Priest As Storyteller

This evening I've been reflecting on the role--or one of the roles--of the priest in a community. I'm "thinking out loud" here--writing helps me clarify thoughts. And discernment, we are told, is best done in community, so I post these thoughts here where some of my community can see them and perhaps ponder them with me.

Recently a friend of mine suggested I read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Speaker for The Dead, and Ender's Shadow. She couldn't remember the exact order of the books, but I think the two she wanted really wanted me to read were Ender's Game and Speaker for The Dead. I finished both of those two and continue to mull them over. However, Speaker for The Dead prompted thoughts about the role of the priest in community, which might be one of the reasons my friend recommended it to me.

"I should have gone to him,"Ela said again.

"Yes," the Speaker said. "You should have."

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate. [p. 212]

In sharing her own story and having it reflected back to her, Ela grew and changed. A Speaker is not a priest in Card's world, but I see some of what a priest does here. A priest encourages someone to tell their story, to share it. A priest listens. A priest reflects.

The Bishop nodded slowly. The Speaker had done a monstrous thing... Yet Peregrino had felt the power of it, the way the whole community was forced to discover these people that they thought they knew, and then discovered them again, and then again; and each revision of the story forced them all to reconceive themselves as well, for they had been part of this story, too, had been touched by all the people a hundred, a thousand times, never understanding until now who it was they touched. [p. 269]

Here the Speaker wove together individual stories he had been told about a person and then retold the story to the community. In a sense, he told the community its story through the story of the person about whom he was Speaking. A priest is a storyteller--the community's storyteller.

As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ... You are to preach... to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood...[BCP p. 531]

My omissions from the Bishop's address to the ordinand are intentional. These words from the church's own consecration ritual point toward the priest's role as storyteller. What is the Eucharist but the retelling of how we became God's people? The priest leads us through and into the Eucharist, the participatory story that defines us as Christians as much as the Passover Seder defines those of God's people who are Jews. What is the Gospel, indeed all of Scripture, but a collection of stories to be told and retold? Stories that change us in the telling and are changed in our retelling.

Our retelling. The priest may be the community's primary storyteller, but not the only one. There are times when it is quite clear to me that there is a reason for the myriad of voices in our Scripture. A community is not one voice. It is the coming together of many voices. That coming together is done through telling each other our stories and listening to each other's stories. Which means that the priest is also the community's "master" storyteller, the one who teaches the community how to tell their own stories and the stories of the community.

There is more here, but my thoughts begin to go in circles. This is enough for now.

Peace,
Jeff
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