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Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 17, 2019
Luke 6:17-26
As many of you know, I am the dean of the Concord River Deanery, which has about 12 churches and 2 Episcopal Schools in its area. Once a month the deans, there are 12 of us, go into the diocesan headquarters in Boston to talk about what is going on in our deaneries and the diocese. Right now a lot of our conversation is taken up with talking about transition – there are currently 4 churches in the deanery that are looking to hire new rectors. I think there are roughly 30-40 parishes out of the 180 in this diocese that are in search.
So what do you think is the main thing that churches are looking for when they are hire a rector? They are looking for a good preacher, and not just a good preacher, but a Bible based preacher. Sometimes being a Bible based preacher is easy – when the readings tell us what we want to hear – but what about hard readings – like we have today. What do we do with them? Let’s take a look.
So in Luke’s Gospel…
When Jesus came down the mountain and stood on a level place, he looked at all those people who came to him to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases. He looked them straight in their eyes, the disciples and the multitudes. He did not stand on a Mountain top like he is reported as doing in a similar passage in Matthew’s gospel. He spoke to all those people who came to him for two reasons: to hear what he had to say, and to be healed of their diseases.
And besides looking at his followers in the eyes, he did not speak to them in theoretical terms saying “blessed are those who…” like Jesus is reported to have done in Matthew’s Gospel – like he is talking about some abstract people who were not present. Instead here in Luke he says Blessed are you…blessed are you…blessed are you….
And then to top if off, Luke’s Jesus does not say “woe to those people over there, or up there, or in that distant place”, Jesus said woe to you…woe to you…woe to you.
And by implication because we are reading this this morning Jesus is also speaking to us.
This kind of feedback is hard to hear. And besides that, are we on the blessed side or the woe side? I think we’d all prefer to be in the middle. I think when we hear a passage like this – since we like to be in the middle – neither living a miserable life now – so that we are blessed later, nor a life of a woe living a good life now – knowing we will suffer later – we would like to dismiss this reading out of hand. But if Jesus is talking to us – it feels like terrible feedback. But feedback, divine or human, is incredibly important.
As many of you know – I am a strong believer in feedback. Sometimes I think we are only as good as the feedback we receive. We are better co-workers, spouses, friends, parents, and children, because someone had the courage to tell us the truth – which is different from someone just being nasty and trying to hurt us. Or even worse, anonymous feedback, which is toxic. I was at a “newly ordained clergy day” years ago, and I will always remember the facilitator telling us, if we ever received anonymous feedback in the mail complaining about anything, to throw the letter straight in the garbage. That advice had profound effect on me – and I make it a spiritual discipline never to fill out a survey if I am not willing to put my name on it.
So we all know that receiving feedback is not easy or comfortable. We all know the problem with feedback is if it is not entirely positive it always stings a bit.
So here we have this passage from Luke’s Gospel. How do we approach a text like this? How do we get God’s feedback? How do we hear it if we want to disregard this text altogether?
Well, one of the ways that Christians, since the 3rd century have been doing it is through a process called Lection Divina. We traditionally credit Origen, a 3rd century Church Father for its invention. Origen once said this about reading scripture: “When you devote yourself to the divine reading
[of scripture]
…seek the meaning of divine words which is hidden from most people.”
This process of divine reading of Scripture is called Lectio Divina, as I just mentioned, and it literally means in Latin “Divine Reading”. The steps of Lection Divina were formalized and used by the Benedictine practice – and the steps are essentially the reading of scripture, meditating upon the word, and praying in order to be more aware of God’s presence, and the knowledge of God’s word. It’s like allowing the scripture passage to give you feedback.
So if you wanted to practice Lectio Divina there are 4 Rs to remember, Read, Reflect, Respond, and Rest. I have a handout on this in the narthex if you would like to read more.
Read – just introduce yourself to the passage by reading it attentively. So in the case of our Gospel lesson you would see that Jesus was talking and healing his followers, and then he starts to tell them about those who are blessed and those who will have woes.
Reflect – Reread the passage to get a greater understanding and ask questions of it like – what does this passage mean? How does this relate to my life? If I had to preach on this passage, what would I say? It there a hidden meaning that seems to be rising from the text?
So the understanding of this passage of scripture might be something like this: what Jesus is really saying here in this passage is that although he loves each and every one of us, died for each and every one of us so that we could be saved and know God more fully during this life, and completely in the afterlife, Jesus is saying in this passage that his attention is directed especially to those who are suffering, those who are hungry, those who are mourning, those who are in need, those who are lonely, those who need healing, and the lesson for us is that we should be too, as a church and as individuals.
But the other thing we hear about in this passage is that people came to hear what Jesus had to say, and they came to be healed. So you may want to reflect on what this means in your life.
Respond – Pray to God about what you have learned from the passage. Pray for greater understanding.
So you may at this point ask God to reveal to you what God wants you to learn from this passage – is it about your needs, or the needs of the world that you are being called to respond to – or both?
And then finally:
Rest – And then spend some time in quiet, listen for the voice of God in your heart.
The final part is really the feedback part – just waiting and listening to what God has to say to you.
And why would anyone want to spend 10-15 minutes, even 30 minutes practicing Lectio Divina? It seems to me that we live in a world where there is endless information at our fingertips, endless streams of how to do something, or what we should be doing. But in the midst of all this noise is that still small voice of calm of God, of Jesus, asking us to return and rest – to learn from him, and to align our lives with his, and, unless we make a little time for this to happen, we can too easily be overwhelmed by the needs, wants and opinions of this world.
Let us be like those original followers of Jesus, who knew that they had to drop everything to come and hear him, and to be healed of their diseases, and who were cured from all that troubled them.
Amen
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