Two Stories | A Sermon on Choosing Something More
A Sermon by the Reverend Crystal Hardin for the people of The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross on the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 1, 2024.
At the risk of oversimplifying, we tend, as people, to choose between one of two stories as we attempt to make meaning of our experiences [1].
The first story takes heed of our existence and finds it fragile and fleeting. It notes the bad things that happen. The good things that don’t. The way things seemingly make little sense sometimes. The way some prayers seem to go unanswered. The fact that, in the end, no matter what we do, we are confronted with our mortality and we die. In the end, when it all shakes out, little actually matters. There is no there there you might say. That’s one story. We might call it the story of surviving.
In the second story, we confront our experience of existence, which is indeed fragile and fleeting, but we then look deeper, look under, look above and find that there is something more —some essence that is good and true and eternal. We would, of course, call that God. And our astonishing claim, as Christians, is that this essence came to earth and dwelled among us. Even more astonishing is its purpose for doing that: to be in relationship with existence, with experience, with us. We know this as Jesus. That’s the other story. We might call it the story of abiding, of living.
And Jesus told us: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). So that’s this second story. A story of more. A story of living.
Our experience of the world is shaped by which story we choose to tell ourselves. And no doubt there is a choice. As my therapist says, you can choose or someone else will choose for you but a choice will be made.
Moses puts the choice this way: So now, Israel [he warns] give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you can enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you (Deut. 4:1).
Later in Deuteronomy, Moses confirms:
I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him, for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give your ancestors (30:19-20).
Moses sets before us a choice: life or death; blessings or curses. Really we could call it the choice between two stories: surviving or living.
Now, this doesn’t seem to be a particularly difficult choice. It seems most people would choose life. In fact, the will to live, to survive, is quite strong —both in us, as human beings, and in our fellow creatures, big and small. We are hard-wired to survive. And yet, to truly live is a different story altogether.
In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, the world as we know it has ended. A deadly flu has eliminated 99.6% of the population.
The novel follows the survivors, tracing how their lives intersect in a group of entertainers called the Traveling Symphony, a theater group turned chosen family committed to performing the plays of William Shakespeare for what remains of humanity.
In a dangerous world, a world where everything that we have grown accustomed to has fallen away and death waits behind every corner, the Traveling Symphony is trying to be something more, to make something more, and to remember something more.
Mandel writes: All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.
Shakespeare, their offering to a broken world and their attempt to seek essence —that which is good and true and eternal — to seek it out and to live, to abide there in that story, despite what might be their current experience of hardship and finitude.
Of course, one of the most well-known lines from William Shakespeare is from Hamlet: “To be, or not to be? That is the question.”
In Hamlet, sure. That is the question. For Shakespeare, maybe. But not Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy suggests another question entirely. A question that raises our collective eyes beyond merely existing, because survival is insufficient.
Moses sets before us the choice between two stories: the story of life or death; blessings or curses; merely surviving or abiding.
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, Moses says, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live . . . But if your heart turns away and you do not hear but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish (30:16-18).
Right worship. Faithful living. Obedience. A heart always turning toward the One True God who is the story of something more.
We’ve heard this in other ways, in other words, in other voices.
Earlier in Deuteronomy: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might (6:5).
In Micah: He has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God (6:8).
And, in the Gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matthew: 22:37).
Scripture bursts at the seams with this central theme: that to love God, to listen to God, to walk with God, and to abide in God is to choose the way of life.
Whereas the first story, the story of survival, is small. Restrictive. Individual. Lonely. Survival is concerned with the most basic of needs. My needs. It scrapes together from what is not enough so that I might have more than enough to get by.
Survival makes idols of who we are to others, what we have in relation to others, and how well we are doing life vis-à-vis others.
Survival can make an idol of even the most precious of gifts. We need only look to today’s Gospel. The gift of God’s law as communicated to us by Moses was given to us to preserve and protect us —to make our lives more.
For every generous act of giving, reads our Epistle this morning, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17).
And yet, in our hands, the law became no longer a gift to receive, but a penalty to be imposed. To survive we take hold of the gifts of God and use them to our end, relying on our strength, merit, goodness. But to rely on God come what may, to abide in him, that is truly living.
While survival might be lawful; abiding —that is faithful [2].
It is choosing more. It is choosing to risk. And to create. And to love. It is choosing to forget the story of I in favor of the story of we.
To choose life is to loosen our hold on all the ways we attempt to survive in a world that would have us speak of us versus them, that would have us hoard so that we might have; in a world that tells us there is never enough and that we must always look after ourselves and our own first; in a world that tells us it is wasteful and naïve to trust, to dream, to hope, to create, and to love.
As one reviewer notes, Mandel’s novel Station Eleven begs the question, “Why?”:
Why bother with iambic pentameter in a world littered with decrepit skyscrapers and [signs of death]? Because to be human is to create: to make things, and to make meaning, out of the chaos.
In the face of terrible trauma, the heroes of Station Eleven choose to keep growing. Dealt a hand of unthinkable brokenness, they choose to rebuild. Confronted with chaos, they choose to be agents of order. Tempted by retreat into self-referential pity, they choose to serve others. Surrounded by things to fear, they choose courage. Fueled by an inherent desire to survive as individuals, they choose one another [3].
They choose life. Because survival is insufficient.
When our hearts turn towards the one true God we begin to live. To truly live. To notice what is good. What is beautiful. What is beyond us as individuals.
We create. We come together. We reach for something more. This is what God wants for us: life and life abundant.
That is what all of this is about. What we are doing here this morning. The worship of our God knows something of living because it too is something more.
In worship, we transcend whatever limitations the world has placed upon us and see beyond, into the very heart of God.
We take what is ordinary –bread, wine, water, words- and, with God’s help, allow them to speak of heaven.
We choose the story of living so that we might, in our lives, do the same, welcoming as St. James instructs, welcoming with meekness the implanted word —the living word —that has the power to save our souls (James 1:21).
That has, in fact, already saved us.
Fellow children of God, this morning we have a choice. And the morning after. And the morning after. This choice is ours to make, and it’s a choice offered by the hands of a faithful God.
So, may we choose life, always.
Because survival is insufficient.
*Image is from the cover of Station Eleven.
[1] Samuel Wells talks about these two stories in his Easter Sermon from 2020 and in his book Humbler Faith, Bigger God.
[2] Grateful to the Reverend Alyse Viggiano for this line.
[3] Brett McCracken, “In ‘Station Eleven’ Trauma Is Real, But Resilience Prevails,” The Gospel Coalition , January 26, 2022, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/station-eleven-trauma-resilience.
