Alone, that is.
For this series, I am offering a different kind of list of spiritual disciplines, a communal way of “training, not trying” that will encourage a shared spiritual life, a yoking to Christ through the body of Christ.
I have offered two others before: Staying Put and Hanging Out. To these I add the first discipline of this Lenten Series, Showing Up. Specifically, “showing up regularly and “showing up really.” Bringing yourself before the one true Lord, as often and authentically as possible.
In my sermon last Sunday, I launched this new series calling it, The Gentle Yoke: Spirituality for Stubborn Souls. Drawing from the imagery in Jesus invitation to take his “yoke” upon us and “learn” from him, for the remainder of this Lenten series, I will be exploring what it means to be yoked to Jesus.
In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus’ invitation comes with an assurance that Jesus is “gentle and humble of heart”. That comforting description is also, most scholars would say, a not-so-thinly veiled criticism of the Pharisees. (For a description of the Pharisees’ use of the idea of “yoking” see an excerpt of my sermon here .)
Jesus’ way of discipleship is to learn from his gentle and humble spirit. To learn from him. But how do we do so? Let me suggest that to be yoked to Jesus today is to learn from the Spirit of Christ through the Body of Christ. It is to learn from the Spirit through the Word in communion.
This yoked learning is demanding indeed. It requires that we cast off both the yoke of our own individualism that assumes that we can figure out the way of Jesus on our own all alone, and the yoke of our “inner” Pharisee who remind us with debilitating shame that we are never going to measure up.
So for the next couple of days, I will offer a couple more ways to practice the Spiritual Discipline of Showing up. So here goes: Show up wherever the Word is being read in by other Christians in communion. Consider reading the Bible more this Lenten series, but not just reading it alone. Instead, develop a rhythm of reading the Bible by youself, then reading the same texts with others in communion. This rhythm of both solo and shared time in a Scripture passage takes us to much greater depth than we would ever meet on our own. And it is the central spiritual discipline of my life--especially during Lent.
As a pastor whose primary responsibility is teaching and preaching the Scriptures, I have found that the best way for me to hear the word is by studying a single passage for an entire week with as many people as possible. So, every Tuesday morning I read the passage for the following Sunday, then I lead a Bible Study on the passage for my staff. Then on Wednesdays, I study it for most of the day and then lead a Sermon Study and Discussion with about 80 people on Wednesday night. Then Friday mornings during Lent, I use the same passage for a time of Lectio Divina (contemplative reading of Scripture) in an early morning prayer session. Then I write the sermon, deliver it on Sundays and on Sunday nights our small groups discuss the sermon and how to apply it to our lives. Now that my kids are both old enough to read, we have also started doing a brief (5-10 minute) time of scripture reading and discussion at the end of dinner each time we eat together as a family.
As you can see, I read a lot of the Bible, but I don’t read it alone. This communal reading of a passage keeps it before me and all of us in a much deeper, on-going way. So many of us read the Bible like either a fortune cookie (“Let’s see what the word says about my day today”) or a school assignment (“Give me fifteen minutes and I can knock off a whole chapter”). We read the Bible for advice or as a book of maxims for living miss that it is a larger inspired narrative for a people to learn to live faithfully together heeding the voice of God. When we read, pray and listen to the Scriptures in communion, we hear it with greater resonance. It is both more demanding and more empowering at the same time. It is the Word of God that comes to me, because it speaks to and through us.
If you are interested in probing this whole idea of "reading in communion" deeper, I would suggest the two chapters of my book It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian on "The Transforming Word".
Tomorrow, another way of "showing up"...and you can't show up for that one alone either.
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