The "Rocking Chair" Class

When I was teaching the Bible as Literature at Delgado Community College, my favorite class of the semester (and the students' also) was what came to be known as the "Rocking Chair Class."  I would bring in a rocking chair and place it at the front of the room, facing the students.  Then I would sit down and tell "my story" of how the Lord had brought me to the Community College -- how I got to be where I was then.  When I finished my story, I would invite the students to come sit in the rocking chair and tell their stories of how God led them through some difficult or confusing passage to where they now were -- to tell the story of their life journey in part.  We had an hour and a half for that class, and it was never enough time.  People who would never stand up in front of a class and speak were very comfortable in the rocking chair.  The chair "said" that they were not expected to pronounce, teach, or know anything except their own experience; they were the only ones who could tell their own stories.  And the stories spoke volumes.

This class was always my introduction to the story of Abraham.  And it worked.  His story was our story then, for everyone in the class had made some kind of journey to get where they were "today."  Of course, the students who enrolled in this class tended to be older students, not the 18-year-olds whose own journies typically had not yet begun.

It is on the journey that we learn who God is.  It is recalling the moments of the journey -- how it began, where it broke down, how it ended-- that we come to know the God Who Called us out of darkness into the light.  St. Paul had a great education and knew a lot of stuff, but his "story," his "journey," did not really begin until he encountered the Living Christ on his way to Damascus.  That was his story!  Everything else was just prelude.

In the same way, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are just prelude, the background setting, for the call of Abraham.  That is where the story begins -- with the journey to a place he knew not where.  On the way, he came to know the God Who Called him, who guided him to a good place, who overcame with divine grace all the obstacles along the way, and who ultimately fulfilled His promises.  That was my own experience, and the experience of my students -- and we recognized it in the stories we told.  There is a great and remarkable similiarities in people's stories (and their response) once they have experienced the Living God!

There is also a great and remarkable similarity in the "stories" or patterns of those who do not recall what God has done for them.  That pattern is outlined in Psalm 106; it is a predictable progression (or regression) from one state to another:

But they soon forgot what he had done

and did not wait for his counsel....

They gave in to craving...

grew envious....

worshipped idols...

despised His inheritance....

did not believe His promise...

grumbled in their tents...

did not obey the Lord...

yoked themselves to Baal...

sacrificed to lifeless gods....

rebelled against the Spirit of God...

shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters....

and descrated the land by their blood.

Our journey is always from darkness to light, or from light to darkness, based on whether we remember or forget what God has done for us.  Moses warned the people just before they entered the Promised Land:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you--- a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant ---then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Deut. 6:10-12).

If we want to sing every day, the best place to begin is by recalling our life's journey -- how we got from where we began to where we are now.  Those are the stories worth remembering and telling to the next generation.  The Jews did not first develop theology; they first celebrated with annual feasts the great events of their lives -- like we do birthdays, our memorial stones along the way.  Their faith eventually grew out of their feasts, their remembrances of their great journey from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light.  They never forgot what God had done for them, and they gave us a great pattern for worship based on their experience.