Storytelling

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, September 19.  The text is Genesis 3:14-24.  Read it here. 

I want begin by telling you a different story about a snake and a man, and I want you to listen to how these two stories relate to one another. 

There was a man named Gilgamesh, who is told one day about a plant.  A very special plant that grows at the bottom of the ocean.  And if you find this plant and use it, it will make you young again.  It has the power to make you live forever. 

So Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet, and walks to the bottom of the ocean and picks the plant.  But he doesn’t trust its power, so he thinks, “I’ll test it on an old man when I get back home and make sure that it works.”

Well, on the way back home Gilgamesh comes across a lovely lake, and decides to bathe there.  He leaves the plant on the shore while he bathes, and who should come across it but a serpent, who takes it away.  And ever since then...the serpent has lived forever, shedding its skin and becoming young again. 

But Gilgamesh wept, because he had lost his chance of ever becoming immortal. 

This story is drawn from the second to last chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient story from Mesopotamia. 

Our story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent is a etiology: a story that’s told about why things are the way things are.  The Epic of Gilgamesh answers a question about why snakes shed their skin.  And our creation story answers some questions too. 

Questions that folks living in Ancient Israel might have asked, like,

Why do snakes crawl on the ground?

Why does it hurt to give birth?

Why does a man rule over his wife?

Why do we have to work so hard to bring food from the land?

Why can’t we live forever?

These stories are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They describe why something is the way it is.  They don’t prescribe how things should be. 

Let’s read the story again and see what we hear. 

*

Stories hold incredible power.

I’m taking a course at seminary right now that’s all about families and relationships, and the ways our families of origin shape who we become.  On the first day of class, we were asked to go around the room and tell the story of our family.  The professor called them,  Our "Holy Stories,” and as we heard from each person, one by one, I realized once again the impact of simply taking time in a quiet and safe place to hear the stories of those around you and how God is moving in those stories. 

We heard of amazing lives, 

of broken and healed relationships, 

of dysfunction and abuse, 

of families that nurtured, 

and families that tried to nurture, but never managed. 

We also paid attention to the stories that families learn to tell about themselves.  Those narratives that, like the story of Adam, Eve, and serpent, tell us something about why we are the way we are. 

Everything from, 

After she lost her father, she was never quite the same.

to

The two of them have always been inseparable, like peas in a pod.

to

Your older sister always was the successful one.

And many, many more. 

Just like the stories in Genesis, these stories perhaps have their roots in an attempt to explain just where it is that we’ve found ourselves in life.  And just like in Genesis, the stories can take on a life of their own, becoming prescriptive rather than descriptive.  The story we tell about ourselves becomes the story we live out. 

For instance: 

After I lost my father, I was never quite the same.  

So dedicating the rest of my life to his loss makes perfect sense. 

or

We have always been inseparable, 

so I guess we better go to the same college, and take the same classes, and move back to the same town. 

or 

My older sister was always the successful one, 

so I might as well quit trying now. 

Stories can be incredibly powerful. 

Going through a break up a few years ago, I had a conversation on the phone with a mentor who had gone through a divorce.  “A huge part of it is realizing that the story didn’t end the way it was supposed to,” she told me.  My husband always said that the first time I smiled at him he knew he was going to marry me.  We married young, we had a child, and when our daughter was two, it all fell apart.  The story wasn’t supposed to end that way.  Reality no longer lined up with the story I had been telling myself.”

So we reframe the story.  We find a new one, or we figure out how to make the pieces of the old one fit a new story, augment the characters, change the conclusion, shift the points of interest. 

The story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent is one that has been told and retold, framed and reframed, throughout the generations as its been passed down through the centuries.  The Ancient Israelites were fascinated with the fact that snakes shed their skin and saw snakes as symbols of fertility and immortality and wisdom.  Eve takes the fruit and her eyes are opened, ripping she and Adam from their utopia, their pre-human state, to a world that’s characterized by reality and pain.  It’s really a coming of age story, a story about moving out of ignorance and into knowledge, as painful as that transition might be. 

Centuries later, around the time that the New Testament is being written, snakes become symbolic of Satan, and the story takes on a different tone entirely.

And four hundred or so years later, Augustine has a whole bunch of things to say, and the term “original sin” is born.

A story that should be descriptive is made prescriptive, 

A story that explains is used instead to enforce,

And suddenly this story is all about sex,

all about downfall, 

all about a “fall from grace”

and we’re using it to prescribe 

who can marry who

or who’s subservient to who. 

Stories can be incredibly powerful. 

As a child, my family didn’t make a big fuss of holidays.  In fact, we sort of had a tendency to ignore them all together, or to mark them in our own, slightly untraditional ways.  I remember being asked in the second or third grade to write a story about what my family had done for Thanksgiving, and feeling suddenly aware that many of the other children were writing stories that had something to do with turkeys and grandmas and cousins. 

My story was about painting our kitchen yellow.  Because that’s what we had done on Thanksgiving.  And I remember deciding to tell it almost triumphantly.  It seemed wiser to highlight my differences from the other children rather than try to minimize them. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve spent more time thinking about the stories that say something about why I am the way I am.  I think about the Thanksgiving we painted the kitchen yellow and remember that it was a whole lot of fun to be just the three of us, no turkey, no grandma, but I also ask questions about just why we celebrated in the way that we did.  About the stories we told about why we were the way we were, and about their power to decide who we were going to be.  And who I’m expected to be. 

A serpent can mean many things:

immortality

wisdom

evil

temptation.

And painting the kitchen yellow can mean many things too. 

The story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent is a holy story, like the stories I heard in my class last week.  We can use these stories to define or to transform.  I find that when we tell them with honesty, tell them in community, begin to push them up against questions,  the Holy Spirit starts to breathe and move in them, opening them again and again to new life, new interpretation, which opens us again and again, to new life, new hope, new grace, new life. 

We share the sermon at St. Lydia’s, and so I invite you to share a story from your experience that was brought up by the text or my words.

Comments

[Penelopepiscopal]

Great sermon, Emily! We were just talking about this today in our Bible Study (as an aside, since we are studying Hebrews!).

[Amenability.blogspot.com]

Excellent sermon! I've been enjoying your posts - sorry not to have commented earlier. I went to SLC and heard of you and St. Lydia's while there. I love the idea of a dinner church, and it sounds like you have a lovely one. This sermon in particular reminded me of an oral history project on belief and experience that I conducted with SLC students of different faiths/views. Still sorting out how to 'present' the results, but it was definitely a moving experience and renewed my respect and passion for storytelling -- and listening!

Peace to you and your church!

[Emily Scott]

Another SLC-er! How wonderful! Your research sounds fascinating...and based on my experience at SLC, the "presentation" will sort itself out! I never knew how all the research I did on early Christian practices would work itself into my work, and now, here at am!