Parish Missions

Stories Can Heal

A rabbi told the following story.

My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to

tell a story about his teacher. And he related how the

holy Baal Shem used to hop and dance as he prayed.

My grandfather rose as he spoke and he was so swept

away by his story that he himself began to hop and

dance to show how the master had done. From that

hour on he was cured of his lameness. That’s the way

to tell a story! *

Stories can heal. We come to the altar of the Word each week bringing our own stories seeking the healing that comes when we connect those stories to the consistent message of God’s compassion and mercy in the Sacred Stories of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

St. Paul tells us today that we should recall the stories of our ancestors so they might serve as an example. We are to see ourselves in the struggles and tensions of the Israelites in the desert. We are to see our own recent history in the report of struggles of the Israelites and the catastrophes presented to Jesus.

Terrorism explodes to shatter any hope of peace in our time. Polarized politics immediately make another’s ideas anathema, causing the most essential of government actions to be frozen in time. Unconscionable greed in corporate America severely damages the financial futures of families and the pensions of seniors. The moral lapses of our ecclesial leadership across the globe shake the faith of the people who placed blind trust above accountability.

In these perilous times the stories of the ancients offer us comfort as well as challenge. In the burning bush God speaks to the people through Moses: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard the cry of their complaint….so I know well their suffering.” God understands our trials. God offers Moses the Divine Presence with the name, “I Am the Who Am.” In other words, “I am the one who is always present to you.”

Jesus offers a challenge in the face of the evil that surrounds us with the image of the fig tree. If we are to bear fruit – an image that invites the reign of God – we must work at it. We need to cultivate and fertilize our own soil. The work is not a pleasant task. If we hoe, if we turn over the soil, we may be confronted by that which we would prefer leaving unearthed. But if we enter into the often unpleasant business of making difficult choices, if we are to be more open to God’s will in our lives, transformation will be possible.

This takes time, but God is willing to wait. Recovering alcoholics understand this: “one day at a time.” They believe that their sobriety depends on a daily conversion. We need to see this twelve step spirituality in our addictions of jealousy, prejudice, destructive relationships, self-righteousness, anger, dishonesty. We need to see this personal conversion as part of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, understanding, in the spirit of the Twelve Steps, that the Sacrament is part of a process. It doesn't happen overnight, but God can wait.

There is no less a need for communal conversion. As a church, a community, a nation, we need to acknowledge our communal addictions and, one day at a time, work to make amends for the evil for which we are responsible. We must become more aware of our participation in injustice in everything from poverty, to racism, homophobia, and elitism. We indict ourselves for society’s consumerism so rooted in the illusion that more and bigger is better. We confront our own attitude that violence promotes peace.

There has probably been no time in recent human history when the world is more in need of the reconciling presence of God. That presence, found in Word and Sacrament, awaits us as both comfort and challenge. A Lenten journey engaged in that reality can be the first step in experiencing for ourselves the healing power of our own stories.

*Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Early Masters,

quoted in “The Story-Shaped Life,” an article by

Sue Monica Kidd, in Praying Magazine.