Sermon

Questions to Live By: What Is Your Story?

September 12, 2004

By Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

I want to start a series tonight called, “Questions to Live By.” And most of the time, a lot of religions try to give answers to everything. Put them in neat little boxes of belief that you can check off in a statement of faith. But I actually think that most of the time, more profound than the answers are the questions, the right questions. And so I invite you to go on a journey with me in these next months of questions to live by. And each Sunday night, I want to explore a question. Sometimes they’ll be a little humorous; sometimes they’ll be a little more philosophical. They’ll always be spiritual. But I want you to take these questions and to reflect on them all week.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this was because the quote that I’m going to read from the poet Rilke has been one of my favorites since my mid-twenties. And just this summer, two different people within a few weeks of each other sent me this quote and reminded me of why I loved it so much. So I’m going to share it with you. A young writer writes to the poet Rilke and is asking him for advice and so Rilke writes back in his famous “Letters to a Young Poet,” and he says:

“I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot be given to you now because you could not live them. At present you need to live the question and perhaps gradually you will, without noticing it, live yourself into the answer. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful and pure life style. Discipline yourself to attain it but accept that which comes to you with deep trust. And as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need, accept it and do not hate anything.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Love the questions. Love the questions, and some day gradually without even noticing it, you may live yourself into the answer. So tonight I want to lift up a question for you. And the question is this: “What is your story?” What is your story? Or what is my story?

You might be saying, “Well that’s not very profound.” Get a better question. (Laughter) No actually it’s a really good question. What is your story? You know we lift up stories here. In fact, stories keep us alive, but some stories actually keep us more closely connected to death than to life. All right?

Now I don’t mean the story of what is going on in your life this moment, unless it’s the same story that has been going on time after time after time and after the 53rd rerun, you’re tired of your story. Those are the kind of stories that I mean. That piece of identity or wound or history that has become so intimately “you” that without it, you might not know who you are. That without it, you might actually experience some transformation that you’ve been looking for.

So what’s your story? Ever seen somebody walking down the street and you said, “I wonder what his story is?” Well, that’s what I’m wondering about you. What’s your story? And that’s the question I want you to reflect on.

So I want to read about a man in the gospel of Luke who had a story. Luke Chapter 9 says:

“Then they (the disciples and Jesus) arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee, and as he stepped out on the land, a man of the city, who had demons, met him. For a long time, he had worn no clothes and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. And when he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me? Have you come to torment me? I beg you, do not torment me.’”

And then Luke adds, “For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For many times it would seize him and he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles but he would break them and run wild.”

So here was this man running wild in the tombs, living in his past. Do you ever feel that sometimes you’re doing the balancing act between living in the past and kind of “future tripping?” Thinking about those old resentments and nursing grudges, or wondering what you’re going to be like in a couple months or if something specific is going to happen. Remembering past loves and losses. Wondering who you’ll fall in love with next. (Laughter)

What a concept to just stop for a minute and actually be right here in the present, not in that old story and not in the story that’s to come but right here, right now. Did you notice that when Jesus got to the shore, before anything happened, the man ran up to him and said, “I beg you. Don’t torment me?”

Jesus probably was like, “I’m just, like, getting’ outta the boat here, on my way to get lunch.” Like, “You are so in your own story.” We have these stories that we carry around with us, stories like, “Nobody likes me.” Nobody likes me. If somebody starts coming toward us and we have this little chatter going on. You don’t like me, do you? You don’t like me, do you? You don’t like me. By the time the person gets up to you, they actually don’t like you. (Laughter and applause)

You know it’s like, “Am I annoying you? You know, I’m an annoying person. I hate that I’m an annoying person.” Yes, you are an annoying person. (Laughter) That’s your story and you’re living it out.

You know, my Dad—this is a bit of a sad story, I mean absolute no disrespect, you know—but my Dad always used to say as he would have a drinking problem, “Well at least I’m not a fall-down drunk like my father was.” He’d say that again and again. “I hold down a job; I take care of my family. I’m not wandering the streets and being a fall-down drunk like my father was.” Well guess what? Now he is a fall-down drunk. He lived that story day in and day out so much that he lived himself right into it. And again, no disrespect, it’s just what is. He wasn’t always like that. But you see if our stories go unexamined, we will bring them to every situation we enter. That’s the thing. And we’ll live them out again and again.

You know, I have a story that I’ve had a phobia of birds in a house. (Laughter) Ok. We all get to have our own erotic phobias, all right? (More laughter) Just stick with this for a moment. When I was younger, there was a bat loose in our cabin and my mother said, “Get under the table or it will dive for you and hit you. So I was under the table and they finally got the bat out. Well ever since then I had this phobia of birds flying at me in closed spaces. You know when you go into restaurants and you’re on a patio and the pigeons come and then they take flight and I would just be all calm talking and then I’d be just like“Waaaah.” And I’d have this, this irrational fear of birds flying at me. (Laughter) And my partner would say, “Penny, a bird is not gonna fly and hit you.” And I’m like, “You don’t know that.” (More laughter) You don’t.

I have this phobia and my friends have seen it and they tease me about it. Well you know what? I’ve lived this phobia and this story that a bird’s going to hit me for so long, I was sitting in the hot tub this summer (Laughter) and I was talking to my partner and all of a sudden I hear a flutter, “Whap.” (Uproar and applause) And I dove under the water in the hot tub. (Continuing laughter) And I came up and Annlee was just howling. And I came up totally drenched and I said, “Did you see that? A bird hit me in the head.” But you know what? My phobia’s gone. It happened. It’s over. (Laugher and applause)

You know sometimes we live our stories so much that we actually make them happen again and again. You know, I mean it‘s a good thing to laugh about it ‘cause sometimes it’s not funny at all. It is not funny at all but that’s what happens.

So this prophet from Nazareth meets this man who’s in his story, “Don’t torment me. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me,” which is really saying, “Please hurt me. Please hurt me. Please hurt me.” All right. We set it up; we invite that energy and then we say, “It keeps happening to me.” What is your story? And Jesus kind of snaps the man out of it by saying this, “What is your name?”

And the man says, “My name is Legion for we are many.” Legion, those thoughts, those wounds, those betrayals, those stresses that go on in your head, they are many. The man says, “Legion is my name. Legion is my story.”

Do you know that there’s been research done that has found that the average person in America has 65,000 thoughts a day, 65,000 thoughts a day? When I first heard that, I thought, “That’s all?” Really. (Laughter) But here’s the point, only 15,000 of them are positive thoughts. The rest are thoughts worrying or replaying old conversations. But I would ask us tonight, “How many of those thoughts are tied into the stories that we walk around with? How many of those 65,000 thoughts a day, which are legion, are really replaying the same story, the same identity again and again? How many are linked to your story and to my story?”

Well how do we know when we’re in our stories? Well listen to yourself as I’ve listened to myself ‘cause sometimes we’ve got our stories down so pat, alright, that somebody we haven’t met or somebody that we’re talking to asks us a questions and we launch right into it ‘cause we’re so well rehearsed in that story that we’re just mindlessly telling it. We’re not even in it anymore. We’re not connected to it consciously anymore but we’re connected to it in a subconscious way that helps us to live it out in ways that are really harmful to us sometimes.

If you’re saying things (or I’m saying things) like, “That’s just how I am.” It could be a story. Or, “You know me.” Or a story that always starts, “Well when I was young.” Well some of us aren’t so young now (Laughter) so it might be time for a new story. Now, don’t any of you walk out of this room thinking that I don’t think stories have great power. We need to tell each other our stories. You know the difference that I’m talking about, don’t you? Night and day, night and day. When we hear each other‘s stories, perhaps then is when we begin to let them go.

And we have some stories. Especially about religion, we’ve got stories. We’ve got our story about faith and religion that we keep telling over and over and over again. How many of us could tell the story of being rejected from our home of worship or spiritual community some time in our life? Probably lots of us here. Story of rejection. But you know what? That’s not the story going on tonight. Any rejection going on here tonight? (No) Any blaming? (No) No, it’s a new story. We can change it; we can heal it. It’s transformed. Terrible things happen, absolutely. And we can choose to have a new story or a different story.

When I was in Scotland, I was up early one morning and this little girl came out and sat on the bench and I said, “What’s your name?” And in this great Scottish accent, she said, “Sophie.” I said, “Sophie, what a beautiful name. Do you know what that name means?” “No.” Said well, “It means wisdom.” And I thought, “Oh, I need to explain that a little better. She’s only five.” (Laughter) I said, “You know Sophie, it means that you know a lot of things.” And she said, “Hmm, that’s funny ‘cause it seems like I’m always doing everything wrong.” And I thought, “O honey, don’t get in that story, who’s telling you this? Don’t get in that story.” We have the power through the spirit, through community with each other to let go of those things that do not serve us. We really do.

Let me tell you one other story. It’s another animal story. And it’s really about our relationship, how we treat our stories sometimes. And I was at our pool in Sonoma County and I had my dog with me and my dog has a story. (Laughter) Alright, this is his story and he’s got one story, “I will kill rodents.” That’s his story. (More laughter) “And it will make me very happy.” (Continued laughing) That’s his story. That’s what he lives for. And so we’re at this pool, he got chasing one of those little pack rats. And I was skimming the pool with one of those long skimmers, and I wanted to go swimming. It was really hot but I was afraid to get in the pool because I was afraid that the rat would jump in the pool and swim and bite me. So. (Laughter) I think I’m revealing far too much tonight!

So anyway, let me make this short and fun because sometimes when we can laugh at ourselves, we really learn something. So Annlee comes down and says, “Why aren’t you in the pool?” And I said, “Because Ollie, my dog is chasing a rat and the rat will jump in the pool and swim and bite me.” And she said, “Penny, rats don’t swim.” And I said, “You don’t know that.” (Laughter) So sure enough, because I knew that the rat would have to choose between the dog and the pool, the rat jumped in the pool. (Laughter)

And Annlee says completely calm—and of course I’m you know all wound up—she says, “Look at that little sucker swim.” (More laughter and applause) So then the rat swims all the way across the pool. Well by the time he gets to the other side, or she gets to the other side, the poor little thing is all worn out and starting to drown. So now I feel this great compassion (Laughter) for this pack rat. So I take the skimmer and I get it out of the pool and just when I do, it starts to run up the handle of the skimmer. (Uproarious laughter and applause) So I fling the skimmer and the rat goes into the tree, this little tree and falls down. And of course Annlee’s standing there the whole time completely calm, (Laughter) unmoved by this whole series of events, and I’m like, “Where’s the rat?” She’s like, “You threw it in the tree.” And then the poor thing, the dog grabbed it. And then, and then the dog ran at me with the rat in his mouth. (Laughter again)

Now, why am I telling you this story? Because that’s the relationship we have with our stories. Oh, this might happen, Oh, no it won’t. Oh, there it is. Oh, it’s drowning. Oh, let me rescue it. (Laughter) Oh, let me throw it away. Ahh, it’s running towards me. That’s the routine that we go through with our own stuff.

What is it that I continue to rescue, that I continue to be afraid of, that I continue to run towards and then run away but stay in relationship with the whole time? What is my story?

When Jesus said to the man, “What is your name?” and he tells him, it says, “There were on the hillside a large herd of pigs and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. And the demons entered the pigs and they ran down the hill and drowned in the sea.”

Because of the folklore at that time, the way that demons were destroyed were by drowning. He gave them permission and they left. The man himself also gave them permission. Maybe that is exactly what we need to do? Give the stories that don’t serve us anymore, just give them permission to leave. Don’t put ‘em on anyone else. Send them into the heart of the compassionate one who can transform them, but give them permission to leave.

How do stories die? They get replaced with new ones; they get transformed into strength and power rather than woundedness and victimness. Give them permission to leave. Get a new story ‘cause the last thing that Jesus says to the man is this, the demons leave. And demons can be anything—negative thoughts, old wounds, habits of addiction, and we’re addicted not just to substances.

We’re addicted to emotions, certain feelings. So if you’ve got a story about sadness, if you live in that story long enough, your body, your very cells become addicted. I’m not making this up; this is scientifically proven, addicted to sadness. Or the more angry you are day after day after day, your cells actually reconfigure themselves so they hitch up, so that actually this, you’re fed by this anger because it comes as an addiction. But the power is, you can break that and help reprogram those things inside.

Give them permission to leave and find a new story about what is going on right now. It never makes the past irrelevant but it transforms the past into the strength and hope of who you are today and who I am today.

Jesus only said two things to the man. “What is your name?” and lastly, “Return home now.” As the man was clothed, “sitting in his right mind” the story says. “Return home and tell what has happened to you.” What has happened to you. How you experienced a new way of being. How you let things go and became a new person. Go ahead, return home, tell that story. Isn’t that powerful?

Tell that story. So you picture the man kind of walking down the street, and somebody saying, “Hey, aren’t you the guy that, you know, used to be in the tombs?”

“You know who I am today? Today I am a person that is freed from my past and I’m living in the present moment. Here’s my story. I let it all go and I’m here to tell you about it. I got a new theme song. Want to hear it?”

What is your story? It’s a question to reflect on spiritually and then ask, “What is my story and how is it serving me or how is it not? How is it leading me to transformation?”

Return home and create for yourselves new ways that help you live in your full power because you are in this moment, beautiful and strong and powerful. Begin to believe it and it will be so.

Amen. (Amen and applause)