Dear Friends in Christ,

If money or love “make the world go round, so, too, do stories.   Everybody loves a good story -whether it’s fictional, factual, or both.  Fictional stories are entertaining, and factual stories are interesting.  Both can enlighten and educate us.

In this post-enlightenment, “Dragnet-biased” kind of world (Remember Sgt. Joe Friday’s: “Just the facts ma’am”), we often favor facts over fiction.  But, both types of stories, fictional as well as non-fictional, can convey meaning and teach truth.   

The Bible is an example of this.  It’s more like a library filled with all kinds of writing than a book simply filled with facts, and it offers truths that give meaning and purpose to life and living across time and place. 

Some get hung up on this perspective, thinking that if Scripture’s not “factual,” it’s not true.  Do you?  

I don’t.  I take my cues from Jesus, who told stories, both fictional and factual, to teach truths about God and God’s purposes, vision, and hope for creation.  

We call Jesus’ fictional stories, parables. They’re simple stories meant to teach straight-forward truths about Jesus’ religious passion: ways of living into “God’s Kingdom.”  His teaching was his response to his prayer that God’s will be “done on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is to these stories that we’ll turn, this Fall, in our worship together.  

I also take my cues from scholars who analyze and interpret Scripture.  One of the best, Jesuit priest Dominc Crossan, describes Scripture this way, saying: “The Bible is God’s parable.”  This makes a lot of sense to me.  Does it make sense to you?  

If stories “make the world go round” and, thus, support and sustain our lives and living, then parables “make our faith go round,” and support and sustain our Christ-like living.  And, if a world “going round” is going places, then we, in Christ’s church with our faith, are going places, too – perhaps right into God’s Kingdom come down to earth!  Let’s keep worshipping God, listening to Jesus’ parables, and see!

Blessings of Living at the doorstep of God’s Kingdom,
Pastor Ed