What's Your Story

Well, a few weeks ago my son and daughter-in-law were given a car. They were given a car by a family relative who didn't need it anymore, which was good. But the really cool thing was that in the glove box there was a street directory—remember those? Yeah, it was my favorite kind of street directory, the Gregory's. The great thing about the Gregory's is they tell you where you've been and where you're going. And we have been thinking about Mark's gospel as a story; that's where we've been. This morning I want to spend a few minutes in conclusion and I want to ask you the question: where does your story join with Jesus' story? That's where we're going—where we've been, that's where we're going: where does your story join with Jesus' story? If at the end of what I say for these next few minutes you say to yourself, "Well it doesn't really," I'll pray a prayer at the end that will help you to do that, that will help you to join your story to his story. See what I'm saying? That's what I'm going to talk about this morning. At the end I'm going to pray a prayer; that's where we're going. And the reason I'm telling you that is because I don't want to surprise you at the end—you think, "I didn't realize that that's what we were doing this morning." But that's what we are doing this morning. So why don't I pray and then we'll begin? Let me pray: "Heavenly Father, as we hear from your word, please help us to hear from you and help us please to respond in a way that is pleasing to you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen."

In 2009, a journalist by the name of Rob Walker conducted an experiment to test the power of stories. He jumped onto eBay and he bought 200 random objects for around a dollar or less. Then he hired a group of writers to come up with stories about each of the objects, and then he relisted them on eBay. This time with their accompanying stories—see what he was doing? He was testing to see if the objects would sell for more if they had a story attached to them. One of the objects was a small plastic horse's head that he bought for 99 cents. How much do you think he sold it for once it was relisted on eBay? $5? $10? $20? He sold it for $62.95. That is a profit of 6,000%. He bought all 200 objects for a combined total of $129, but with the stories he sold them for over $8,000. Now that's a pretty good return on equity for the analysts amongst you—that would send you mad! You would recommend that company, wouldn't you, if they could get that sort of return on equity? Maybe you should get an eBay account, maybe you should start writing stories, one of the two anyway.

Everyone loves stories. Why? Well, if you want a philosophical sort of learning, teaching, category kind of answer, the reason is because most of us are concrete relational thinkers. That just simply means we prefer to learn from stories rather than abstract concepts. Dr. Sam Chan, who tackled this whole issue in his PhD, he claims that 80% of Westerners—80%, four out of five—prefer stories to abstract concepts, and 90% of people around the world prefer stories over learning from abstract concepts. See, there's something about a good story that grips us, that arrests us, that lodges itself in our brains, that touches our hearts in a way that storyless information simply doesn't. But stories are more than mere marketing tools; they are vehicles for empathy. They help us make sense of the world around us; they help us understand who we are. What's your story? What's your story and how would you tell it? What would the defining moments be? What would be the themes and the motifs of your story? Who are the heroes of your story? Who are the villains? Where would the highs be? What would be the lows? What's your story?

The other thing about stories is they allow us to take the point of view of the teller. They allow us for a while to suspend disbelief and just go with the story and grasp the story. We don't have to kind of ask ourselves, "Is it true or not?"—not at the beginning anyway. We can just immerse ourselves in the story. If you think about nearly every ABC drama, you know, they all seem to involve someone getting killed or murdered and then there's a solution to the murder at the end of it. If you think about that for a moment, we would live in a very, very dangerous world if that was the world we really lived in. But it allows us to suspend disbelief to involve ourselves in the story and we hear and understand things from that. They allow us to occupy the worldview of the person who's doing the telling.

Now since February 1st this year, we've been listening to Mark's story, and Mark's story has got a hero, Mark's story has got villains, it's got a quest, it's got action, it's got heart, it's got a twist, it's got rising tension—it's got all those things. But Mark's story is really Jesus' story. Mark 1 verse 1, he says, "This is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." But is it an important story? Jesus of Nazareth: 33, a carpenter, Palestinian Jew, itinerant preacher, executed under the procurator Pontius Pilate. We've heard of his death, we've heard of his resurrection from the dead; that's what we thought mostly about last weekend over Easter. But is it an important story? Well, if you looked at our city, you would judge that it probably isn't all that important. If you were at Bondi Beach this morning—not that I was and perhaps you weren't either—but if you're at Bondi Beach this morning and you ran beside the joggers (there's a lot of them apparently) and you were jogging next to someone and you said to them, "Have you heard this story?" and they said, "Yes," and you said, "Is it an important story?" I think they'd maybe think or say to you, "Probably not." I think the average person would say, "Look, Jesus has made a terrific impact on the world, he's given us very good values." I don't even think it's an intellectual objection to his death and resurrection; I don't think people are very well-versed in the historical details of his death and resurrection—the way it's so well-attested in history: the empty tomb, the people who saw him, the dramatic change in his followers, the hole in history that's kind of resurrection-shaped. I could go on and on. It's not so much the intellectual objections; it's just that it just doesn't matter too much to me. Different people believe different things—maybe it happened, maybe it didn't—and if it did or it didn't and that helps you to get through life, well that's fine, but it doesn't make much difference to me. The story seems helpful to me, I might believe it, and if it doesn't, then I won't, and I don't have to think anybody should tell me I have to. It's not so much a problem of believing it as a personal law that says, "I don't want to adapt my life to something I don't find helpful." I don't think people sit down and actively think this way; they just live it, and the way we live is often the way we think. If I'm walking down the supermarket aisle of life, will I throw Jesus into the trolley? That's the question. Or like the sport we follow—you know, you follow NRL and somebody else follows AFL and someone else follows the Super Rugby—it's just a personal matter of taste, or our musical taste. It's just one of many options.

However, if this is about knowing your maker, if this is God's way to know God, if this is about eternal life and it's urgent, then it must be important. Or in the words that were read to us by Jesse, where Jesus says, "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul?" It must be an important story, mustn't it, if that be true? And then, is it a true story? Mark's gospel is the earliest account of Jesus, so it's the very closest to his life that we have of all the gospel accounts. And Mark's chief source was Peter, and Peter knew Jesus better than anyone. Peter, who wrote around about the same time of Mark's gospel, around about 65 AD, in that first passage we heard from 2 Peter, he said this: "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." And then he goes on to say, "We ourselves heard the voice of God when we're on the sacred mountain: 'This is my son whom I love; with him I am well pleased.'" And Mark adds, "Listen to him." See, if we could listen to the Son of God, if we could listen to Jesus, that would have to be worthwhile, wouldn't it? To hear what he has to say about life, how life works out best, how to live it in a meaningful way. See, there's something to hear; that's one of the messages of Mark's gospel: we need to hear from Jesus. There's something to listen to; it's the good news of Jesus the Son of God—listen to him. And as we've been reading and thinking about this particular gospel, you see Jesus as this great colossus who strides through the world. He's like a doctor going through a battlefield: he's got all the medicine, everyone's injured, he seems to have all the answers and none of the problems.

And although it's Mark's gospel, it's not Mark's story. In fact, Mark really doesn't mention himself at all, although there is a cryptic and enigmatic reference when Jesus is arrested in Mark 14:51. It says this: "A young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus when they seized him; he fled naked, leaving his garment behind." What a funny reference. And we think that that is Mark just being self-deprecating, and he doesn't need to refer to the fact that it was him because he told the story many times himself about how he was so frightened he ran away naked. But my question this morning is: how does your story fit with his story, with Jesus' story? And I hope over the last few weeks—well, the last week since February 1st—I hope you've been listening and you've been saying to yourself, "This is the person I must join." Is there a place in your story for him, and is it the right place? I'll tell you why it's important: it's because it's got to do with God, it's got to do with your maker, it's got to do with being friends with God, of being right with God. Mark is brilliant in the way he sets it out for us. You can describe it in all sorts of different ways. Do you remember a number of weeks ago when we talked about the time the paralyzed man was let down through the roof and Jesus, rather than healing him from his paralysis straight away, he said, "Your sins are forgiven"? And you might say to yourself, "I don't know if my sins are forgiven." Have you ever asked for that? Can't ever remember asking for it? Maybe you never have, I don't know. Forgiveness—that's one way of looking at it. Do you remember the time a few weeks ago where we looked at that woman who was healed? She'd been ill for 12 years; there she was, she was going through the crowd secretly and she just touched his cloak and immediately she felt she was okay. And Jesus found her in the crowd and said to her, "Your faith has saved you." It's a lovely sentence isn't it, "Your faith has saved you." And you think to yourself, "Have I ever done that? Have I ever stopped to say to Jesus, 'I put my faith in you'?" And you say to yourself, "Look, I actually don't think I ever have done that." Or the way he deals with his enemies, the way he cares for the little people, and you say to yourself, "This is just the sort of person I want to be associated with; if this is God, this is the person I want to be joined to." Or you might remember from Friday a week ago—just Friday with you, Good Friday—when we spoke about Jesus dying on the cross. Remember the temple? The curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom, the thing that represented the barrier between us and God. And you think to yourself, "In real life there are a lot of barriers between me and God; I put a lot of barriers up." And there it was like God was saying through the death of Jesus: there's now no barrier anymore between me and you. No barrier; you just need to come in. And I'm saying to you this morning, have you ever done that?

It's just different ways of saying, "How does his story join with my story?" And you might be saying to yourself this morning, "I don't think I can remember when this happened." Might have happened slowly over a long period of time; it was a slow realization that my story was joined to Jesus' story, and that's okay. Sometimes it's a slow realization; sometimes it just happens once and you could say the day and the time and what was going on—the day and the time when you said, "Yes, I do want to join this one." But if you have never done that, maybe it's never happened. And if it's never happened, then there's no better time than today to make it happen. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray a prayer. And the prayer goes like this—I'm going to read it to you straight out and then I'm going to pray it slowly, and you, if you agree with it, you should echo it in your own head. So the prayer goes like this: "Lord Jesus, this morning I would like to join my story to yours. I know you're the forgiver of sins and I ask for that forgiveness. I know you're the one who saves and so I put my faith in you. Thank you for dying and rising and that there is now no barrier and you welcome me in. Please show me each day and help me to be someone who listens to you." Well, that's the prayer I'm going to pray, and if that's any use to you—I just made it up this morning based on Mark's gospel—if it's any use to you, then I'm going to ask you to pray it just quietly in your own heart as I read it out line by line. So let's pray. "Lord Jesus, this morning I would like to join my story to yours. I know you are the forgiver of sins and I ask for that forgiveness. I know you're the one who saves and so I put my faith in you. Thank you for dying and rising and that there is now no barrier and you welcome me in. Please show me each day and help me to be someone who listens to you."

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