"LECTIO DIVINA" by Chris Webb

Photo by Willow Creek Assosiation

“Lectio Divina”
Chris Webb  www.renovare.us

The Monastic “Sacred Reading” - reading the Bible slowly, 3x, with a candle ...lol

Moses at the burning bush received Scripture from God, including history, doctrine, poetry... but he took off his shoes and covered his face because he was in the presence of God.  

Lectio Divina assumes we are not to receive Scripture when we read the Bible, but that we’re about to meet with God.  His word isn’t here as his “secretary’s notes.”

All Scripture is God breathed, so when you meet another person, God is there. He breathed in to Adam. (Google C.S. Lewis’ “Weight of Glory” - a sermon on paying attention to a human being as having the life of God)

The purpose of LD as though God were present - as though the text mediates the presence of God before us: until we are in the presence of God, in the throne room, we have not finished reading.  

FOUR MOVEMENTS of LECTIO DIVINA
“Idleness is the enemy of the soul, therefore the brethren should be occupied at certain times in manual labor, and again at fixed hours in sacred reading (lectio divina).” The Rule of St. Benedict
“It’s not reading, or ‘super reading’” but it’s an approach to the Bible with an expectation of God’s presence.  

1) Lectio - “read” - attentively and carefully reading this text (mind)
    a. e typically engage with Scripture so we can go do something - the end all is “things         getting done...” Jesus said “the Kingdom of God is near” whether you do anything or not.      God’s timing not ours. It may be that the end point is not the action or “what we can do.”         Will there be Bibles in Heaven? Or is the end game of the Bible to be in God’s             presence..?
    b. Read it 3x, slowly, bit by bit and pay attention to it.  We can’t just distill the story of         David and Goliath into 3 action points.  Otherwise God would have just put those in the         Bible - be attentive to the text.  
    c.  Study - “how long is a cubit?” the academic analysis if you wish.
    d. To encounter God in Scripture is easy because God created us for that and the Bible         is for that reason. The default setting is “when you seek you will find, knock and it will be         open...” and it’s a little easier in the Bible than in a commentary.
2) Meditatio - “reflect” - Reflect on this text in the light of Christ ans salvation history (heart)
    a. Turning it over and over in our minds and hearts, chewing on it until it descends from our mind to our heart. LD is to seek Christ and find Him.  

If God became human only to save us from our sin, that means that we look at this center of history, the pinnacle of our existence and the focal point of God’s encounter with humans was done only because we sinned.  

b. What if from the very beginning it was always his intention to come in human form to have relationship with humans.

This implies that the answer really is “Jesus,” but what’s the right question?  He makes humans in the likeness of Jesus, not the other way around.  And finally he thinks we needed an environment - the universe - where christlikeness can flourish.  There is a push-back to sin, for example you can get drunk you get a hangover - because the universe is created for christlikeness.  It’s all about Jesus.  What would it mean that it’s all about Jesus, on every page, the life of Christ can be expressed.  

c. Monks love praying psalms. They wrote about it constantly that they were sharing in the prayer of Christ.  The psalms speak of Jesus and they are the voice of Jesus.  We are part of the body of Christ and we want to share in this prayer.  For example, Psalm 1 is about Jesus. Not because David knew him but because God did and he inspired the writers.  

Paul does this all the time through the NT.  He’s convinced that Jesus is all over the whole book.

3) Oratio - “respond” - Prayerfully responding to this text in the context of our whole life (prayer)
    a. This is not intercession for salvation or the troops in Iraq. But as we read and meditate and something of the life of Christ is revealed to us, we become a little more painfully aware of the distance between Christ and I.  The specific prayer response is prayer for grace that we might be transformed into the likeness of Christ who we find in the Scripture.  Not an action point: “Jesus was like this so I must be like this.”  -but we are deprived, no power to help ourselves so there’s no point in trying to be like Him.  BUT God in his grace has the ability to transform us.
eg: we’re a tree - but we’ll never actually bare “fruit” no matter how much we study botany.  But this tree (us) can choose where it stands - next to the river of Grace and the presence of God to soak it in.  THEN the tree bare fruit.  

    b. Deliberately seeing Christ in Scripture causing us to rely on the Grace of God to become like Christ.  

4) Contemplatio - “rest” - Allowing this text to still in us the presence of God
    a. Prayer in the presence of God when we finally shutup.  The longer we’re there, the less and less there seems to be needed to say.  That’s transforming - it’s the river of grace.  WE don’t know what we are yet, but we will be like him by looking upon him and being in his presence.  
    -Imagine a married couple of 50yrs discussing things, then talking about honey-do’s etc... just like usual.  BUT what if they made some lemonade and sat next to eachother on a swing and watched the sun set.  What did they say to eachother? (nothing)
   

b. That’s the agenda, being in the presence and company of God, nothing to say.

There is a kind of mystery in Scripture, like it’s a puzzle we need to try to work out.  Layer after layer - but you’ll never get to the bottom of it because it’s revealing the living presence of God of whom there is no bottom - and the living presence of God, or even your spouse is perhaps even more mysterious then when you first met.  A mystery is something you don’t understand but something you never stop understanding - you never get to the end of it.  Scripture is like that.

Scripture is constantly saying “get into the presence of God.”

Lectio Divina in Experience: Take Mark 14:3-9 for 30 minutes and say “Jesus, I’m seeking a lived experience of your presence with this passage... “ -he would love to give you that. 

@onlychriswebb 


~notes taken by Corey Rose during a workshop at the “Transformation Intensive” conference at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, IL, May 3-6, 2011. This is not the lecture in entirety and some portions may be the intellectual property of Chris Webb and www.renovare.com