Our role in the Story - September 2

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 37:1-18; PM Psalm 37:19-42; 1 Kings 11:1-13; James 3:13-4:12; Mark 15:12-21

It wasn’t until I was twenty-four or twenty-five that I really began participating in the beautiful liturgies of Holy Week.  Until that point in my life, Church was pretty much the same thing every week.  While I did participate in Morning Prayer as a part of my Episcopal School education, I didn’t think of that as church as much as part of my educational experience.  In high school, I was very active in youth group and even as a youth minister, I begin to believe that it was the extra activities of the church that had the power to deepen people’s faith and transform lives.  If I could get people to Sunday School or EYC, or go on a youth trip, I was helping to deepen people’s faith.

Maybe this is true, but I certainly was lacking an appreciation for liturgy and the power of what happens in our nave when people gather for worship, especially the ritual of Holy Week.  That all changed one year on a Palm Sunday.  The church I attended had put together a passion narrative with about fifteen different roles.  As the story of Jesus’s crucifixion was told, people would stand up in the pews and read different parts of the story.  I recognized the person playing the role of Pilate as my neighbor, Bill, who lived behind my parents.  He walked to the front of the nave as one of the three people in the story with a lot of lines and asked the congregation what we were to do with Jesus.  Another woman a few feet away had stood up earlier and told part of the story right from her very seat.

What came next, was the most surprising.  Printed in bold were the words, “Crucify him!” and the liturgy invited all of those in the pews, to say the words just like we would say any other “Amen” after a prayer.  The church proclaimed the words, not once, but twice and I found myself saying the words louder than most prayers as I was swept up in the dramatic retelling.  The words came out much easier than I imagined.

Tears welled up as I began to realize my own role in this story.  No longer was the passion narrative a story that was just told before Easter, but a part of my own story, and it was me in the crowd, not just some innocent bystander, but caught up in the whole drama, along with everyone else, yelling for the crucifixion as we hear in Mark’s Gospel today. 

One of the challenges of reading Scripture is to begin to learn to see ourselves in the story.  The Bible is not just about events of the past, or how we understand God, but it is our own story of how God is a part of our lives today.  Sometimes this can be painful when we realize our own role in denying God and God’s goodness, and yet that same proximity to the story makes grace and reconciliation that much more meaningful.  God’s love on the cross is still, 2000 years later, what shapes our daily lives.

When you read Scripture, where do you see yourself in the story?  How can the daily practice of reading Scripture make the story your story?  And how can our worship, both on Sundays and throughout the seasons of the Church year, help you to see God’s story lived out in your own life?   The Bible is not a history book, it is how we engage with the Living God and that story is for you and me.

John+

Questions for Self-Reflection:  What liturgies of the church have been most meaningful to you?  Recall a time when a church service was especially meaningful and consider how it helped you grow in your understanding of God.

Daily Challenge:  Reread two of the readings for today.  I suggest James and Mark, and ask yourself two questions:  “Where I am in this story?”  “What am I to do, be, or change?”