Godly Play is a curriculum created by an Episcopal priest, Jerome Berryman, to teach children the stories of our faith. If you’ve encountered the curriculum before you will recognize a Godly Play room instantly, because you are surrounded by simple wooden toys that tell Bible stories. There are little sheep that look like blocks. Noah’s ark is just the right size to sit in your lap. There’s a little wooden set with a chalice, a paten, and bread. There’s often a felt calendar on the wall, showing the purple of Lent, the Gold of Easter, and today there would be a big arrow pointing right into the middle of a sea of green Sundays. And if you keep looking around the room, you would see a shelf full of boxes, all of them painted gold.
The gold boxes are for a special set of stories. When the storyteller takes one down from the shelf, they notice out loud how special this story must be. The gold boxes are for the parables, the stories Jesus told. The stories Jesus wanted us to remember and to tell again and again, as we live the story of our life.
The Story of Scarcity and the Story of Today
There is no Godly Play story for the parable Jesus tells today, the story of the man who hoards his wealth. When you’re little, it can be hard to understand why Jesus would tell a story about a way he hopes we won’t behave in this world. We don’t want our kids to internalize this story of scarcity.
We don’t want our kids to internalize it, but that story of scarcity is all around us, isn’t it? There’s not enough money for education, for NPR, to send lifesaving medicine or to fight for human rights. We need that money for the world’s largest border patrol.
The story of scarcity is an internal story we tell as well. We are a people of storehouses. The self-storage industry, all of those units people rent to place their extra stuff, this in the United States alone will generate $45 billion in 2025, and 3/4 of that, or about $34 billion is personal self storage, not businesses holding on to documents, but just the extra stuff of life we hold onto, just in case. The self-storage industry is projected to grow to $50 billion in the coming years. We are building bigger, climate-controlled barns.
St. Basil, in the fourth century, imagined having his own conversation with Jesus’ parabolic rich farmer. Basil imagined asking the man in the story, “But if you fill these larger [barns], what do you intend to do next? Will you tear them down yet again only to build them up once more? What could be more ridiculous than this incessant toil, laboring to build and then laboring to tear down again? If you want storehouses, you have them in the stomachs of the poor.”
Basil is concerned about the poor. He’s concerned that the hungry are fed. But he is also concerned about the rich man. This rich man is telling himself a story of scarcity. He’s working so hard to protect his wealth. He’s investing so much time and energy and labor in storehouses that he’s missing the point. He has enough. He has more than enough. He is already free to give away out of his abundance. What the rich man needs isn’t more stuff. The rich man needs a better story. The rich man needs a story that allows him to be generous.
St. Basil wanted to invite the man to see the story unfolding around him, the story of his neighbors who are hungry, the story of a world with need. Leaving food to rot in storage, when your neighbor is hungry, is criminal.
It can be stunning how literal the Bible has become lately.
There are literal storehouses of food going to waste in this country, while people are starving in Gaza. Our government in recent months has been burning food rations rather than distributing them. We’re living through biblical times. We are living through times like those of Jesus. Jesus came to give us a better story. Jesus longs to give us a better story.
It is part of why I appreciate this congregation, this island of sanity. On Tuesdays, we redistribute food to hungry neighbors. Every day kids come to learn, and to play at our preschool. We stand up for the rights of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, women, indigenous people. Each Sunday we tell the bigger story, the story of love and justice, and each week we seek to live it out.
Grief and the Power of Stories
Stories have real power. In his book “The Tears of Things” Richard Rohr talks about the danger that can come if we tell ourselves a partial story. He talks about the grief of someone who lost their spouse, when the main story they told themselves was their love story. When a person sees the whole world as the stage for their love story, and their spouse dies, what more is story is there to live? A similar kind of grief can come for a parent who for years centers parenthood as their principal story. When the child leaves home, or God-forbid, if a child dies before them, the grief can be overwhelming. The only way through is to realize that there is a wider story out there. There are people who still need our love, friends, family, neighbors who can still help us find purpose and meaning. God’s story is always bigger than the details of our individual lives. God is always writing a story about a whole world, with needs, with hopes, with possibility. Part of the work of grief is learning, eventually, to participate in a wider story.
The Power of Hope
The other week, I was invited to speak at a rally, and I had to search my soul a bit. I have been wrestling with the fear and the hopelessness all around. I had the words of Harvey Milk in my head as I prepared to speak. In the 1970s, to LGBTQ+ organizers facing outright hostility, to folks facing impossible odds, Harvey Milk said, “you’ve got to give them hope.”
I also had, rattling around in my head, the image Richard Rohr has of the “incomplete prophet.” Richard calls prophets “incomplete,” if they don’t finally make their way to a place of hope, a place of healing. The prophets who only railed against the system, Richard counts as incomplete. The full work of a prophet is to help the people remember how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, to find God’s hope.
And so I looked out on the crowd and said, “I see many of you are carrying signs you have carried recently at other protests. Protests against policies which would harm public lands. Signs written against policies which would limit access to abortion. There’s nothing wrong with signs. We need those messages. But I want to invite you to something more. I want you to take some time to imagine the world you hope for.”
Hope requires more than stating what we are against. Hope needs more than the negative assertions. The work of resistance is difficult work. At St Michael’s, we are part of a coalition for immigrant rights. This church, along with nonprofits like the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, Somos, El Centro, and others has been going to Santa Fe to testify for legislation which end immigrant detention. It takes stamina because we have been working for this bill for a number of years, and it still hasn’t passed. New Mexico detention centers still hold thousands of immigrants, in conditions which violate human rights. We still run storehouses for people.
Showing up again and again, to rally after rally, hearing after hearing, year after year, it takes stamina, it takes persistence, it takes a vision. You have to remember your reason why, the world you hope for, the story you want to tell.
Imagine a country which writes laws to welcome immigrants, creating a sane and orderly immigration system which responds to labor needs and allows families to reunite. Imagine a country where immigrant workers do not have to fear raising their voices about labor conditions, because they have protections under the law. Imagine a world where LGBTQ+ kids aren’t terrified to come out, for fear of rejection, where their families embrace them with hugs, and joy because they know deeply who they are. Imagine a world where access to reproductive healthcare is protected by law, and where all health care is treated as a human right, where no one goes bankrupt to pay for care, where the definition of “medically necessary” was up to a patient and their healthcare provider. Imagine a world where elder care is a human right as well, and where disabled people are integral members of our community. Imagine a world where we teach the stories of our indigenous communities, where those communities are celebrated, and compensated for land that was stolen.
Imagine a world where education funding is abundant, where teachers are paid like doctors or lawyers. Imagine a country where one of the most guaranteed ways to get rich is to invest in new technology for sustainable energy. Imagine a city where we build plentiful housing, so no one has to sleep on the streets, or try to get sober without a roof over their head.
Enough Resources in Our Storehouses
These aren’t just dreams. There are enough resources in our storehouses to do everything I just mentioned. But to get there, we have to tell stories of our hopes. We have to remember the story we want to tell about this country. If you are going to sustain the work for justice, if you are going to sustain the work for change, you have to remember your hope.
The stories we tell to our children matter maybe the most. Stories help kids understand the world and their place in it. They help shape their world.
In the days ahead, in the years ahead, take some gold boxes down off the shelf. Dust them off. Tell stories about the world that is still possible. Tell stories that Jesus told, about lost sheep found, about generous widows who gave their all, about people who encountered healing and didn’t have to pay, about a table wide enough for all. Tell our children these stories, so they will dare to hope.
Mike Angell 