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Online Retreat for the Week of January 18th 2010

A contemplative way to read the Bible

Lectio Divina (lec-see-o div-eena) began as an ancient monastic form of Scripture reading, many Protestant denominations from Baptists to our own United Church of Christ have embraced it. A group of my UCC colleagues meet monthly in Danvers to practice it. And I do, myself. Lectio Divina is Latin for divine or spiritual reading. It is a traditional Christian practice of prayer and reading the Bible that promotes communion with God and deepening knowledge of God's Word. Jesus regularly went to the mountain or on the lake or on the sea or in the wilderness or in the garden to pray. We are called to pray.

A word about spiritual growth

We are called to spiritual and ethical maturity – which means growing. Growth is not a good in itself. There is evolution and devolution. There is stunted growth and there is overgrowth. There is manipulated growth (through drugs) and out of control growth (cancer) and unnatural growth (through environmental damage). Direction matters. As moral agents, we are responsible for developing habits that help us grow in the direction of greater love for God, and for our neighbors as ourselves. While I believe in salvation and that God’s grace alone saves us, I diverge from Christians who believe that personal salvation is “it.” Even if it turns out to be “it” in God’s eyes, I see a danger of growing in self-righteousness if we don’t strive for deeper communion and greater ethical and spiritual growth, if we don’t continue to develop our God given gifts towards being better stewards. Healthy spiritual growth requires practice (prayer, reading the Bible), experience (working on a mission), and reflection (in a faith community).

The practice of Lectio Divina

What: What I want is to deepen my faith. What I want is to experience the living Christ. What I want is for Christ’s love to replenish me so that it will spill over to others.

When: Choose a quiet time – some people like the discipline of reading the same time each day or night. I can never do that – I grab whatever half hour or hour I can muster.

How: There are traditional steps to contemplation. I start by closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths just to settle in and relax. I say a prayer to the Holy Spirit for insight and awareness of God’s presence. Then I read a Bible passage. Lectio Divina is a way of reading by listening - listening for the "still, small voice" of God.  I pay attention to a word or phrase that “rises” – that stands out, catches my attention, or bothers me.

I sit with that word or phrase and hold it in my mind. I don’t try to block out the thoughts going through my mind. I let the word freely interact with my thoughts so that an internal fight does not break out between the Scripture and my thoughts. I just give a friendly nod to the wild life going on in my mind. Otherwise, you tense up and start to think you’re doing it wrong. Your mind is a gift from God. Just gently hold your word or passage in the mix.

Then I pray. And what I mean by prayer is talking to God in my own words, natural words. I talk to God as a companion, as someone who speaks my language, as someone I know loves me. I focus my prayer on the word or passage, which I believe God has given me as some sort of blessing, a gift at this particular moment in this place. Sometimes a deeper insight arises – something dawns on me and I understand and see things differently. Sometimes the fruits don’t show up then but surprise me some other time.

Finally, I contemplate.  This means I move from communicating to communion, to just being with God. Contemplation is a way of resting in God. It is a heart to heart encounter with Christ. It is simply sitting still, being with God.

Our Scripture Reading this Week is: Song of Solomon 4:9—5:1

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride,?   you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. ?How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride!?   how much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! Your lips distil nectar, my bride;?   honey and milk are under your tongue; the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon. A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed. ?Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates  with all choicest fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense,?myrrh and aloes, with all chief spices— a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind,  and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits.

Sermon delivered first Sunday of Advent 2009

The Skunk Cabbage, Snake, Duck, and the Evergreen or, Why I Believe in the Whole Shebang

Emily Dickinson wrote:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—

Hope is an odd duck. Cynics hunt it like prey. When we look at the condition of the world – abject poverty, homelessness, starvation, wars, domestic violence, human trafficking, violent crime – it is not difficult to understand why a moral person would drop their faith in God, and become a humanist. Given the existential crisis the human race seems stuck in, there can’t be a loving God, so I’ll just do my best to help where I can. I’m not about to judge someone for coming to that conclusion. Give me an ethical humanist over a self-righteous Christian any day. The tragedy of the humanist is that she has given up on the big picture – and stops believing in the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

Walking in Hapgood Wright Town Forest in Concord several years ago, something happened to me. I walked there everyday – lost – angry at God for the call that had nagged me since my youth yet not opening a door through which I could answer that call. I certainly wasn’t cut out for the nunnery. In my early twenties I studied to become a Third Order Franciscan. I have an affinity for St. Francis, a strong bond being our mutual love of God’s creatures. And how I wanted that hooded brown robe – just think I’d never have to worry about clothes again! And I wanted my pin. Surely this would be a way I could answer God’s call and serve the poor. But the night before my – pseudo-ordination – I can’t remember what it was actually called – commissioning maybe – Father Edwin sent me home with a little booklet. Read this tonight, he said, and if you can in good conscience uphold all the tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, you will be commissioned tomorrow. But if one of them gives you a problem, you need to wait another year in prayer and reflection until you have come to terms with that tenet. I loved Father Edwin. He had a keen mind, great sense of humor, and an open heart. I grabbed my booklet and went home. That night, I curled up to read what I thought was going to be something like the Apostle’s Creed. But it listed about ten questions specific to Roman Catholicism – the faith I had been raised in. I looked at them and my heart sank. I didn’t believe that the Pope was infallible. I didn’t believe in transubstantiation. I didn’t believe it was the one and only true religion. In fact, there was not one question to which I could give an honest yes. I had to tell Father Edwin the next day and walk away.

So there I was walking in the forest, having sworn off organized religion for spirituality. For ten years, I did not step foot inside a church. I walked in the forest. This day, though, something came over me – I had a vision – and that led to an aha. Over here I saw a cluster of skunk cabbages turn to monks as they look in early spring with their hoods, and one had crossed the stream– over here I saw a snake curled up on summer’s sun-warmed rock – in front of me I saw a duck’s orange feet flapping through the rotting leaves in the autumn pond – and behind me towered an evergreen, its holy boughs heavy with snow. In that moment, I saw the drama. Suddenly God made sense to me – God became real to me. The world came into being dramatically – in a big bang. I saw that the universe is wildly dramatic – nature teeming with many levels of organisms – micro to macro – all engaged in the drama. We tend to eschew the God of the Old Testament – the Smiter – the Law Giver – the Covenant Maker – the Creator – but what a dramatist that God is! That aha moment changed my life. I left Hapgood Wright Town Forest with faith no dire reality has shaken yet.

I have always written tragicomedies – because in reality, tragedy is never the end – as Emerson said after his young son died, “Even grief will make idealists out of us. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” In Classical Greek Drama, “comedy” did not mean what it means today – it was not the haha genre – it meant that there was more - the play did not end in tragedy. Since my walk in the woods, I see the grand epic of the Bible, and God’s other book, Nature, as a grand tragicomedy. To think that we can step outside of it, is like thinking we wouldn’t fly off this earth without gravity. Story after story across the ages, of slavery, famine, exile, war, droughts, flooding, human greed, envy, the human condition --- culminates in the coming of one who has the power to overturn all of it --- and dies on a cross. But the drama doesn’t end there. This epic tale of our relationship with each other, with the earth, and with God is a tragicomedy – it ends with good news of a promise that there will be renewal into eternity. It’s end is a new beginning. I’ve been a playwright for 25 years. After I finish a play, a sense of dread comes over me – will I ever write another one? That time in between the finished play and the new one is very disconcerting. You have nothing but that thing with feathers perched in your soul. Is it a bird, is it a play, is it nothingness?

You could say that the Bible gives us a brilliant vision of where we exist – in between the first and second coming – with nothing to go on but hope.

Here we are in Advent, that odd time of looking backwards and forwards. Advent came to be observed around the 6th C. We look backwards when we celebrate Jesus’ birth, believing that the Prince of Peace has come to “reconcile the cosmos to himself (2 Corinthians). In her poem On the Mystery of the Incarnation, Denise Levertov, whose father was a Hasidic Jew turned Anglican priest, captures the "first coming" of Jesus:

It's when we face for a moment? the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know ?the taint in our own selves, that awe ?cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:? not to a flower, not to a dolphin,? to no innocent form ?but to this creature vainly sure ?it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word.

At Advent we also look forward in expectation to Christ's coming again, to that time when we believe that God will fulfill what He has begun, when He will fulfill what He has promised. Our scripture reading speaks of a future restoration of the drama we call human history.

Celebrating Christmas is easy enough; but how to think about expectation of the future fulfillment of history? Unbelievers respond to scenarios of the "end times" with cynicism; Christians respond with sensationalism, silly date-setting, and hello 2012.

In fact, the end of the whole drama of history is easy to imagine. We have many ends to, well, look forward to. We know that the end of who we are will come when we die. We know that cultures, civilization after civilization lie buried under the earth - advanced civilizations. In an age of nuclear weapons, environmental devastation, wars, famines, apocalyptic scenarios are being lived on by some of our brothers and sisters right now. Do we really think that our civilization is sustainable? Physicists sound like ancient Aztecs when they talk about the sun expanding over time to millions of times its present volume, and basically devouring the earth. And if that’s not end enough, there is always the end of the universe. Some physicists believe that the expansion of the Big Bang will continue to expand everything outward, making our galaxies fly apart forever, black holes waiting to gobble them up. But if gravity wins, the expanding universe will eventually reverse and collapse into a “Big Crunch.” I can imagine any and all of those scenarios, can’t you?

We have many ends to, well, look forward to. We know that the end of who we are will come when we die. We know that cultures, civilization after civilization lie buried under the earth - advanced civilizations. In an age of nuclear weapons, environmental devastation, wars, famines, apocalyptic scenarios are being lived on by some of our brothers and sisters right now. Do we really think that our civilization is sustainable? Physicists sound like ancient Aztecs when they talk about the sun expanding over time to millions of times its present volume, and basically devouring the earth. And if that’s not end enough, there is always the end of the universe. Some physicists believe that the expansion of the Big Bang will continue to expand everything outward, making our galaxies fly apart forever, black holes waiting to gobble them up. But if gravity wins, the expanding universe will eventually reverse and collapse into a “Big Crunch.” I can imagine any and all of those scenarios, can’t you?

So, imagining the beginning as we prepare for Christmas is easy. Imagining the end as we read the newspapers and scientific journals or watch movies is easy. But what comes after the end? Well, what went bang in the beginning? We don’t know. No one knows. Any position you take is an act of faith. When we look to the Great Tragicomedy, the Bible, we get a very different sense of “the end.” Paul writes to the Romans that God loves the earth that He created, and will redeem it. Even John’s marvelous drama of “the end” is a vision. Ancient seer, Jeremiah preached to Judah, in the wake of disaster and deportation to Babylon in 586 BC, "The days are coming, when prosperity will replace calamity, when restoration will overcome present desolation.” That time, Jeremiah says, will be a time of health and healing, security and safety, prosperity, joy, gladness, thanksgiving and forgiveness (Jeremiah 33). And Jesus describes a day when "redemption draws near" for "the whole earth" (Luke 21:28, 35).

In reality, redemption is always drawing near if we are acting on it. While we are not in control of the big picture, how we treat the earth condemns or redeems it. How we treat one another condemns or redeems them and so, ourselves. We are intrinsically linked to each other, to all living things, and to God. The Great Tragicomedy is our story of walking with, wrestling with God, burying God, and witnessing resurrection. Nature nods and demonstrates the end’s beginning every spring. The Author gives us clues everywhere we look. We don’t need to know when the curtain will close. A CS Lewis writes, "playing it well is what matters infinitely." That could lead to ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ – but is that really what it means to "play it well?" We are in this drama together. Without an end, there is no purpose. Without ends and new beginnings, there is no redemption. We are here for a reason. The Dramatist has a purpose. There is hope. It is up to us to wake up to reason hope.

Advent begins with Jesus telling us to wake up, to pay attention. Knowledge comes and goes. Wisdom is eternal. The Great Tragicomedy and its counterpart, Nature, hold powerful messages of hope. The Bible is not past or future history – it is a living story of who, what, why we are – and what we should be doing. Yes, I used the “s” word. And what should we be doing? Loving God, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is a myth about myth that puts it in a derogatory light. Evangelical colleagues get riled when I call some of the stories in the Bible, “myth.” In my eyes, they diminish the Bible’s power by reducing it to a literal and linear time and fact line. Playwrights and poets understand that myth is not fiction – myth is what you turn to when prose cannot express the depth of truth.

Walk in the forest and you just might wake up to the skunk cabbage, the snake, the duck, and the evergreen telling a deeper truth. You might come away with a faith that changes everything. You might see the whole tragicomedy, and its Author, whom you feel compelled to applaud, praise for the glory of it all. You might fall in love and walk with God beyond all the ends. You might wake up to Advent, in between tragedy and transcendence, where purpose and meaning are found – and come away with a thing with feathers perched in your soul – that will never stop.

May we awaken to Advent, aware in our season of expectation. Amen.

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