Saturday, March 23, 2019
Temptations to Quarrels Bred In A Loveless Desert: On Luke 4
**another reflection given in a time of prayer the morning of Saturday, March 16th (which I'm just now getting around to recording here)**
In prayer this morning, I was gracefully given a flash of what I take to be helpful insight.
From what I saw in prayer, I don't think the point is really about the scriptures at all. At least, not primarily. I think it's more like, when Satan offers Jesus the kingdom's of the world if he would worship him, and when Jesus tempts Satan to affirm his identity by performing some extravagant miracle, Jesus' response was a reminder to Satan of who he was talking to.
"You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve."
and,
"You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."
Prayerfully, I kind of hear Jesus implying to Satan: "Who do you think you're talking to? 'All this authority and their glory...has been delivered to you' BY ME. Who do you think you're testing here?
In other words, the central point and thrust of the story is the person of Jesus and the actual words spoken from his actual mouth. Jesus wasn't referring to and didn't have in mind an abstract theory of the authority of scripture, and he didn't have to mediate or filter his response to Satan through such a secondary power from a distant God above to whom the abstract theory points and on whom the theory supposedly relies. Jesus IS the authority. The scripture he quoted only has any power because of him, to whom said scripture points.
Further, he identifies with us in his baptism with us. We are extensions of his body, authority, and rule in the world. If we are living as ambassadors of our King in and of the world according to his "new commandment" of love - which also came from his mouth, in his person, and is embodied by his life - then why do we fight so hard to miraculously and extravagantly prove a mediated and distanced authority of a set of words that stand alone in a conceptual world outside ourselves and our King?
As one of many potential demonstrations of my point, pictured above is a cartoon depicting the loveless debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham over the authority of scripture. We are all at least tempted to vicariously participate. Bill Nye: "Science is how you get bread, fame or identity, and power!" How we tend to respond: "No, you get them through trust in the scriptures!"
Of course, my point isn't to discard scripture. But, perhaps the real temptation of our day isn't so much to distrust the authority of God but, rather, "foolish, ignorant controversies" that only "breed quarrels." The good news is, that's not something we have to fight or quarrel over. Trust in God, thankfully, isn't so much something we fight for as much as a gift from the One in whom we trust.
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,In The Temptation of Jesus by Satan in the wilderness, I've always imagined and been taught that Jesus is quoting scripture on the authority of the God above who inspired the scripture he's quoting to the face of Satan. This is usually in the context of teachings and conversations about the power and authority of scripture with the marginal caveat to be careful, since Satan knows the scriptures, too. I've always been a bit uncomfortable with this, and I was never enough of a theological master to put my finger on why.
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
- from Luke 4
In prayer this morning, I was gracefully given a flash of what I take to be helpful insight.
From what I saw in prayer, I don't think the point is really about the scriptures at all. At least, not primarily. I think it's more like, when Satan offers Jesus the kingdom's of the world if he would worship him, and when Jesus tempts Satan to affirm his identity by performing some extravagant miracle, Jesus' response was a reminder to Satan of who he was talking to.
"You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve."
and,
"You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."
Prayerfully, I kind of hear Jesus implying to Satan: "Who do you think you're talking to? 'All this authority and their glory...has been delivered to you' BY ME. Who do you think you're testing here?
In other words, the central point and thrust of the story is the person of Jesus and the actual words spoken from his actual mouth. Jesus wasn't referring to and didn't have in mind an abstract theory of the authority of scripture, and he didn't have to mediate or filter his response to Satan through such a secondary power from a distant God above to whom the abstract theory points and on whom the theory supposedly relies. Jesus IS the authority. The scripture he quoted only has any power because of him, to whom said scripture points.
Further, he identifies with us in his baptism with us. We are extensions of his body, authority, and rule in the world. If we are living as ambassadors of our King in and of the world according to his "new commandment" of love - which also came from his mouth, in his person, and is embodied by his life - then why do we fight so hard to miraculously and extravagantly prove a mediated and distanced authority of a set of words that stand alone in a conceptual world outside ourselves and our King?
As one of many potential demonstrations of my point, pictured above is a cartoon depicting the loveless debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham over the authority of scripture. We are all at least tempted to vicariously participate. Bill Nye: "Science is how you get bread, fame or identity, and power!" How we tend to respond: "No, you get them through trust in the scriptures!"
Of course, my point isn't to discard scripture. But, perhaps the real temptation of our day isn't so much to distrust the authority of God but, rather, "foolish, ignorant controversies" that only "breed quarrels." The good news is, that's not something we have to fight or quarrel over. Trust in God, thankfully, isn't so much something we fight for as much as a gift from the One in whom we trust.
Sacrificial Death through Interpreting: The Beatitudes and Psalm 37
**a reflection given in a time of prayer the morning of Thurs., March 7th (which I'm just now getting around to recording here)**
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
- from Isaiah 53: 7
This morning, in a time of daily prayer whose most common refrain is "Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner," I was given to see a particular relationship between Psalm 37 and the Beatitudes that extends through multiple generations and into the present.
In prayer, I saw that wonder at the correct interpretation of a story calls us to hope for mercy. And, vice versa, Mercy embodied in the Word of Life calls us to a posture where we must interpret stories and our places in them. We don’t proclaim authoritative facts from on high without presumption of taking the role of Jesus in the story of the world. Humbly, we enter into the body of a story and are left to ask our place in it.
But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.
- Psalm 37: 11
This verse might sound familiar to those of us who know the New Testament better than the Old. The context of the Beatitudes is not neutral. They aren't singular, atomistic, universal propositions or pronouncements offering obviously definitive and factual meaning over a clean slate of uncontested territory waiting to be interpreted and understood in the same exact way by any and everyone. Jesus wasn't speaking on the moon (nor was David). When David's commander wants to kill a member of Saul's family who is hurling curses and rocks at David, David's response is: "Who knows, maybe that's the voice of God in response to my life of voilence. We're going to have to wait this out. Be at peace with him." Different members of both Jesus' audience and David's would hear these blessed words in Psalm 37 of inheritance and peace very differently.
In his authority to identify, speak into, and judge the world of his time and place, Jesus is re-calling, remembering and reinterpreting ancient songs and oracles. Jesus proclaims the Beatitudes and re-enacts the Psalms before his audience, which is specific to his time and place but, requiring re-placement, recontextualization, or reinterpretation, extends to our time and place, too. His authority is why we should trust his interpretation of the world and not some other. Especially not our own!
The way we hear stories will depend on where we place ourselves in the story being told. It is by His Word that different audience members of his world and ours who are vying for their stakes and claims upon their various roles in the scriptural narrative find their final place. Who will be vindicated, and who will fall? Whether we really belong in the clothes of the character we imagine for ourselves, however, really isn't up to us. I'm sure Saul wouldn't have identified himself as "the one who prospers in his [own, self-assertive] way...the man who carries out evil devices!"
If the Beatitudes were a re-membering of ancient songs and oracles like this one, then "blessed are the meek...[and] pure in heart" is prophecy that we can be confident, in his authority, that he is re-enacting.
As a hospice nurse who is confronted daily by a death we neither control nor choose, this brings me great hope and comfort. Dying daily is training and practice for the bearing of our crosses, yes. But, it's also a reminder of how the world works, in general. We are dependent and vulnerable in ways we rarely acknowledge or imagine to simply get along in life by imagining a story or narrative for the world in which we are getting along, as well as our places in it. Our imagination for those things is borrowed from sources outside ourselves. That’s why we read what are are called SCRIPTures. And, we don't ultimately determine how the story - of which we are neither the authors nor the authoritative interpreters in the first place - unfolds and ends.
"Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
- from Isaiah 53: 7
This morning, in a time of daily prayer whose most common refrain is "Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner," I was given to see a particular relationship between Psalm 37 and the Beatitudes that extends through multiple generations and into the present.
In prayer, I saw that wonder at the correct interpretation of a story calls us to hope for mercy. And, vice versa, Mercy embodied in the Word of Life calls us to a posture where we must interpret stories and our places in them. We don’t proclaim authoritative facts from on high without presumption of taking the role of Jesus in the story of the world. Humbly, we enter into the body of a story and are left to ask our place in it.
But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.
- Psalm 37: 11
This verse might sound familiar to those of us who know the New Testament better than the Old. The context of the Beatitudes is not neutral. They aren't singular, atomistic, universal propositions or pronouncements offering obviously definitive and factual meaning over a clean slate of uncontested territory waiting to be interpreted and understood in the same exact way by any and everyone. Jesus wasn't speaking on the moon (nor was David). When David's commander wants to kill a member of Saul's family who is hurling curses and rocks at David, David's response is: "Who knows, maybe that's the voice of God in response to my life of voilence. We're going to have to wait this out. Be at peace with him." Different members of both Jesus' audience and David's would hear these blessed words in Psalm 37 of inheritance and peace very differently.
In his authority to identify, speak into, and judge the world of his time and place, Jesus is re-calling, remembering and reinterpreting ancient songs and oracles. Jesus proclaims the Beatitudes and re-enacts the Psalms before his audience, which is specific to his time and place but, requiring re-placement, recontextualization, or reinterpretation, extends to our time and place, too. His authority is why we should trust his interpretation of the world and not some other. Especially not our own!
The way we hear stories will depend on where we place ourselves in the story being told. It is by His Word that different audience members of his world and ours who are vying for their stakes and claims upon their various roles in the scriptural narrative find their final place. Who will be vindicated, and who will fall? Whether we really belong in the clothes of the character we imagine for ourselves, however, really isn't up to us. I'm sure Saul wouldn't have identified himself as "the one who prospers in his [own, self-assertive] way...the man who carries out evil devices!"
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace."Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."
- Psalm 37:7-11
If the Beatitudes were a re-membering of ancient songs and oracles like this one, then "blessed are the meek...[and] pure in heart" is prophecy that we can be confident, in his authority, that he is re-enacting.
Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off. I have seen a wicked, ruthless man, spreading himself like a green laurel tree. But he passed away, and behold, he was no more; though I sought him, he could not be found. Mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off. The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord ; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.So, because Jesus is re-calling and re-enacting prophecies that call us to humble mercy, we rely on Jesus to interpret the world for us as we place ourselves in the story he tells. We open ourselves before the face of his Mercy seat as we begin to wonder or imagine who we are in the story. But, that's not all. It is only in him - in his Mercy and grace – where we have hope for justice as the story unfolds before us. I certainly am not the pure one. Like David, I tend towards a life of violence. But, in his baptisms in water and blood, Jesus binds himself to me in my death, which is the inevitable end of my life of violence. I can thus have confidence in my binding to his Life of righteousness and redemption.
- Psalm 37:34-40
As a hospice nurse who is confronted daily by a death we neither control nor choose, this brings me great hope and comfort. Dying daily is training and practice for the bearing of our crosses, yes. But, it's also a reminder of how the world works, in general. We are dependent and vulnerable in ways we rarely acknowledge or imagine to simply get along in life by imagining a story or narrative for the world in which we are getting along, as well as our places in it. Our imagination for those things is borrowed from sources outside ourselves. That’s why we read what are are called SCRIPTures. And, we don't ultimately determine how the story - of which we are neither the authors nor the authoritative interpreters in the first place - unfolds and ends.
"Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."
The Creating of the Nations
**a reflection given in a time of prayer the morning of Saturday, March 16th (which I'm just now getting around to recording here)**
On Psalms 46: 1-7
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
I never noticed this before, but, in prayer this morning, I was given to see that this is not simply an image of God's power, meant to invoke an emotional response of fear or awe. That was how I’ve always read those first three verses in the past….
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah
Given as a flash of insight that I would not have had without the Spirit’s presence in prayer this morning, one might say I remembered that this imagery does evoke a powerful response, but it is also a reference to creation. The Spirit was upon the face of the waters... God separated the waters from the earth...and it was good.
In other words, if “the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,” then we are facing a return to primordial chaos and disorder. David is invoking the imagery of creation by juxtaposing its well known story against the ever-present threat and possibility of the dissolution of God’s created order. It's as if, David is saying, “even if the creational order comes unhinged, even if it looks like God has withdrawn his Spirit 'from upon the face of the waters…'"…
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
It was in the presence of the Spirit this morning when and where I was gifted with an imagination for how the scriptures testify to the presence and creative work of the Spirit. The Psalm is retelling the creation story and embodying or re-membering it in the life, history, and very existence of Israel.
"God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah"
This new imagination for God’s creative order through the presence and work of the Spirit (verses 1-3) with a special creative role for the world given to Israel (verses 4 and 5) moved me to begin asking questions I wouldn’t have otherwise asked. Without the Spirit’s piercing this morning in prayer, I was in the past simply confused by verses 6 and 7. My level of confusion was such that I wasn’t even able to articulate a coherent question about it.
This morning, however, in a place of awestruck wonder, I was led to ask: if God's story of creation is what sets the context and meaning of the Psalm, and if Israel is included in this creative act, then why is the "raging" and "tottering" of "the nations" associated here with "the earth melts"? The powerfully evocative imagery here suggests to me that, just as the nation or people of Israel is an extension, or even the first knowable sign, of God's creative act in and for the world, the world's political comings and goings also participate in God's good creative project.
The seemingly or hopefully solid foundations of nations that actually appear immersed in waters of chaos ("though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea...the earth melts") are not outside the creative realm and power of the spirit of God present and at work.
Trump might impulsively hit “tweet” on a stupidity that leads to nuclear world war, but “The Lord of hosts is with us.” Injustice might reign in the streets of our nation through bribes and bloodstains that aren’t easily cleansed, but “the God of Jacob is our fortress.” This Psalm, then, and the way it testifies to the presence and work of God, gives me an imagination for what it means to trust that God is at work when it looks like he’s abandoned ship to the circus that is our world.
I don’t need to MYSELF “rage like the waters of the sea.” I don’t need to join in the chorus of call outs against scapegoats to restore justice. Nor even against real perpetrators, perhaps. That is indeed to join myself to the imperial mountain that Jesus says is cast into the sea with a mere mustard seed of faith.
I don’t need to MYSELF come unhinged from myself. My screaming to the heavens until I lose my voice because injustice muzzles the voices of the voiceless is like chaff in the wind. The works of the flesh yield the rotten fruit of primordial, chaotic death. “Rage, rage against the dying of the night” isn’t a scriptural reference.
For “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved…” Stay the course. As Proverbs 3: 3-8 reminds me, steadfast love and faithfulness are tied to creative fruitfulness. Glorious beauty!
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 So you will find favor and good success
in the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
On Psalms 46: 1-7
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
I never noticed this before, but, in prayer this morning, I was given to see that this is not simply an image of God's power, meant to invoke an emotional response of fear or awe. That was how I’ve always read those first three verses in the past….
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah
Given as a flash of insight that I would not have had without the Spirit’s presence in prayer this morning, one might say I remembered that this imagery does evoke a powerful response, but it is also a reference to creation. The Spirit was upon the face of the waters... God separated the waters from the earth...and it was good.
In other words, if “the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,” then we are facing a return to primordial chaos and disorder. David is invoking the imagery of creation by juxtaposing its well known story against the ever-present threat and possibility of the dissolution of God’s created order. It's as if, David is saying, “even if the creational order comes unhinged, even if it looks like God has withdrawn his Spirit 'from upon the face of the waters…'"…
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
It was in the presence of the Spirit this morning when and where I was gifted with an imagination for how the scriptures testify to the presence and creative work of the Spirit. The Psalm is retelling the creation story and embodying or re-membering it in the life, history, and very existence of Israel.
"God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah"
This new imagination for God’s creative order through the presence and work of the Spirit (verses 1-3) with a special creative role for the world given to Israel (verses 4 and 5) moved me to begin asking questions I wouldn’t have otherwise asked. Without the Spirit’s piercing this morning in prayer, I was in the past simply confused by verses 6 and 7. My level of confusion was such that I wasn’t even able to articulate a coherent question about it.
This morning, however, in a place of awestruck wonder, I was led to ask: if God's story of creation is what sets the context and meaning of the Psalm, and if Israel is included in this creative act, then why is the "raging" and "tottering" of "the nations" associated here with "the earth melts"? The powerfully evocative imagery here suggests to me that, just as the nation or people of Israel is an extension, or even the first knowable sign, of God's creative act in and for the world, the world's political comings and goings also participate in God's good creative project.
The seemingly or hopefully solid foundations of nations that actually appear immersed in waters of chaos ("though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea...the earth melts") are not outside the creative realm and power of the spirit of God present and at work.
Trump might impulsively hit “tweet” on a stupidity that leads to nuclear world war, but “The Lord of hosts is with us.” Injustice might reign in the streets of our nation through bribes and bloodstains that aren’t easily cleansed, but “the God of Jacob is our fortress.” This Psalm, then, and the way it testifies to the presence and work of God, gives me an imagination for what it means to trust that God is at work when it looks like he’s abandoned ship to the circus that is our world.
I don’t need to MYSELF “rage like the waters of the sea.” I don’t need to join in the chorus of call outs against scapegoats to restore justice. Nor even against real perpetrators, perhaps. That is indeed to join myself to the imperial mountain that Jesus says is cast into the sea with a mere mustard seed of faith.
I don’t need to MYSELF come unhinged from myself. My screaming to the heavens until I lose my voice because injustice muzzles the voices of the voiceless is like chaff in the wind. The works of the flesh yield the rotten fruit of primordial, chaotic death. “Rage, rage against the dying of the night” isn’t a scriptural reference.
For “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved…” Stay the course. As Proverbs 3: 3-8 reminds me, steadfast love and faithfulness are tied to creative fruitfulness. Glorious beauty!
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 So you will find favor and good success
in the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
If it’s “Divine Reading,” Then who is the one doing the reading?: Lectio Divina Part 2
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. – Exodus 20: 1-4
Be still, and know that I am God. – Psalm 46: 10
"We live in a noisy world – and for teenagers who have grown up with mobiles, Facebook and Twitter, a permanent iPod plugged in, to sit in silent stillness can be a revelation. As 28-year-old Johan Vaneeken, from Holland, tells me: 'There are not many places or times in our Western civilisation to be quiet, to be yourself and contemplative – that's very hard to do at home. So I think it's very important there's a place like this.'"In Part 1 [SEE LINK] of a short blog series on Lectio Divina, I discussed how God originally intended his good creation project to be towards knowing fellowship and relationships with humans and to make Himself known through this royal, representative image of Himself. This God-ordered project of His for which humans were sent on a mission to cooperate with God in completing was interrupted by humanity’s taking and grasping knowledge for ourselves from the center of the universe.
- an atheist reporting on why thousands of young people flock to the Taize community every summer, LINK HERE.
In our particularly modern human history, this additionally became a problem of humans centering their being and identity around our minds and, from there, speculatively grasping by enclosing our minds around a system of thought and thus tending strongly to relate to God as a distant, foreign object of our own speculative knowledge rather as the One “in whom we live, move, and have our being.”
Also, then, in Part 1, I discussed how Lectio Divina is one way to cultivate and train us into relating to God as though He’s the one doing the knowing rather than ourselves (see, for example 1 Cor. 13: 8-13, or Col. 2: 3).
Here in Part 2, I will attempt to articulate how Lectio Divina is one way to help train us into way of relating to work in a similar way as to knowledge.
HUMANS WORKING
And to Adam he said,In the beginning of the script for the world, God and man worked together in fellowship and communion towards God’s ordered ends. One of the first problems that arose after the original grasping is that working of the ground – from which we now come and to which we now return - would occur “by the sweat of our brow.” We are humans for whom one of the fundamental urges is to urgently, unendingly, and compulsively reach out and grasp after our images of reality until we have fully and completely finished our project of creating our world using the fruit we took for ourselves from the center of the universe. We presume as though that were possible, anything other than a vain and futile, Babylonian fantasy.
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
- Genesis 3
One of God’s solutions to that problem in that scriptural story is Sabbath rest. This requires trust that God is always present and at work, even – and especially - when we stop and be still.
As moderns, characterized by our thinking about the entirety of the world all at once (as discussed in part 1 SEE LINK), the ancient problem of work quickly became our now taken-for-granted frenetic pace of life that far exceeds the natural rhythms, sensations, and perceptions of the human body with its limits and mortality. Also appropriate to the modern world’s essential character of the mind’s encompassing the whole of said world, this unnatural pace has always been naturally doubled with modern imperialism and colonialism. This doubling is part of why we, as moderns, predominately suffer through lives of anxiously desperate striving to keep up with the “powers of this world" whose tools are death and alienation.
The Temptation of St Anthony, engraving by Martin Shongauer, c. 1470-1475
For more basic information on the nature, idea, history, as well as on the “how to” of Lecito Divina, CLICK HERE.
Lectio Divina is one of the ways that originated from long before the dawn of modernity that Christian tradition has handed down to us to address what has now become a problem of the frenetic, mechanical, and anxious pace of modern life in order to identify with and trust in the “powers” of our modern world.
"Silence is the only phenomenon today that is 'useless'. It does not fit into the world of profit and utility; it simply is...Silence stands outside the world of profit and utility; it cannot be exploited for profit...It is 'unproductive'. Therefore it is regarded as valueless...Silence gives to things inside it something of the power of autonomous being. The autonomous being in things is strengthened in silence. That which is developable and exploitable in things vanishes when they are in silence." - Max Picard, The World of Silence.For this reason, theologian Sarah Coakley leads a prison ministry whose central feature is contemplative prayer. It's very freeing for the inmates, and the prison guards don't know what to do with that.
One of the most basic and original facts of the kind of mystical prayer from which Lectio Divina arose was that it began when Desert Fathers such as St. Anthony were suspicious of and saw the danger in the union between the Catholic Church and the enslaving power of the Roman Empire. They saw and felt in their bones how such powers formed and shaped their desires and thoughts. Their response was to – like Jesus - be exiled to the wilderness of the desert, where they came face to face with such temptations of power, productivity, and profit. They sought to be formed by a different and greater power.
Some moderns, rather than being worried that Lectio Divina is "too subjective" (see Part 1) tend more towards being suspicious of what they perceive as closed-minded, disengaged speculations of the mind as itself a form of exile. And, these moderns, rather than being suspicious of personal forces getting in the way of the production or appearance of "objective" truth, are more weary of the death and alienation wielded by our "powers" towards productivity and profit. These people will likely tend to see Lectio Divina as too harsh, set, formulaic, or rigid. What it may help those tempted in that direction to realize, however, is that the "movements" of Lectio Divina are those of the Spirit. They are not impersonal gears in a machine. Lectio Divina is not a capitalist, industrial factory with smokestacks. A more appropriate image for Lectio Divina than liturgical factories with smokestacks is the person of Jesus. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
GOD’S DIVINE WORKING
The center and climax of Lectio Divina is the free(ing) gift of rest in the presence of God. Note St. Anthony's expression in the above engraving. To quote "Father Josh" from the video in Part 1 (LINK TO VIDEO HERE): “We simply spend time looking at Him and letting Him look at us…[it’s] a time where we gaze at Him and He gazes at us.” As we rest in stillness of “centering prayer” before the Face of God, we give ourselves over to what we trust is a wellspring of healing, creative waters from the Spirit at the true center of all of existence, a center that we accept as being something – or more accurately the One - who we cannot begin to even fathom what it means to reach out and grasp. “Do not cling to me, Mary…”
The first commandments are about proper worship and against idolatry, against worship of created images. Lectio Divina is traditionally likened to the gift of a awe and wonder-filled, worshipful, God-honoring communion feast with the Uncreated. In “contemplatio” – as part of God’s transformation of his people into His image through the presence, power, and Word of the Master Wordsmith - our false images of God are put through the gift of a cleansing and purifying fire.
“In the modern world language is far from…worlds of silence. It springs from noise and vanishes in noise. Silence today is no longer an autonomous world of its own; it is simply the place into which noise has not yet penetrated. It is a mere interruption of the continuity of noise, like a technical hitch in the noise-machine – that is what silence is today: the momentary breakdown of noise. We no longer have definite silence and definite language, but simply words that are being spoken and words that have not yet been spoken – but these are present, too, standing around like tools that are not being used; they stand waiting there menacingly or boringly.” – Max Picard, The World of Silence (p. 40)Lectio Divina, then, is not a noisy, technocratic method that we work to conjure for ourselves our fantasy world. Nor do we control it and our words as a tool to create a powerful prayer experience or to feel exciting emotions. The four movements of Lectio Divina, rather, are one means of cultivating a re-union of the creative, powerful movement of words with their beginnings in silent stillness.
It’s an attempt to get out of our own way for a moment to allow God’s work of Creation to re-occur in our bodies, desires, souls, and minds. This occurs in and through the whole of our being so that – counter to the “powers of the world” - we may participate with God in His re-Creation project.
Notably, the Desert Fathers who exiled themselves from Roman influence did return to “society.” People were then drawn to them, because they were able to present a new, more whole and healthy image of humanity and the world.
[Prayer] brings together the sense of awe at the transcendence of the God who made the world, with the sense of intimacy that this same God wants to be in personal touch with his human creatures.P.S. – for some transformative gifts of sights and insights given during Lectio Divina in my life, see the following links. I didn't put all those there with the intention that my reader both read all 10 of these, necessarily. I just put those here so that you one might, if they so choose, use however many of them they want to get a more particular and concrete idea of what the actual happening of Lectio Divina is like, as compared to my talking about or explaining it from a distance:
This … is what we find in the Psalms and elsewhere in the Jewish scriptures; and it is this that comes to full expression … in and through Jesus. For the Christian, prayer is simultaneously the adoration and wonder of contemplating, and thanking, God the creator and redeemer, and the awareness of an intimate and loving relationship bubbling up from within, which shapes the character and the content of prayer so that it reaches out to embrace the suffering world – and all kinds of particular needs and problems within it – and finds that it embodies the presence and healing love of Jesus himself as it does so.
- N.T. Wright
1. Sit, and Listen to Me: on Mark 3 and the passionate, all-consuming, fiery gaze of Jesus, LINK HERE
2. Luke 7, where Jesus relationally honors both the “sinful woman” and the sinful Pharisee at the same time, LINK HERE
3. On the relational humility of God where Jesus turns water to wine in John 2: 1-11 - LNK HERE.
4. On The Beatitudes as a patriarchal blessing and naming of the people of God who take up their cross and follow Jesus - LINK HERE.
5. On Mark 10: 17-31, where both Jesus (and Peter and the church) and the rich young ruler embody different parts of the story of Abraham - LINK HERE.
6. A lesson on trust, generosity, humility and pride from the poor widow in Mark 12: 38-44 (this one only partially involved Lectio Divina) - LINK HERE.
7. Less directly Lectio Divina but a similar insight given in prayerful consideration of and over a passage: On our hallowing of a humble God in The Lord's Prayer - LINK HERE.
8. Psalm 46: 1-7 on loving faithfulness through trust in the presence and work of the Spirit in The Creating of The Nations - LINK HERE
9. An insight given in prayerful reflection in Psalm 37 on the humility required for understanding our place in the world - LINK HERE
10. An exploration of the gift of security in trust in the authority of Jesus - Temptations to Quarrels Bred In A Loveless Desert: On Luke 4 - LINK HERE.
P.P.S. - For a more detailed and academic treatment of Lectio Divina, if one so chooses, SEE THIS LINK to "Lectio Divina: The Great Spiritual Practice."
If it’s “Divine Reading,” Then who is the one doing the reading?: Lectio Divina Part 1
"…Lectio Divina. This is the practice, whether individually or in smallish groups, for spending prayerful time with a particular passage….The important thing is that symbolically and practically what this says is that we are trying to be still before the word of God, to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church and to ourselves, and not least to listen for what the Spirit may be saying through one another. And in all this we are embodying and celebrating in advance the new creation to which scripture points and which the Spirit brings into reality.” - N.T. Wright (SEE LINK)Here begins a short, two-part blog series intended as a quick introduction to an ancient form of prayer called "Lectio Divina," which translates in Latin to "Divine Reading." CLICK HERE for a link to Part 2 of this blog series.
“The Bible is not a textbook. Nor is it a manual to be studied, mastered, and mechanically applied. Instead, pastor and author Eugene Peterson believes we should listen to the Word of God and reflect upon it like poetry till it infiltrates the soul…he draws upon the ancient practice of lectio divina as a way for leaders to humbly listen to Scripture and experience transformation ...the practice allows busy pastors to slow down and listen once again to God…” - from a Christianity Today article featuring an interview with Eugene Peterson on Lectio Divina (SEE LINK HERE).
GOD'S DIVINE KNOWING
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.According to Christian scriptures, the beginning of the world is communal fellowship between God and humanity in an inchoate world where God gives his royal, representative image – that’s us - the mission to multiply and spread his presence through us and to cultivate, tend to, and protect His good creation project, towards God’s end or goal of bringing His creative order to bear upon all of creation.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
- Genesis 2
The first problem we encounter in and of the story of this world as humans occurs when we reach out and grasp for ourselves a forbidden fruit of a tree of knowledge that grows at and from the center of our universe. One of the ways those same scriptures give us to address that problem is to engage in and practice speech that both doesn’t originate in and with ourselves and also isn’t ordered to our own ends or goals. We call it prayer.
As moderns, the first problem we encounter in and of the modern world is when we step back and presume our very existing to be known through a speculative view that encompasses the entirety of the universe with the eye of the mind, with our own thinking. (This is why everything modern is systematic: the word system comes from the Greek word for “all”)
One of the ways Christian tradition has handed down to us to address that problem – from long prior to modernity - is to practice a form of encounter in which we don’t read the scriptures so much as they read us. We call it “Divine Reading,” or as it’s more commonly known: Lectio Divina. It is traditionally practiced as a form of prayer. It’s been said of Lectio Divina that, with it, we come not to master the text but to be mastered by it. We don’t go to grasp and enclose. Rather, we come to listen and receive.
Thus, Lectio Divina is not intended as a means to becoming a spiritual giant. It asks us to bow and submit. The idea is to bow and submit before the very presence of God embodied in and through His spoken Word. This traditionally occurs through four, or sometimes five, “movements.” They are referred to as “Lectio” (reading), “Meditatio” (meditating or pondering), “Oratio” (praying or responding), and “Contemplatio” (contemplating). Sometimes there is a fifth movement or step: “action.” The above video gives a very good and concise explanation of the basic idea and four movements of Lectio Divina.
"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.” – St. John of the Cross on the four movements of Lectio Divina.
HUMAN KNOWING
Modern modes of studying and teaching such as inductive bible studies and expository preaching can and should clearly be helpful. They have their place. But, they also tend to perpetuate this second modern problem of humanity’s attempts to know God. Lacking presumptuousness, Lectio Divina is not a better or singular way to know God. Just like expository preaching or teaching, Lectio Divina is one (kind of) attempt to get out of our own way of a God who is in passionate pursuit of knowing us. It is not meant to replace other forms of prayer or study but to be an element of a woven tapestry of seeking God that constitutes our life.
“In the ancient world, one read to be persuaded to live in a particular way, in contrast to modern practices of reading where one typically reads to be informed.” – K. Jo-Ann Badley and Ken Badley, Slow Reading, Reading Along Lectio Lines, LINK HERE
This reading “to be informed” implies precisely the above noted speculative distance. Our modus operandi is predominantly from a kind of disenchanted and dispassionate disengagement, a place of fundamental dis-interest.
So, the most basic reason for Lectio Divina as compared to other forms of prayer or study is to stop talking and listen, to stop conceptualizing by grasping our minds around God as an object of our own knowledge and to open ourselves in awe and reverence to the presence and work a God of divine mystery who has, in His loving Grace, made Himself known in the flesh of His Son. Christ is the redemption and re-making of a humanity bifurcated after an original grasping, a grasping which is now a particularly modern grasping towards the enclosure of the mind around a system of thought that disengages us from ourselves, the world, and God.
The Son has fulfilled the promise of God being “all in all.” In other words, because of and in Jesus Christ, “God is everywhere”. Jesus is the fulfillment of His original goal in the script for the world, and we are extensions of his body WITHIN the world. But we tend to read and pray the scriptures as though that’s not the case. This is because, like the very Earth itself, we tend to place ourselves in relation to God as a distant object of the speculative knowing of our own mind.
Lectio Divina is an ancient tradition of prayer handed down through many generations that helps us to address these two problems of knowing. Rather than grasping for ourselves, we do seek in “meditatio”, but the idea is to wait on the movement of the spirit to illuminate rather than to grasp for ourselves. We do speak in “oratio,” but it is in response to the speech of the Word. We don’t DO anything in “contemplation.” We die to our own striving and speaking and thus open like a seed to the presence of God through the Spirit in silent stillness.
One common way of explaining Lectio Divina, then, is that we don’t study and analyze the ways in which scripture teaches us that Jesus Christ is our peace. Rather, with Lectio Divina, we assume that the Word is alive and active through the scriptures. We thus actively encounter and engage the peace of Christ through the Word as articulated in scripture and thus formed in and through us. We don’t study and analyze the story. We enter it, become it, and embody it.
As moderns, contrary to the "entering" and "embodying" of the movements of the living Word in Lectio Divina, our speculative disengagement is required for and built into a presumed "neutral objectivity" that we hold so dear. Also as moderns, then, any "movement" out of that dis-interest and back inside the actuality of living or praying can have a strong tendency to appear to us as something that is too "subjective." Before modern dis-interest was a thing, however, ancient practitioners of Lectio Divina taught the importance of avoiding error in "meditatio" by and through its being preceded and accompanied by "lectio" (or reading) of scripture. In that sense, Lectio Divina and modern expository preaching or teaching and inductive bible studies are attempts at articulated orders towards the same end.
Rather than seeking to know God the way we study a long dead and dissected frog as an object of our own knowledge, however, Lectio Divina - or “divine reading” - helps us to engage the Living Word who is the breath of Life. Rather than treating the scriptures as a textbook to be analyzed, we come expectantly before the passionately-loving Face of God mediated through the gift of the scriptures. We don’t do this “to be informed.” In Lectio Divina, we instead approach God in order to be transformed into the image of the Son, the Son who is both the redemption and remaking of humanity into its original, good wholeness and also into the One in whom we “live and move and have our being.”
"Interviewer: What have you discovered, or what insight was revealed to you, about yourself that you may not have had if you did not respond to this call?
Intervieweee: I discovered that the more transparent I become in describing my inner spiritual experience, the more prisoners respond. It’s as if my deepest secret longings are not unique to me, or unique at all. These subtle interior wounds are no different from prisoners’ own deepest longings. My sense of abandonment, estrangement from God, aloneness in the universe matches theirs. What started as self-revealing disclosures ends in a community of relationships that I never expected."
- from: Teaching Centering Prayer to the Incarcerated (SEE LINK HERE)
Sunday, March 03, 2019
The Monumentally Famous Story of David vs. Newton That No One Ever Talks About
You may have heard it said that God's acceptance of you requires a sacrificial satisfaction of God's "wrath" for your sin.
Of course, the scriptures never say that; it's based on a system of interpretation built up over time since at least the Reformation.
Good News: But the scriptures (actually do) say this:
"By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil."
Proverbs 16:6
Notably, here, "fear" is reverent awe, not "fear" of pending punishment.
This would mean that the cross is not satisfaction of wrath but the ultimate act of "steadfast love and faithfulness" to the point of death. We aren't "made holy" by the trading of a foreign righteousness for our guilt that is otherwise held onto in wrath. Rather, in faithful love, our original fullness is restored in a act that judges us acquitted of the shame and guilt that would otherwise have us on a path of death on which the image of God in humanity would be that of empty ruins.
Empty ruins are traded for a heavenly city, yes, but that's because, in awe of the beauty of that city, enraptured and captivated, we come to identify with her people, her King, and her land - and we come to act accordingly. The trade isn't a metaphysical or spiritual transaction with God that we understand speculatively in our minds. It's a very visible, visceral, physical, and practical conversion to another Way. A Way founded not on wrath and punishment but on "steadfast love and faithfulness."
Now, what I have presented here so far is a little bit of an over-simplification and doesn't paint the entire picture, particularly regarding what "wrath" might actually mean or entail without the mind-bending speculation of the above noted metaphysical "trade" or "conversion." Others more qualified than myself have already discussed that ad infinum, and a dissertation isn't my purpose here.
It is, however, a question that is vital to the hi-story that I am here trying to tell you. So, please allow me to explain a bit. The basic idea, as far as I'm concerned, is that the death that constitutes "wrath" and that is the end of the path unatoned for with faithful love is a teleological "end" rather than a punishment imposed by an exterior force. Newton and his exterior forces on pool balls don't teach God how to act. Why do you think we imagine the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as an apple when the story in Genesis says or mentions no such thing?
I think, too, that those who hold onto God's "wrath" as an external punishment are concerned that the cross can be made to look like it costs nothing of us. No change, ho hum, everyone just go on your merry way, God is the unltimate hippie. Well, I think Proverbs speaks to that concern, as well:
Fools mock at the guilt offering, but the upright enjoy acceptance.
Proverbs 14:9
The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow's boundaries.
Proverbs 15:25
And, there again, I think we should understand "the Lord tears down" as an indication of the teleological end of the proud fool rather than as an external punishment. A proud Newton was not being punished by gravity for foolishly and stupidly believing in ancient, superstitious, teleological fables. Instead, David - the guy who taught the guy who wrote the above-quoted Proverbs - would be quick to note that not seeing and avoiding death as a teleological end to our path is precisely what defines the proud fool as such.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ...."Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:3, 5
So, which authority figure do we identify with? David or Newton? Which path do we take? "Choose ye this day..." We see what end came to Goliath.
Of course, the scriptures never say that; it's based on a system of interpretation built up over time since at least the Reformation.
Good News: But the scriptures (actually do) say this:
"By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil."
Proverbs 16:6
Notably, here, "fear" is reverent awe, not "fear" of pending punishment.
This would mean that the cross is not satisfaction of wrath but the ultimate act of "steadfast love and faithfulness" to the point of death. We aren't "made holy" by the trading of a foreign righteousness for our guilt that is otherwise held onto in wrath. Rather, in faithful love, our original fullness is restored in a act that judges us acquitted of the shame and guilt that would otherwise have us on a path of death on which the image of God in humanity would be that of empty ruins.
Empty ruins are traded for a heavenly city, yes, but that's because, in awe of the beauty of that city, enraptured and captivated, we come to identify with her people, her King, and her land - and we come to act accordingly. The trade isn't a metaphysical or spiritual transaction with God that we understand speculatively in our minds. It's a very visible, visceral, physical, and practical conversion to another Way. A Way founded not on wrath and punishment but on "steadfast love and faithfulness."
Now, what I have presented here so far is a little bit of an over-simplification and doesn't paint the entire picture, particularly regarding what "wrath" might actually mean or entail without the mind-bending speculation of the above noted metaphysical "trade" or "conversion." Others more qualified than myself have already discussed that ad infinum, and a dissertation isn't my purpose here.
I think, too, that those who hold onto God's "wrath" as an external punishment are concerned that the cross can be made to look like it costs nothing of us. No change, ho hum, everyone just go on your merry way, God is the unltimate hippie. Well, I think Proverbs speaks to that concern, as well:
Fools mock at the guilt offering, but the upright enjoy acceptance.
Proverbs 14:9
The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow's boundaries.
Proverbs 15:25
And, there again, I think we should understand "the Lord tears down" as an indication of the teleological end of the proud fool rather than as an external punishment. A proud Newton was not being punished by gravity for foolishly and stupidly believing in ancient, superstitious, teleological fables. Instead, David - the guy who taught the guy who wrote the above-quoted Proverbs - would be quick to note that not seeing and avoiding death as a teleological end to our path is precisely what defines the proud fool as such.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ...."Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:3, 5
So, which authority figure do we identify with? David or Newton? Which path do we take? "Choose ye this day..." We see what end came to Goliath.
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