One thing healthy religion does is challenge us. I don’t mean the strident castigations of the street preacher or even the social justice rally-er. Great traditions excel at the soft challenge, the friendly nudge, issued predominantly through the mode of story.

Through centuries, the great traditions—from Indigenous religions to the Abrahamic faiths—honed narrative in seeming acknowledgment that humans learn best through story.

The order that Jesus called the “Kingdom of God”—present around and within us yet also transcendent—was at the center of Jesus’ proclamation and invitation. And the mode of his proclamation and invitation was most often story, or symbolic actions that came down to us as story.

According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is an order in which “the first will be last, and the last will be first.” This dramatic reversal of the values we see day-in-day-out is foundational—Jesus’ stories and actions demonstrate it…