SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: How about that?
SPEAKER_00: She said, I read my Bible fifteen times in the shipping container and always it's new.
SPEAKER_00: My daily food was Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound like someone who's reading the Bible out of obligation or discipline?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you talk that way if you're reading the Bible just because you want to understand it a little bit better.
SPEAKER_00: I think you talk that way if when you read the Bible you're hearing God speak to you.
unknown: Ms.
SPEAKER_00: Brahane, she responded to Pete's question about how to hear God's voice by saying you have to shut everything else down because there's a lot of noise around.
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
SPEAKER_00: She actually indicated that that was easier for her to do when she was imprisoned in a shipping container.
SPEAKER_00: Now that she's back in the regular world, she has to shut off Instagram and Twitter.
SPEAKER_00: That's wild.
SPEAKER_00: Pete said, I thought this was so true.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Many people, if they were in prison being tortured, they would think God had abandoned them.
SPEAKER_00: But you found God in that place.
SPEAKER_00: How how?
SPEAKER_00: In a booming voice and a blinding light, in an intense emotional experience of God's presence, in a miraculous prison break?
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
unknown: Nope.
SPEAKER_00: Through the scripture, she said.
SPEAKER_00: Through the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, she said, this blew my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I scrubbed that video back and watched this part three times because I was like, she did not just say that.
SPEAKER_00: There's no way she just said that.
SPEAKER_00: She said, for me, Christianity is not hard.
SPEAKER_00: My first thought was, no, for me, Christianity is not hard.
SPEAKER_00: For you, it is terrifying and dangerous and violent.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: She said, for me, Christianity is not hard.
SPEAKER_00: The hard is if you do not hear, or maybe you hear half.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning from God, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you do not hear from God or you hear half, that's when Christianity is hard.
SPEAKER_00: Not when you're in prison for your faith.
SPEAKER_00: That is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: How many of us, how many of us these days are struggling, finding our Christian faith difficult or untrustworthy or insufficient?
SPEAKER_00: How many of us are deconstructing or questioning, moving away from all this, pulling back or giving up altogether, finding the whole thing just a little too hard?
SPEAKER_00: Could it be that the hard is simply that we're not hearing or only half hearing from God?
SPEAKER_00: What if God still wants to communicate with us?
SPEAKER_00: What if hearing from him is both natural and normal?
SPEAKER_00: And what if the primary way, not the only, but the primary way he speaks to people is through his written word, the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Might that change the way I read the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: If I was hearing from God regularly in my interaction with his written word, would I also say, like this woman, about Christianity, that it's not hard?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about that some more today, but first let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your written word.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that it can be food, that we can read it again and again and find new things and be sustained by it.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit that helps us to understand what it is you're saying in your word.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus instructed, we pray that you will give us ears to hear, give us ears to hear, and give us hearts to understand what it is you have for us today in your written word.
SPEAKER_00: We love you and we trust you.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so, oh, I'm John, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: We I we jumped right in there.
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of intense, but good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have a question for you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, here's the question: How do we know what we know?
SPEAKER_00: This is a philosophical question, okay?
SPEAKER_00: How do we know what we know?
SPEAKER_00: A conundrum, this has been asked many times, many ways over the millennia.
SPEAKER_00: This question has led to a branch of philosophy called epistemology, which is mainly concerned with the nature of knowledge itself, answering that question.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know what we know?
SPEAKER_00: Now, any crazy conspiracy theory that's worth its salt is at its core an exercise in epistemology, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's flat Earth or Pizzagate or the Moonlanding was fake or the anti-vax movement, QAnon for people my age, the grassy knoll for all you boomers, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Han shot first, that's when we actually believe in my house.
SPEAKER_00: No Star Wars fans?
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, if you've ever had an intellectual conversation with someone who believes one of these conspiracy theories, you will quickly realize that the issue itself is not the issue.
SPEAKER_00: What's in question is the nature of knowledge itself.
SPEAKER_00: How do you know the earth is round?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Where did you get this confidence the vaccines are safe?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you trust?
SPEAKER_00: Now you could claim science or rationality or empirical analysis as your epistemology.
SPEAKER_00: Many people do.
SPEAKER_00: You can claim your own feelings and experiences.
SPEAKER_00: Some people claim their cultural or family history as being how they know what they know.
SPEAKER_00: Other people trust everything they read on the internet.
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, every Christian has to ultimately claim that it's by the Bible that we know what we know.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to the things we believe as Christians, our epistemology is the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to hearing God's voice, the Bible is the language of his heart.
SPEAKER_00: It is the primary way in which he speaks.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a book of scientific facts or religious rules or inspiring stories.
SPEAKER_00: It's an invitation into a conversation with God Himself, and it can direct and guide us if we let it.
SPEAKER_00: Caleb read just a few minutes ago something that the prophet Isaiah said to the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah said, Your own ears will hear him.
SPEAKER_00: Right behind you, a voice will say, This is the way you should go, whether to the right or to the left.
SPEAKER_00: You remember the story we read last week from Luke 24, okay?
SPEAKER_00: About the couple on the road to Emmaus.
SPEAKER_00: If you missed, uh, I would recommend that you read that whole chapter, Luke 24.
SPEAKER_00: When you get the chance, you can also, if you missed last week's message and you feel like it would behoove you to listen to it, we do keep these things, right?
SPEAKER_00: We keep them on our on our website, connectchurchlawrence.com.
SPEAKER_00: If you click on the button that says media, you can listen to sermons.
SPEAKER_00: We keep them there.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can listen to them uh wherever you listen to podcasts, if you're a podcast person.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, in the story, a guy named Cleopus and his wife, who are followers of Jesus, they've been in Jerusalem during the last week of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: They saw him get arrested and tortured and executed.
SPEAKER_00: And then three days later, they wake up in the morning to a rumor that the tomb Jesus was buried in is empty and the body is missing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: They're even hearing from some of the ladies in their group that there was an angel there who said that Jesus had come back to life.
SPEAKER_00: And regardless of whether or not Cleopas and his wife believe this rumor, they've had a really long week.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, this has been really awful.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just go home already?
SPEAKER_00: And so later that day, while many of Jesus' followers are scrambling to figure out what happened to his body, these two quietly take off for home, seven miles on foot.
SPEAKER_00: And while they're on their walk home, Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, appears to them.
SPEAKER_00: But they don't know it's him.
SPEAKER_00: He must look different.
SPEAKER_00: And besides, the Bible says that God uh prevented them from recognizing him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, who sometimes strikes me as being surprisingly arnery, says to them, What are you uh what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he knows what they're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Why are you so sad?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he knows why they're so sad, right?
SPEAKER_00: But he wants to hear it from them.
SPEAKER_00: And so they tell him.
SPEAKER_00: They tell him all about what happened in Jerusalem in the past week.
SPEAKER_00: They can't believe he doesn't know, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, has this guy been living under a rock or something?
SPEAKER_00: They tell the stranger who is actually Jesus, incognito, all about what happened.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this great moment of vulnerability where they say, we had hoped Jesus was the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: We had hoped that he was here to change all these things, but you know, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's just read a few verses from there, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pick up in verse 25 of Luke 24.
SPEAKER_00: After hearing this explanation, Jesus said to them, You foolish people, you find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?
SPEAKER_00: Then, and this is what we really zeroed in on last week, then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from the scriptures the things concerning himself.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine having Jesus explain the Bible to you for three hours?
SPEAKER_00: That is incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Later in the story, this couple will say, Do you remember the phrase?
SPEAKER_00: Later, when they realize it's Jesus, they say, uh, didn't our hearts burn within us while he was explaining the scripture?
SPEAKER_00: It's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: I have never had the privilege of a three hours-long Bible study led by Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: So, like most of you, I sometimes struggle with the Bible when I'm reading it.
SPEAKER_00: I can't speak for you, but I think my struggles with it boil down to two things.
SPEAKER_00: I struggle with the Bible when I don't read it enough, and I struggle with it when I don't read it well.
SPEAKER_00: People like to pretend that the Bible is easy and obvious and straightforward when I don't think it's any of those things, and I don't think it claims to be.
SPEAKER_00: I've always chafed a little at people who say things like, the Bible says so, as if that's a simple explanation for something.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a simple explanation.
SPEAKER_00: I like the authority of that statement, but I dislike the oversimplification.
SPEAKER_00: Rabbis in Jesus' day, they had a figure of speech that they would use.
SPEAKER_00: They said about the scripture that every word has 70 faces and 600,000 meanings, which I think is a little saying that would help you to maintain a posture of humility when you're reading the scripture, right?
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I might get something different from it every single time.
SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is that the Bible's very long, about 1,200 pages, very old, written between 2 and 3,000 years ago, and very different from any cultural context that you or I have ever experienced.
SPEAKER_00: So I think there are a couple of particular skills that every Christian should spend some time developing.
SPEAKER_00: Two skills that would serve us well when it comes to understanding the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: The first is to learn to read the Bible with our heads in order to understand objectively what is being said.
SPEAKER_00: Now we talk about this around here a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Sister Mary Magdalene, in last week's interview video, she called this the literal meaning of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: This is very valuable, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The second skill I think we should learn is to read the Bible with our hearts in order to hear God's voice speaking to us through it.
SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about Lectio Divina, which we will in just a minute, we're talking about this second kind of reading, this heart kind of reading.
SPEAKER_00: But both are very important, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You don't really want one without the other, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00: If I read the Bible with my head, okay, if I understand academically and literally what the Bible means, but I never hear what it says to me personally, then I have information about God without having any communication with God.
SPEAKER_00: I might come to understand the scripture in a sense, but it's unlikely that I'm ever going to come to love it, and I'm certainly never going to risk my life smuggling it into prison with me in a box of laundry soap, right?
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, if I read the Bible with all my heart, I want desperately to hear from God in it, but I don't know, I don't know anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: I disregard its context, its genre and form, or I ignore all the bits I don't understand or don't like, then I run a very high risk of confusing God's word with my own thoughts and feelings and preferences and politics and ideology, right?
SPEAKER_00: There are two Greek words that may help us get a better grip on understanding how to read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we got into Latin last week, and I'm pretty sure I butchered all the pronunciations.
SPEAKER_00: This week we're trying our hand at Greek.
SPEAKER_00: This is some nerdy stuff, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Bear with me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the words are not necessarily so important.
SPEAKER_00: The concepts are what I want you guys to remember, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The first Greek word is exegesis.
SPEAKER_00: Exegesis is the critical explanation of a written text.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, it means to lead out or to guide out or to explain.
SPEAKER_00: It's the art of explaining and interpreting and applying scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Exegesis wants to know what the author was intending when he or she wrote the text.
SPEAKER_00: It wants to know how the original audience would have understood it.
SPEAKER_00: It also recognizes that different parts of the Bible need to be understood in different ways because they were written in different literary genres.
SPEAKER_00: Prophecy, allegory, poetry, history, and personal letters should probably not all be read exactly the same way, should they?
SPEAKER_00: That's not really smart.
SPEAKER_00: For example, I recently read the book in the Bible, Song of Songs, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Which works wonderfully, both as an erotic poem, hey, and as a metaphor for the relationship between God and humanity.
SPEAKER_00: It breaks down a bit, however, if I read it like it's an instruction manual for how to lead a church.
SPEAKER_00: That's not why it was written, that's why Paul's letters were written, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I probably shouldn't mix those things up.
SPEAKER_00: Things are gonna get real weird real fast.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: I love the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: It's our origin story.
SPEAKER_00: We did a whole sermon series on the first three chapters of Genesis alone.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis teaches profound and timeless theology, but it was not written by people with a modern scientific mindset.
SPEAKER_00: Modern scientific mindset didn't exist when the book of Genesis was written.
SPEAKER_00: So I actually think I don't read Genesis very well.
SPEAKER_00: And I may even miss its message altogether if I insist on reading it the same way I would read a science textbook.
SPEAKER_00: That's just not why it was written.
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely not how the early church fathers read it.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's letters are another good example of this.
SPEAKER_00: Paul sometimes gets accused of being sexist and patriarchal, and he kind of sounds like he is, if you read his letters in our own modern context.
SPEAKER_00: But if you take the time to learn a little about the cultural context in which Paul was writing, certain things he says not only become less cringy, they become revolutionary and empowering.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the work that exegesis does, and this work is very, very important.
SPEAKER_00: Reading the Bible with our heads, so to speak, so that we come to understand it intellectually, historically, contextually.
SPEAKER_00: Doing this will only strengthen our ability to receive it with our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: But my opinion is that rarely will this type of reading grow the relationship with God's word that Helen Bertani has.
SPEAKER_00: Rarely will it lead us to say, I read the Bible 15 times, and every time it was like food.
SPEAKER_00: I have a confession to make.
SPEAKER_00: And so every day I'm trying to either read or listen to a bunch of chapters of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm trying to stay on it because if I fall behind, it's like a lot to catch up on.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I'm learning a ton of new information about the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I'm making connections between passages.
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning a lot about the intention of the writers.
SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing things I've never noticed before.
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
SPEAKER_00: But for all that I'm learning about the Bible in this process, I have to confess, I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed reading it less.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe this sounds kind of bad, but a lot of the days I'm just like, I don't know if I can take all this information in today.
SPEAKER_00: I went out the other morning, you know, it was a little bit cooler.
SPEAKER_00: I went out and stood in my yard and was watering the flowers, and I put that day's reading plan on my headphones, and I realized a few minutes in, I was just like tuning it out.
SPEAKER_00: I realized I can't hear another word about God's judgment on Israel because of their idol worship.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually switched over to Spotify and put on Huey Lewis in the news.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I picked Huey Lewis in the news, but that's what it was that day.
SPEAKER_00: That felt, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: There's a chance, I'm confessing, there's a chance that the reason I wanted for us to do a sermon series on the ancient practice of Lectio Divina is that I need it.
SPEAKER_00: I need to hear God's voice speaking to me through his written word, not just to grow my correct understanding of its literal meaning.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to our second Greek word that should help us out this morning, I hope.
SPEAKER_00: That word is hermeneutic.
SPEAKER_00: Hermeneutic is the particular key you use to unlock the meaning of the text.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, it means to translate or to interpret.
SPEAKER_00: I like to think of it as the lens you look through when you read scripture, like the glasses you put on so that you can read things clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Any of you have to put glasses on if you want to read the Bible clearly and not have to do one of these.
SPEAKER_00: I see people of a certain age having to do this sometimes when they're reading.
SPEAKER_00: There are several different hermeneutical keys you can use to unlock meaning and power and understanding in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And just because there are different ones doesn't mean there's a right one and a wrong one, okay?
SPEAKER_00: There could be several valid hermeneutics.
SPEAKER_00: There's a covenantal hermeneutic, which looks at various covenants established between God and people, uses that as a map for navigating the rest of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: There's a dispensational hermeneutic, okay, which breaks the Bible up into different eras in order to understand how God deals differently with people at different times.
SPEAKER_00: There's a feminist hermeneutic, which pays extra attention to moments in the Bible where there's a message of oppression or emancipation for women.
SPEAKER_00: There's a liberation hermeneutic, which mainly interprets the Bible as a message of justice and freedom for oppressed people.
SPEAKER_00: This fall we're going to read the book of Exodus together, and we're going to come back to a liberation hermeneutic when we do that.
SPEAKER_00: But in the story we read about Jesus, okay, in the story we read about Jesus on the road to Emmaus, he introduces a new hermeneutic, a new way of interpreting the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Luke said about the three-hour Bible study that Jesus leads?
SPEAKER_00: This was in Luke 24, I think it was verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: It says that he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.
SPEAKER_00: Concerning himself.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in his life, Jesus said this.
SPEAKER_00: This was in John chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, These are the very scriptures that testify about me.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's easy for us to gloss over this if we're kind of used to reading the Bible, but this is unbelievably audacious on Jesus' part.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a major factor in what got him killed.
SPEAKER_00: He kept going to the scripture saying, This is how I know what I know.
SPEAKER_00: This is how I know what I know.
SPEAKER_00: And also, it's all about me, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: This is either a claim so narcissistic, so megalomaniacal by our standards, that it would be diagnosable as some sort of psychiatric delusion, or it is an epiphany that has eternal consequences for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars call this a Christological hermeneutic, which means that we read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We read the later New Testament epistles, Paul's letters, etc., in the light of the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: We look at everything in the Bible through the lens of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The glasses we put on so we can see it clearly are Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's an organization we like around here that's called the Bible Project.
SPEAKER_00: They make all kinds of resources to help people better understand and study the Bible, and they have a mission.
SPEAKER_00: They talk about it often.
SPEAKER_00: They say their goal is, quote, to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think they're on to something.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a Christological hermeneutic.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an example, okay?
SPEAKER_00: When we read in the Old Testament about God instructing Abraham to sacrifice his only son, a seemingly brutal and heartless act at face value.
SPEAKER_00: And yet this story gets completely reframed by the moment hundreds of years later when God sacrifices his only son.
SPEAKER_00: The tedious passages of the Old Testament, the ones that I was avoiding reading while I'm watering the flowers, these passages where God not only seems to condone but command things like genocide and violence, they have to be reevaluated in light of Jesus showing us unequivocally that God's heart isn't nationalistic or aggressive, but instead is overflowing with love for all people and all nations.
SPEAKER_00: This way of looking at the Bible, like a Christological hermeneutic, will unsettle sexist hierarchies and church governance and family units that are based on Old Testament laws.
SPEAKER_00: It will dismantle justifications for nationalism and xenophobia and racism that are based on an Old Testament view of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It is easy to find a justification for violence and war from parts of the Old Testament, but it gets quite a bit harder to do so when you reread these pages through the lens of Jesus Christ, Jesus who commands us to love our neighbors and our enemies, who refuses to take up arms to get what he wants, and who not only rebukes but reverses Peter's violence against the men who came to arrest him.
SPEAKER_00: Now maybe this all sounds a little on the controversial side.
SPEAKER_00: It certainly did in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_00: It's part of why they killed him.
SPEAKER_00: But we can see him do it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: On the road to Emmaus, Jesus clearly reinterprets the whole Bible in light of himself.
SPEAKER_00: And every subsequent writer in the New Testament follows his lead.
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis once said, It is Christ himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will always bring us to him.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another way of thinking about it, okay?
SPEAKER_00: To think about reading the Bible with our heads and with our hearts, to think about exegesis and hermeneutic, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't come up with this.
SPEAKER_00: A guy named Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Richard Pratt developed this idea in the 80s, but I think it's helpful.
SPEAKER_00: He says we could think of the Bible as a masterpiece painting, okay?
SPEAKER_00: A great painting in a frame.
SPEAKER_00: So it's important to study it like you would study a great work of art, to admire its intricacies and its design, to thoughtfully consider its context and its original audience, to try and make sense of its meaning, much like you would do if you were standing in front of a great painting and a fancy art gallery in Europe.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: There is value in doing that.
SPEAKER_00: But the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, which we're going to come back to in just a moment, invites us to also turn this great painting that we're looking at into a window that we look through.
SPEAKER_00: It's an invitation not just to look at the text, studying it, understanding it with our brains, but to look through the text at the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_00: This means that when we read the Bible, we're not just trying to study the truth about God in the past like we would a masterpiece in a picture frame.
SPEAKER_00: When we read the Bible this way, we're looking for an encounter with Jesus, who is the truth, alive and well right now.
SPEAKER_00: We're not just looking for information about God, we are looking for a conversation with Him.
SPEAKER_00: An encounter with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in last week's interview video, Sister Mary Magdalene, she said, Lectio Divina is the moment when I have a personal encounter with Christ guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray again, and then we're going to dip our toes into this practice together, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you again, asking that you would give us ears to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Give us hearts that are open to understanding what it is you have for us, not just intellectually, but but to uh understand your word as something you're communicating to us.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, we invite you here to help us make sense of what it is we're reading today.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so before we call today, in just a minute, I want to give us a chance to just begin this practice of Lectio Divina together.
SPEAKER_00: That way you can continue practicing it on your own throughout the week.
SPEAKER_00: Last week I walked us through the traditional four steps of Lectio Divino.
SPEAKER_00: Remember they're in they're in Latin because they're super, super old.
SPEAKER_00: But in English, the steps are read, meditate, pray, and contemplate.
SPEAKER_00: And I did the best I could to explain this practice, but then we heard Sister Mary Magdalene explain it much better and in a much more pleasant voice.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today, whether you knew it or not, we've been focusing on the first step, hearing God's voice in the Bible, by reading the text slowly, prayerfully, reverently, and using our imaginations, and by looking at what we read through the lens of Jesus, through the through his life and death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked about how the primary way God speaks is through his written word, the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Not the only way, but the primary way.
SPEAKER_00: No other way that he speaks will ever contradict or undermine what is in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, learning to hear his voice begins with reading scripture.
SPEAKER_00: There's not really another way around it, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00: I may want for him to speak to me in a blinding light and a booming voice, or to give me peaceful feelings while I'm making a tough decision, or to speak to me in a dream or a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no reason that he couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm honestly not sure of why he would do that if I'm not already listening to him in the primary way he speaks, which is through the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I should probably at least start there.
SPEAKER_00: And Lectio Divina is about not starting with the Bible by reading it like a textbook, but approaching it prayerfully, relationally, and conversationally, using my imagination and seeking conversation with God, not just information about him.
SPEAKER_00: I think if we can do that, not only will the Bible come to life for us, but we'll hear God's voice speaking to us through it.
SPEAKER_00: So let's try it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Last week, Sister Mary Magdalene said, Don't start with one of the difficult passages where you can't even pronounce the names of the kings.
SPEAKER_00: Start with the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: Start with the Gospel of St.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: So let's start with St.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: We're going to do our very first reading.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, there are four steps in Lectio Divina, and in each step you read the same passage four times.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go slowly.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to put the passage on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: You can follow along in your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: You can follow along the screen.
SPEAKER_00: You can close your eyes and read along.
SPEAKER_00: But we are going to read chapter one of the Gospel of St.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: Just the first 14 verses, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Try not to speed up or read ahead if you can help it.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to stick to a few verses when we do this.
SPEAKER_00: We want to go slowly and prayerfully and reverently.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin.
SPEAKER_00: Prologue.
SPEAKER_00: Christ, the eternal word.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, the word already existed.
SPEAKER_00: The word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He existed in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.
SPEAKER_00: The word gave life to everything that was created.
SPEAKER_00: And his life brought light to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
SPEAKER_00: God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony.
SPEAKER_00: And John himself was not the light, he was simply a witness to tell about the light.
SPEAKER_00: The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.
SPEAKER_00: But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
SPEAKER_00: They are reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: So the Word became human and made his home among us.
SPEAKER_00: He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, next week we're going to revisit this passage for a second reading.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And this time we're going to meditatio.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see what jumps out to us.
SPEAKER_00: And what jumps out to us from this passage may be different for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would guarantee that it will be different for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're worried about talking about meditating in church, please don't skip next week because we're going to talk about how different a Christian understanding of meditation is from a more modern colloquial or new age understanding.
SPEAKER_00: We're also going to return to our story of Jesus and his friends on the road to Eumaeus, and we will spend some more time with Lectio Divina hearing God's voice in the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Also, and you probably found this already, but there's a bookmark on a seat around you.
SPEAKER_00: You can take that home, that's for you to keep.
SPEAKER_00: As a brief explanation of the steps of Lectio Divina.
SPEAKER_00: That way you can practice this at home in your own Bible reading.
SPEAKER_00: One quick thing about this, these precise steps and their precise, you know, Latin names, that's not really the important thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is just a framework.
SPEAKER_00: The important thing is that we learn to begin to read the Bible, not just with our heads, but with our hearts, so that God can speak directly to us through it.
SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine told me last week, we're not doing this to try and overcome God's reluctance, right?
SPEAKER_00: As if he's hiding out and we're gonna do this really old school thing to try and coax him to say something, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not overcoming God's reluctance.
SPEAKER_00: We are laying hold of God's willingness.
SPEAKER_00: God wants to speak to you.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to speak to you, and he wants to do it through his written word, the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is that this will simply help us to hear him better.
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray together one last time this morning, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that it is timeless and true, that it is life-giving, that we will never reach the depths of understanding, and that you want to speak to us personally through it.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus, the Word who became human and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for this truth.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit to help us understand better what it is you're saying to us.
SPEAKER_00: We pray your blessing over everyone here this morning as we move into a new week.
SPEAKER_00: Please, Lord, give us ears to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And pray all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.