Sunday 1 October 2006

How to tell the gospel

“The story is itself an event and has the quality of a sacred action.... It is more than a reflection – the sacred essence to which it bears witness continues to live in it.... A rabbi, whose grandfather had been a pupil of Baal Shem Tov, was once asked to tell a story. ‘A story ought to be told,’ he said, ‘so that it is itself a help,’ and his story was this. ‘My grandfather was paralysed. Once he was asked to tell a story about his teacher and he told how the holy Baal Shem Tov used to jump and dance when he was praying. My grandfather stood up while he was telling the story, and the story carried him away so much that he had to jump and dance to show how the master had done it. From that moment, he was healed. This is how stories ought to be told.’”

—Martin Buber, as cited in Johann Baptist Metz, “A Short Apology of Narrative,” in Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 253.

1 Comment:

One of Freedom said...

Sweet. I don't hear about Metz that often, he's an interesting theologian. I picked up a Buber reader over the summer, still need to get to that. So many books, so little time.

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