Mark 10:17-22
There are at least three assumptions I'm making in this message, so I'm going to just tell you what they are right up front.
First, people need to hear the gospel.
Second, the Gospel will not make sense unless it makes sense in the listeners lives.
Third, therefore, based on the first two, the one who carries the gospel needs to know two things: the message of Jesus Christ; and, the story of the person who is being told that message. Most mistakes are made in sharing the Gospel because people are not listened to, their stories are made to be insignificant to the sharing of the Gospel, so they feel like targets at which the message of Christ--like a dart--is thrown at them.
I think people like to talk about themselves. I have found this to be generally true. There is a story about the actress Mae West who, at a party, talked and talked about herself. Then finally she said to those who were listening, "Enough about me. Tell me, what did you think of my last film?" Most people aren't egotistical in a Mae West sort of way. But we nonetheless like to find people who are interested in us and our story.
It is in conversation with people--listening and talking--that discoveries are made about each other, what their lives mean and what our lives mean in light of the Gospel.
This kind of conversation has been called "Lifestory Conversations". There is a little booklet by this name that I have used with churches to help them reach out to non-Christians or non-church members in a healthy and significant way. The booklet describes four such lifestory conversations you can have with people. I want to go over three of the four with you in a brief way this morning, and hopefully get you interested so you will take the "Lifestory Conversation" Workshop I will be offering in the near future.
The first kind of Lifestory Conversation is called "Life Review." A life review conversation can be started by asking certain kinds of questions, like:
What is one of the best things that's happened to you, and why was it so good?
By your own standards, what have been some of your most meaningful achievements?
Complete this sentence: "It gave me real happiness when..."
These kinds of questions are a conversational way to help people survey their lives in their current situation. From that survey they can then make some observations about any changes they might need to make. And then reflect upon their past.
Some other questions that could be asked might be:
Where have you been? (Not just geographically, but also emotionally, relationship-wise, etc.)
Where are you now? (In other words, at what point are you at now because of where you have been?)
Where are you going? (What's ahead for your future? What are you looking forward to in life?)
I particularly like the third question because it has to do with future and hope. It will give you an insight into the person you are talking to in terms of whether they are a person who is locked in the past and constantly looking backward, or if they are someone who is hopeful about their future. Do they think their future is going to be bigger or better than their past?
I read an article recently about a homeless amnesiac. He remembers working as a Wall Street banker, hearing his mother speak French, living in southern Florida, going skiing, and having a dog named Woofy. But that's about it.
He was found one winter taking shelter in a luggage compartment on a Greyhound bus in Springfield, Missouri. He was suffering from frostbite and exposure. He had nothing on him that cleared up the question of who he was.
Even after doing nationwide searches through the FBI, no one is any closer to finding out who the guy is. "He has a few nice memories," his social worker said in the interview. "But without knowing much about his past, it's hard for him to put together his future," the social worker said.
So many people don't need to have amnesia to feel like they don't know where they are going in life. They remember their past, but they may think their past is not substantial enough to build a new future upon. That's the work of this first part of Lifestory Conversation: helping people understand their past and present, so that they can then be engaged with the Gospel about their future with God.
The story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, the wee little tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus is a great case in point. At verse 7 Jesus went to be the guest of Zacchaeus the tax collector. People were grumbling that Jesus got cozy with someone like Zacchaeus. At verse 8, Zacchaeus told Jesus, "Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!"
My question is, "What happened between verse 7 and verse 8? Did Jesus have a "life review" kind of conversation with Zacchaeus, and after hearing his story, Jesus knew what Zacchaeus needed to hear from the Gospel about his new future? But Jesus may not have been able to get Zacchaeus to that place of amazing generosity without hearing Zacchaeus' story first. Those are the conversations we need to have with others before we share the gospel. If we listen first, help the person do some life review, then share the Gospel based on what the person told us, some amazing transformations can take place.
The second kind of Lifestory Conversation we can have with others is called "Search for Inner Meaning."
After you have laid the groundwork of life review, it is hard not to begin to see the meanings that are attached to the various events of our lives. Often, if not most of the time, it is not the events and experiences themselves that create the impact on our lives, but the meanings we quickly associate with those events and experiences.
An engineer, a psychologist and a Pastor were on a hunting trip in northern Canada. They came to an isolated cabin and knocked on the door hoping to get some shelter from the cold. No one was home, but the front door was unlocked, so they walked right in.
Inside the cabin there was a large, potbellied, cast-iron stove, suspended in midair by wires attached to the ceiling beams. Why would a stove be elevated from the floor? The psychologist concluded, "It is obvious that this lonely trapper, isolated from humanity, has elevated his stove so he can curl up under it and vicariously experience a return to his mother's womb."
The engineer disagreed. "This man is practicing the laws of thermodynamics. By elevating his stove, he has discovered a way to distribute heat more evenly throughout the cabin."
But the Pastor said, "I disagree. I'm sure that hanging his stove from the ceiling has a religious meaning. Fire lifted up on the altar of his stove connects him to the ancient religious practices over the centuries."
Just then the trapper returned. They immediately asked him why he had hung his stove by wires from the ceiling. The trapper said, simply, "Had plenty of wire, but not much stovepipe."
The meanings we attach to the events in our lives can be just as outlandish as the three hunters did with the stove. We take the odd, painful, exciting experiences of life and almost always interpret them as more than they simply are. When we figure out the simpler, more honest meanings of the events we experience we can then be freed up to reinterpret those meanings and see the event differently--even our lives differently.
The story of Nicodemus in John 3 is a great example here. Remember Nicodemus is that highly respected Pharisee who came to speak with Jesus in the dark of night. He was in some sort of midlife crisis and needed help. So he came under the cover of darkness to speak with Jesus. How was Nicodemus interpreting the events of his life? What were the meanings he attached to his life experiences that left him in a state of confusion and anxiety?
Thursday was National Poetry Day. I immersed myself in poetry, posting a poem an hour on Facebook. There were some powerful words in those poems. One poem I found was by Jane Kenyon. She wrestled with depression her whole life, as did her husband. One of her poems is titled, "The Pear."
There is a moment in middle age
when you grow bored, angered
by your middling mind,
afraid.
That day the sun
burns hot and bright,
making you more desolate.
It happens subtly, as when a pear
spoils from the inside out,
and you many not be aware
until things have gone too far.
That is a sad meaning that many people attach to their lives. That their lives have rotted from the inside out and now it's too late to do anything about it. And that's the sentiment behind Nicodemus' question to Jesus, "How can a grown man be born again?" "How can I find a way to make the spoiled fresh again?" Nicodemus can't see any other meanings for the events in his life other than utter hopelessness and unreclaimable deterioration. Jesus, after hearing Nicodemus' story, reframes the meanings of Nicodemus' life in terms of rebrith, and all of a sudden Nicodemus sees he can be free and live differently into his future.
But Jesus wouldn't have been able to guide Nicodemus in that direction if he didn't first have that conversation with him. Jesus needed to hear Nicodemus' story before he could reframe new meanings for Nicodemus and get him out of the hole he was in.
A final strategy of Lifestory Conversations is "linking our story with the story." So much of our society has become hurried, surface activity. So much of what we do is flat and one dimensional. Our language has become more like empty blogger verbage, pushing away the depth of the poetic language of wonder and awe.
Samuel Miller, in commenting about our time, wrote,
In man's life everything has been denuded of its religious quality. Birth, puberty, marriage, sin, death--once pivotal points of spiritual significance--have now lost their sacramental depth. Everything has become natural, biological, social and quite clinical. There are no distances, no depth, no essential mysteries. Everything is on the surface.
Taking a look at our own story, and helping others take a look at theirs, can put us in touch with the realization that there is another whole story that is surrounding our own. That we are part of something much, much bigger if we had just been paying attention. There is a deep undercurrent with powerful rhythms, sometimes moving in an opposite direction from the surface.
Joseph's story of being sold into slavery by his brothers in the book of Genesis is a perfect here. Remember Joseph was his father's favorite. Joseph was given the coat of many colors by his father--which made the brothers jealous.
After being sold as a slave by his brothers, a series of circumstances led Joseph to eventually become the second in command to Pharaoh himself. With a famine in the land, Joseph was in a position to get his brothers out of Israel and into Egypt to make sure they didn't starve to death.
Joseph's brothers can't believe it is him, and what he has attained. They are afraid Joseph is going to have them killed. But because Joseph saw the bigger picture, he was able to say to his brothers, at the end of their story, "As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people..." Joseph saw God's larger story going on in his and his families life. But his brothers only saw what they had done, but not the bigger movements of God, even in the negative circumstances of Joseph's slavery and imprisonment.
Here is the ultimate aim of Lifestory Conversations as a healthy form of evangelism: to joyfully discover this other Story--this Story that is larger than ourselves that is of God.
The purpose of Lifestory Conversations in evangelism is to enable a person to hear the Biblical story and to say, "That is my story, too." When that happens, gradually or suddenly, we can say conversion has taken place. The Bible is the story of "every person" (and how God is working in every person's life).
But you can't lead anyone to that point until you have the conversation first--the Lifestory conversation that helps them understand and then embrace the God of the larger story.
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