song and story

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon a stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. --Shakespeare

Songs sing and movies tell tales. Plays are about the playwright as much as about the play. But one could not exist without the other. Stories give us more truth and fill in the holes that words leave empty. In the end the Bible is like the story, the song, the movie, and the play we've seen over and over again but can never get enough of. I hear the story in nearly every song and story I see. Perhaps it is a blessing, maybe a curse; some might say it is the product of a vivid imagination. Never matter. It hangs around me like an echo, a breath, a voice. We are insatiably made with this hunger for a happy ending. 'A tale told by an idiot' is not what we need or want and it is certainly not our intended finale. We need a better story to finally set our hearts to rest.

Macbeth was wrong. We are made for more than this. Things may fall apart around us. We die. We seem destined to lose. But it is in the losing that we find life. We can rest in a better story. If we look with our soul we will see.

A story that contains all our hope.

One is out there.

The surprise ending of the Story told in scripture is the mystery unveiled by the Christ, spoke of extensively by the Apostle Paul. The revelation of Jesus should be likened unto the opening of a curtain on a stage in the final act of a play. It is revealing, surprising and disorienting to the traditional powers and in the end to ‘power’ and domination itself. The Christ event is clearly the commencement of one way (Christianity) and the conclusion of another (Judaism). It, the Christ event, is the center point of the history of mankind. It is when the way of a man and a woman is unveiled in the most beautiful way. In this we find love. In this we see the glory of God. It is here that we must know what God has been ‘up to’ and how this story goes. I have presided over many weddings. The final act of the processional is the coming out of the bride. It always comes in the end in white.

It is here we see what really was done on that cross.

A new way is unveiled. Naked and unashamed.

We can make the Bible about whatever we want it to be, we have in the past, we do in the present, and we may in the future, but I am convinced of this: The resolution of the dilemma of God, and the release of the cosmos from the tyranny of the fall, is the key question answered in the Bible. It is the purpose of the Bible. All else hinges on this issue...all else falls like so many dominos, once this issue is brought to terms and laid to rest. This is Biblical, Pauline language for the work of God in Christ. The curtain has fallen and the epilogue is being played out. We live in this story and it feels familiar at times. Déjà vu is the feeling that we have been in a present emotion at another time. There is something familiar going on. This story told in scripture being everyman’s story—is just like that.

You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.
Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman, Act 2