[Below is a sermon I preached this past Sunday – which happened to be a focus on Youth Ministry here at Asbury UMC during our Stewardship season. The Psalm from the Lectionary lent itself to the theme of “storytelling” – so I went that direction. The text was Psalm 78.1-7.]
1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
3 things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
5 He established a decree in Jacob,
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach to their children;
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and rise up and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God,
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
I don’t know about the rest of you, but last Tuesday evening, at about 8.01pm, I felt like breathing a deep sigh of relief…The election season was finally over. While I was invested in the issues and certainly have my own set of feelings and emotions about how everything turned out, I’m really glad that the Presidential election is finally over. Throughout the past few months, we’ve heard SO many stories – from the story of Barack Obama and his family background, to the stories of John McCain’s commitment to the military and to this country and so many more. And regardless of how you feel about the outcome, we all will remember and be able to tell our children where we were when the United States elected its first African-American President. This race has been FILLED with stories.
I’ve spent the past few weekends with some good friends from college. Two weeks ago one of my closest college friends came out to visit Sarah and me here in Livermore, and last weekend, Sarah and I were in Chicago at a conference, and we stayed with another close college friend of mine. One thing I notice when old friends get together is that we often spend a lot of time telling stories. And while Sarah might disagree, at least for me, telling the same stories over and over again never gets old. There are a few stories with these friends that always seem to come up whenever we’re together – because there is such meaning and memories behind these stories, we enjoy reliving these moments through the stories.
The same might be true for many of you and close friends or during family get-togethers. Every family has that one story that always gets brought up at Thanksgiving or Christmas – perhaps because it embarrasses one member of the family, or because it’s just one of those moments when the entire family begins to roar with laughter.
For whatever the reasons – stories are powerful. While the power of stories is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s culture – this isn’t a “new†thing. Cultures throughout the history of the world have used stories, myths and urban legends to communicate meaning, morals and truths.
Stories were also important and crucial to the survival of the Israelite people – as their culture was primarily an oral culture. However, because faithful men and women passed down stories from generation to generation, today we have the wonderful stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. Not only stories, but also the beautiful poetry that exists in the Psalms, like we have heard today. Now, I have never preached using a Psalm as my primary text before, but this morning’s Psalm seemed a natural choice as I was thinking about this Sunday having a focus on Youth Ministry amidst our month of Stewardship.
“We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and God’s might and the wonders that God has done.â€
This morning we heard just the beginning of the second longest Psalm – next to Psalm 119. Psalm 78 is basically a history lesson for the people of Israel – as you can tell from the subtitle of the Psalm: “God’s Goodness and Israel’s Ingratitude.â€Â Not really what Israel probably wants to hear, but they needed to be reminded often of God’s goodness and the ways in which God had been working in their lives. This Psalm basically works through the history of the Israelites and gives them many stories they can continue to pass down from generation to generation. This was the way in which they handed on their faith – by telling these stories. They had a culture of memory – memory that was cultivated by the telling and retelling of these stories of faith – and stories of un-faith. But the focus was on God and the ways in which God was at work in their lives.
One of my favorite lines in this Psalm is when the Psalmist writes, “I will utter dark sayings from of old…†The phrase “dark sayings of old†basically means riddles. So, here is this Psalmist saying that we must share these riddles, these parts of the story of God that we really don’t understand…but we don’t hide them from our children, we pass them on, and we trust that somehow, God is at work in those sayings and in the other parts of God’s story that we just don’t get.
“We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and God’s might and the wonders that God has done.â€
So what does this Psalm have to do with youth ministry?
Everything – I think, I hope. There are many different philosophies about youth ministry – the ways you should organize your ministry program, the kinds of things you should focus on, the type of atmosphere you should try to create in your ministry. But in the end – it’s not about the program. It’s not about how many youth show up for a lock-in, it’s not about the fun & games. Sure, these might be components of a youth ministry program, but in the end – we want the youth of our church to know the “glorious deeds of the Lord and the wonders that God has done.â€
That is done in a variety of ways, but probably most effectively through the continuing tradition of storytelling. The author of the Psalm for today proclaimed the importance of passing on the teachings and stories of their people to their children. The Psalmist says that we cannot hide these stories and that it’s important for children to hear these stories “so that they should set their hope in God, not forget the works of God and keep God’s commandments.†We continue to tell stories for many reasons…
We tell stories because we are forgetful. Much like the Israelites as they wandered throughout the desert on their way to the promised land…we find ourselves forgetful. We don’t remember the amazing ways in which God brought us through the Red Seas of our own lives. We need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness.
We tell stories because it is through the stories that we cultivate our faith. We learn about the faith – and faults – of great characters in the story of Scripture. We see the many ways in which God worked through the lives of so many people throughout Scripture – and we hold onto the hope that God can work in our lives in similar ways – and that deepens our faith.
We tell stories in order to find out where we fit into God’s story. Each and every one of us has our own personal story – no one’s story is the same, and that is part of what makes up this amazing thing we call the body of Christ. And while we each have an individual story that has meaning in itself, and while our stories gain deeper meaning when we come together as a community, they gain an even deeper meaning when our personal stories find their place in the greater story of God.
And so – for all of these reasons – we continue to tell stories.
“We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and God’s might and the wonders that God has done.â€
Over the past couple months, many people have asked what my “goals†are for the youth ministry here at Asbury. My initial response to that question is to start thinking about what my goals aren’t before saying what I hope happens…My goal is not provide a ton of activities to keep the youth of this church busy; it’s not to create “Christian†alternatives for all the other types of activities youth could participate in; my goal isn’t too convert anyone. It’s not to grow our youth ministry program exponentially, so our numbers reach mega-church proportions…
No – I see the goal of the youth ministry here at Asbury to continue on with the ancient Hebrew tradition of storytelling.
We share stories of the ways in which God was active in Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.
We share stories of the ways in which God is active right now in the world – in our lives.
And we’ll share stories of how we might imagine God active in the world in the future.
As we share these stories, we’ll start learning how to see God in the world – perhaps even in surprising places – and we’ll start learning how to see God in our own lives – in the ways in which our stories intersect with the great stories of God, passed down from generation to generation.
AMEN.