Storytime

 An audio recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Luke 12: 54-59) is a reminder that even if Jesus is a mystery to us, we are no mystery to Him. When He comments on the people’s knowledge of the weather, and when asks He why the people cannot read the signs of the times, it is not because He does not know what moves them. And when He draws the second scenario of this gospel about having to go to court and being in danger of ending up in a debtors’ prison, He was not telling the people anything they did not know; rather He was telling them things they knew very well but did not like to think about. In this regard, these hypocrites in the gospel are once again ourselves.

How was it that people knew what the weather was going to be: whether it would be hot or whether it would rain? There was no weather service in the Roman Empire. They probably knew the future weather in the format of stories. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning. In its purpose, this saying is a weather forecast, but if we look at its structure or genre, it is a story. There are highs and there are lows. There is a hero – the shepherd. There is emotion; deep emotions of alarm or pleasure. Above all, this story helps people make sense of their immediate surroundings, and it tells people what to do in the short term, assuming of course that they already have a long-term plan. With this story of the coming weather, the people travel into tomorrow’s future; they may even take action now to shape that future, depending of course on the weather. Alongside all the models of humanity that anthropology has proposed, such as homo sapiens and homo faber (man the maker), we also find homo narrans - man the storyteller.

So, what is Jesus getting at in the first part of this gospel if not simply that we are rather good at telling ourselves one kind of story (the one that plays to our self-interest) but not so good at telling ourselves other kinds of story that are, shall we say, not so self-serving, the very stories that He Himself came to tell us? We are good at telling ourselves the stories that tickle our ambitions and needs or perhaps indulge our self-hatreds; those stories that lie in embryonic form in our imaginations and grow and shrink like a wicked genie. We are not as good, perhaps, at telling ourselves the stories that we need to hear: the stories of our fall, of our redemption, and of the long road home that we often seem so irresolute about. Why is it that we are wearied by the story’s development, or is it that we fear what the story will cost us next? 

In truth, audiences choose their stories. We characterise the cultures that we come across by the stories that they tell themselves. The people Jesus preached to liked stories about the weather, for many of them were farmers and this was an agricultural society. At least theirs were stories of education; our stories today are often stories of titillation. Today’s tales are plastered across the pages of the media or more usually on our screens, and they are rarely of the edifying kind. In that sense, maybe we read The Times or the New York Times but do we have any more sense of the signs of the times that the original peasantry of ancient Israel?

The people in this gospel extract do not know the signs of the times because they decline to listen to the stories that could unfold for them the signs of the times. Like us, they tell themselves stories of diversion or anguish about the things that they desire or the things that they fear to lose, and all the while they ignore the stories that would interpret for them their true reality and the dangers in which they really stand.

For this is the essence of Jesus' complaint. The people are not anxious about eternity; they are more stirred by a story about a potential law case than they are by the prospect of the courtroom of the last judgement. But, as we noted above, people choose their stories. They would indeed listen to these stories about the last judgement if their hearts were in the right place; if in fact their hearts were seeking God. Of course they liked stories about their own piety; flattering stories to give them reassurance about what fine fellows they were. We do the same. Yet these stories did not cut very deep…unlike the story of Scripture which St Paul describes in the following way:

For the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.

This is the story of the word of God and it is a tale of high emotion too; of a hero, Jesus, who comes to our rescue, and of the drama that plays out for our salvation. This is the story that gives us the signs of the times, the story that tells of our peril, and of the destiny which cuts through every living and waking moment. More especially, for each one of us, this is the story in which, like Mary, we have the choice of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the Lord. 

The only story left to tell, therefore, is what we are going to do about it right now.