Stewards of Sacred Stories
Psalm 100
October 25, 2026 Stewardship #1
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA
LINK TO PDF BELOW
Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth.
Worship the Holy One with gladness;
Enter into God's presence with a joyful song!
Know that YHWH is God!
The Divine made us, and we belong to the Creator;
we are God's people and the sheep of God's pasture.
Enter God's gates with thanksgiving
and the courts with praise!
Give thanks to God! Bless God's Name!
For God is good;
God's steadfast love endures forever,
and God's faithfulness to all generations.
Opening
One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there—but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted. In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story. And so portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered.
A story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is an wonderful novel about the power of generosity, the importance of connection, the value of sharing our stories, and the quiet miracles that happen when we choose kindness and wonder.
A story about listening to stories. I am reading this novel now – Theo of Golden by Allen Levi.
Good Samaritan
The lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus said, “There was a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him, and left him half dead. A priest saw him and passed by. A Levite saw him and passed by. A Samaritan saw him and stopped to help...” We know this story as the Good Samaritan.
This summer we explored familiar Bible stories and reexamined them – David and Goliath, Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the Whale.
This psalm and these stories are not simply stories. As Walter Bruggemann puts it - they are invitations.
Each one is an action which reorients life. In Psalm 100, when the community praises, it submits and reorders life. It is not only a moment of worship but also an embrace of a doxological life which is organized differently. A summons to reorient life.
“To enter the courts in singing” is to give meaning to specific memories of gratitude. This movement of praise brings to speech a long history of interaction marked by stories of God’s deeds of goodness, loyalty, and fidelity.
We are called to be stewards of the gift of life and the sacred stories of God’s love and grace.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a familiar story, an energizing story. Jesus tells this story to enlarge our world. He pushes anybody who can hear him beyond the safe and predictable. And he calls us to act for the benefit of other people. Jesus pushes us to expand our view of the neighborhood.
Gratitude, compassion, generosity, empathy – stories that move us, our heart and mind. God uses them to transform us, encourage us, reorient us. These flow into our own life stories.
We celebrate our part within the larger Story. In gratitude and awe, we pause to consider this great thing that has been placed in our hands. This thing that it is to be church together, share life together, stand with each other in suffering and joy and together love and serve and hope for and pray for a world that we’re called to stand with and for as well. This mysterious and amazing thing that can’t be grasped, but can only be shared, that in some way we are connected with all that has gone before and all that is to come by the steadfast love of God, which never ceases, and by which we seek to be defined. Called to be good stewards – life as a gift and life as a task – stewards of God’s story and our stories woven together
Closing - In many African traditions, elders tell a beautiful story about the baobab tree. The baobab grows enormous—its trunk wide, its branches stretching toward the sky—because it holds the stories of the village inside it.
For generations, people gather beneath its shade. They tell the stories of where they came from. They remember their ancestors. They speak aloud the struggles their people survived and the wisdom those struggles revealed.
The elders say the stories nourish the tree. The more the people remember, the stronger the tree grows. In return, the tree shelters the people. It is a simple image, but it tells us something important about how people remain rooted in difficult times. Communities grow strong when they remember their stories.
I have been thinking about that image this week. Right now many people feel unsettled. War has expanded in the Middle East, and public life at home often feels chaotic and unpredictable. The midterm elections are near. I hear the concern in conversations. When events move this quickly, it becomes easy to lose our bearings and forget who we are meant to be. That is when memory and stories become essential.
Rev. Cameron Trimble writes - Spiritual traditions have always known this. Again and again the scriptures call people to remember. Remember the covenant. Remember the liberation. Remember the mercy that carried you through earlier storms.
Memory is not nostalgia. Memory is grounding. Memories are stories and people.
When we remember our deepest stories, we remember what kind of people we are meant to be. We remember that courage has existed before us. We remember that compassion has carried communities through darker times than our own.
That remembering strengthens our roots. In moments of fear, societies often forget their best stories. We begin telling different stories instead—stories about enemies, about domination, about who must be defeated so that we can feel safe again. But those are not the stories that nourish life.
The stories that sustain a community are the ones that remind us of our shared humanity. Stories of liberation. Stories of courage. Stories of people who chose compassion even when fear would have been easier.
Today in our adult ed class we are going to hear some stories from friends at church about the ways they are living their values and spirituality and faith out in the community. I am so looking forward to hearing their stories about compassion and hope and generosity of time and money and energy and resources.
What stories have shaped your understanding of compassion, courage, or faith?
When the world feels unstable, which stories help you remember who you are?
What sacred stories might our church needs to be stewards of and tell again right now?
Biblical stories and other stories can make us larger inside.
When we remember who we are, when we hold the stories of justice, mercy, courage, generosity and love, something inside us steadies.
We become like the baobab. Rooted. Sheltering. Steady. Holding the stories of our community.
May we be good stewards of our sacred stories. Amen.
Resources
Walter Brueggemann, "Psalm 100, Expository Article," Interpretation, 1985.
Rev. Cameron Trimble, “The Story We Need to Remember,” Piloting Faith on Substack 3.6.26
https://open.substack.com/pub/camerontrimble/p/holding-the-stories