A Lenten Reflection - Reading the Bible with your head and Heart
For as long as I can remember my faith has always been more cognitive in nature. According to my family, this began when I was a small child in Sunday school where I would ask countless questions about a biblical text and try to make connections to other scripture passages. In school I was a diligent student who did his homework, read voraciously, and engaged in classroom discussions. This continued into my undergraduate studies where I majored in religion and psychology. I especially enjoyed the academic study of the Bible and learned all that I could of its historical and cultural background and delved into learning its original languages by learning New Testament Greek. For seminary I attended Duke Divinity School which is a place known for erudition. I took more Greek classes and filled my schedule with as many biblical studies courses as was allowed. After meeting Rhonda (who was a PhD student in Hebrew Bible at Duke) I started taking classes in biblical Hebrew. My goal was to be able to do my own translation work from the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. For as long as I can remember I have always been interested in making sense of the Bible.
The problem is that this is only one half of the equation. We need to read the Bible with our heads and our hearts. Reading the Bible with only our heads eventually makes the Bible a cold, rational exercise that feels more like school than encountering the living God. Reading the Bible with only our hearts runs the risk of missing the truths unlocked by knowing the culture and historical background of a passage. Reading the Bible with my heart has always been hard for me. I struggled with it until I encountered a way of spending time in the Bible that was profoundly different from my more studious, rational approach. It was called Lectio Divina and it revolutionized my experience of the Bible.
Lectio Divina is an ancient way of reading the Bible that focuses on finding the presence of God in the text and allowing the Bible to shape our thoughts and behaviors. The goal is not just understanding but transformation.
I would like to share one way of doing Lectio Divina. This way of practicing it developed in the Middle Ages at the beginning of the Scholastic Period. At this time, there began a tendency to compartmentalize spiritual life. As this tendency grew, the emphasis was placed more upon rational analysis and less on personal experience. The scholastic form divides the process into stages or steps in a hierarchical pattern. I have found that this method is a good way to learn Lectio Divina.
Guidelines for Scholastic Lectio Divina
Step One: [READ] Read the passage, listening with the “ear of their heart.” What phrase, sentence or even one word stands out to you?
Step Two: [REFLECT] Read the passage again and Reflect on the word of God. Be aware of what touches you, a thought or reflection that is meaningful. Allow a minute or two of silence.
Step Three: [RESPOND] Read the passage again and respond spontaneously to the word of God. Be aware of any prayer that rises up within that expresses the experience. Allow a minute or two of silence.
Step Four: [REST] Read the passage a final time and Rest in the word, reflect or pray and allow God to speak in the silence. Allow three or four minutes of silence.
To Extend the Practice: [EXTEND] After resting, take the phrase, sentence, or word into your daily activity and listen to it, reflect on it, pray over it, and rest in it as time allows during the day. Allow it to become part of you.
My hope is that this ancient practice of scripture reading will help you discover that spending time with the Bible is less a matter of doing homework and more a matter of being open to an encounter with the living God. In this way, the words of the text can come alive in our hearts and draw us closer into relationship with the Lord of the Universe and the Author of our salvation.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor John