[The following is the text of the sermon I delivered at the chapel at the Free Lutheran Bible College/Seminary this past Thursday,]

And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’” (Luke 8: 9-10, ESV)

Dr. Sebastian Gorka tells a story about when he was writing his book, Defeating Jihad. When he’d finished it, he showed it to his wife and asked her what she thought of it. As a writer myself, I know what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to tell him it was the most wonderful book she’d ever read, and it would certainly be a bestseller and change the world.

But she didn’t say that. What she did was ask, “Is that all there is?”

He said yes. Here were his facts and his arguments. What was there left to say?

She told him, “You need to tell a story. Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

So he went back to his word processor and he wrote an introduction. In that introduction, he told the story of a young man who’d been in the underground in Communist Hungary, back in the days of the Soviet Union. He was betrayed by the famous English traitor Kim Philby, and arrested by the government. Imprisoned and tortured.

Then, in 1956, the Hungarians staged an uprising. The man was released from prison, but he knew the Communists were coming back. He made plans to escape to the west. When he left, he took a friend’s 17-year-old daughter with him, at that friend’s request. The man wanted his daughter to live in the free world. They made the very dangerous journey across the border, and ended up in England. Later he married the girl, and they were Dr. Gorka’s parents. He says that whenever people talk to him about the book, they never want to talk about the main text. They ask him about that story.

“Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

If God had asked my advice, back when He was planning how He’d reveal Himself to Mankind through a book, I’d have told Him to give us a book of Systematic Theology. You start out with a chapter on Epistemology – the science of how we know things. Then I’d suggest a chapter on Trinitarian Theology. And a chapter on the Incarnation. A chapter on Soteriology, the theology of salvation. At the end, a chapter on Eschatology, the Last Things. Everything organized, like the books I used to stock up in the bookstore for seminary classes. I’d want it laid out neatly, with headings and subheadings. Charts and bullet points would be nice, too. Think of all the theological arguments we’d be spared!

But for some reason – and theologians marvel at it to this day – God did not consult me on the subject.

When God chose to reveal Himself through a Book, he told a story. A classic story in classic form, with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Rising and falling dramatic tension. Twists and turns and setbacks, a moment when all seems hopeless, a climactic battle, and a happy ending featuring a wedding. There’s other kinds of material in the Bible, of course, law and poetry and prophecy, but overall it forms a complete narrative arc.

Even more shockingly, when God determined to come down to be with us as a Man, He did not come as a theologian. Or even a philosopher. He came as a storyteller. That’s one of the reasons the Pharisees rejected Him. Storytellers were not then – and are not now – considered entirely respectable.

And He made it worse by admitting that He didn’t expect most people to get it! “Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand!” What does that mean? If storytelling is a trivial activity, how much more useless are stories that people aren’t even going to understand?

Now this question takes us into dangerous territory.

Which, by the way, is precisely how stories work. More on that later.

First of all, let’s talk about how a story is made. This is something I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t figure out until I’d been trying to write for years. I’d read a thousand stories, but I never figured out the formula until I found it described in a magazine article.

I’ll tell you the formula now for free.

You start with a main character. Usually, this will be someone the reader can like and identify with.

Then you torture him. You give him a problem. He tries to solve the problem, and he fails. Not only does he fail, but his failure makes the problem worse. Now it’s important here that your hero should have some character and resilience. You can’t just let him give up; if he gives up there’s no story.

So he tries to solve his problem a second time, and he fails again. And makes things worse again.

Wash, rinse and repeat, raising the stakes each time, enough times to make the story as long as you need it to be.

By the end of the story, the situation is desperate. Then, he either finally succeeds, or he fails in some way that’s significant.

That’s it. That’s how a story works.

And did you notice the neatest thing about the formula? The formula for a good story is exactly the same as the formula for living our lives. This is precisely how we learn, and grow, and succeed. Trial and error. Perseverance. Endurance. Failing and failing again until we find something that works. Matthew 24:13 – “The one who endures to the end will be saved.”

And it occurs to me that this may be the answer to what C.S. Lewis called the Problem of Pain. We’ve all asked the question, “If God is so good, how come people suffer so much? How come awful things happen to the nicest people?”

Well, that’s what happens in a story. I go through this every time I write a story. I usually like my main character, but my whole job as a storyteller is to make him suffer. The more I torture him, the better the story. I could be nice to him. I could give him a beautiful day full of love and good luck and sunny skies.

But that would be a boring story. And nobody would read it.

So this is the formula – the hero suffers. He learns through suffering. He has to face his greatest fears.

And you know, there’s another word for that. It’s called Faith. Romans 5:3-5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

It seems to me more and more, as I get older, that sin and cowardice are the same thing. (And I’m speaking here with some authority, because I’m a great coward.) It’s a prudent rule in life to generally choose whatever course of action scares you the most, because our sinful flesh craves safety and comfort. The Christian life is a life of walking toward the things you fear. Running toward the gunfire, as they say in the military.

Just like in a story.

Why is it that we have the command to “Fear not,” or something similar, 92 times in the Bible? (That’s the King James Version; it varies with other translations. It’s not actually 365 times, as people like to say in Facebook memes, but still that’s a lot of fear nots.) Because the life of faith is a life of heroism.

Maybe that’s why we’re told to fear God. Not only because He’s holy and powerful and greater than anything, though those things are most certainly true. Maybe it’s also because knowing Him always involves doing scary stuff.

So there’s my grand theory. The universe is a story. We’re all characters in it. That’s neat and clever, and like all neat, clever answers it isn’t really satisfactory.

Because if I think about the things we have to fear, the evil in the world – genocide, and slavery and injustice, disease and the suffering of children, it doesn’t really help much to say, “Well, you’ve got to have bad stuff if you want to have a story!” I’m tempted to reply, “So what? Maybe we can do without the story, thank you very much!”

Well, there’s one more element of a story that I haven’t discussed yet.

The happy ending.

Oh, I know you can have a story without a happy ending. I’ve written them. Lots of stories are tragedies, and some stories are horror stories, and some modern stories haven’t got a proper ending at all.

But the best stories have happy endings. Those are the stories you remember, the stories you read or watch or re-tell over and over, the ones that give you comfort in hard times. J. R. R. Tolkien called it the eucatastrophe – the wonderful happy ending that comes out of nowhere just when you’re sure everything’s lost.

If our faith is true, if the God who created the story really spoke to us through the Bible, then that’s the kind of story we have to believe we’re in. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— (1 Cor. 2:9). “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2). “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. (1 Corinthians 12:2-4)

Some people talk as if they know what the Kingdom of Heaven will be like. I’m pretty sure they don’t. The Bible gives us images – symbols and poetry. We’re told it will be like a Great Throne, with angels worshipping all around. We’re told it’ll be like a foursquare city – where everything is neat and squared away. My own guess is that that means that in the Kingdom there won’t be any loose ends or rough edges, or anything crooked. Everything wrong will be made right. But my favorite image is the Wedding Feast. We’re talking a Jewish wedding here, not a Minnesota wedding. We’re talking singing, and dancing, and – dare I say it – wine. God’s gonna throw us the biggest, loudest, best party ever, and it’s gonna go on and on. “…and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:17)

But remember this. In the great story, that eucatastrophe only comes after the bad part. The happy ending isn’t any good unless it comes after some really bad, scary stuff. Tolkien wrote about it in The Two Towers:

But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?’

 ‘I wonder,’ said Frodo. ‘But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.’

So the great question is this – do you believe that the story we’re in is that kind of story? Do you trust Jesus the Storyteller to bring us through to the Happy Ending?

Are you willing to trust Jesus the Storyteller, based on His character, without knowing exactly how He’s going to work the happy ending out?

In other words, are you ready for an adventure – knowing that adventure means hard work, suffering, sacrifice, pain, and likely death? Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23).

During World War II, Winston Churchill told the English, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Following Jesus offers one thing more than that – the certain promise of the happy ending. But certain proof is not offered to us. Faith is all we’re offered.

And remember this – you’re not the hero of the story. I’m not the hero of the story. Jesus Christ is the Hero of the story. So, knowing what you know about Jesus Christ, do you trust His promise? Even in the dark?

“Looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)