This past week my wife found, buried in our basement, a box of old love letters from when we were dating.  We pulled them out and spent an evening reading through them.  We laughed at how smitten we were; we blushed at how cheesy some of our rhetoric was; and we relished the memories of what it felt like when we first fell in love.  One of the letters I wrote Tammy while I was on a retreat at a monastery midway through my first year of seminary.  It’s a seven page letter pontificating on the biblical and theological implications of the Sabbath (which was our theme for the retreat)—how romantic is that?!  This is what you get when you are dating a seminarian!

 

But here’s the thing, and I suspect you can relate: it didn’t matter so much what the content of those letters were.  Even a seven page letter on the Sabbath was cherished by Tammy (and tucked away for safe keeping)—she poured over every word.  Why?  Because she knew that it was a personal letter addressed to her, written by someone who loved her deeply.  This is what we do with love letters (or any kind of letter from someone who matters to us): we read them over and over again, savoring every word, delighting in the relationship the letter expresses and to which it points.

 

What if we read the Bible this way?  There have been many faithful theologians down through the centuries who have suggested that we view the Bible, at least in part, as God’s love letter to us—addressed personally to us, borne out of a covenantal relationship.  

 

We began a new sermon series last Sunday on the Spiritual Disciplines titled “Practice Makes Missional.”  Between now and Easter, we’re going to be exploring a handful of the classic spiritual disciplines—ancient activities that Christians throughout the ages have practiced as a way of being open to God’s work of transformation.  One of the primary and most important practices taken up by God’s people—and not just in the early church but all the way back in the OT—is reading and meditating on the Scriptures, which we refer to as “God’s Word.”

 

Listen again to what St. Paul writes to the young pastor named Timothy:  “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful in teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

 

Paul is simply confirming what the Hebrews long believed: that even though the Scriptures were written by various human authors, revised and collected over time, ultimately there is One Voice we hear speaking through them all: God’s Voice.  To say the Scriptures are inspired by God does not mean they simply fell out of the sky, nor that the human writers slipped into a spooky trance and God controlled them like puppets as they penned the words.  It means that the Holy Spirit directed the human authors—used their thoughts, personalities, unique cultural context and writing style to reveal to us who God is and how God is active and at work on the stage of human history.

 

Reformed theology has always affirmed that there are two books, so to speak, that reveal God to us: the book of creation and the book of the Holy Scriptures. The book of creation—that is, the natural world in which we live-- may point to the reality that there is an Artist behind the artwork, but the natural world itself is not enough to reveal to us who this Artist is, what this Artist is like, and how we can be in relationship with this Artist.  God needs to reveal himself to us in a special way.  This is where the book of the Holy Scriptures, or the Bible, comes in.  It is through the Bible that God makes himself specifically known to us.  And God reveals himself most fully and decisively in Jesus, who is the Word become Flesh.  All of Scripture, then, points to Jesus, the Eternal Word.

 

So the Bible is the way God reveals himself to us—and it is the way that God draws us into right relationship and works to transform us, by the Holy Spirit, into the image of Jesus.  All of this is to say that the Bible is unlike any other book!  I don’t know anybody who has said this better than 16th century Reformer John Calvin:

 

“The power which is peculiar to Scripture is clear from the fact that of human writings, however artfully polished, there is none capable of affecting us at all comparably.  Read Demosthenes and Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle and other of that tribe and they will, I admit allure you, delight you, move you, enrapture you in wonderful measure.  But betake yourself from them to this sacred reading, then inspite of yourself so deeply will they affect you, so penetrate your heart, so fix itself in your very marrow, that compared with its deep impression such vigor as the orators and philosophers have will nearly vanish.  Consequently, it is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endeavor, breathe something (of God).”

 

Isn’t that marvelous?  It is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endeavor, breathe something of God.  This is what Paul is saying in 2nd Timothy.  God speaks to us through the Bible.  God transforms us through his Word.

 

Having said that, let’s be honest: the Bible can be a hard book to read.  It arises out of a different culture, and there are a lot of things that we may not understand.  I would suggest that reading the Bible is more an art than a science.  

 

One of the mistakes we tend to make when it comes to reading the Bible, especially as westerners, is that we focus on reading the Bible for information.  We read it like a newspaper or a textbook or a self-help manual.  The Bible certainly contains historical accounts and provides instruction for living, but God intends us to read it for more than just filling up our heads with interesting facts about the Bible.  God wants us to read Scripture in such a way that we are transformed, by the Holy Spirit, into the image of Jesus.  Reading the Bible is not just about learning things about God; it is about encountering the triune God through Scripture—God meets us, speaks to us, addresses us personally.

 

There is a way of reading scripture for spiritual transformation that has long been practiced by God’s people called lectio divina.  Lectio divina literally means “divine or sacred reading.”  The aim of lectio divina is to read not just with the head but with the heart.  The goal is not to get something out of the Bible or try to master it; the goal is to allow the Bible to get into us and master us.  We don’t just read the Bible; we let the Bible read us.  It is a living and active word, sharper than a two-edge sword, says the writer of the NT book of Hebrews!

 

There are four movements in lectio divina.   First we select a passage of Scripture—and this works best with no more than six to eight verses.  We begin with a time of silent preparation (silencio) in which we become quiet in God’s presence and settle into a posture of attentiveness and expectancy before God.   It may help to close your eyes and breathe in and out deeply.

 

The first move is to read (lectio).  Read the passage of Scripture slowly (silently or aloud), listening for the word or phrase that strikes you or catches your attention.  This is a word or phrase that stands out from all the rest.  Allow for a moment of silence, repeating the word or phrase, and ponder it and savor it as though pondering the words of a loved one.  Trust that this word or phrase it meant for you.  The goal is not to try to analyze it try to figure out what it means, but simply to receive it.

 

The second move is to reflect or meditate (meditatio).  We read the passage a second time, and this time we reflect on the way our life is touched by this word or phrase.  We ask questions like, “What is it in my life right now that needs to hear this word?”  Or if it is a story, ask, “Where am I in this story?  What do I hear as I imagine myself in the story?  How does this story connect with my own life experience?”  Again, there is a brief silence in which we stay present to God with whatever comes.  Even in this stage of reflection, we must resist analyzing and picking it apart; we want to keep coming back to that word and phrase and listen for what God is speaking to us.

The third move is to respond (oratio).  Read the passage once more, and listen for your own response.  Is there an invitation or a challenge for us to respond to?  Perhaps the Scripture has touched a place of pain, frustration or anger, fear or insecurity, and we pour out these feelings to God in prayer.  Perhaps God reveals something to us about ourselves, or about himself, or sheds light on a circumstance.  Whatever our response, this is the time to honestly express it to God in prayer—a personal dialogue with God.  You may find it helpful to write your prayers or to journal at this point.

 

The fourth and final move is to rest in God (contemplatio).  We read the passage one last time, and like a weaned child in Psalm 131 who has received what he or she needs from the mother, we can now rest in God’s presence with peace and quiet.  This is a posture of waiting and being open to God.  From this place of rest, God calls us to resolve to carry this word with us and to live it out (incarnatio) in our daily lives.  “Don’t just be hearers of the word,” writes James in the NT, “be doers of the word.”  God’s Word, ultimately, is to be obeyed and lived!

 

In his book Life Together, Deitrich Bonhoeffer captures the heart of lectio divina when he instructs his students on how to read the Bible as God’s personal address to them:

 

“The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love.  And just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did.  That is all…Do not ask ‘How shall I pass this on?’ but ‘What does it say to me?’  Then ponder this word long enough in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.”

 

Now this is a very different way of reading Scripture than most of us have been taught or are used to doing.  It’s not that there isn’t a place for a deep kind of study—analyzing and digging into the Bible.  There is (in fact, study is another spiritual discipline).  But our goal in reading Scripture for spiritual transformation is not to study the text but to listen to God speak to us personally and transform us by his Spirit through the text.  

 

As we learn to read the Bible this way, it may feel a bit clumsy and awkward at first (much like learning a new dance).  But as we practice it, we get the flow down.  And it becomes more natural and meaningful.  

 

I need to say one other thing about the art of reading Scripture.  Lectio divina is something we can practice individually, but it is also important that we are reading the Bible in community.  By this I mean in the company of others alive today (like in worship, small groups, and so forth); and also in communion with those who’ve gone before us.  G.K. Chesterton once quipped that the only true democracy is when we also listen to the voices who call out from the grave—listening to tradition and not limiting our vision of Scripture to the myopic views of our present day alone.  This keeps the Bible from becoming something that is held hostage by our own subjective experience and reminds us that we read the Bible with the whole church, down through the ages!

 

Lectio divine does not always yield a kind of dramatic, life-shaking experience.  And certainly not every time we practice it.  But God promises us that, when we open the Scriptures and come humbly and expectantly before him, longing to hear a word from the Lord, he will speak.   Even more, God’s very presence meets us and snatches us up into this strange new world of the Bible.  The Holy Spirit pulls us into the divine drama of redemption, where our lives get re-plotted in Christ and we are “equipped for every good work” (2nd Timothy), ready to take our place in God’s mission to renew this whole world.  

 

“Oh, how I love your word!” exclaims the Psalmist in Psalm 119. “I meditate on it all day long…How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!...Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

 

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.