ENTER INTO THE STORY, THE WATER, AND THE INCARNATION
No storyteller worth his or her salt, from Jesus of Nazareth to the Bard of Avon to Toni Morrison to Tom Waits, will ever give a direct, cocksure, unambiguous answer to the question, “What does the story mean?” Or “What does the parable mean?” Or the song?
I suspect if novelist Gabriel García Márquez had been asked by someone what’s 100 Years of Solitude about, that he might well have replied, “Do you have a week?” and then proceeded to read “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” I have a feeling if someone asked Don McClean “What does your song ‘American Pie’ mean?” that he would grab his guitar and say, “What does it mean? It means this: ‘A long long time ago/ I can still remember how/ That music used to make me smile/ And I knew if I had my chance / That I could make those people dance/ And maybe they’d be happy for a while” and he’d keep on singing to the last verses “Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye/ Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die.” The meaning of the story is the story itself. It’s discovered in the action of the story not in some mono-lesson external to it.
The words “The moral of the story is . . .” are rarely if ever in the lexicon of a good storyteller any more than a moral is an effective means of grace. No. Storytellers are not moralists. This is why, even without the scholar’s form criticism, we know that Jesus wouldn’t tell the parable of the sower and then insult his listener’s – some of whom no doubt were farmers – by saying “The sower is God. The seed stands for God’s word . . . and the hard ground represents . . .” It would have insulted his listeners then just as it belittles the intelligence of the listeners today. It is just like redactors to limit the meaning of Jesus’ story. But like all good stories, the story Jesus told isn’t told to make a single point. Jesus didn’t give lectures or make stump speeches. And when he retold a story or a parable as all lovers of stories do, it was to invite the listener into the story.
Just as in the spiritual practice of lectio divina (a prayerful rumination on a word, phrase, or sentence from a scripture passage) the point is not to arrive at some exegetically correct analysis or intellectual interpretation or moral lesson external to the story. The purpose or end toward which lectio moves us is not a matter of breaking open the word like the biblical scholar, but rather of being broken open by the word as amateur story-listeners. Religious historian Karen Armstrong has described herself as an amateur theologian. But by that she does not mean “second-rate.” She reminds us that the word amateur comes from the Latin word for love. In Latin amātor means lover. An amateur is a person who is in love with one’s subject.
Avid, attentive, open, and intentionally susceptible story-listeners are lovers of stories. As such, we are participants not merely spectators. As we listen we hope to be drawn into the story, to live in the story, to be open to what in the story moves us, breaks us open like a piñata, makes us feel something way down inside, deep sympathy maybe or heartbrokenness or happiness for one of the characters. In this way stories have the capacity to reveal something to us, to re-connect us to something that happened to us once upon a time, a time when we were just hanging on, or all alone, or maybe a time when laughter and pain, or sorrow and quiet joy, were respectively and inexplicably connected in us like conjoined twins who, if they ever had a vote, would never choose to be separated. Or maybe the story brings us clarity, opens up for us a new way to go, to grow, to give.
A few weeks ago I said that one of the reasons I love the seasons of Advent and Christmas is because of the stories. It’s a litany of familiar stories about familiar characters through December into January. A story of a messenger bearing unbelievable news, a story of an unexpected pregnancy and radical trust and fidelity, a story of a lodestar loaded with hope and light, a story of a long arduous journey and then finding no suitable place to stay at the end of it which they soon learned was not the end but only another beginning, a story of birthing and shepherds and animals and angels and a heavenly gospel choir singing of God’s glory and wishing the earth peace, and wise men from the east bearing gifts all coming to visit the newborn that some whispered was a royal child, a prince of peace, a light to the nations, then a story of danger and violence of power and the power of violence and bloodshed and wailing and the grinding of teeth, and a story of escape to new life.
And shot through all these linked stories is the action of grace, the action of God, the story of Emmanuel, incarnation, God-with-us. A story too good to be true and too true not to be good, at once a comedy, tragedy, and fairy-tale as wise and witty wordsmith Frederick Buechner puts it, a story of birth and death, a story that is filled with hope for some, for others challenge or indictment if they have the guts and ears to hear and the eyes to see. And yet, for still others it is a story of reassurance, solidarity, a story about them and the only kind of God that has any street cred with those who are well acquainted with grief and the desecration of violence and exploitation and cuddle up each night next to suffering or shame or brokenness inflicted on them.
Like any and all mysteries, like the magi who bring not one but three gifts and maybe more, these stories that are part of the larger story of the incarnation, and the incarnation itself, bear not one meaning, not one message, not one point, but rather hold many meanings, offer many truths, radiate many showings, make many connections, raise many questions, illuminate many things, and keep many people alive for many different reasons.
Protestant theologian John MacQuarrie once gave the best definition of baptism that I have ever heard. It bears significance for how we understand the mystery of the incarnation. When someone asked him, “What is the meaning of baptism?” he replied simply, “Baptism means everything that water means.” Water doesn’t have one meaning any more than does baptism or the incarnation or Christmas or Epiphany and the stories affiliated with them. Water is refreshing on a hot summer day. It quenches thirst. It hydrates the body. It is necessary for life. It is responsible for death. It keeps us alive. It drowns. It is a means of transportation. Just ask Huck and Jim. It is playful and dangerous as any surfer or sailor or river rafter knows. It is playful and squeal inducing as any child knows who has run through the spray of a backyard sprinkler or a neighborhood fire hydrant or jumped into a cold pond in winter. It cleans us up pretty fine, too, relaxes the body, wrinkles fingers and toes when hot or warm.
Sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill once remarked “You took a mystery and measured it.” Mystery, and the mystery of the incarnation in particular, is a lot like water. We don’t measure it, we enter into it. Whether tentatively toe by toe or by jumping in head-first, we go in to the mystery. We get wet.
What we can agree on is that water is wet. What it means is experienced in the action of water. What we can agree on is that the Hebrew word Emmanuel means God-is-with-us. What it means is experienced in the action of divine kenosis,1 divine solidarity, the incarnation of love as embodied and expressed in Jesus and that action is experienced differently by Joseph and Miryam of Nazareth than it is experienced by Herod or the shepherds or the augurs from the east, just as it is experienced differently and holds unique meanings and revelations and implications for the young pregnant woman in the hospital suffering from hyperemesis, the ninety-two-year-old woman living in a deteriorating body, the poor refugees who lived in poverty and fear of harm and now live behind chain linked fences, the suburban teenager hooked on heroin, the man diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the soldier home from war but not really home, the CEO who realizes he has invested his life in the wrong things, the unemployed, the drifter and driven, the recent college grad, the hungry and hurting and homeless on our streets who are not litter but images of God, and by the earth itself and her other-than-human creatures who yearn to flourish.
The incarnation means something different, points to something singular each one needs to hear or see, offers something unique, gives something for each one to move inside of or to hold on to or to lean against or journey toward.
And for each one who listens or dares to listen, for each one who sees or dares to see, these stories and the radical and ridiculous action of God implicate us in some significant way. Like the wise men coming from the east who are overwhelmed with joy at the sight of the child before whom they kneel down and pay homage and then choose to disregard Herod’s directive and instead go home by another way and like baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph who, after Joseph has a dream in which it is revealed they must flee to Egypt, take another road home as well, we too must listen for those implications and live into the mystery and meaning of it all.
We must dare to ask and listen for how it involves us, how or where we are called, what path are we to take home, and how are we to enflesh the divine in this place and in this time? Will we measure the incarnation, limit its mystery and meaning? Or will we jump in and get wet.
1 Kenosis, Greek meaning self-emptying.