Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Frederick W. Schmidt is an Episcopal priest and the Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of several books, including The Dave Test: A Raw Look at Real Faith in Hard Times. He lives in Arrington, Tennessee.

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CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

Church Publishing Incorporated

Contents

Chapter One

Luke had a story to tell and he told his story to change people's lives.

If you have ever worked with a therapist or a spiritual director, you know how important stories can be. The best of therapists and directors rely upon storytelling. They tell their own stories. They tell stories about other people. Most important of all, they rely on the storytelling skills of their clients. Getting them to tell their stories is what finally makes the difference.

The Primal Need for Stories

Stories help us to remember our past. They help us to make sense of new events in our lives; and, when we are stuck or confused, they help us to imagine where we go next.

Think, for example, of the story that explains how you overcame a significant life challenge. Perhaps you suffered an injury or illness, or at some point in your life you lost a job. The chances are the story has chapters and turning points. There were important things said by someone who loves you or advises you. You discovered a new insight that changed the way in which you viewed your circumstances or managed the challenge you faced. Whatever the details, there were elements of the past, the present, and the future involved.

What is interesting about stories of this kind is that they not only help us to recount the past, they help us to imagine a way forward. Until we've told our story, we are often at a loss to know how to go on. We live uneasily with the stuck-place we find ourselves in and we can drift through days on end without making any progress. It is only when we wrap a story around what has happened to us that we can tell to others that we can imagine a new chapter that begins with the words, "And then ..."

Luke did not know anything about modern therapy or spiritual direction, and he hardly would have described the value of stories in the terms that I have used. But the power of stories to change our lives does not depend upon modern theories. Their power arises out of a far more primal and human need; that need accounts for the universal presence of stories across time, cultures, and races. This description is more an effort to bring to the surface what we intuitively know about those stories.

Luke knew this too. He understood the need to recount the past, to put it in order. He knew that this kind of storytelling helped to explain the present. And he knew that if he could do that, he could also describe the future. Addressing the needs of other Christians, he used the stories he had heard told about the ministry of Jesus to help his circle in the ancient church understand where they had been, where they were, and where they were going.

The staying power of those stories led the church to read and re-read his gospel, copy it, and eventually treat it as sacred Scripture. Millennia later Luke's stories still shape our lives and the life of the church; and therein lays both the gift and the challenge of reading Luke's gospel.

Basic Elements of Storytelling

Stories—ancient, as well as modern—are never told in a vacuum. Their shape, content, and focus depend upon the environment in which they are told. The four basic elements of that environment include:

* The storyteller

* The circle of listeners to whom the story was told

* The circumstances under which the stories were told

* And the events that prompted the storytelling

When someone first tells a story, those basic elements are taken for granted by both the storyteller and the people who hear it. Imagine, for example, the stories told around your family dinner table. Everyone knows Uncle Robert and remembers the pipe he smoked. The way he gestured with it to make a point; the smell of the cheap tobacco he used. You can see Aunt Martha in your mind's eye—her quick wit, the ready smile. You can even smell the gingerbread she made for family gatherings.

So when you start telling the stories of the fishing trip they took to New Mexico, no one needs to fill in the blanks. The storyteller and the listeners know one another; and both know the circumstances under which the stories were told and the events that prompted the original telling of the story.

But as time passes, the common elements that made that kind of storytelling possible are not as readily obvious. As communities grow, circumstances change, and generations pass, the identity of the storyteller and the first audience is often lost to us. It is harder to know what concerned or interested them, or what first prompted someone to tell a story.

People, places, circumstances, and cultures can and do completely change. With them the original meanings of stories can be lost as well. Even the details about Uncle Robert's pipe and Aunt Martha's gingerbread can be lost.

This is not to say that there are not enduring themes and common human characteristics that continue to shine through the oldest of stories. Bible stories, Aesop's fables, even a story about Uncle Robert can still entertain or teach us something. For that reason we can almost always get some kind of meaning out of a story, and it's that broader meaning that often tempts us to forget how different our world is from the one in which the original storyteller lived.

For example, I teach a class that introduces students to the basics of monastic spirituality. As a part of the work that the students are asked to do, we often read the stories of the ancient desert fathers and mothers whose lives of devotion gave rise to the early monasteries. One of the ancient stories told runs this way:

Some old men went to Abba Poemen and asked, "If we see brothers sleeping during the common prayer, should we wake them?"

Abba Poemen answered, "If I see my brother sleeping, I put his head on my knees and let him rest."

Then one old man spoke up, "And how do you explain yourself before God?"

Abba Poemen replied, "I say to God: You have said, "First take the beam out of your own eye and then you will be able to remove the splinter from the eye of your brother.'"

Left to their own devices, my students will often conclude that the story tells them something about the level of comfort they might experience in prayer; the importance of acknowledging their frailty—even when engaged in spiritual pursuits; and something rather more general about the importance of avoiding a judgmental spirit. But the story was probably told and retold in its original setting as a means of shaping the way in which individual monks treated one another in the close confines of monastic community. In turn, their concern about how they treated one another was rooted in an understanding of community shaped by waiting and preparing spiritually for the return of Christ that required them to set aside every other care. So the story has a context and point of application that, more often than not, my students completely miss at first.

When it comes to reading stories, then, there is almost always some kind of meaning that can be derived from hearing one, even if you don't know why the person who originally told the story chose to tell it or the point they intended to make. But there is also a lot that can be missed.

If we are reading a story to be entertained, that is not necessarily a bad thing. We may want nothing more than to lose ourselves for a time in the story that is told—to laugh, to...