Living the story

From earliest times human beings have told stories. The stories we tell, either explicitly or implicitly, seek to answer questions such as, “How did we get here?”, “Where are we going?”, and “What is the meaning of our existence?” We call these overarching stories metanarratives or worldviews and we live within the meanings which they provide. So, for example, a humanist may tell a story of a universe which comes into being by chance leaving human beings free to create their own meanings for life and society. By contrast, the church is founded on the premise that the creator God decisively calls and forms a people to serve him through the history of Israel and through the work of Jesus Christ to bring about the redemption of the creation.

We must constantly remember that we are a story formed community and that story is what defines our existence. Our story reaches us through the Bible which has been described by the former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, as being like a five act play containing the first four acts in full (i.e. 1. Creation, 2. Fall, 3. Israel, 4. Jesus) and the writing of the New Testament as forming the first scene in the fifth act which also gives hints of how the play is supposed to end. We are then called to live in this story improvising our part in the play on the basis of what we know of the story so far and the hints we have of how it will end.

Living the story in this way is something that artists and writers have done throughout Church history and continue to do today. For example, the art historian and curator Daniel A. Siedell has noted that: “the Bible … is a dynamic and powerful cultural artefact, a library of powerful stories, within which we in the western tradition have lived and breathed and have had our being. And for centuries it has been the engine that drove art and literature.”

As a result, in Living the Story we will be examining a selection of mainly contemporary uses of the Bible and the Christian story in popular culture and considering whether or not they can be said to be 'living the story’. We plan to cover film, music, novels, poetry and visual arts. Living the Story runs at the Diocesan Office, Chelmsford on Friday mornings from 10am-12pm on March 4,11,18, 25 and April 1.

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Athlete - Chances.