BBC Radio 4 2016-01-21

BBC Radio 4 2016-01-21

Good morning. Researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon, one of whom spoke on this programme yesterday, suggest that the stories of Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin go back four thousand years. When the brothers Grimm began to compile such fairy tales in the nineteenth century, their project fostered growing German nationalism. The notion that deep in the woods was a boundless store of common stories affirmed the emerging identity of the German people.

That’s how a bunch of stories coalesce to form a powerful narrative. When the people of Judah found themselves in exile in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ, they looked deep into the soul of their people to discover how they’d come to be there. What they found was a collection of stories, of how God created the world, called a people, saved them from famine and slavery, made a covenant with them, and gave them land, king, and temple; before things went astray.

But then, as with the brothers Grimm, came the crucial moment: where the exiled people of Judah wove those stories together and discovered a faith that God would save them as before, and that, most remarkably of all, they were as close to God in exile as they had been in the Promised Land. When the early Christians compiled the New Testament seven centuries later, they made precisely the same two moves: they believed God had found a way to save them again and they saw Christ’s suffering not as God’s abandonment but as the closest humanity had ever come to God’s heart.

It’s easy to say stories are for children and to dismiss primal narratives as fairy tales. But such stories are the bedrock of a people’s identity. Without them we don’t know who we are or where we’re going. Take the current debate over Europe. Isn’t it really about what story Britain thinks it’s in, with an Empire long gone and a new identity not yet clear? Great leaders, political, spiritual and social, identify not only what story we believe we’re a part of but also where we are in that story and what we therefore must now do.

When I say I’m a Christian, I’m naming the story of which I believe I’m a part, and in which I find meaning, truth and purpose. It doesn’t occur to me that everyone shares my convictions. But I say, Don’t tell me what you don’t believe; tell me what you do believe – what story you feel you’re a part of, and most importantly how, in a crisis, your heritage of stories converges to clarify your identity and purpose.
Story turns to faith when people believe that God has entered their story. Faith turns to life when people say, ‘There’s a part for me in that story too.’