Evolving The Tales And The Tunes

Genesis 2  Mark 9:38-50

Personally, I was always more of a Rolling Stones fan myself, but the other week they had a whole evening of Beatles music on BBC4 to coincide with the re releasing of all their albums on digitally remastered CD’s.

And I realised how much all those songs meant to me. The extent to which they have become a background  accompaniment to my life. I used to think “Please Please Me – O yeah” and “She loves You” were just tuppeny ha’penny ditties, soon over and soon forgotten – but the years have evolved them into a stature beyond themselves.

I am one of those people who always has a tune on his brain. I wake up in the morning and a song comes straight into my head. I sing it in the shower,  whistle it around the house and down Ridgeway Road, and usually, and strangely, the tune that comes to mind has something to do with what I’ve been up to. The songs evolve into a meaning way beyond themselves.

And it’s the same with bible stories. The tales  Jesus told and the things he did circle round and round in my brain. Not because they are sweet and comforting, but rather that I find them increasingly unsettling and challenging. If you’ve listened to a few of my sermons, you’ll know the ones that spin round most frequently. Water into wine at Cana. The paralysed man beside the pool of Bethsaida. Feeding of the five thousand, prodigal son, road to Emmaus. They spin around in my head and take me to places I never dreamed of.

Maybe I’m sitting in a meeting. Maybe I’m having a chat with you. A song will often come to mind or maybe a bible story and like as not it will make sense to the moment – at least for me.

A ministry that weaves its way through tunes and tales and since I’ve been at St Matthew’s – it’s getting a great deal worse.

During the Summer, I felt as if I was being given a right old dressing down. By that man Richard Dawkins. I wish I’d kept the article – but he was saying something like. There are Vicars who when they preach about Adam and Eve give the impression they believe it’s all true, but if you talk to them  privately, they will say they don’t really believe it at all. These Vicars are dishonest hypocrites.

Now, I hope it will come as no surprise to you that I am not a creationist, and that it seems perfectly reasonable to me that we can hold together the theories of evolution with a biblical understanding of faith. I would also say that if you were to travel back in time you would probably not come to a place where two human beings called Adam and Eve would be found cavorting about in a garden.

Yet in all the tales and the tunes of my life – the Garden of Eden is another  place I frequently go to, and I will drag those who will listen, all the way back there with me. So the problem with Dawkins is, that he will not let his commitment to evolution go far enough. He will apply it to the natural world, to science,  but cannot extend the same ideas into theology. Even the possibility of the evolution of people touched by a power way beyond themselves through the media of tunes and tales, seems to be beneath contempt to him.

For me, Adam and Eve goes a bit like this! The people of Israel had reached a point, maybe it was when they came to the promised land and started building places to worship in,  maybe it was later when they were in exile and were missing all their trapping of worship,  but somewhere they reached a point where they realised God was everything to them.

That he was one almighty being to whom they were indebted for everything that was good. And they wanted to state that fact and celebrate that fact because it marked them out as different from everyone else.  They also realised that God’s perfect world had been marred by their own wrong choices, and they wanted to confess that and own up to it.

So they took the tales and the tunes that had been circulating for generations round camp fires and kitchen tables, they looked at the way alien cultures had built up stories about their lesser God’s and they allowed their own life’s experience to work upon that, and they allowed the Holy Spirit of God to work upon that – and the story of creation, the tale of Adam and Eve evolved, and it can evolve some more if people of faith will take the stories seriously and let them touch them.

I could preach to you for a year, sitting on a bench in Eden, I really could. You can find almost every Christian them amongst its trees and pathways. The glory of God. The way he yearns for intimate love with us. The way he want s the best for us.  The way true freedom has to be hedged with obedience and discipline. Temptations. Wrong Choices. Wrong voices. Trees and crosses. Rivers and baptisms. Ashamed to discover our nakedness. Hiding from God or turning to God. Take those themes. Take your life, and let the Spirit evolve its meaning for you and lead you closer to Him.

That’s the problem I have with Christmas. I love to go to Bethlehem. Again that stable is a place where I find all sorts of tunes and tales evolving. But we have tragically tamed that story into a sweet little thing and often our worship to those who come once a year – just propounds that.

“I don’t understand “ said a sixth former to me once “Why you’d want to spend your life telling a story that’s got about as much meaning as the tooth fairy”.

People are missing the point because we have become so ineffective at bringing the tunes and the tales to life.

 For me, the joy of Christmas is that God became man for us, the wonder of the incarnation is unfolded for us. Bethlehem only makes sense in the context of living that out. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that’s what the scripture writers want to say to us – and in the nativity stories they throw everything they can at us, to get us to see that it is true. The depth is in the meaning – not just the reading out of chapter and verse. The depth of the meaning is how you take the story and let it evolve in you, by His Spirit.

Someone once said to me that evangelism is where the story of God touches with the story of your life and that touches with the story of the person you are talking to.

I’m sure Dawkins would find a way to knock these thoughts down. He would probably say, I was verging on the edge of lunacy. But then, how do you feel about it all. For I’m asking that we embrace such a dynamic approach to faith that it will come leaping out of our bibles as tales and tunes that will never let us go. Wild and untamed. Chaotic and open ended.

I must then just turn to this morning’s Gospel reading. Dawkins would point the finger at that passage as say it was typical of the mumbo jumbo people like me espouse.  Cutting off your hand or your foot if they cause you to sin Where’s the loving God in that?

To me Jesus is saying – so you say you’re a disciple – will you give your all in that – or will you hold back when it starts to bite, when it begins to hurt, when it threatens the view you want of yourself that’s nice and comfortable. Those things which prevent you from following – recognise they are and rubbish and get them down to the dump.

There’s a back catalogue and its being re-released. Tales and tunes from Genesis to Revelation. You might have thought some of them were throw away little verses. Ever so sweet, but dreadfully dated.  See what they mean afresh every day, shaped by your evolving life and the spirit which blows where it wills.

RH 27.9.09