God's Story

Once Upon a Time…

there was a child born to a single mother, single in every sense of the word. The child was special, said to be a king, and his birth was announced by angels. He lived an ordinary life, at least for a while, living among his subjects without distinction, his royalty perfectly camouflaged, like the secret crawlspace behind the barn that concealed him in many a game of hide-and-seek. His mother alone replayed the  angels’ heavenly declaration and the earthy pains of his birth like a movie in her mind’s eye, each night as she closed her real eyes to catch some much needed sleep.

While the hidden prince did his chores, had foot races with his brother and learned the trade of the other man of the house, his heavenly pedigree was pulling him away from the ordinary like an outgoing tide. He awaited his cue, supporting his widowed mother until he traded his trade to be about some other business. No one foresaw that the man from Nazareth (who could have been the man from Brockton or Detroit or East LA), would begin a campaign to turn the world upside down; where the first would be called last and the poor blessed; welcoming in the outcast and casting out the in crowd. He made sick people well and well people...well, sick.

He liked boats but didn’t need swimming lessons because he could simply walk across the white caps. He could even change the weather. Speaking of weather, he looked exactly like the sun one day and his friends weren’t sure which was which. His words were telling, but it was hard to be certain what they actually told.

He was a truth bearer - The Truth, in a Way - a PhD, a prophet who knew your name (and so much more) before you could introduce yourself. But in all of this, he never looked like the one thing he truly was. You know, what the angels had said about him, - “a king who will save his people”. The last thing he could have passed for was a king, which disappointed everyone - so much promise.

So the hidden king rose to fame and just days later fell from grace on a pole where they strung up derelicts and scum bags. Silence alone remained. Grief for a few; relief for most. Then after three gray days of April showers, the bud opens and the grave opens and open wounds now painless are the fingerprint of his identity into which they all must put their fingers. He is sometimes fleshy, sometimes ghostly – a “now you see him, now you don’t” presence who is a gardener, a walking-along-the-road-scholar, and a beach vendor serving up breakfast burritos.

It’s a fairy tale ending to the story of God that began with some newlyweds in a garden in Iraq, of all places, and a handhewn barge full of animals and one family who won the lottery. It’s the story of the sea all gathered up into walls like a giant aquarium with a dry sidewalk right down the middle. It’s the story of a child born to a teenage virgin and a dead man cooking the catch-of-the-day on a campfire. It’s a fairy tale if you want to call it that, one that a child listens to with eyes all aglow, all things being plausible.

Doesn’t every culture and time generate their own version of this – God’s story – where the epic conflict between good and evil unfolds and princes are disguised beneath bumpy green skin and sons discover their true identity, exchanging their allegiance from darkness to light? Doesn’t the gospel ask us to step into the looking glass and follow the yellow brick road? Isn’t the gospel itself God’s trail of holy breadcrumbs that safely lead us home? No wonder we're asked to lighten up and become like little children if we want to see the heavens open. Can we read the story through any other than a child’s eyes?

This is, after all, God’s unique story. It is the essence of life; the story that guides, uplifts and warns; passed along from generations before us to weave with our own - in this very place and time - tenuous chapters that we read even as they are being written.

A fairy tale, it’s fair to say, whose author is God who can write whatever he wants. A serpent can certainly talk, a bush can burn and be ever-green and the senseless death of one so good brings life to all. The key is to recognize ourselves, and one another, in this epic tale, living players in the thick of God’s plot until the too-good-to-be-true ending truly happens and we find ourselves living with the Author of our faith, happily ever after.

Step into the story. Become like a child and believe. 

© Grace Church