2 June 2013

“The story matters ...”
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 / 2 Timothy 4:1-5 / Matthew 28:16-20
OT 9C
2 June 2013


Many, perhaps most of us have one of them in our lives. A person who tells magnificent stories … stories which capture you, draw you in, keep your interest, and keep you coming back for more.
For me, that person was Phil Mudgett … he who invented the LD-3 airline container-shippable video broadcasting system … he gave me my first job in Seattle, back in 1985, hiring me away from a large broadcast equipment and facilities provider in LA, bringing me up here to help him form the same kind of company in the (at that time, still broadcasting frontier) of the Pacific NW.
Phil had stories. Hundreds and thousands of stories. He’d lived a rich, full life, packing a lot into his then 45 years.
Over the course of the four years I worked for and with Phil, he told me many of his stories.
His dad was the first chief engineer Dorothy Bullitt hired for her new television station, KING-TV, so he had old KING stories. Like climbing the tower on Queen Anne every year with his dad to string the Christmas lights. Like sitting with his dad in the primitive KING-TV remote truck, broadcasting live from Seafair 1955, and watching Tex Johnston barrel-roll the first Boeing 707 over Lake Washington.
Phil followed his dad’s lead into the video business, working as a video engineer in Seattle and in LA. And so he had more stories ... working with Bill Cosby when he was a local TV show host here in the 1960s. Living in LA and video engineering TV shows such as “Hullabaloo” and numerous sporting events, in California and all over the country.
And then there were stories about his family, and his personal life. I’ve met his family, so I have no doubts as to their authenticity. Phil was married four times, but according to him it should have only been three because “my second wife left me for Ed Asner.” My favorite was the story about his brother, who bought a car in Everett (where he lived) but then came to find out that it only turned right. So he had to plot his commuting trip into Seattle making only right turns ... no lefts.
And there were even some Phil stories which intersected with mine. One day, actually the day after Kathleen and I had decided to get married, she had called her parents and told them the news, but I hadn’t called mine yet. So she called me at work to “ahem” remind me.
Except ... and this is the story of what happened next … Phil happened to answer the phone, Kathleen thought it was me (our voices sounded quite a bit alike), and she immediately said, “Call your mother.” And then she realized it wasn’t me ... got a little flustered (as we hadn’t told anyone else yet) and hung up.
I of course had no idea what was going on ... and didn’t till she related her side of things to me years later. What I do remember from my end was a rather dumbfounded Phil walking into my office and saying, “The weirdest thing just happened. Some strange women just called and told me to call my mother.”
So what did you do, I asked.
“Well, I called my mother,” Phil said ... Mrs. Mudgett was at that time still very much alive and well and living on Wetmore Avenue in Everett. “And she’s fine. Perhaps it was some kind of a heavenly reminder to me.”
After I left his company – Modular Video Systems - to go to seminary, Phil kept on inventing … he devloped TVW, the state television network that airs the legislature live on cable when it’s in session ... then, later, he became ill with cancer in the 90’s and died about 15 years ago. But he’s still very much alive to me ... and the hundreds of people in the video industry around the country ... through the memory of his stories. In many ways, Phil Mudgett was his stories ... his stories, making his story, alive in the hearts and minds of all those who heard him, who heard them told.

Stories. Each of us have them ... our own stories which we share and tell individually ... funny, sad, or lessons learned, and so on. And the sum total of those stories make up The Story that is each one of our lives. This is a very human attribute we all share.
Our stories make up Our Story ... the story of who we are as individuals. One could even say that Our Story is who we are. Certainly Phil was made up of the sum total of all his stories. And so are each of us. Nowhere is this clearer than at the end of our lives ... when friends and family gather to grieve, and to comfort each other ... with what? Story. The story, told at wakes and memorials, funerals and burials, of this person whose life we shared.
We each have our individual stories which make up the One Story of our lives. But we also have shared story ... shared story in family, shared story as part of a group, a community, state or nation. Veterans who have shared the horrors of combat. Communities who have survived natural disasters, like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Nisqually earthquake, the Moore, OK tornado. The story of national resilience in trials like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or rejoicing, as when we first landed humans on the moon.
And as people of faith, we most certainly also have Story. Our story as God’s people has many, many layers. As followers of Jesus Christ we have been adopted as children of God, grafted into the old, old story of God’s continual care, protection, and love for his people ... a story which begins long, long ago in the accounts of creation, flood, rescue and salvation, deliverance and destination into the land of God’s promise.
Our text from Deuteronomy is a fine example of how story shapes a people. These words come from the instructions that God is giving Moses before they enter the land God has promised them, but they look forward to a time when, settled into that land, that memory has become story which has shaped, is shaping, and will continue to shape God’s people.

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor ...

In this beautiful story, both the one telling the story, and those hearing the story-teller, are re-hearsed, re-born into the story of God’s faithfulness to his people ... from Abraham and Sarah, through Moses and the Exodus, to this very day ... and that “very day” indeed varies. It could, can be the day Moses heard the story from God ... it could, can be the day Moses re-told it to the people of Israel ... it could, can be the day those who heard, who hear it, retell it again ... and again ... and again.
Such is the way of story. Story creates, and re-creates, those who hear it, once, and again, and again.
Now this story in particular, is a particular people’s story ... the story of the people of God’s promise ... to be sure ... but through their telling and re-telling of the story, others are drawn into it ... and look how great is the love and promise and hope of God for his people, and through his people, for the rest of creation ...
Thus we who are not Jews are drawn into this story as well ... drawn into it first because the story is told to us ... and then, we are grafted into that story through our adoption as God’s children, through Jesus Christ, born of water and Word, baptism and forgiveness, confession and promise, meal and life everlasting.
That part of the story, their story, our story, is what we receive in both the Gospel text from St. Matthew, as well as the words of 2 Timothy:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ...

I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message!

God’s story makes Israel’s story, and then, crosses us and makes us into God’s people as well, through the Cross ... through Jesus’ story to and for us, we are brought in to God’s everlasting, ever loving story for his beloved creation.
Creation ... protection ... faithfulness from God despite unfaithfulness from God’s people ... right on down through the ages ... to God’s sending his very self, his only Son, to share our life in all its sorrow and all its rejoicing, in all it suffering and even in its life-end ... God has done and is continually doing all this for us. And more ... not letting the story end with death, but, through death itself, through Jesus’ own death, bringing him life, bringing us life, bringing all the world and all of God’s creation, LIFE ... rich, full, abundant, as God has always intended it for us.
And this story ... it is not a passive story. It is not a story we simply sit back and enjoy, of which we are spectators, onlookers, an audience at a show.
NO.
This story is a “make, take and share” story. God’s story, Jesus’ story, it draws us in, it makes us part, part of the story, part of all those who have been part of, who have shared the story from the beginning, and then, and then, it sends us out, out into the world, to share that story with those who have not heard it, to bring others into the story as well ...
Now I know that you know that Lutherans are not so good at that last part ... proclaiming the message. Sometimes I think it’s because we don’t want to (because we don’t want to call attention to ourselves) but most of the time I think it’s because we just don’t know how to do it.
That’s what we’ll talk about next Sunday, as we discuss a story-based approach to proclaiming the message into which Nativity has been invited ... called “Story Matters” ... a word, a way to help us overcome our “Lutheran Laryngitis.”
But that’s next week. For now, simply remember that God’s story, Jesus’ story for this world, for all of creation, is FOR YOU ... you have been grafted in to that story ... and your story, and where it crosses God’s story, is a story worth sharing ... and it is a story people want to hear … friends, family, people who have heard and people who haven’t.
Your story IS you. And you are Christ’s, you are part of his story ... and Christ is God’s, and he is part of God’s story.
So ... your story, and God’s story, are all wrapped up together ...
... together, waiting to be told ... together, wanting to be heard.
May THAT Word today give you the faith, the courage, the strength, the willingness and the joy, to share your story, Christ’s story, God’s story, into other people’s stories, in the week ahead. Amen.