8/10/22

One of my favorite Old Testament stories is of Elisha, his servant, and the army of the Syrians. After several defeats by the Israelite army, the Syrian king was told that whatever battle plans he whispered in private, Elisha the prophet proclaimed to Israel’s king. So the Syrian king sent his troops to capture Elisha. The image is almost comical: an aging, bald-head prophet and his young servant look out their front door to see hundreds of troops surrounding the house. The controlling story of the Syrians (and most anyone else looking at the scene) assured victory for the Syrians and doom for the man of God. But there’s another story at work. Elisha prays for God to open up his servant’s eyes, and the servant sees that while they might be surrounded by the Syrians, the Syrians are surrounded by the armies of God!

We are natural born storytellers, and storytelling is one way we make sense of life. We have overarching stories that shape the way we view life. When something major happens to us, we try to understand it by making it fit into the larger story. We all do this, but we rarely stop to think about it.

People in power, or people struggling to hold on to power, work hard to control the narrative. We certainly see it in politics on both sides of the aisle. A narrative is constructed [a polite way of saying “they make up a story”], and they stick with it. Whether or not it’s true doesn’t really matter. Everything that happens is interpreted by that story. This isn’t solely political, by the way; I’ve seen churches do the exact same thing. A pastor has a moral failure, or incompetent leadership leads to a congregation’s decline . . . what do you do? You make up a story. What matters is not the truth, but the story, and making sure that the people controlling the story look good. . . and woe to those who contradict the story!

Not having the right story can be dangerous. A friend of mine was recently told by her doctor to stop watching cable news because, even though she was a believer, she allowed the secular, political narrative to be her controlling story. Her sense of well-being hinged on who was in the White House and it was affecting her health. I had another friend (unfortunately not a believer) who became so obsessed with politics that her entire personality changed, and, I believe, her anger and intense hatred brought on her early death.

We have to be careful what stories we base our lives on! And we can’t just blithely accept whatever story Those In Charge hand us, nor can we live as if the only reality is the one shaped by the dominant political power.

To those living in the Roman Empire during New Testament times there seemed to be only one story; all the propaganda proclaimed “Caesar is Lord.” To the naked eye, that was obvious: Rome had the power, Rome had the money, Rome controlled the news media (the heralds in the town squares). Rome held all the cards, and Rome controlled the story.

But if you were to ask the apostle Paul what the controlling narrative for the church was, he’d say, “Jesus is Lord.” That was the earliest Christian creed and merely saying it was all that was necessary to get your head cut off or to have you be fed to the lions by Those In Charge.

To the outsider, Paul’s controlling story would seem ridiculous. The church at this time had little power and influence. The majority of churches were made up of women and slaves. On top of that, the average church had only around 25 members. Think about two of the greatest letters of the New Testament, Romans and Revelation. If all the believers to whom Paul wrote in Rome were put together in one room, there’d only be around 250, and that was about the same total number of believers that made up the seven churches to whom John wrote Revelation. That’s not a lot of people.

Yet the message of the New Testament is “Jesus is Lord'' despite the power and pomp of Rome. The message of Revelation to these tiny battered little churches is that one day the empire of Rome will be replaced with the New Jerusalem. And all that happened to these believers - famine, rising prices, earthquakes, grossly immoral emperors, mentally deficient emperors, unfair taxation, loss of jobs - ALL these things were to be experienced and interpreted within the narrative of “Jesus is Lord.”

So Paul wrote to the little bitty congregation of Colossae, a tiny group of people in an increasingly unimportant town:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

For them to grow as Christians, Paul needed this little church to understand the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ. Everything else in life is understood, judged, embraced or abandoned based on this central truth. This is the controlling narrative for this little congregation. . .maybe 25 people. Not very imposing by the world’s standards, but when we think of them as an outpost for the Kingdom of God and that the lordship of Christ is being worked out in them and through them, well . . . that’s a different story!!

So, how does this work for us in August of 2022? Let me give you one example. When we see the escalating prices (is there no end?), we could go with one of the secular narratives and either a) blame Putin or b) blame President Biden; OR we can plug it into our narrative of “Jesus is Lord,” recognize it as a symptom of living in a fallen world currently controlled by people who are missing the moral image of God and ask ourselves the more important question: how we can do the Kingdom’s work to help those crushed by the financial burden?

Sure, the rising cost of goods may be caused by Putin or Biden - or both (and however you understand it, vote accordingly), but, our response to it, as citizens of the Kingdom of God, as believers who live under the Lordship of Christ, is to ask ourselves what we can do to relieve the suffering of others. Sure, I will vote; I’ll be glad to discuss the issues with anyone. However, I will not let it affect my well-being, and I will do my best to respond as a Christian.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Can you think of other Christian responses to the challenges around us? Can you think of other ways our controlling narrative that Jesus Christ is Lord can shape the way we live in an increasingly lost and out-of-control world? Feel free to email me: terry.jackson558@gmail.com.

Blessings,
Pastor Terry