Fr Simon Sleeman OSB
Sometimes I wonder about God. Especially on days like this. Maybe you do too. I wonder about the risk God took using words, language, and story, to tell us his truth. Words can be so ambiguous and stories unclear.
He could have given us a cosmic fireworks display.
He could have used math, hard data, information, facts, geometry, algebra. Maths is the most precise, unambiguous language we have – you can dismiss stories as kids stuff, but your sum is either right or wrong.
But No…God revealed himself through story and who am I to question the Holy Spirit’s genre of choice.
The truth is, that we are not a collection of facts or an assemblage of data – we are storied people; there is a narrative structure to our lives – a beginning, middle and an end, characters, plot.
And here we are Sunday after Sunday, getting you to dress up, asking you to sit on those hard benches, and do our best to tell you the story of God – creator of the universe. The greatest, vastest story ever told. The truth is, we probably don’t tell it very well or don’t even get it ourselves.
If a story is working well, it get’s you into it…..doesn’t it? You are right in there…in a good novel or murder mystery, turning the pages when you should be turning out the light and going to sleep…
And here is the very weird thing that I have learnt preparing this sermon – God wants us in his story…and he has written the bestselling story of all time to get us into – 73 books with a huge cast of characters and many plots – and with a beginning, a middle and the End.
Prophets.. major and minor
Gospels and letters
Parables and prophets
Psalms and prayers..
Not even Agatha Christie, with her 74 books or Shakespeare, have sold as many.
The truth is… God is not interested in us knowing the right things or doing the right things – he doesn’t want to be reduced to a nice idea or fine theology, or us tipping our hats to him at the weekend. He doesn’t want us on the side line, spectators at the match – he wants us on the field and for the full match.
He desperately wants us in his story – a love story.
So we can choose.
We can opt into God’s story, like Abraham, take the plunge, let go of control, watching for the hints and nudges in the unfolding chapters of a life with God.
We may opt out, go my own way – prefer the facts, the data, fold my life into a neat bundle of me… Give me the GPS co-ordinates if I am to go anywhere and enough food. Stick with geometry, algebra…
God’s story – a huge, vast love story.
He speaks…… revealing himself,
‘I love you’ he says.
You say, ‘Yes’ …and the plot thickens.
My story – small and cramped.
Facts, data, information. The plot weakens.
I speak
but how will I ever manage to say …‘I love you’…in algebra.