I remember going through a phase in the beginning of my college career when I felt that there just wasn’t enough time for fiction. I had many serious books to read and the reading load of college life was, in general, a bit higher than I had previously experienced. So I focused. I read my textbooks carefully. I read the supplemental materials on reading lists assigned by my professors. I viewed reading fiction as recreational and thought I didn’t have time for such recreation when I had a full-time job of being a student. It was a rather narrow view of life. I was aware that there were serious students who studied literature. I was aware that there were important lessons to be learned from literature.

In my third year of college I took a class that was titled, “Christian Faith and Contemporary Literature.” At that point, I was taking most of the courses offered by a particular professor and signed up in part because I knew and trusted his instruction. I enjoyed the class and found it very easy to justify reading the fiction because it was a class assignment. I began to re-open the doors to reading fiction a little bit.

In my seminary years, I found the novels of Elie Wiesel. I was entranced. I began to read everything by Wiesel that I could get. In the introduction to Gates of the Forest he tells of an experience of meeting a Rabbi that he had known before the holocaust and the rabbi asking him if he was writing the truth. His response was, “Sometimes you have to tell a story to tell the truth.” It is, of course, true and a profound observation about the human condition. There are human experiences that cannot be captured in cold, rational, factual narrative. The numbers and statistics of the holocaust don’t tell the whole story. There is more to the impact of this event on the world than can be contained in the facts and figures.

Jesus, standing firmly in the Jewish educational tradition of parable teaching, understood this. When a man asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with a story of a Priest, a Levite and a Samaritan. The gospels are filled with Jesus’ parables. There are some sayings of Jesus that scholars debate about whether or not they are parables, but there more than forty of them. Some are similes: “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” The use of “like” or “as” to paint a word picture by making a comparison is a poetic way of expanding language when the purpose is to point beyond the limitations of language. It is a time honored way of speaking and frequently employed by Jesus.

Sometimes Jesus employs extended metaphors with a host of different direct comparisons. The parable of the great banquet is such a story. Like a simile the referent is clear. The parable is speaking of the realm of God. Not all of the referents are quite as clear. Specifically, who are the ones invited who refuse to come? Exactly who Jesus is referring to in the story is open to interpretation and speculation.

Jesus also told allegorical stories such as the parable of the wicket tenants. The question posed by an allegory addresses the question of “what happens?” more than the question of “who?” Again direct referents are open to interpretation, but the story makes it clear that certain courses of action will bring predictable results - often punishment.

Often, however, Jesus doesn't stick to these three forms of story, but simply tells a good story, as is the case with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The stories help us to reach our own conclusions and point us toward universal truths that operate in different situations. Instead of learning about just one set of circumstances, stories invite us to look for the truth in other experiences and circumstances as well.

Joseph Campbell does a masterful job of analyzing how a single story can reach beyond telling a single truth to speaking of universal truth in his classic study, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” As I studied Jesus’ use of storytelling, I was led to examine the practice of storytelling and to work on my own skills as a story teller to enhance my preaching and the practice of ministry. I have learned to use illustrations and examples fairly well and occasionally find a simile or allegory that fits. But so far, I have fallen far short of predicting any significant fiction for others to read.

It isn’t that I haven’t tried. I have the beginnings of several novels on the hard drives of my computers. I’ve written quite a few short stories. But writing fiction is a skill that I have not begun to master, and one that I may never completely understand.

One of the biggest problems with the stories that I think I might tell is that I keep recognizing real people, real situations and real experiences in the stories that I tell. Being a pastor means that I have all kinds of stories and experiences that simply are not mine to tell. If, for example, I begin to tell a story about a fictional suicide, I recognize details of an actual suicide in my description. I know that the things I know about the actual situation are the result of privilege and my trusted position as a servant of those who are grieving. I also know that their story is not mine to tell. Part of recovery from traumatic events is knowing that there are people who can be trusted. I am called to be one of those people and that means keeping strict confidence. It may be that I simply hold too many stories in confidence to be good at telling stories. Still, I keep thinking that the universal truths that emerge from all of these experiences are worth sharing - they may even help to save a life.

So I read the stories of others. I seek to understand how they are structured and told. And I practice telling stories with great care.

Writing fiction may be a bit like writing poetry - a critical discipline that is mastered by very few.

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