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The Power of Stories
On Friday evening I went to see the new Steven Spielberg movie, Munich. This movie is a story of a Mossad agent who was contracted to assassinate the Palestinian leaders who were part of Black September.
WARNING: Small Spoiler - if you will be seeing the movie, wait to read this until you have watched the movie.
One particular series of scenes in the movie drove home the idea of narrative in a powerful way. It began with one of the Palestinians who was going to be the target of an assassination. The man had recently translated the book 1001 Arabian Nights into Italian. He is giving a short talk about the book and his work on the book.
He says asks, "Why would I want to do this work of translating such a book?" After a few self-deprecating remarks about the enormous sums of money to be found in such work he says that the purpose and fulfillment in this work stems from the power of the narrative. He finds the narrative to be something that can propels us to live by a given story.
In the very next scene the man is assasinated and the assasins are discussing whether they should celebrate or rejoice. They go back to the exodus narrative where God delivers them from their enemies and kills the Egyptian army in the Red Sea.
This comparison is moving and you can see how the narritive in the exodus has propelled these men to action and now to celebration or rejoicing, whichever you like. As postmoderns will remind us stories are powerful. We hear stories and are in search of stories that we can enter. That is the power of God's story of the Exodus and now the New Exodus in Jesus.
We can enter God's story and live our story in His story. He has delivered us from our enemies and into the Promised Land in and through Jesus.
