Listening for God's Word

October 8, 2013

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

So faith comes from listening, but it’s listening by means of Christ’s message. 

– Romans 10:17

I remember as a child hearing a number of metaphors for how to relate to the Bible.  I didn’t consider them odd at the time; in fact, most of them made sense, helping me connect its strange words and antiquated imagery to ordinary experience.  I was told, for example, that the Bible is like a road map:  just consult it for direction, and you’ll see the path you need to follow in life.  One time I was told it was a how-to manual:  follow its instructions, and you’ll see your life through to successful completion.  Consider it as a cookbook, and you’ll have the ingredients to a good life. 

Those were all well and good.  For a time.

But now, I’ve come to the gradual realization that such treatments of the Bible are more self-serving than sacred.  While there are a lot of preachers, and even entire Christian traditions, that view the Bible with such utilitarian perspective, there is an option better aligned with the Bible's purpose and potential:  it is less about asking how the Bible can be useful to me, and more about how I can “enter into the text as a participant,” in the words of Eugene Peterson: 

“The most important question we ask of this text is not, ‘What does this mean?’ but ‘What can I obey?’ A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances.” 

To reorient our approach to the Scriptures, to make it less about using the Bible and more about becoming useful to God, it requires one key ingredient:  Listening. 

It is no wonder that the first signpost on our Disciple’s Path journey combines two spiritual practices into one:  Prayer and Scripture Reading.  It might seem unusual at first to link the two, as the former seems like an enterprise of emotion, while the other engages the intellect.  For most of us, that sixteen-inch distance between our hearts and our heads can feel like a chasm in practical terms.

But to grow in our faith, the two go hand in hand.  We must read the Bible prayerfully, and we must engage in prayer biblically.  “Faith,” Paul writes to the Jews in Rome, “comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the message of Christ.”  The text is illumined by prayer; prayer is grounded in text.  It is logos and pneuma, word and spirit, united. 

LISTENING FOR GOD’S WORD

One piece of evidence of how I have changed in my views of the Bible over my sixteen years in ministry is in the subtle but significant difference in how I introduce the scripture reading during worship.  At first, I would simply say, “Today’s Scripture reading is from ….” and then give the chapter and verse.  Or I would say, “This gospel lesson is from …”  Or, sometimes, I would just jump right into reading it, with no introduction at all.

That changed in 2005, when I heard the great preacher and theologian Peter Gomes, of Harvard Divinity School and Harvard’s Memorial Church, utter these rich words in a lecture:

I love the way that in an earlier generation, Presbyterians used to introduce the reading of the scriptures in the 50s and the 60s.  Instead of saying, “Here beginneth the fourth verse of the seventh chapter of the gospel according to St. John” (which is good Episcopal form), they would say, “Listen for the word of God in…”  And then they would give the citation.  Now there is a useful distinction there which I have always cherished.  [2]

Gomes reminded us that it is not the text itself that contains intrinsic power, as in the way I used to perceive it as a road map, instruction manual, or recipe book.  Rather, the Bible is merely the conduit for a living conversation, between Author and audience, between Creator and creation. 

The moment we disengage prayer from scripture reading, we lose that attentiveness to God’s voice as we read the Bible, and the words of the text too easily becomes utilitarian, self-serving, and, therefore, potentially destructive:

It is too easy to say, “This is the word of God.”  And the risk you run in saying that is you confer a kind of sanctity upon these human phrases which may or may not be justified by what they actually have to say.   But if your task is not simply to read a text, but to listen for the word of God - which may speak through, or beyond, or in fact in spite of the text - then you have opened up the possibility, indeed, that “Faith comes by hearing.”  Not by hearing the words of scripture, but by hearing the word of God. 

And they are not the same!  The word of God and the words of scripture are not the same.  Ideally, one helps us to hear the other, but to confuse the two is to make a very serious and fatal mistake.  And the history of our tradition is amplified by the blood of those who made that fatal mistake.  To confuse the word of God with the scriptures is to get into very dangerous waters. 

This Sunday, and in the small groups that follow, we will listen for God’s word together.  Through the reading of sacred texts, the act of solemn prayer and celebratory praise, and in gathering together our collective will to participate in God’s ongoing story.  Together, we will take one more step along the path of discipleship. 

Grace and Peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey R. deVega

St. Paul's United Methodist Church

531 W. Main St.

Cherokee, IA  51012

Ph:  712-225-3955

Email:  mdevega@sp-umc.org

[1] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book:  A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, New York:  Eerdmans, pg. 71.

[2]  Peter Gomes, Lecture, Festival of Homiletics, May, 2005, Atlanta, Georgia.

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