“Truth about stories”

Luke 1:46-55

December 21, 2008
Advent 4 & Christmas

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
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And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

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Truth about stories.

“Truth about stories is that that’s all we are.”[i] That’s what Thomas King, a well known Canadian writer, says about stories. Who we are depends on what stories we live by and how we make meaning out of stories in our life.

Two sisters are remembering an event that happened over forty years ago.

“Remember the woman on the bus, Vera? The woman in the fur coat?” It was Christmas Eve in 1952. A sixteen year old and a six year old sisters are snuggled up against their mother on the backseat of a bus. They are Ukrainian refugee family recently arrived from Germany following the WW2. They remember a kind woman in a fur coat who leaned across the aisle and pressed sixpence into their mother’s hand saying, “for the kiddies at Christmas.” “Thank you, lady,” was what their mother said as she slipped it into her pocket.

The younger sister tells the older one, “It was that moment – more than anything that happened to me afterwards – that turned me into a lifelong socialist.” The older sister for whom conspicuous displays of her consumption has become a part of her life, replies to her sister, after a long silence, “Maybe it was what turned me into the woman in the fur coat.”[ii]

Truth about stories is that that’s all we are. How we experience and what lessons we learn from each event shape and mould our identity. Stories influence the way we see and experience our surroundings. Stories shape our lives. Stories inform us of who we are and how we are related to others – as friends or foes, neighbours or strangers, as part of us or them. Stories reflect the kind of values and principles we hold as truth as individuals and as part of the whole.

One of the dominant themes in stories permeating in the lives of Mary and her contemporaries was that of the power and domination. After all, she grew up and was living under a Roman military occupation. She lived in a land where displays of military might and abusive physical and mental brutality were the norm.

The rich and the powerful were known to be the ones God blessed. They have every right to be proud to be in the company of God. They were the exalted ones whose will was the will of their society. They were the ones who deserved to fill themselves with good things while many in their society were sent away empty.

More is good. Big is better. The message that might was right was the prevalent message of Mary’s time. God was in the business of blessing the rich and the powerful. The poor and the powerless were invisible even to God. The truth about those stories was that that’s all Mary was – poor, powerless, and pregnant before she was married, a morally “defiled” girl who was a social and a religious outcast – one of those insignificant undeserving and forgotten by God.

Some things don’t change. Wall Street bankers gave themselves exorbitant salaries and bonuses even after the stock market meltdown. “Because we can” was the message of their actions. More is good. Big is better. Excess is the name of the game. Three CEO’s of the largest auto companies flew private jets to Washington, D.C. to beg for billions of dollars in loans. “Because we deserve it.” A sense of self importance and entitlement seem to permeate amongst those three who led their companies into utter disaster. It seems that North American society is divided into two categories – those who get rescued by the government and those who do not. Might continues to be right even in economic recession.

Closer to home, signs and bright lights on the billboards around the city continue to feed the insatiable appetite for consumption. More is good. Big is better. Keep the economy afloat with the myth of “retail therapy” and needing the latest model. Power and domination – the message Mary and her contemporaries heard more than two thousand years ago – continues to perpetuate as a dominant story.

There is a prevailing sense of uncertainty and fear as we experience this severe economic crisis. We hear about people losing jobs as many companies are shutting down or reducing the number of employees due to the down turn in economy. People are asking: How will this crisis affect me? What does this mean for my family? What would happen to my retirement savings and to the value of my home? Do I have enough saved for my children’s education? It’s not supposed to happen this way.

If we are experiencing this much uncertainty and fear in North America, how is the rest of God’s people, especially those in the so called “developing” countries, experiencing this economic crisis?

Our lives are connected to all lives everywhere. Donations to charity organizations are drying up while needs are escalating. Shelves in many of the drop in centres in Toronto are sparse. The Mission and Service Fund of the United Church is behind its target. Our Friday lunches at KRU are packed with folks looking for a meal and warmth.

What stories do we hear as we wait for the day of the birth of the Christ Child? What stories are we telling one another in this season of hope in Christ as we experience the economic downturn in our society? What stories could we dare to imagine in this bleak winter? How do you hope for a better tomorrow when you are feeling so vulnerable and overwhelmed with so much uncertainty?

According to the Gospel writer Luke, something radical happened when Mary was visiting her cousin Elizabeth who was also pregnant. In her encounter with Elizabeth, Mary began to imagine a world that was fundamentally different than the world she was part of. Mary remembered another dominant theme of the stories that had shaped her life – stories of hope and resistance against power and domination. She remembered Hannah’s song. She remembered how Hannah, who was too old to have a child, was blessed by God and had Samuel. She remembered how God’s mercy made the impossible possible for Hannah. And Mary’s love for her child in her womb turned her to envision a world where the lowly, those like her and her child, could experience God’s mercy. She dreamt of a different world where people like her and her neighbours would no longer be sent away empty.

She imagined a society where the priority was to provide things to those who were in need. She imagined a society where justice would mean moving beyond equal share for all or equal pay for equal work. Mary’s imagination was much more radical than that. She imagined a “needs-based” economy which focuses on filling the needs of the “have nots” rather than a “wants-based” economy which focuses on the wants of the “haves” and “have nots.” She imagined a political system which would go beyond Capitalism, Socialism or Communism. She imagined a society where those who have would refrain from acquiring any more than what they need, and those who do not have enough would be provided for what they need.

God’s mercy, Mary proclaims, is much more radical and drastic than humanity can ever imagine. It is God’s mercy that will save humanity, not the excessive desire for wealth and power.

And yet, we continue to hold and perpetuate the stories focused on the merits of power and domination over our neighbours and God’s creation as the central stories to live by within our individual selves and within our society. We continue to have difficulty imagining, never mind accepting, the good news that Mary heard. We may be able to imagine a notion of equal share or equal distribution of goods but not to the extent of Mary’s vision. Mary’s story of God’s mercy and blessing envisioned in her song continues to challenge us.

Would it be possible to imagine us being part of a society where men and women working in the assembly lines in the auto industry get paid six figure salaries because they do not have enough? Could we imagine a society where senior auto industry executives are compensated a minimum wage since they already have enough? What holds us from imagining such a possibility?

Would it be possible for those of us living in North America to radically decrease our consumptions of water, gas, and electricity amongst other things – and share our natural resources with citizens of countries who do not have clean water to drink and fuel to cook with? Could we share our savings with those who are living in abject poverty and barely surviving without much hope? What holds us from envisioning such a possibility?

Would it be possible for us to convert our church building into a low income housing for the homeless and gather at a school cafeteria or at a school gym for worship on Sunday? What holds us from thinking about it as a possibility? Would it be possible to dream the undreamed dream of God along with Mary?

The Nigerian storyteller, Ben Okri says,

“We live by stories; we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we can change our lives.”[iii]

We can change our life by changing the stories we live by. The quality and the content of our life and our relationship with our neighbours and the rest of God’s creation will change when we no longer take the stories focusing on the power and might as the stories we live by. The quality and the content of our life and our relationship with our neighbours and the rest of God’s creation will change when we begin to take stories of hope and resistance against power and domination as stories we live by.

Mary changed the stories she lived by as she dreamt of a better future for her child. Like any mother would, she envisioned a future where her child would be blessed and embraced by God and God’s people, open to new and limitless possibilities.

Truth about stories, indeed, is – that that’s all we are. Stories shape and reshape us. Stories inform, reform and transform us. Which stories we choose to tell and which stories we continue to tell informs us of our values. We struggle with the prevalent stories that continue to dominate our imagination – that more is always good and that less is always bad.

How do we participate in such drastic changes of imagination when we ourselves are feeling so insignificant? By changing one small story at a time.

Every evening a woman heard her neighbour’s baby girl crying through the thin walls of the apartment next to hers. She realized that the baby’s parents put the child to sleep alone in the dark. Every night the baby cried for a long time while her parents watched TV. The woman heard anguish and loneliness in the baby’s crying. What could she do? She wondered. Speaking to the baby’s parents might make things worse. Then, she came up with an idea. Just as she could hear the baby, the baby could hear her. She decided to sing. Every evening when the baby cried alone in the dark, the neighbour sang sweet lullabies, talked to the baby through the thin walls, consoled and comforted her. The baby heard the invisible voice of love, stopped crying, and peacefully fell asleep.[iv]

It is small gestures of love shared with people around us that changes, heals and saves us.

This voice of warmth and compassion is what the shepherds and Mary heard. This comforting voice, telling us of God’s remembering of each one of us, is what we hear through Mary’s Song. These lullabies of love are what we are called to continue to share with those we encounter in our life, those who are crying out in loneliness.

This is the message of Christmas – that God so loves the world that God continues to sing lullabies of hope, mercy and compassion through the prophets like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, like the younger sister on the bus. God’s lullabies continue to be sung to those who are meek and vulnerable.

Richard Wagamese, a writer and a newspaper columnist, shares in his autobiography, One Native Life. “Stories are meant to heal. That’s what my people say, and it’s what I believe. Culling these stories has taken me a long way down the healing path from the trauma I carried.”[v] “Everyone has a story. That’s what the circle teaches us. We become better people, a better species,” Wagamese says, “when we take the time to hear them. That’s how you change the world, really. One story, one voice at a time.”[vi]

May we continue to hear God’s lullabies of hope. May we continue to sing God’s lullabies of mercy, hope and compassion even to those we do not know. May we live the message of the Christmas story in all the songs of our lives, songs of good news of great joy for all people.

Amen.

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[i] Thomas King, The truth about stories: a native narrative (Toronto: Dead Dog Café Productions Inc. and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2003), 2 - 9.
[ii] Marina Lewyck, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 220-1.
[iii] King, The truth about stories, 153.
[iv] Piero Ferrucci, translated by Vivien Reid Ferrucci, The power of kindness: the unexpected benefit of leading a compassionate life, (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2007), 28-9.
[v] Richard Wagamese, One Native Life (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 2008), 4.
[vi] Wagamese, One Native Life, 203.