Welcome to the Podcast! Today Paster Rob Ayer is teaching on a way to read the bible. Unfortunately due to some unforeseen technical difficulties we are missing a minute too two minutes of the sermon This morning – we will finish our SUMMER TEACHING SERIES: HOLY HABITS. I'll do that by sharing the last of my thoughts on ways we might read the Bible. So far, we have learned together about reading the Bible in a systematic way: behind the text, the text, and in front of the text = the context of the text, the characters and language of the text, and the biases with which we read the text. Then we talked about reading the Bible as a unified story about Jesus Christ – the micro stories of the O.T. pointing to Jesus, the N.T. stories pointing at Jesus and that – being stories – we are invited into them at multiple levels – to find the moral of the stories. And now, we'll explore this idea together of reading the Bible as an experience of ANAMCARA. ANAMCARA is an Irish Gaelic phrase derived from two words – ANAM + CARA – which when translated literally into English means SOUL FRIEND. SLIDE 3. ANAMCARA = SOUL FRIEND. I'm inviting us this morning to think about a way of reading the Bible that is not centered on a system or a story but rather on silence and a solitude. We're going to explore LECTIO DIVINA.LECTIO DIVINA is a Latin phrase which literally means SACRED READING. SLIDE 4. LECTIO DIVINA = SACRED READING. Reading the Bible to listen to what it is saying – to be encouraged or to be challenged in our walk of faith. Listening is the key. SLIDE 5. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (Jn. 10:27). We are his sheep. Jesus is our shepherd. Jesus is saying here that the primary mark of one of his disciples is that they listen – they AKOUOTIKOS (in Greek) - to His voice. Disciples of Jesus know the "acoustics" of His voice – it's nuance, it's tone, it's warmth. Let me tell you a story… Back in the 1890's – there was a painter named Francise Barraud. Sadly, his brother Mark died. Francis inherited three things: an old wind-up gramophone player, a recording of his brother's voice, and Nipper (his Jack Russel Terrier). Whenever Francise would play the recording of his brother's voice, Nipper would turn toward the voice, his ears alert, and sit transfixed – staring into the gramophone. Deeply moved, Francise painted this scene and he titled the picture, "His Master's Voice." SLIDE 6. His Master's Voice. A record company in London, England loved this picture so much that they decided to make Nipper their logo. They even changed the name of their company from the Gramophone Company to His Master's Voice.By the end of the century, this company had grown to own the world's largest record store in London and America's largest in New York City – His Master's Voice. And they shortened their name from His Master's Voice to, as you may have guessed by now, HMV. Reopened on Oxford St., London, in 2023! SLIDE 7. HMV, London. Nipper knew his master's voice. He longed for it. I think there is a longing in every disciple of Jesus to hear His voice – not the recorded voice of a dead god, but a real, personal, conversational encounter with a living, loving Lord. How might we go about doing this? As one of my recent mentors on Bible study and prayer says… "One of the oldest and simplest and most powerful ways to hear God's voice in and through the Bible is LECTIO DIVINA. This is an approach to Scripture that emphasizes reading it prayerfully, slowly, and with imagination. It's about the heart more than the head; less about Bible study than turning the Bible into a conversation with God." This way of reading of the Bible doesn't abrogate those ways of reading the Bible. It supplements them. It isn't about it being a better way, it's about it being a different way. Circumscribed by other ways of reading the Bible – for balance and faithfulness.
