The Power of a Biblical Story
Bible stories.
Many of us have heard them since we were children.
- Daniel and the Lion’s Den.
- Noah’s Ark.
- Three Angels Visiting Abraham.
- Moses and the Burning Bush.
- David and Goliath.
And many more!
Bible stories are important. They do more than tweak the emotions or offer a moralism, as important as those dimensions are. Their power arises from something (even Someone) much deeper than human morality or emotion.
What is the power of a biblical story?
The power of a biblical story is what it reveals about God. Even when a biblical story does not name God (as in the case of Esther), it is still about God. As such, God is the subject of every biblical story, and that story says something about God’s identity and character.
Biblical stories reveal God’s goodness as well as God’s holiness. We see God’s faithfulness, a divine commitment to the divine goal among God’s people. We see God’s transcendence but also God’s immanence; we see God’s holy otherness but also God’s deep involvement in the world.
Reading a biblical narrative, we ask: what does this story tell us about who God is and what God is doing in the world?
The power of a biblical story is what it reveals about the human condition. We locate ourselves in the human condition; we find ourselves in the story. We see our own frailty, weakness, and unbelief in the story. We also see courage, strength, and faith in the story.
Biblical stories reveal both the depravity and the dignity of human beings. As we hear these stories, we recognize how evil human beings can behave but also the heights to which their faith draws them. We see both the absurdity of life with all its brokenness, woundedness, and death, but we also see the good gifts of relationships, community, and family within God’s good creation. Biblical stories tell both sides of the human story.
Reading a biblical narrative, we ask: what does this story tell us about who we are, what we have become, and the heights to which God is calling us?
The power of a biblical story is how it invites us to participate in the theodrama. As we read the stories in the Bible, we are invited to see ourselves in the story. This is not simply a matter of locating ourselves there. Rather, we engage the story as part of the larger theodrama, the dramatic history of God at work within creation and human history. We are participants. This story is our story.
Biblical stories are not isolated moral plays; they are part of a larger narrative, a metanarrative. The stories themselves participate in God’s mission within the world. Each story is an expression of the larger story, and we are invited to participate in that larger story even as we see ourselves in any particular story.
Reading a biblical narrative, we ask: how does this story invite us to participate in God’s larger metanarrative?
So, what do we do with that?
If we know who God is, and we know what our condition is, then we are enabled to discern how a story summons us to play our role in God’s grand redemptive drama.
The God of the burning bush is both redeemer and holy. The holy God encounters Moses, and invites Moses to participate in God’s redemptive movement within the world. We see in Moses our own reticence, fear, and inadequacies, but we also see God’s enabling power and summons. God includes Moses in the redemptive drama such that Moses partners with God in liberating Israel from Egyptian bondage. What Moses becomes is rooted in what God does.
Who is God? The Holy Redeemer.
What is humanity? Weak and fearful, yes. But the story also affirms human dignity by inviting Moses to participate in the divine mission.
What is our summons? To participate in God’s redemptive agenda in the world, pursuing God’s mission in dependence on God’s power. We are still on the same mission as Moses, as the redemption of Israel is part of the grand narrative of God’s redemptive work for all peoples.
Biblical stories have something to tell. They inform, moralize, and motivate.
But, more importantly, through them we also encounter Someone. We encounter the God who invites us into God’s own story, God’s theodrama.
At bottom, biblical stories are callings. God calls us.
August 7th, 2015 at 6:12 am
These biblical stories also call us to participate in the community of faith that has answered the question, “Who else needs to hear this story?” Jesus directed, “make disciples of all the nations…” and we do that by inviting others into the theodrama!
August 7th, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Thanks, John, for this important reminder. Though implicit in the call to partner with God in God’s mission, you are quite correct to highlight “disciple-making” with an additional question since this is often neglected. I appreciate and honor your point.