9/13/2026 - “Where the Story Finds Us” - Rev. Anthony Spearhart

So 13 weeks ago, we opened up something together that I called the Pastor's Playbook.

Now it was never meant to be a list of rules or some secret manual hidden away in the pastor's office.

It was a way of showing you what I come to you ready to live into.

The things that are bedrock to my ministry and the things I believe are cornerstones of our faith.

A way of saying, if we're going to do ministry together, these are some of the things I want you to know about how I understand the work God has called us to share.

So week by week we open those pages together.

We began with conviction that God is still speaking, and that faithfulness requires us to keep listening for where the Spirit is moving now.

We talked about being open and affirming, remembering that welcome cannot simply be something printed on a sign, that welcome has to be experienced, it has to be felt.

Welcome.

We talked about the kingdom of God, about doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.

We talked about being united and uniting, not because we all think alike, but because covenants ask something deeper of us than agreements.

We talked about language and the power of the words we choose, not only to describe who we are, but to create change, open doors, and keep plusing our extravagant welcome so that more people can truly hear and believe that there is a place for them here.

We asked what it really means to say, no matter who you are or where you are in life's journey, that you're welcome here.

We talked about vim vigor and vitality, about the gifts of the Spirit, about collaboration, community, and covenant.

And last week we played with imagination and an awe, asking, what might happen if the church became a place willing to dream, willing to create, willing to experiment and imagine something that does not yet exist.

And now we come to the final page.

Story.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that this is where we end, because under every underneath every one of those conversations has been a story.

A story about God, a story about who we believe God is, a story about what we believe God desires for the world, and a story about who we are becoming as a church.

There's a quote from Walt Disney that I've carried with me for a long time that goes, that's what we storytellers do.

We restore order with imagination.

We instill hope again and again and again.

I think I learned something about the power of story long before I knew that was what I was learning.

When I was little, my brother Marty and I, when we would spend the night at my grandparents' house, which would somehow always become a night of whimsical adventure.

Throughout the night, we would bathe in the hot tub, we would put on what we called the Lincoln bedroom robes, and we'd wear one of Grandpa's oversized grill master or hot dignity dog t-shirts.

And as we headed off to bed, we would make our way down the long hallway to the back bedroom.

We'd climb into one of the two twin beds, and obviously we were going to argue which one grandma would lay in as she would tell us our bedtime stories.

And there were always stories.

She told us about her childhood, like the time she dropped her birthday money into the outhouse.

She told us stories of married life, like Grandpa insisting his socks did not stink.

Or what she told him when he said that they could only afford one hat and somehow she came home with two.

She told us stories about when we were babies, including how I was apparently so adventurous that the blanket she laid out for me was less of a boundary and more of a suggestion.

She told us fables of good Mary and bad Mary, stories that made us laugh but carried lessons about generosity, collaboration, and community.

She told us when they moved to Wapakaneta about finding new friends and about the opportunity Grandpa found that brought them there.

To this day, that story reminds me that opportunity does not only belong to the young.

New chapters can open at any age.

And she told us about our ancestors, their journeys, and perseverance so that we would know where we came from.

At the time, I thought grandma was simply telling bedtime stories.

But those stories did far more than entertain us.

They taught us who our grandparents were before they were Graham and Gramps.

They connected us to people we would never meet.

They taught us about laughter and resilience, generosity and community.

Just like the sayings I shared with you last week put a smile on your face and a song in your heart and vim vigor and vitality, they gave us pieces of wisdom we would not fully understand until years later.

They were telling us this is where you come from.

This is part of your story, so carry it with you.

And I think that is where family stories and faith stories begin to touch one another.

Because both are carried in the telling.

Both depend on someone deciding that what happened for us matters enough to remember, and matters enough to pass on.

Someone has to say, this is a part of who you are.

Someone has to say, carry this with you, and when the time comes, tell it again and again.

That is exactly the work Psalm 78 is calling the people of God to do.

We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of God.

The Psalm is not simply about remembering the past, it is about making sure that the story keeps moving.

One generation remembers, another generation listens, and eventually those listeners become the storytellers.

We were not there to see the sea parted.

We did not sit beside Jesus when he taught.

We did not stand outside the tomb on Easter morning.

And yet those stories have traveled through centuries, through cultures, languages, families, and communities of faith until they arrived here.

Until they arrived with us.

Long before most of us knew the words like theology or doctrine, we were already learning faith through stories.

Someone told us about Noah in the Ark.

Someone told us about Moses in the burning bush.

Someone told us about a baby born in Bethlehem and the stars that guided some wise men.

Someone told us about Jesus who welcomed children, ate with people others avoided, touched people others were afraid to touch, and spoke about God through stories.

And somewhere in the telling we began learning what God might be like.

There is a way of approaching faith called narrative theology.

And it is at the heart, and at its heart is the simple idea that faith is not merely a collection of beliefs or isolated Bible verses.

Faith is a story.

A story of creation and covenants, of liberation and wilderness, of prophets and exile, of incarnation, of tables and of healing and grace, of a cross and an empty tomb.

And the invitation of faith is not simply to understand that story, it is to enter it.

It is to live within it, to allow it to shape the way we understand ourselves, our neighbors, God, and the world around us.

Perhaps that is why Jesus taught so often through stories.

In our gospel today, Jesus talks about a farmer who goes out carrying seed.

Some fall on the path, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, and some on good soil.

Jesus could have offered a theological lecture.

Instead, he gave them a story.

And suddenly the listener is inside it.

You're thinking about soil, about seed.

You're wondering what God might be planting.

You're imagining.

And Jesus does this again and again.

A lost sheep, a lost coin, a child coming home, a wounded traveler beside the road, workers waiting to be hired, a mustard seed disappearing into the soil.

Again and again, Jesus invites people to imagine, imagining a world where the last are first, imagining a world where the stranger becomes the neighbor, imagining a table where everyone has enough.

Imagining grace that reaches farther than anyone thought grace should reach.

And maybe here we can borrow a word from another great psalmist.

No, not David, John.

John Lennon, that is.

And maybe you already hear it in your hearts.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

Living differently.

Living with fewer walls behind us or between us.

Living with enough, living in peace.

And whether Lenin meant it as theology or not, there is something deeply theological about the act of imagination.

Because Jesus is doing something remarkably similar every time he says, The kingdom of God is like.

Imagine a world where nobody is disposable.

Imagine a world where there is enough.

A world where mercy matters more than status.

A world where the boundaries we've constructed around belonging begin to fall away.

Before we can help create something different, we first have to imagine that something different is possible.

Which brings us back to the playbook.

Because every week, in one way or another, we have been asking, what story are we telling about God?

Because every church tells one.

We tell it through our worship and our preaching, but also through our choices, our language, who we welcome, whose voices we listen to, and who discovers that they belong.

Some communities tell the story of a God whose love comes with conditions.

But that is not the story, I believe, that we are called to tell.

We are called to tell the story of a God whose love keeps expanding, a God who notices those overlooked, a God who hears the cries of the oppressed, a God who keeps making room at the table, a God who calls us towards justice and mercy, and a God who is still speaking.

And every time that we say, no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.

We are telling that story.

Every time someone walks through these doors wondering whether there is a place for them and discovers there is, we are telling that story.

Every time we care for someone, advocate for someone, stand beside someone, or make room for someone, we are telling that story.

Because eventually the story we tell with our mouths must become the story we embody with our lives.

So beginning next Sunday, we're going to enter the biblical story together in a different way through what's called the narrative lectionary.

Rather than moving through one isolated passage to another, we're going to walk through the larger story together.

From the stories of Israel through the prophets and exile into the life of Jesus and eventually the early church.

And my hope is that we will ask more than what does this passage mean?

I will hope we will also ask, where do we find our story in these stories?

Where are we challenged?

Where are we comforted?

Where are we invited to imagine differently?

And perhaps most importantly, where does the story find us?

Sometimes the story finds us celebrating, grieving, wandering.

Sometimes the story finds us standing at the threshold, sometimes beginning again.

And suddenly an ancient story becomes startingly present.

We realize that people of faith have stood in places like ours before.

They have doubted before, wandered before, been afraid before, dreamed before, begun again before.

They have wrestled with what it means to rebuild and restore their places of worship more than once before.

And God was there.

God is here.

Psalm 78 says, These stories are told so that the next generation might set their hope in God.

That may be one of the sacred responsibilities entrusted to every generation.

Not simply to preserve the story, but to tell it and live it in such a way that someone else discovers hope within it.

My grandmother was doing that all those years ago without ever calling it narrative theology.

She was handing us a story that this is where you came from.

These are the people who carried you here.

These are the lessons worth remembering.

Now carry them with you.

And perhaps that is a part of what we are doing every time we gather here together.

Because we inherited this story.

But it does not belong to us alone.

We are carrying it for a while.

And another generation will carry it after us.

Someday they may tell stories about Lakeview United Church of Christ in Mainville, Ohio.

About people who gathered here and believed God was still speaking.

About a church that tried to mean it when it said, Everyone is welcome.

About people who imagined that the kingdom of God could become a little more visible right here.

About a congregation that faced hard questions and did not confuse uncertainty with the absence of God.

About people who understood that buildings matter, but the church is more than a building.

About a community willing to discern, rebuild, restore, and continue to become.

Because the story is still being written.

And we are writing part of it now.

So perhaps the question that closes the pastor's playbook is also the question that opens everything that comes next.

What story will we tell?

What story will we live?

And when another generation asks what God was doing here, what story will they tell?

May we listen carefully to the stories handed down to us.

May we tell them faithfully.

May we imagine boldly.

And may we have the courage to keep writing the next chapter together.

Because somewhere between the stories we inherited and the stories we are still becoming, that is where the story finds us.

Amen and amen.

So, beloved, go now carrying the stories that formed you, the hope that found you, and the love that still calls you forward.

May you listen for the stories God is still speaking.

Imagine boldly the world God is still creating, and live in such a way that those who come after us inherit a story of courage, welcome, justice, and grace.

And wherever the story finds you this week, may you remember God was there.

God is here, and the story is still being written.

Amen and Amen.