By Annie Turner
Sermon delivered via Zoom to Haydenville Congregational Church January 9, 2022

How does your story, your small, individual story, intersect with God’s bigger story? What happens when we link our narrative to God’s narrative? In what ways will this change us? In what ways will this make for a better world?

     All during my Junior year abroad in England the years of 1965-1966, a young woman of faith had been working on me, giving me a copy of the King James Bible, talking to me about faith, and promising me that with my passion for justice I could become a fervent part of God’s kingdom. I listened, found that the Gospels were not so darn strange after all, which was a big surprise given my Lefty upbringing and my parents’ disdain of religion. Even though both had been brought up in churches.

That summer, July 1966, suddenly—without my wishing it at all—my tiny story became enfolded in God’s story when I sat in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, England, listening to Bach’s “St. John’s Passion.” The music was beautiful, profound, and moving. As I read the words on the program and looked at the cellist playing–without music,  tears streaming down her cheeks—my heart gave a sudden thump and I realized: This is true. Every word of it is true. Jesus is real. He lived, taught, healed, claimed, suffered and died so long ago. He is real.

And my life has never been the same since, praise God. My ambitions, ego, arrogance, judgements, comparisons, all of it were swept away as someone sweeps the dirt on a kitchen floor. How could this have happened? Where did the fun-loving party girl go? I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her or wave a glass of Prosecco in her direction!

The wonderful, radical Franciscan priest, Fr. Richard Rohr, often speaks of the “small self,” or “the shadow self,” as does Jung. You will know it when your tiny egoistic self is joined to God’s bigger self because—you may cry as I did with snotty, gobs of tears streaking down your face. You may well fall to your knees and pray for the very first time, as I did, after asking God—“Mmm, hello there, dear sir, how do I pray? Do I put my hands together? Do I kneel? A couple of directions would be good here, dear sir.” I put my hands together, began to pray, and God’s love blasted through the brick wall to strike my heart so hard I fell on my ass.  All of this can happen. Or you may find a gentler, kinder way where conversations with friends and loved ones over days, weeks, and months lead you to the inevitable conclusion that God is Real, is Here, and You are never Alone. What a concept. What a gift. Or, as Fr. Rohr has said, “God is reality with a face.” And Paula D’Arcy wrote, “God comes to you disguised as your own life.”

  Let’s go back to the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, and maybe find some places where we see God’s Story intersecting with Our Story.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light, “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning—the first day. (Genesis 1: 1-5)

When was the last time that you saw that you are good? When did you hold out your hand or look at your face in the mirror—not judging, not criticizing—and say, “I am good. God created me.” You could also, if you wish, say, “I am the imago Dei, made in the image of God.”

This could be the first time you are joining your small narrative to the bigger, holier one. And in case you missed it first time around, You are holy, just as the heavens and the earth are holy. It does not matter what you did. Your mistakes, regrets, sins and failures make no matter when God shines her light on you and creates you.

Here is another one to remind you of whence you came, in Psalm 19, 1-3:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

What if you knew—I mean really knew in your bones—that the breath beneath your words is holy, just as the speech uttered by the stars, moon, and sun is holy? What if you knew that the story of You is also wrapped in the stars and the sky? How would it change the way you love, move and interact within this world? As science has shown, we are all created from star dust, all the same material—praying mantises, bugs, blue birds, blue whales, dolphins, hummingbirds, Komodo dragons, and yes—even the people you love to hate in this world or in your past—everyone created from star dust.

As Thomas Merton once realized, on the corner of Lexington Avenue in Kentucky;  “…we are all walking around shining like the sun.” That is something to think about, to take into your heart as a way to link your small story to God’s big story. Each one of us is a small sun.

Here are some other places where a tiny story gets folded into a larger one, all from the Bible; Scripture tells us how this can happen:

–The Story of Elijah and the Widow in a land of starvation (1Kings 17: 10-16); remember that he meets up with the widow as she is collecting sticks to make a fire to form a last cake from olive oil, water, and flour to feed her son and herself before they will die. But Elijah, and God, have other plans. He tells her to bring him a small cake to eat, and from her trust, God’s abundance rushes forth like a mighty fountain. Elijah tells her that her oil jar will never run dry nor will her flour jar run empty. God’s abundance meets the widow right where she is, in the midst of hunger, drought, and despair.

–The Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4: 7-16): you know that the Samaritans were considered outsiders, beyond the pale to the Jews. But Jesus turns this on its head by sitting on the well stones and telling the woman all he knows of her life, including her 5 husbands. Her tiny story, which seems so sad to me, is suddenly enfolded in God’s bigger story through Jesus, his words, and his compassion. She is rescued, joined to Jesus.

–The Cannanite Woman (Matthew 15: 21-28) who begs Jesus to expel the demon from her daughter and heal her, although at first he refuses in a way that is a real head-snapper. But she pulls on his cloak with her words, “…even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” By trusting, by imploring, by believing, her story and that of her sick daughter become part of God’s story and her healing.

–In Romans 8, verse 26, Paul writes: “We know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” People of God! Listen up! Even if you do not know HOW to pray, the Holy Spirit knows how, and he will intercede for you, carrying your unspoken, unknown words to the Father/Mother God, joining your smaller words to God’s bigger ones.

I would like to suggest that you meditate and pray on these words to see where they take you. Or find others in the Bible which speak to you. Imagine God’s hands cradling you like the warm hands of a Woman of Color, a grandmother who has seen it all and still loves, and sees every part of your story cradled by each long finger, even the ones you are most ashamed of. What I have found is that the very times when my small story seems most joined to God’s story are times of anguish, joy, or trust.

So, I would see the moment I was shot by a .22 rifle through a doorway in a home gun accident, all of the blood, fear, and pain, swept within that warm hand, contained and folded so it can no longer harm me, even though for years afterwards I would slink past a window or a door, not remembering why I was doing that.

  I would see the moment I was thrown out of a car when I was 17, after Rick and I had been drinking,  onto the cold, black tar by Look Park. Wait. Look for it. This grandmother, this woman of spirit and faith, is picking me up from the tar, bloody and concussed, but alive. She is saying to me, “Man, I am so glad you are here, Annie. I am so glad you are alive, because I’ve got plans for you that you know not.” 

I would see the moments when I spread my fleece coat over my dying mother—only 55—at the hospital to keep her warm as she whispered to me, “Take care of Daddy, Annie, take care of him.” And beneath the sorrow and grief, God was there, holding me in Her hands, holding my mom in Her warm hands as my mother slipped through the thin place to another life.

I could go on. I could talk about the births of my two sons, how that was a thin place for certain where death and life were intertwined like one dark thread and one bright, bringing new life into the world. How did I not know this at the time? I know now, though, because God has given me the wisdom to go back over my life’s moments to see where she was acting, what she was saying to me.

But with the years—with cancer, chemo, resultant illnesses and disabilities, with all of this—I have gained fragments of wisdom, like small stars snatched from the firmament. I hold them, shining, in my hands, just as God holds me, shining, in Her hands:

Here are some concrete ways I have found to join my story to God’s story, and some may resonate for you, some may not.

–Pray. Pray daily because it is breath within your body. I cannot do without it, and I suspect you cannot either, even if your prayer is doing it for the 2 min. when Susan Farrell does her electric toothbrush. God will take any prayers, anytime you want, for however long they are. Anne Lamott say that her two favorite prayers are, helphelphelp thankyouthankyouthankyou.

–Read Scripture Daily. This is important. You may think you can do without it. You can’t, any more than you can do without the loving hug of your partner, your morning java, your daily walk, whatever gets you up and running. It will change your life. Literally. Those words will sink into your bones and flesh, appearing during a walk, a conversation, and you will think, “Oh, yeah, NOW I get it.” How could you possibly have a relationship with your partner if you didn’t bring her coffee, ask how her day went, and communicate with her? It is the same with God.

–The More You Talk to God, the More God Will Talk to You. Be alert for that small whisper, for the words which fly into your mind which are not your words. It will happen. Be open to it.

–Write In a Gratitude Journal because Gratitudes become joy, which is not the same as happiness. It is a choice, much as the blessed Julian of Norwich once said, “All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well… for there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go.” Because no matter what happens, you are not alone; no matter what grief life brings you, love holds you up and will bring you home. Julian knew this, as a survivor of war, hunger, the plague and so much more.

I am not asking you to be falsely optimistic. I am simply asking, nay urging you (only English majors get to use the word “nay”) to dive deep into your stories and then dive deep into God’s stories. You will see that you are linked to God, intertwined with Her like a massive, shining, bright web of threads that is your life and God’s life. They cannot be separated. Trust me on this. I know it. I have lived it. And I have come back to tell you that it is true.