Read, Mark, Learn, and Inwardly Digest

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: 

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, 

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life…

                                                                                                                              Amen.

 The collect for today is such a familiar old favorite.

How many of you were told to approach the Bible in this way:

            to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the words of Scripture?

The Episcopal Church isn’t usually thought of as a Bible Church,

            certainly not in the way biblical literalists would use that term,

but the Bible has been central in our theology and identity,

            so central and important 

                        that our Book of Common Prayer is loaded with scripture texts;

                        indeed, we include the entire book of Psalms,

                                    most of the canticles are straight scripture passages,

                                    and a multitude of the prayers contain scriptural references.

But to distinguish us from other “Bible” churches,

            the Bible is not our only source of authority.

How many of you have heard about the Anglican three legged stool?

            That’s the illustration used for talking about the voices of authority we use:

                        Scripture

                        Tradition

                        and Reason

These three balance each other 

            so that we don’t proof text or use Bible verses out of context,

            and we consider the wisdom of our spiritual leaders over the centuries,

            and we also use our own reasoning skills in openness to the Holy Spirit

                                    to discern what is appropriate in how we read the Bible

                                                                                                    for our own situations.

Nevertheless the Bible is our source book, where we go first,

            and we get a whole chapter on that in our study book, Being Christian.

Your senior warden has been commenting about how great that chapter is!

All that being said, 

            here we are with a Gospel reading that is outright apocalyptic.

We Episcopalians tend to recoil from end of the world talk, 

            the book of Revelation, 

and Second Coming passages that give rise to speculative discussions about
                                   the Rapture and the mark of the beast and such exotic beliefs.

Couldn’t we instead just look at that beautiful passage from Isaiah? 

Where God says:

I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;…

be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; 

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.…

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox; …

They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

But no, that’s not the picture given in the Gospel reading for today:

            Not one stone shall be left upon another…

And what follows in this selection from Luke, Chapter 21,

            is a description of what is to come:

                        wars, natural disasters, and severe persecutions.

Now, I want you to understand the context for these statements –

            This is after Palm Sunday and just before the whole events of the Crucifixion.

And to whom these words are directed – the disciples.

Jesus is telling them what is going to happen to THEM.

            This is what’s up for them in the aftermath of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The disciples are being rewarded for following Jesus

            by losing their religion and their nation,

                        literally in the year 67 

            when the Romans destroy the Temple and raze Jerusalem.

Read the rest of Luke 21 and you will see what Jesus is referring to.

But it goes beyond that for the disciples.

And here is where we move from actual historical facts

            to something so cosmic that it can only be described 

                        through the utter destructive end of life as we know it,

                                    of the whole natural world,

The heavens and the earth will be shaken,

            and then Jesus comes and redemption is drawing near.

The new creation.

When I have my meditation groups read scripture after meditating,

            I watch for how that spiritual process of meditation

                        can shake us loose 

            from preconceived ideas about what the passage is saying.

Can we see with new eyes?

How are we being moved from the limitations 

            of head knowledge and theological ideas and familiarity with the passage?

Is there room for the Resurrection Presence of Jesus, the Holy Spirit there

            to give us a second touch so that our eyes can see clearly and more widely 

                        the brilliance of Transfiguration,

                        the New Creation,

which we are already in but unconscious to its Presence?

So that, even if what Jesus said to the disciples also becomes your experience:

            “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends;             and they will put some of you to death. 

            You will be hated by all because of my name. 

            But not a hair of your head will perish. 

            By your endurance you will gain your souls."

That’s how this Gospel reading selected for today ends,

            and that is what our ears hear and we take away from the reading.

So it is very important to ask,

            what is the endurance through which we will gain our souls,

                                                            through which we will know we are saved?

There are seven places throughout the Gospels where Jesus tells us how:

            “Take up your cross and follow me.”

If you wish to follow me, you must deny your very selves,

            take up the instrument of your own death and follow in my footsteps.

Seven places:  Matthew 10:34f, Matthew 16:24f, Mark 8:34f, 

                        Luke 9:23f, Luke 14:26f, Luke 17:33, and John 12:24f.

                                                Matthew, Mark, Luke, John!

When something gets repeated that often in the Gospels,

            wouldn’t you think that means 

            “this is important; pay attention” ?

Death is so significant in the central story of our faith – the Crucifixion – 

            that we have to look at death as much as we look at Resurrection.

There is the natural, physical death that all living beings face,

            but usually death doesn’t occur all of a sudden – 

                                                                        unless there is an accident, of course.

Death happens through a long process of disintegration,

            one loss after another of the use of the parts of the body,

                        until finally the lungs and heart give out and brain waves cease.

There is a tremendously useful parallel in our spiritual lives.

Traditionally spiritual directors have called these the minor deaths,

            when we don’t get our own way,

            when we realize our self deception,

            when we experience loss of something or someone we hold dear,

            when we accept doing something God’s way instead of our own,

            when we pray the Amen that says, not my will but Thine be done.

These are the ways of endurance that will gain us our souls.

This is the nature of conversion;

            even the Apostle Paul’s encounter 

                                                            with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus

                        was not the first step or the last step in his conversion.

It is a lifelong process of minor deaths,

            usually taking us where we wouldn’t want to go 

                                                            or wouldn’t usually choose for ourselves.

But it is always in a trajectory 

            toward that place where we can be most at home, 

                        not in the world in the state that it is currently in,

                        but in the New Creation as Isaiah described it.

And so in this Gospel passage we move from actual historical facts

            to something so cosmic that it can only be described 

                        through the utter destructive end of life as we know it,

                                    of the whole natural world,

The heavens and the earth will be shaken,

            and then Jesus comes – 

                        comes clearly into our perception

            for, of course, he has already and always been right there.

When we see that

                                    Redemption has drawn near.