Friends,

I feel like once in a blue moon there is a television show that is made for children that adults get into as well. When Leandra and I were dating we loved to watch episodes of Adventure Time, which follows a young boy named Finn in a surreal world named Ooo with his magical dog named Jake, who talks and is also his brother. The surface of the story is super frivolous, light-hearted and simple. However, when you pay attention to the background, it is clear there is a concurrent story. Glimpses here and there point to the true setting. The world in which they live with all the magic and fun exists in our world but in the distant future after a nuclear war. The narrative weaves in and out of seriousness. Characters that you once thought you knew become complex. Typically, villains do not remain villains. Redemption arches and regret abound, the characters are mortal and sometimes die, and the characters grow. When broaching impossibly hard topics it is often helpful to have a frivolous setting. When we found out that Leandra was pregnant, I began counting down the days until Andrew would be old enough to watch Adventure Tim with me.

Andrew sometimes has a hard time watching certain shows and movies or reading some books. He feels profoundly, and whenever there is something scary or there is tension or conflict, he’ll demand we turn off the show. It was about a year ago I showed him the first episode of Adventure Time, and I forgot that all the candy people get turned into zombies. This is done in the most slap-stick and silly way, and of course there is a happy ending, but he could not bear it, and we had to forget about Adventure Time for a while. Six months ago, when he wasn’t looking, I went through all the episodes and picked one out with no major conflict or scary things, convinced him to try it again and he got hooked! Every morning, once I get everyone up, fed, dressed and ready for the day, Theo, Andrew and I sit on the couch and watch our episode of Adventure Time, and we do the same thing right before bed. Wednesday morning, we finished the series and there were a lot of tears. The creators did such an amazing job of wrapping up stories, giving just enough closure, acknowledging loss and pointing toward hope in the future, and by the end of the final musical number it was over.

The “what abouts” sprung up immediately. Andy asked what happened to this character or that. Why this and that did or did not happen. He was distraught. He learned not just to become more comfortable with scary things and conflict, but to see how it could form and shape the characters in this show. The things that he actively avoided became integral to our daily ritual and he loved every minute of it, but this was something new. He had never encountered the end of something. He’s finished shows before, but little kids shows always end with the assumption that they are going to go back and rewatch from the beginning. They generally end in the same place as they began, and they avoid a sense of finality. In this story, people changed, Andy grew along with them, and in that last episode there was a crescendo of endings. Andy was shocked when I confirmed his fear that there would be no more episodes. Not only was that the end of the show, but the end of our little ritual as we knew it.

Do not underestimate the power of stories. Andy just turned seven, and he is particularly sensitive to these stories, but stories profoundly affect adults as well. Stories help sell stuff, win elections, lead people to fall in and out of love, and guide our decisions and moral compasses. Your identity is a story that you tell yourself.

One hopeful thing I find in conflicts and controversies about scripture is that the conflict itself is evidence that people care. On one side you may have the literalists who spend tons of time reconciling conflicting details in scripture, creating systems of intertextuality, or participating in a very worthwhile activity that the left has abandoned, which is memorizing scripture. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the Jesus Seminar, which obsessively tried to determine the historicity of every passage of scripture. The Bible was a puzzle to be solved, or a mountain to be climbed, or a problem that needed conquering. While I appreciate their dedication in pursuing truth, their fundamental task seemed to be an elaborate task in removing themselves from the story. There was no dance, but domination. The hopeful part, the part that neither side was to acknowledge, is the massive thing they have in common, which is an obsession with reading and understanding scripture, which is a very good place to start.

Before you go and start creating a systematic approach to understanding scripture in a specific theological framework or try to tear the whole thing apart in search of irrefutable truths, try just listening to the stories. Listening to scripture in Church is a great place to start. In addition to literally reading the stories from scripture, we also tell the story of our salvation through the Church year. Lent is all about sin, repentance and forgiveness so this Sunday that is what you’ll hear about. The themes of the seasons are stories unto themselves. Sitting down and just reading the scripture is a great thing too. You can download apps that help you read through the bible in a year, or you can use the Daily Office to read through the bible in the context of worship. Regardless of how you do it, write these stories onto your soul, and let your story meld with the stories of our faith.

Realizing that we are agents in our own stories, and not just passive participants can be a daunting concept. With every decision we make, or conversation we have, we choose how to shape our stories. Like Adventure Time, the stories in the Bible are complex. People grow. Redemption arches and regret abound, and you can get lost in the story. We can make a choice to have these stories be part of our own. We can choose to create a ritual, where we listen to the stories that shaped generations before us.

When the final music was playing in the last Episode of Adventure Time and while Andrew was asking a million questions, I told him, “I hope my story ends as beautifully as this one ended.” When I die, and am reconciled with God, my identity will no longer be my story. Instead that story will belong to Andrew and others who knew me. I hope the stories they remember are filled with the grace and redemption. Of course there will be regret. If we are to tell good stories, villains need to be able to change, heroes can never be perfect, and we all need to be able to grow. Tell your story boldly.

Blessings,

Nick