My friend, the Rev. Lauren McDonald, recently preached a sermon about the power of story. Facts and reasoned arguments seldom change minds or inspire action—but stories, told well, do. The Bible is full of stories that inform, inspire, and reveal truth. It would be just another storybook if that were all, but it is grounded in a deeper reality—one beyond human comprehension yet revealed through real events we can understand. These stories tell us who we are and who God is. They show how we live in relationship with one another and with God. They have shaped our past, help us navigate the present, and—if we choose—can guide us toward a better future.
Other stories, rooted in imagined realities, promise a better life through the dominance of powerful leaders. They offer dreams they cannot fulfill, inspire hopes that never bear fruit, and fabricate illusions of prosperity built on the suffering of the most vulnerable. The Bible is brutally honest by contrast. It pulls no punches in showing how easily people and nations are led down paths of disappointment and destruction.
We can do the same to ourselves and those around us when we let our lives be ruled by our own desires and devices, heedless of God’s call to a better way.
It’s easy to forget that the Bible is not one book, but a collection. The writings narrate the unveiling of God’s redeeming love—over two thousand years of engagement with the Israelites, and a mere three decades of the Christian era. They describe God’s persistent guidance toward lives of justice, peace, and love—visions difficult for people to live in to.
The culmination of God’s self-revelation comes in the stories of Jesus—his birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection. In them, he is made known as the Word of God made flesh. His voice is God’s voice. In him are life and truth. There is no higher authority, no alternative way. His is the way of redeeming, reconciling love for all—a love that invites but never coerces.
Yet even as this has been made known to us through real experiences of real people, it does not mean we fully understand it. Peter Gomes reminded us that while the Word may stay the same, our ability to understand it changes. We are shaped by the context in which we live, and that gives rise to two common mistakes. The first is assuming that the way someone understood the gospel a thousand years ago is exactly how we should understand it today. The second is believing that our current understanding is somehow sufficient to judge all that came before.
The biblical stories that revealed God’s word and our hope continue to open new ways of understanding in what it means to follow the way of love—to be disciples of Jesus Christ in our own time and place. We would be foolish to ignore the wisdom of the past or the transforming events of previous generations. But we would be equally foolish to believe we have now discovered, with finality, what it means to love God, self, and neighbor; to build up the kingdom of God in the lives of others; and to know fully what godly justice looks like.
We have much to learn and a long journey ahead. Future generations will judge us just as we have judged those who came before. Even Paul confessed he could only see the full picture “through a glass, darkly.” We are no different.
In the meantime, we are to struggle with the Bible and its stories, drawing inspiration to live more fully into God’s kingdom now. We trust in God’s grace, knowing that our place in the heavenly kingdom awaits. Let us not allow fear of the new to blind us to what God is saying anew. Let us be cautious not to let the demands of daily life cloud our vision. And let us not let complacency keep us from confronting the injustices and deprivations that afflict the least among us.