What do people do when they have to wait for anything? They immediately pull out their smartphones and kill the time by staring at them. Some people do that even when they don’t have any time to kill; some others do it as if they intended to kill when they play with their phones while driving… The main reason for this relatively new habit is that with the dawn of smartphones we found a very handy and easy way to keep boredom away and entertain ourselves. It used to be so much more troublesome: you had to carry a book, or find a telly and watch it at the right time, or go to the cinema with a narrow selection of films and being time-limited… You’ve got the idea. Go further back in time and there were even fewer means of entertainment, such as theatres (mostly for elites), gladiatorial arenas (for the masses) and social or religious gatherings (very often they were interconnected). The common element of virtually all those forms of entertainment, from ancient to modern, is that they tell a story. What is the secret of a good story? Its delivery, the way it’s told or presented. The best storyline can be ruined by poor delivery, while an apparently extremely boring topic can keep us gripped when it’s told well – think of the natural history series by Sir David Attenborough as an example. Incidentally, I’ve just revealed the secret of a good delivery: it has to keep us gripped. And that leads us to another secret; we are gripped by a story if we can somehow identify with the main characters or the plot.
Over the last 15 or 20 minutes, we have listened to the stories of Abraham called to sacrifice his only son, the story of the people of Israel crossing the Red Sea and the story of some women in Jerusalem who had had an encounter with a couple of strangers making bold claims that Jesus was alive. Were we gripped by those stories? Probably not so much… Over the years I’ve heard complaints that the Easter Vigil is too long, with too many readings and so on. I suppose we are not gripped by those stories because we have heard them so many times, their language is archaic, and the storylines are unbelievable or tedious at best. All that means that it’s hard to find those stories relatable. In other words, the stories we read out and tried hard to listen to didn’t meet the aforementioned criteria of being gripping… However, there’s a group of people who seem never to tire of listening to, or watching, the same stories over and over again; even when they know them by heart, they keep returning to the same stories, sometimes driving their parents to desperation. Yes, I’m talking about small children. This attitude is at odds with our adult world, always looking for fresh content. But when you think about it, all the new books or films essentially re-tell the same story of good and evil, love, sacrifice and so on; what changes is the form of telling it. So, perhaps children are just sharper at seeing that…
I’ve mentioned children for a good reason. There’s an interesting passage in the Book of Deuteronomy; it’s a bit long but please bear with me: “When your children ask you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your children, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lord displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. Then the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case. If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.” (6:20-25) The biblical stories had a strong educational purpose, and they were aimed at younger generations of Israelites and later, of Christians. Let’s remind ourselves how to keep their attention: make the story gripping. The obvious way of doing so was by expanding them, adding awe-inspiring or breath-taking elements, circumstances and the like. The modern entertainment industry describes this way as “based on a true story” so we understand that the film or book isn’t reflecting factually the events in question but still tells the real story. It’s not a new invention; it’s as old as storytelling and it applies to many biblical stories.
As an example, let’s look at the partition of the Red Sea and the Israelites crossing it dry-shod. Read as a journalistic, factual report on the event it doesn’t stand up to even superficial scrutiny: “The Lord drove back the sea with a strong easterly wind all night, and he made dry land of the sea. The waters parted and the sons of Israel went on dry ground right into the sea, walls of water to right and to left of them.” A wind strong enough to retain the water like walls would make any walking completely impossible. Just think about last winter’s storms here in Scotland. However, this story wasn’t a newspaper report; it was a form of entertainment “based on a true story”. What was that story then? An educated assumption is that there was a group of slaves who had escaped from their captors or owners in Egypt and were heading back home. They travelled along a shore, chased by a hunting party. A combination of low tide and strong winds pushed the water far enough from the shore to make a strip of land passable. A couple of weeks ago I experienced something similar while walking at the Forvie Natural Reserve north of Aberdeen. Those who regularly walk along sandy beaches know well that the sand underfoot can behave differently; sometimes it’s solid like concrete, easy to walk on, sometimes wet and mushy or super dry and very loose, making walking exhausting. Another possibility was that the weather conditions exposed a rocky maze, usually partially or completely submerged, providing refuge or hiding from the pursuers, or allowing the fugitives to escape. The hunting party might have suffered some losses, or that bit was just added to increase the dramatic effect. What mattered to the original characters of the story was that they were saved from slavery and from harsh punishment as a result of absconding. They interpreted the fortunate combination of many factors as God’s intervention, a miraculous deliverance. Imagine that story told by the flickering light of an oil lamp in the middle of the night when the Israelites celebrated Passover, with children holding their breath and noisily applauding the happy ending.
And here we have touched on how we can find this and any other biblical stories relatable if we reach behind the ornamental bits and archaic language. We can learn to see God’s loving presence around us; we can learn to see all those small, seemingly coincidental fortunate events as God’s helping hand in action; we can learn to persevere through troubles to eventually emerge on the other side of hardships. And then, when we tell others about God’s active presence in our lives, we will more or less consciously try to describe the indescribable experience in the way described as “based on a true story.”
Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay