David Ketchum
Our last reading this morning, from Tim Minear, was included, in part, as a gift for my 13 year old. It's from a TV show created by Joss Whedon that tells the story of a vampire with a soul who fights on behalf of the weakest and must vulnerable on earth and, sometimes, beyond earth. There's something wonderful about having a wisdom lesson that was initially spoken by a vampire who is, at turns, mopey and heroic and has a penchant for saving the world.
But I also chose it because it connects both with what makes life meaningful to us as human beings and how we make and sustain meaning in a world that is often overwhelming in its complexity, beauty, and cruelty. The sentiment that - "If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. Because that's all there is. ... Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world." (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512846/quotes ) - resonates very deeply with me, imbuing the ordinary acts of life with purpose, even in the face of my own extraordinary smallness, or the intractability of systemic injustice, or the vastness of time and space. As Loyal Rue put it, "any existential losses incurred by naturalizing religious meanings may be fully compensated by an acquired sense for the mystery and sanctity of nature itself." (Religion Is Not About God, 17)
Yet the sentiment doesn't exist by itself. When I read that "the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world" or consider the grandeur of "the mystery and sanctity of nature itself," what's happening inside of my brain is that I am remembering stories. And it's these remembered stories that make the meaning, that give me a context to understand that, because "nothing we do matters," "all that matters is what we do." My first lessons in ecological justice are embedded in the grief I felt when my cousins needlessly killed the garter snakes in my grandma's garden, or the joy I felt climbing a tree, swaying in the breeze under the moon. And even my first steps at learning to resist the horrors of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy came when, even as a child, I saw that the same people who hurt me were socially permitted to hate certain others on the basis of color or gender or sexuality or religion or class or ability, and that our suffering and our liberation were bound up together.
I remember what's happened to me, what's been shared by others, what's been sung and written. It's how I keep in touch with what is most wonderful and beautiful in life, to celebrate and be grateful. And when I get discouraged, when there's barely enough energy to do the bare minimum, I return to the memories and to the stories I've lived and heard to find the energy and insight I need to keep going. We do this a little bit, I think, automatically and haphazardly, but it's a skill we can also cultivate. bell hooks has written about something like it in her description of "collective black self-recovery" -
"Memory need not be a passive reflection, a nostalgic longing for things to be as they once were; it can function as a way of knowing and learning from the past, .... It can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery. ... We need to keep alive the memory of our struggles against racism so that we can concretely chart how far we have come and where we want to go, recalling those places, those times, those people that gave a sense of direction." (Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, 40)
And hooks is right to emphasize this, for all of us dreaming of and working for a community where everyone's voice can be heard and needs met. Because most of the time in most of our lives, we are hearing the stories told by those who stand to gain from injustice or who are simply so deeply enmeshed in our culture that they unintentionally but still powerfully repeat what they, and often we, have been socialized to learn. They tell us a tale that makes the current order of things sound, if not natural, then at least inevitable. They want us to believe that the way things are is the best they'll ever be, or that things are already getting better. They want us to believe that, if we'll only be patient and not agitate, not rock the boat, we'll keep progressing toward equality and liberation. They don't want us to
remember the stories, whether our own or those handed down to us. They don't want us to remember the hard and persistent work of those who dared to say "no" to injustice. But they do want us to remember our heroes as merely unique individuals, as exceptions, instead of remembering them in the context of the communities they belonged to and that came together to make a difference. They do want us to feel insignificant, powerless, overwhelmed, indifferent, resigned to the way things are. "We need to keep alive the memory of our struggles," wrote hooks, to know and learn from the past so that it "can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery."
And this is why doing things like studying the Bible is still important to me. These stories and poems are part of our history of "recalling those places, those times, those people that gave a sense of direction," and of refusing to stand idly by, whether we are reading the texts themselves or remembering how they've inspired and directed trouble makers and prophets through the centuries. Or, all too often, we learn how the message of justice and wholeness has been betrayed, reduced, destroyed by those in charge. Hermeneutics is not a nostalgic longing; it is a political act. Or, as Lerone Bennett put it, "An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor." (*in G. Pritchy Smith, "Relationship Among Knowledge Bases for Diversity" in Teacher Education,
Critical Pedagogy, Critical Inquiry, and Story, Storied Inquiries in International Landscapes: An Anthology of Educational Research, edited by Tonya Huber-Warring (Information Age Publishing: 2010), 7)
So in the lectionary readings for today, one of the scripture stories we are invited to remember is when Saul, soon to be Paul, had a change of heart. It's a familiar one: an evil man convinced he is doing good goes in search of more victims; something unexpected changes his mind; the evil man becomes a good man and takes up the side of his innocent victims; the good man spends the rest of his life advocating for a message of grace and justice. It's an exciting tale that begins with Saul on his way to Damascus to hunt down, as the text has it, "any who belonged to the Way, men or women". If you've been reading Acts through, you already know what Saul is capable of doing; you know that Saul doesn't just 'breathe threats,' but he follows through with arrests and murders. Just one chapter earlier,
the narrator tells us that, even while godly people were still in mourning for the death of a friend, Saul began to 'destroy the church.' In other words, Saul was so callous that he didn't even give his enemies the dignity or breathing space to grieve before he struck his next blow. Saul is sub-human, zealous and scary. So the stage is set. Our evil antagonist re-appears in the theater of the mind, and the crowd lets out a muffled chorus of boos and groans.
This set-up is important. You can imagine a very different story being told by those who found Saul's murderous acts virtuous. From that perspective, Saul would begin as a hero, a faithful champion of orthodoxy and conservative values. And the story would unfold as a tragedy, a betrayal with an inevitable and well-deserved bloody ending.
But the author of Acts isn't telling that story. Saul is our Bad Guy, and we know to be wary. We're meant to be surprised when things change, and even a little mistrustful - that's why there's a flashing light and a voice from heaven, to reassure us. The story-teller knows it's going to take something special to make us believe. So we have the disembodied voice of Jesus speaking from heaven, in those classic lines, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And Saul recognizes that this is not someone with whom to trifle, answering "Who are you, Lord?" And the voice says, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."
This has all the makings of a great story. Just at the edge of tragedy, as Saul nears Damascus with a heart full of malice and a head full of plans for persecution, there comes, literally out of nowhere, the intervention that brings a last minute rescue. Saul's companions are speechless, and Saul is made blind in a burst of light. Our friends are safe, our Bad Guy is incapacitated and this previously feared enemy is now helpless enough that he has to be led by the hand, and so overwhelmed that he stops eating and drinking. The ever-listening crowd in our minds, who knows not to rejoice in the misfortune of anyone, nevertheless stifles a cheer.
Now the narrator adds a new actor, a humble disciple in Damascus, one of the ones whom Saul would have presumably arrested. This disciple has a miraculous vision, too, telling him to go and help Saul. At this point, the story-teller expects all our minds to start screaming, "No! Don't go! It's a trap! That guy will kill you!" Our emotions are aroused. We're still gloating over the defeat our Bad Guy has suffered. We're not ready for mercy. And that's why, I think, neither is Ananias. We quickly identify with Ananias and let the fellow speak on our behalf. He talks back, politely, and says, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name."
And so we come, I think, to the point of the story. Because the ethereal answer is this: "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel...." This is the highlight, the climax of the story. Even when Ananias goes and restores Saul's sight and baptizes him, it has the feeling of a foregone conclusion. The real miracle here is that Saul has become Paul. And instead of persecuting the disciples in Damascus, he spends days with them and begins teaching in the synagogues.
Religions have been very good at preserving stories like this that help us make sense of our own lives and the astonishing cosmos in which we awake each morning. This is one of the reasons Rue could say that, often, "religious life is the sanctuary of existential meaning." I am fascinated by the questions that surround these stories, about why someone told these tales, and why other people thought they were important enough to keep telling, again and again, through generations. I'm also fascinated by how the same stories can be told in ways that produce very disparate results. Some of our meaning-making machines get wired up in very different ways, with neurological twists and turns that lead us to surprising, and not always wonderful, places. And we can become so delusional, so attached to those stories and beliefs, and so unaware of how they run our thinking and acting, that we, with all our wonderful potential, recede into the background. Instead of actors, we become mere scenery.
But in contrast with Rue's important and often true point, naturalizing religious texts and experiences isn't inevitably a "hostile act" that destroys meaning or undermines faith. In this case, Saul's conversion story, though fantastic, still feels very relevant. In a society in general and in an election year in particular where the sides are increasingly drawn in permanent ink, where the issues are polarized to the point that supporters of certain political candidates spontaneously and regularly attack courageous protestors, I hear the lure of the Good versus Evil plot line even more than I usually do. When, for example, I cast my vote in the primary election last month, the person in front of me asked for a Republican ballot. A tiny but very visceral part of my mind immediately played images of Trump and Rubio and Cruz and cried out, "Evil! This is a Bad Guy! Stay away! He's going to punch you and persecute you and your friends!" I read our biblical tale of Saul and Ananias while thinking about how people over thousands of years have had to wrestle with divisions, injustices, and violence. We want the world to be a beautiful place where everyone's voice is heard and needs are met, and we believe it is possible. But how does Saul become Paul? And, just as importantly, how did the people of Damascus come into right relationship with Paul?
We wrestle with these kinds of questions in our imaginations and in our realities. And to make sense of it, or to try to make sense of it, we tell stories. Which is probably what inspired Terry Pratchett to write that "The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise [person]'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee."
But the way Pratchett goes on in his many books of stories, you get the idea that there is more to this insight, or that this insight doesn't quite go far enough. For it is in the telling and re-telling of stories that wisdom has a chance. We need communities, and we need to support communities, who care about justice, who understand systems of oppression and domination, to take up the pen, the brush, the stage, the drum, the microphone. We need all manner of art to help us think about these questions and stumble
toward an answer. We need folk stories and historians. We need Role Playing Games. We need good friends and good conversations over cups of tea or on long walks. We need the singing of songs and the telling of tales.
We need to learn to listen, to interrogate our own complicity with the way things are, so that we can resist. We need to learn to tell our own stories, to find out how we got here and what we really think, so that we can understand and then resist the ways in which we've been conditioned into acting a part that often contributes to oppression and marginalization of others. We need to listen to the stories of others, so we learn we are not alone, and so we can understand how our stories and the systems of domination intersect, and so we can push the boundaries of our own understanding. We need to read outside what is familiar to us, especially to read and listen at the margins when we have become accustomed to seeing the world according to the Powers that Be. And we need to be reminded of
what's gone before us, to be proud and celebrate and to be sad and grieve. We need to learn what has worked, what hasn't worked, and why. In other words, we need to hear stories where we are Ananias, on the right side of justice and grace, discerning what to do next. And we need to hear the stories where we are Saul, in desperate need of a painful change.
Because in the hearing and telling of stories, Pan narrans has a chance to become Homo sapiens. In the hearing and telling of stories, wisdom can be born in us, in our communities and as a community. But we have to pay attention. We have to listen not just to the stories, but for what they mean and how they change us. We can choose the stories we hear and the stories we live with attention to what we care about, with attention to kindness, justice, and community.
I started with a line from the TV show Angel, and I'll wrap things up with some words from Angel's creator, Joss Whedon, when he was asked, "What is the world? What is existence? Why are we here? How can I, and us, feel more sane and purposeful in our own lives? And how do you represent that philosophy in your writing?" Whedon responded -
"The world is a random and meaningless, terrifying place and we all -- spoiler alert -- die. Most critters are designed not to know that, but we are designed [uniquely] to transcend that. To understand ... What we have right now and right here has as much meaning as anything we're afraid of. ... The main function of the human brain is storytelling. Memory is storytelling. ... And from the very beginning we're learning to tell a story about ourselves. ... We come here to celebrate exactly that: storytelling and the shared experience that it gives us, how we live with each other." (http://deadline.com/2015/07/joss-whedon-comic-con-dr-horrible-2-firefly-avengers-1201474472/ )
That's a pretty fair explanation of why I keep listening, keep remembering - whether these are stories of Jesus and Saul, or those of us gathered together in this room. I've only been part of the story of the Community Christian Church since last summer, and most of your own stories have only come to me in pieces along the way. But I want to listen and understand. And I am glad to add paragraph or page to the narrative of this community, perhaps in our ongoing tale of conversion, where together, in a city in which I have found it so difficult to live, we turn it around, offer kindness instead of hate, and justice instead of a tired resignation to the way things are.
Because, in the end, it turns out we don't need a voice from heaven. Our own, very earthly voices can call one another to a more beautiful and just and altogether wonderful way of life. Like Saul becoming Paul, if we can learn to listen rightly, we will know, as the storytellers put it, what we are to do and how we live with each other.
