“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”— Steve Jobs.
Storytelling is the oldest tool of influence in human history. It has the power to cut through and be listened to. Stories help create or reframe/shift a person’s perspective. Stories linger around so their power of influence stays on long-after rational facts are forgotten.
Jesus the storyteller
I have recently come to appreciate at a deeper level that Jesus was the master-storyteller of Emmanuel, the God who is with us in all things, … even death.
Jesus had no well-financed public relations team. He did not need Powerpoint, Facebook, or Twitter. Jesus basically told, and sometimes acted out his stories. He washed the feet of his disciples to help them understand what it meant to brothers and sisters.
He told stories they could relate to. The stories illustrated the Good News of a kingdom unlike any kingdom they had ever experienced. (Beyond Waving Palm Branches) He told stories of a God who was not interested in sacrifices. He told the story of how an enemy proved himself to be a neighbor to someone who had been beaten in robbed. He even tailored his stories about seeking this kingdom to the daily lives of men searching for lost sheep and women searching for a lost coin.
The evangelists as storytellers
Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John learned to use stories as well. They used the Jesus stories. They chose and adapted his stories to what was important in the life of the ordinary people they were writing to.
Matthew’s main concern is to present Jesus as a teacher even greater than Moses.
Luke presents Jesus as the prophet who has come to suffer for His people. He is a healer and a friend to tax collectors. He has come to save the lost and the outcast. He is the Servant from Isaiah, who brings comfort to the suffering and oppressed.
For John, Jesus is the Word made flesh. He is the Son of God and the one who reveals the Father
It is only recently that I have come to appreciate how these stories were used to address the growing tensions between Christians and Jews. By the time Luke composed his work, tension was breaking into open (Acts of the Apostles – Prequel to Today’s Polarization)
The summer of Mark
All this was triggered by the realization that this is the summer of Mark. This is Year B in the three-year cycle of Sunday Gospels. With the exception of the seasons of Christmas and Easter the readings have been taken from Mark.
This past Easter season I was amazed at how much I had never appreciated about Luke’s Acts of the Apostles as the follow-up to his gospel. (Link) I never appreciated why and how Luke strung the stories together. I had not seen the forest because I was focusing on the trees.
Traditionally, Mark’s gospel is said to have been written shortly before A.D. 70 in Rome.
Gentile Christians were facing impending persecution and destruction loomed over Jerusalem. His audience seems to have been Gentile, unfamiliar with Jewish customs (hence Mk 7:3–4, 11).
Mark’s gospel encouraged these Christians to stand faithful in the face of persecution (Mk 13:9–13), and continue with the proclamation of the gospel begun in Galilee (Mk 13:10; 14:9).
Some things to consider
- How does Mark use the story of Jesus and Jesus’ stories to strengthen this community?
- What does the Gospel of Mark underline for us in our world?
Click below of an audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk
One thing I have read about Mark is that the disciples never understood Jesus. This keeps the focus on Jesus and off of us as his disciples. Our work is to follow. This leads to the cross, and when I can say yes, to freedom and peace.
Miles, you scooped me. That caught my attention also. I have a post planned on this in the next 2 weeks.
Father John, more than 30 years ago, I came to appreciate Mark’s Gospel as the “git-her-done” version of Salvation History. I had been a liturgy planner at the parish where I grew up and we were planning a Tenebrae service for Holy Week. As I recall, I had spent several weeks reviewing Mark’s Gospel and even wrote a song about his version of the Gethsemane account.
In many ways, Mark’s Gospel seems laconic compared to Luke, less reflective than John, and unladen with all the detail that Matthew presents. Yet, it is very compelling.
The passage that eventually hooked me was Mark 3: 20-21. (I just looked up where it appears in the Lectionary and we just missed it. It’s read on the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, if that ever gets celebrated in its own right, which was preempted by Corpus Christi this year. It almost always falls in that group of Sundays at the end of Easter.)
“He came home. Again [the] crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” – Mark 3: 20-21
The other evangelists put those words in the mouths of other people, but in Mark the family are the ones seeming to be disparaging. Interestingly enough, “hunger” is their motivation – a theme that motivates all of us but in different ways. It also serves as a good reminder of who we are called to serve – those who are hungry.
Our pastor always manages to include the food connection when he talks about Jesus and Salvation History: laid in a feeding trough; born in the “House of Bread” (Beth Lehem); offering himself as food and drink at the Last Supper; being recognized as the Christ when he breaks bread with friends.
My humble take “from the pews”!