Seeking God in Scripture

God’s dream for humanity is basically given for us in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, ‘in the beginning’ of the Bible: “Let us make humankind in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves.” (Genesis 1:1, 26) We are to be God’s Image on earth. Thus do we seek to know God (Rule of St Benedict 58:7), for we need to encounter him to know who we are to be — much as Jesus knew himself as ‘Son’ because he knew God as ‘Father’. This dream of God was finally and fully disclosed to us in the coming of Jesus; in him we see God’s dream finally and fully translated into human form: he is what we are meant to be. An encounter with God may be a difficult, even rare, thing (John 1:18), but Jesus is one whom we can encounter (Matthew 28:20), he being one like us in all things; in him we can see what God is like, and so know what we must do to be like him, that is, to be like God. (John 1:18) Our quest, then, is for an encounter with Jesus.

St John speaks of Jesus as the Word: “In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And a little later: “The Word was made flesh and lived among us.” (John 1:1, 14) In the story of the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus, we are told that the Risen Jesus, ‘starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets, explained to them the passages throughout the Scriptures that were about himself.’ (Luke 24:27) The words of Scripture, then, all speak of the ‘Word that was with God and the Word that was God.’ So, we can understand Jesus’ criticism of those of his day: “You study the Scriptures, believing in them you have eternal life; now these same Scriptures testify to me, and yet you refuse to come to me for life!” (John 5:39) We need to come to him, to encounter him in and through Scripture, and so we seek him there. Earlier St John had told us: “To all who did accept him, he gave power to become Children of God.” (John 1:12) This is why we come to him, for this is what we are to be: ‘heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.’ (Romans 8:17) In coming to Jesus, in studying God’s Word to us in him, lies our best chance of becoming who we are to be: one like him in all things. This is why we do Lectio.

But here I wish to dwell on the role I see for the community in our Lectio, and of our need for it. Benedict starts off his Rule with the words, “Listen, my son.” (Rule of St Benedict Prologue 1:1) Here before I put my foot in it, I need to say something about the term, ‘son.’ I think it is better to approach it as a technical term, rather than as a term for a male offspring. In the Roman times that Jesus lived under, a son was expected to do his father’s will; this is what a ‘son’ was. So, an adopted son could be the equal of a natural son by doing his ‘father’s’ will. The doing of the father’s will is what defines a son, more so than matters of paternity. So, in the Parable of The Man Who Had Two Sons (Matthew 21:28ff), the man asks both to go and work in his vineyard. One says he will but does not go, while the other says he won’t but then thinks better of it and goes. Jesus’ question to his hearers, “Which of the two did the will of his father?” could have been put as: “Which of the two showed himself to be his father’s son?” So, it’s not so much a matter of paternity (for both are sons, in the ordinary sense of that word), but more a matter of doing the father’s will. We see this notion about what it is to be a son operative in Jesus’ conversation some Jews, when he says to them, “But you, you put into action the lessons learnt from your father. … The devil is your father, and you prefer to do what your father wants.” (John 8:38, 44) By their actions they show who their father is. So, by ‘son’ I mean only ‘one who does his father’s will,’ but it needs also to hang onto something of the relationship between them … to distinguish a ‘son’ from a ‘slave,’ and which Jesus picks up on when he says, “The slave’s place in the household is not assured, but the son’s place is assured.” (John 8:35) In doing the Father’s will, we are not just called to slave for him; to be a ‘son’ is more than that. (C.f.: Luke 15:29, 31; John 15:14-15) We are all called to be ‘son,’ to do the Father’s will — whether we are male or female (John 8:35) — so that in what we do, we can say with Jesus: “To have seen me is to have seen the Father.” (John 14:9) And of course, something similar could be said of the term, ‘Father’: the One whom we obey is our ‘Father.’ Perhaps ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ may be terms we could better use instead to describe the relationship — much after Jesus’ words: “You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I shall not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know his master’s business; I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.” (John 15:14-15) So, as a different way of putting it: a friend, knowing what his friend is doing, sets about helping him do it. Our call is to friendship with God, to be God’s friend.

So, to go back to where I left off: Benedict starts off his Rule with the words, “Listen, my son.” (Rule of St Benedict Prologue 1:1) The word, ‘listen,’ in Latin means ‘hear and obey.’ Through the word, ‘listen,’ Benedict is inviting us to be his ‘son.’ For it is in our hearing and obeying that we show ourselves to be ‘son’. So, he says to us, “This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice.” (Rule of St Benedict Prologue 1:1) This is what a ‘son’ does, this is how we be ‘son.’ In our Lectio, we endeavour to hear and obey God’s Word … to welcome it and faithfully put it into practice; this is how we are to become/show ourselves to be God’s ‘son’ — much after the Prologue in John’s Gospel. It begins: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;’ a little later adds: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ (John 1:1, 14) In a sense, this is what we are trying to do in our Lectio: through our listening to God’s Word, through our hearing and obeying it, we let God’s Word become flesh in our flesh … in what we do we incarnate the Word, so to speak, doing being a bodily thing.

God’s Word to us, however, is not always clear — it’s a bit like the Indian word, ‘Om/Aum’, that primal word that is at the root of all that is; in it is contained every other other word. In a sense, it is a good image for that Word that in the beginning was with God and is God. But what does it mean? (C.f.: Genesis 1:3ff) To obey this Word, we need first to try and understand it, that we might put it into practice. (C.f.: Genesis 1:26) We apprehend it as best we can in the context of all that is, and especially in the person of Jesus. (Romans 1:20) But we cannot just arbitrarily decide for ourselves what it means, for we do often misunderstand God’s Word, and it is liable to get caught up in my will/what I want. To gain clarity in what I hear, I seek feedback from those others who are trying to do the same as I am, from those who have gathered with me in The Lord’s name and thus with him in our midst, that is, from those with whom I live. For they, too, are listening to God’s Word and trying to put it into practice. The clarity I seek comes from rubbing the Word I hear with/against the Word I see in the gathering, for essentially it is the same Word, a Word that reveals the God who is our Father, the author of all we do, the God whose Word we hear and obey. (John 1:1; 8:38) We each are trying to do the same thing. Our living together is really a conversation about the Word, and the Word I hear is my contribution to that conversation (and more in what I do than in what I say), and which also forms part of my feedback to those others with whom I gather in their search for clarity. Now, in our being together can be heard The Word that collectively we obey in our living together; our living together, what we do together, proclaims this Word, to ourselves as much as to others, and reveals the God who is Our Father, the God who is in our midst. It is this Word that I rub together with the Word I hear, my doing against our doing, seeking to find a harmony — and in some senses, the Word I hear is not greater than the Word in our gathering though it is the same Word. (John 14:28)