Mark 5:21-43; John 21:20-25; Mark 8:22-29
Today's Vision4Life service is focussing on our remembering Jesus. In conversation recently, some people at St Andrew's have been telling me they don't really feel they know much about their faith, so it would be hard to share it with other people. I know about Jesus, somebody said, but I don't have much idea about God - and others nodded. Now when we had this conversation there wasn't much time to tease out what they meant, but when they said, I know about Jesus, I rather suspect they didn't mean, I've read everything Calvin wrote about Jesus, I know the creeds inside out and back to front, but rather, I know stories about Jesus, stories I was told at Sunday school, and they have stayed with me all these years, but I don't know all the Bible references for them, let alone all the jargon words, and there are lots of big questions about God I'd have no chance of answering if someone were to ask me.
The good news is, as I hope we've just discovered, that if we know the Bible stories about Jesus, we know much more about him, and therefore about God, than we may think. For stories tell us about people. If you want to describe one person to another, one of the best ways to do it is to tell a story about them. For example, recently Sheila Dunstan and I were remembering Jean Burden, who died this year. Sheila was telling me how Jean told her off roundly when Sheila didn't want pigeons taking over her birdtable. They're all God's creatures, Sheila! she said. And that was Jean in a nutshell: concerned for all creation, and feisty enough to challenge her friends on behaviour she thought wasn't right.
But stories don't just have the power to tell us about people, they can tell us about God, too - we know that because Jesus told us about God and God's kingdom by telling us stories of everyday life, about women putting yeast into dough, and farmers trying to sort out weeds from wheat. And because they are good stories, we can go on retelling his tales ourselves.
Just this last Friday morning, when I was at the Broomhall Breakfast, where you get the best breakfast conversation in town - just ask Ann Cathels if you don't believe me - I was catching up with a young Ukrainian man who visits us from time to time and reads the books on our bookstall to help his English. From a casual enquiry about how he was getting on, I heard he was going back home in the autumn. He felt that he had made a mess of things, that he had let drink spoil his life, that he had to take responsibility for everything that had gone wrong and start over again at home. And I found myself saying, That reminds me of a story Jesus used to tell, about a man whose son wanted all his inheritance now, went off and wasted it, and then saw what he was doing to himself and decided to face the music and go home, where his father welcomed him with open arms. Do you know that story?
Yes, he smiled, he knew the story - as many people do, even in society today. And I hope that remembering that story will have reminded him that God's forgiveness is always there when we realise we've gone wrong and decide to turn away from our mistakes and start over again.
Just finding out about that one story of Jesus can speak powerfully about the possibility of forgiveness to someone who thinks they've made such a bad job of their life that God couldn't possibly want to know them. And I'd be very surprised indeed if you here today only knew one story Jesus told, or one story about Jesus. I suspect you don't realise till you start to think about it how many you know. How did it feel to remember the stories you had clues for on your postcards? How did it feel to retell them? Did it feel frightening, because you didn't have exactly the words as they're written down in the Gospels? Did it feel perplexing, because you didn't know quite what story was behind my hint? By the way, if anyone is still stumped by their phrase, do come to me afterwards and show me. Or did some of them remind you of a story that has supported or challenged you in the course of your own life?
For the stories of the Gospels are interwoven with our life-stories. The names for Jesus you have found most memorable and meaningful, the ones which finish your postcard sentences, may well have something to do with the experiences of your own life. After all, that was how the Gospel stories we have now were chosen, because they rang a bell with the first Christians, trying to make sense of their lives as people of a minority faith living in a multicultural society. As they tried to live their Christian lives, they remembered Jesus' stories and passed them on to one another and to others beyond the faith, because they held important truths about God they didn't want to forget. And you too have these treasures in your memories!
So I encourage you to be generous with your memories of Jesus' stories. Let's share with one another those that mean the most to us. And let's pass them on to others whose lives could be encouraged or transformed if they knew the stories we do. As Christians we believe that what we know of Jesus, we also know of God. So when we remember a story of Jesus, and ponder on what it means, we are reflecting theologically on our God. And when we share one of those stories with others, without a word of theological jargon, we are sharing our faith in God and what it means to us.