“I may as well give them what they want” – Jack Skellington
As a preacher, I’m interested in stories and how they shape us. Delivering a message to a congregation of willing listeners often feels like this clip from Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Jack Skellington, like a preacher standing behind his pulpit, begins to tell the people of Halloween Town about another place, Christmas Town. But everything he describes; presents, stockings, and the like, are immediately shoehorned into the townspeople’s existing narrative of Halloween. They simply cannot understand that Christmas is something different. Finally, Jack gives up trying to help them identify with this strange story and acquiesces, “I may as well give them what they want”. So he changes the Christmas story to fit Halloween and tells them about Sandy Claws, the scary character who reigns around Christmas but really looks just like someone from Halloween Town. After the song Jack reflects, “well at least they’re excited, but they don’t understand”.
It is clear to me that we are like Halloween Town. We are so steeped into the prevailing narratives that define our sense of ourselves and the world around us that when an alternative story is offered, it becomes absorbed and assimilated into the existing formula. This has been happening to the Christain story for centuries. As long as Christianity has been married to mainstream culture, the status quo, and the interests of those in power, its story has been shaped to fit dominant narratives. What I’m saying is that the Christianity people are familiar with in America is not very often the Story of Jesus. It has overlapping elements, characters and themes, but it has been shaped as a part of other stories, stories that are often anti-christ.
The good news is that more and more people are in the market for a better story. They’re wising up to the fact that the stories that brought us to where we are in society aren’t the ones we want. For an increasing number of people this means that the western version of the Christian story is being thrown out. This departure from the Christianity many were raised with is a terror and tradgedy to more than a few. They are fighting a culture war with everything they have to restore the story of God and Country that once stood center stage.
I, for one, am grateful that this version of Christianity is crumbling and being forsaken. I do not want to be the kind of preacher Jack became halfway through his sermon and say “I may as well give them what they want”. Instead, I believe I am called to tell the Story of Jesus.
Currently, my ministry counts on the hope that we can build small pockets of people trying to live the Jesus story together. And maybe, when others are looking for a better story, they’ll be drawn to that Jesus story and the people living it out.
People aren’t just looking for a religious story or a political story. They’re looking for a story that tells them who they are and how we can make sense of this world. I believe Jesus tells us that story and that when we believe what he tells us it leads to a life and a world most people would call beautiful, good, just, and loving. A world we’d like this current one to become.