It's a rather odd way to answer the priest's question when you think about it. But Jesus also tends to tell stories when asked questions. Someone says, "Who is my neighbor?" and Jesus tells the story of the "Good Samaritan." I suppose stories and parables helped people remember Jesus' teachings better than straight forward answers, but I also think that faith is more story based than we modern folks tend to be.
If you're in a business meeting or a committee meeting and someone says, "Let me tell you a story," there will likely be groans (unless the person is a very gifted story teller). We don't have time to waste on stories. We are about efficiency and getting things done. But in our rush to be efficient and accomplish things, we often have little sense of context, of where we are in the story.
It's seems rather obvious that we are products of stories: family stories, community stories, school stories, national stories. We are shaped and molded by the narrative in which we live, but for whatever reason, we tend to think of ourselves as free and independent agents who create our own stories. Those born into privilege speak of creating their own success. We talk easily of earning what we have, often oblivious to the fact that we might well have done nothing of the sort in another age or culture, without infrastructures and supports that others provided, without advantages provided by gender, race, academic or physical gifts, etc.
Our disconnection from our stories has a profound impact in the way we pursue and experience faith. The notion of "going to church" rather than "being the church" is but one example. In some congregations, there is no more sense of community on Sunday morning than there is in a movie theater. People are there to get something they need, and they don't necessarily see that as connected to a larger story intertwined with those around them.
A big part of my Reformed/Presbyterian tradition is the idea of vocation or call. A vocation is not what I happen to do for a living but what I am meant to do, an activity that benefits me and my community, as well as God's plans for Creation. Responding to God's call, discovering one's vocation, is about finding our place in a larger story, one that we do not write on our own.
It seems to me that at times America's worship of individualism rises to a level that is extremely hazardous to faith and relationship with God. If we presume that we are author, producer, and director of our own stories, then we have forgotten the lesson of that old catechism question. "Q. What is your only comfort, in life and in death? A. That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ..."
I am not my own. In Christ, I belong to God. And I am who I am meant to be, I am truly and fully alive, only when I discover my calling and take my place in the story of which God is author, designer, producer, and director. I uncover my truest and deepest identity, my true self, as I take my small part in God's great narrative. "A wandering Aramean was my father..."
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
James,
ReplyDeleteDo I detect, in this blog,the echo of the recent discussion of whether President Obama was right when he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen?"
I feel that you are right in your believing that we are not entitled to feel that we are solely responsible for our own success. We, individually, should act on the recognition that our success is largely due to factors beyond our control. However, this does not mean that President Obama is right. He concludes that those who succeed in our capitalist society should be required by law to give a more substantial part of their income to the federal government. I don't buy that! Feeling obligated by our faith to help humanity when we have the resources to do so is quite different from being legally obligated by law to give more in taxes. In other words, our obligations to God are quite distinct from our obligations to government.
Thanks for the comments. And while I can see a slight connection to the recent furor over President Obama's comments on small businesses, I didn't intend this post to be political. All faith stances have political consequences, I suppose, but I was talking about the all too regular failure to appreciate our indebtedness to God. We tend to live without appropriate gratitude to God and others, acting as though we are "free and independent agents." This strikes me as an equal opportunity problem, afflicting those on the right, the left, and everywhere in between.
Delete