Telling the Story of the Gospel

By The Rev. Dr. John F. McCard, STM ’03

Growing up, my daughters loved hearing stories. In fact, I could have read the same story over and over to them, and it wouldn’t have mattered. However, like many parents, there were times when we would sit down at the end of a long day when I was tired, a bit grumpy, and I’ll confess to you that I occasionally tried to cut corners on the stories. I’m sure that’s never happened to any other parents.So what, if you leave out a line here or there? The story is the same; Curious George still manages to get into trouble and must be saved by the Man in the Yellow Hat. However, when I tried to cut corners, however, there would be howls of indignation. . . ”Dad! Read the whole story,” they would insist. To them it was important I got the story right. All of us in some ways tell stories: we tell stories about our families, we tell stories about our trips, and our experiences. Stories define who we are as human beings. And having told my fair share as a parent, it’s fun to listen to my own children’s experiences, their own stories, as they navigate life in the real world. A few years ago, my oldest daughter told the following story, when she was attending a leadership seminar at college. In one of the exercises, the seminar participants were told to pair off for one-on-one conversation. The facilitator instructed them to tell each other one thing they were excited about doing as part of their leadership role on campus and take a guess at what would be their greatest challenge. What were they most apprehensive about doing as leaders on campus?The person my daughter was speaking with was going to be working as a campus ministry coordinator. She told my daughter, “I think I'm most nervous about sharing the gospel with people who haven’t heard it before.” Now on the one hand, I can understand where she is coming from. One of the reasons I am an uptight Episcopalian is that our church is not the type of place that continually asks the question “When did you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” Also, sharing the gospel--or, as modern self-centered culture puts it, “our faith journey”--involves vulnerability: sharing something personal about our lives. “I was in the grip of addiction. I was a lousy spouse. I was depressed. I was in debt. . . . before I found my path back to a relationship with God.”

Not many of us feel comfortable doing this; our pride and American culture encourages us to preserve this facade of invulnerability. Many of us are brought up believing that we should be able to handle our problems without earthly or divine intervention.Sharing the gospel, the good news about Jesus, the fact that He is risen, the tomb is empty, and death has been defeated involves self-disclosure about the mess we once made and continue to make of our lives. And, let’s be honest, that conversation can strike a bit too close to home for many of us.But I want to focus on the second part of the young woman’s statement. Remember what she said? She was apprehensive about “sharing the Gospel with people who have not heard it before.” With people who have not heard it before. I want you to ponder those words for a moment.These hypothetical people have not heard anything about Jesus; they have not heard about Christmas; his birth in Bethlehem; his death upon the cross; his resurrection on Easter Sunday; or the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. To put this problem another way: since these folks have never heard the story, how could you possibly mess it up? If you get 60% of the story right, you’re probably a few steps ahead of the rest of the class.Sharing the gospel simply means talking about Jesus, the Son of God, who told stories about God’s forgiveness, God’s love for all people, who died for our sins, and was raised from the dead. Just knowing a little bit about Jesus and being able to share it--that should be the important thing in any Christian’s life.Tell someone the parable of the Good Samaritan or the story of the prodigal son returning home to his father. Know Jesus’s two basic commandments: love God with all your heart, soul, mind and body and love our neighbor as yourself. My friends, it’s not rocket science, the barest of bones of the story will suffice. And you don’t need a Ph.D. in biblical studies to learn the story, to get the story right. In fact, telling the gospel story involves two things that I want to challenge you to do.

First re-read the story. Read one of the gospels. It doesn’t matter if it is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Get to know the story again. Start that wonderful process of getting to know who Jesus was and is.Now here comes the second part, and this is absolutely the most critical part of learning and sharing the story with other people who may not know it. When you read stories about Jesus, you will make an interesting discovery about him that you may not have known.And this discovery is critical to getting the story right. People who were very much unlike Jesus liked Jesus. And Jesus liked people that were different from him. Many people have this strange idea that church is only for professional “church” people. People who are biblical and spiritual experts and that you must be that kind of person to attend a church regularly or to share Jesus’ story with others.However, the story of Jesus and our celebration of Easter and Pentecost should teach us all exactly the opposite. People who were not anything like Jesus liked Jesus and Jesus liked people who were nothing like him. In fact, our Lord loved people who were not regular “church- going” types.And this gets to the real nitty gritty of what I want you to take away and what it meant for the women to discover that the tomb was empty and Jesus was alive. It’s a simple message from a simple story, and you don’t have to cut corners to know it. Jesus’ life and ministry were all about explaining God in such a way that ordinary people could feel they could have a connection, a relationship with God.People in Jesus’ day thought God was remote from them, that the gods would get angry or need sacrifices or appeasement, or that the gods simply did not care about human beings. Jesus came to earth so that he could help people connect with God in a new and profound way.This is why our Lord used examples that ordinary people could relate to their own lives. Jesus’ language about God was intensely relational and was meant to help people feel that God was interested and concerned about their lives.He washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper to demonstrate the care, love, and concern that God had for each person.Or there is one of Jesus’ more popular images, of God being a good shepherd and all of us being God’s sheep: smelly, stubborn, not always obedient, but still loved and cared for by the shepherd.Jesus’ language about God is relational. To share the Gospel with others is all about sharing the story of a God who longs for a relationship with us, no matter who we are and what we may have done in the past. Ours is a God of forgiveness and new beginnings.This Pentecost, challenge yourself to get to know the story again and tell it to someone who needs to know it or be reminded of it--the story of Jesus’ life, his death, and the empty tomb.  Remember, God is not looking for perfect people to tell God’s story. God’s looking for people just like you and me. 

And just between you and me, it doesn’t matter if we tell folks there were ten apostles instead of twelve or twelve commandments instead of ten. . . what matters is that we tell them the story of a man named Jesus that lived a human life and who, as God’s risen son and our savior, is ready to bring hope to the story of their broken lives.   

The preceding is adapted from a sermon preached at St. James’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia, by the Rev. Dr. John F. McCard. Dr. McCard completed the Master of Sacred Theology (MTS) degree at Nashotah House in 2003 and Doctor of Ministry Degree at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2007.  He serves as a vestry retreat leader and consultant and is an authority on the writings and life of C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia.