Paul writes - The current conversation around “preaching” (see here) reminded me of a post I wrote in 2003 after seeing the movie Piglet’s Big Movie. Steve Taylor also commented on the same movie here.
Pooh, Rabbit et al are on a honey hunt, but don't include Piglet in their plans because he's too small. When he runs away, the penitent friends use his Book of Memories to track him down.
However, Piglet's book of memories - storied snapshots from his life - is destroyed...the stories are lost and Piglet is lost, but Pooh and company decide to communally recollect, to rewrite history, this time paying attention to the fringes of the story, usually inhabited by Piglet, whose heroics pass unnoticed until now - Pooh and friends see the edges of their shared stories in new ways, they notice Piglet and the very central role he plays. They physically draw Piglet, placing him in the centre of the stories, and stick those images to the inside walls of Piglets home.
The unfolding drama of Scripture is in parts, and certainly at one level a book of collected narratives or stories; these stories, amongst other things, story, form, shape and provide identity to God’s people.
Further, as Steve Taylor writes, “the stories are told in order to find direction,” in order to find a lost Piglet – “As we tell the story, our lives are changed. And in doing so, we just might find the object of our search and become Jesus people, tremendously energised to live his story… As they [Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore and Tiger] start a process of communal re-telling, so they find themselves in a process of communal re-living. Re-telling and re-living cannot be separated...”
Now Scripture, unlike Piglet’s book of memories has not been lost, but Scripture, particularly what Jonny Baker calls, “the dangerous memory of Jesus,” like Piglet needs to be recovered. We need to learn how to read the stories, how to live into and out of the story (and its related sub stories). For me this biblical “text,” or “script” as Brueggemann calls it, is the identity and mission-shaping heart of a church community. We tell it, read it, imagine our way into it, pray it, live it, and are also read by it.
We are never “textless” or “scriptless”; if it isn’t the biblical text, we will be shaped by alternative social, political, ideological, and nationality stories or scripts.
For me, the questions I want to ask are around what it is that we are recovering (in contrast to how Scripture is often worked with and presented in many congregations - looking at newspaper advertisements for church services (specifically themes and sermon titles) is a good place to get a sense of how Scripture is used, and why I'm wanting to recover something "more," something more authentic)? How we recover these dangerous memories? How they orientate, disorientate, and newly orientate us as a Jesus following people (the worldview and praxis questions!)
Related to this post is an earlier one I wrote on Brueggemann’s 19 Theses. They still profoundly resonate and shape my thinking with regards to the importance of the Biblical text and it’s being re-covered, re-told and re-lived.
Paul
I've written a bit more on pooh and the bible at the following (sorry the URL extends over 2 lines)
http://www.graceway.org.nz/thinking.html.html#apostmoderncommunalbible
Posted by: steve | Wednesday, 13 July 2005 at 10:03 AM