Christian Storytelling, Part V: Faithful Improvisation

The Christian story gives powerful meaning to the old Shakespearian line, "All the world’s a stage." Indeed, the world is the stage upon which the drama of redemption takes place.  And you and I are players.  But we are not "merely" players.  No, we are the faithful improvisors of the tragic and glorious fifth act of history, trying with all our might to remain faithful to the four acts, as well as the few scenes of the fifth act, that preceded us. 

The first four acts, and perhaps even Act V, scene 1, have been laid down for us in the Scriptures.  We have some solid clues as to what will happen in the final scene of Act V, but there is a great length of scenes in the fifth act to be played out. 

If you’ve been following the Christian Storytelling series, you’ll know that I’m positing NT Wright’s illustration of the Bible as an unfinished drama as a more beneficial way of reading the Scriptures than our normal methodologies.

Obviously, the objection might arise that if we only have four acts and have to improvise a fifth, we’ll be left to our own devices, and authority would shift away from the text and to us.  I think this would miss the point of the illustration, however, as the first four acts would serve as the authority for the fifth.  It just wouldn’t be a comfortable or easy authority.  Rather than pulling timeless principles from Scripture to apply in any and every context, we would now be forced to ask the question, "Where was the biblical story going?" and "How do we, as its followers, continue to take it there?" We somehow have to deal with the fact that the Scriptures do not give us the whole story, nor do they give us an answer for every single question that arises.  To treat the Bible like it does is to misuse it.  The Scriptures do not lay out the fifth act in detail, but they provide a direction that we faithful improvisors should take. 

The strength of this position comes in its treatment of the Scriptures as the story of redemption.  Certainly the Bible is not laid out in the form of a Shakespearian play.  But it is a story, and we must treat it as such, difficult though that may be. 

The story, of course, has a main character: Jesus of Nazareth.  If we get bogged down in too many of the minor details of the story and do not focus on the story’s central trajectory, the proclamation of Jesus as crucified Lord of the universe, we’ll take the story in all sorts of misguided directions.  Therefore, we should see the Scriptures as an unfinished drama about Christ, a drama which we are to live out in each setting we are given.  We should take our places in our allotted scenes, take the role given to us, and live out the incarnational story of Jesus as faithfully as possible.

The term "faithful improvisor" is meant to be a self-correcting term.  If you focus on the word "improvisor," you’ll think authority lies in each actor, making it up as he or she goes along.  But if we are genuinely "faithful" to the script we have been given, we’ll hopefully avoid such an approach.  And anyway, there will be other actors on the stage to point out when we’ve taken too much creative license.  But if you neglect the word "improvisor," you will establish for yourself some rigidly narrow view of how things should be done and lose your ability to become faithfully incarnational.  You’ll also refuse to learn from other actors who might be better than you.  So with humility, let’s play our parts in the drama of redemption, living and speaking the story of Jesus.