigsaw—we actually found ourselves up until one in the morning doing this jigsaw! Talk about a rock n’ roll lifestyle. It’s a big jigsaw—as 1000 pieces, based on the TV show Stranger Things. Eaden was helping us with it, but it got past his bedtime, so he went up to bed. Steph and I thought we would carry on for another twenty minutes, and we were there for a further three hours.

I’d like to say we finished the jigsaw, but I can’t. There’s a piece missing! Which is infuriating. We still have this incomplete jigsaw laid out on our dining table, as we hunt this missing piece.

All the pieces matter! It’s not about how dramatic a piece is, all the pieces are important in bringing this larger image together. It’s the same with your story of faith. Whatever God is up to in our church, and in our town of Bury, your story is an essential piece of that.

So please, remember that you are a storyteller, remember and refocus you own story of faith on Jesus, and remember to share it.

‘He saved them from the power of their enemies. He set them free from their control… But they soon forgot what he had done.’
Psalm 106:10, 13a (NIRV)

‘Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.’
N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

FURTHER QUESTIONS TO PONDER:

What stops us from telling our stories? Is it a lack of confidence? Opportunity? Maybe we don’t want others to know our past? Or maybe we feel our stories are inferior some way?
Neil Gaimen, in his book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, writes, ‘A story only matters to the extent that the people in the story change.’ Would you agree with this? How is it applicable to the life of those who claim to have encountered and follow Jesus?
Can you plot out any other convergence stories in the Bible, using the pattern of, 1. Who/where they were, 2. Then something happened, 3, What effect it had?
As Christians, what risks are there in swapping out and replacing the ‘then God happened’ segment of our convergence stories with other things? For example, what happens when we make grudges, disappointments, personal failures, or accolades the pivot point of our stories, instead of the Gospel of Jesus?

[i] This need not imply that the conversion is always positive, by the way. There are plenty of moments when God has “crashed” into my world and I’ve hardened my heart in response, or pushed against God and gone in another direction. Maybe this is how we are to understand the story of Exodus, when it speaks of God hardening the Pharaoh’s heart? Did God actively harden Pharaoh’s heart, or had God “crashing” into the Pharaoh’s imperial rule cause the Pharaoh to harden his heart in response? There are other textual clues that indicate the latter being the case, but that’s a conversation for another time.

[ii] That Paul went to Arabia is significant, and serves to echo some of the Old Testament encounters with God. Arabia was the location of Mount Sinai (aka, Horeb), ‘the Mountain of God’. It was at Sinai that Israel encountered God, and the law was given via Moses. Sinai was also where Elijah fled to seek solace and to wrestle it out with the God whom he worshipped. On one level, Paul’s reference to Arabia serves to highlight how deeply Paul had to readjust to the revelation of God after his encounter with Christ, and how much rethinking was required to his interpretations of the scriptures. On another level, the reference to Arabia also served to divinely legitimise the Gospel that Paul taught. In the face of some Jewish believers, who were teaching that gentiles need to meet the requirements of the Law in order to become Christian, and were therefore arguing that Paul was watering down the Gospel through his teaching of faith alone, Paul, by referencing his time in Arabia (where the law was given), could be showing that the source of the Law to the Jews was also the source of the Gospel he was now sharing with the Gentiles. I.e. His mandate to the Gentiles (in Galatians 1:15-16) and his message to the Gentiles, both came from God.

[iii] It’s possible, then, that our stories therefore take the form of the following pattern: Convergence—Conversion—Convergence—Conversion—Convergence… etc.

[iv] Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

[v] Rob Merchant, Broken by Fear, Anchored in Hope, p. 69

TRISTAN SHERWIN