A time-honored way to meditate on Scripture is lectio divina, a phrase often left untranslated because it is more than just divine or spiritual reading. It’s a way of savoring the language, reading slowly, allowing the words to sink in and roll around and resonate, to pause when something strikes you and then resume reading when the echoes die out. It’s hard work, especially for those of us who have trained ourselves to read quickly so that we can read much. Even under the best conditions I find myself whipping through verses so I can get on to the next project.
That’s why I like reading Scripture in another language. I’m forced to slow down. It does help at least to know what the words mean; lectio is not so effective with a Bible in one hand and a dictionary in the other. I’ve discovered that after I’ve worked my way through a bit of the Greek NT, I retain enough vocabulary to read the Gospel slowly and chew it.
What stopped me this week were two words: pheuge and nuctos: flee by night. “Arise” says the angel to Joseph in a dream. “Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.” And arising, he took the child and his mother by night and went to Egypt. Unlike Luke’s angel, who calmed everyone after his frightening appearance, the angel in Matthew’s story creates fear, so much so that Joseph runs away at night with mother and child in tow. No bucolic stable scene with sleepy lambs and adoring shepherds here. Just wild-eyed fear. Herod’s about to kill all the infants in a vain attempt to eliminate the competition. (We won’t actually hear those gruesome verses on Sunday.)
So fear shows up right at the birth of the Savior of the world. Perhaps that’s appropriate; fear dominates much of our lives, also. Every time a person botches an attempt to blow himself up there’s havoc for millions of air travelers. Hand sanitizers are routinely used in households with babies and there are now anti-MRSA sprays for pets. Never mind that immune systems need challenges to develop fully, and that indiscriminate use of anti-microbials promotes bacterial resistance. We’re afraid. Fear sells newspapers, boosts ratings, wins elections.
Joseph’s fear was real, and as Herod’s subsequent actions proved, it was justified as well. Joseph was so afraid that even after Herod died he zipped right through Judea to Galilee in order to avoid Herod’s son. One gets the impression that Joseph was happy to reach an obscure hamlet where no one would find them. Of course, all that would change once the baby grew up, but by that time Joseph seems to have disappeared from the scene.
Fear is not and never is the last word because of that baby, even if fear surrounded his first weeks. And it should not be the last word for us, either. God calls us to hope, not fear. The letter to the Ephesians prays that God may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know the hope to which God calls us, “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” Joseph didn’t live to see that. But we have. Shouldn’t we be living in that hope rather than fleeing by night? Shouldn’t we be listening to the angel who said, “Do not be afraid”?
Christmas 2: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree with you about reading Scripture in another language; I have done some of this in Spanish and German. I undertook it with the idea of improving my skills in these languages, which it did, and was surprised by the significant spiritual benefit of Slowing Down.
When reading the Scriptures in English, I read aloud whenever possible, and if that cannot be done, I at least mouth the words silently. That likewise forces a slower pace, though still far too rapid for Lectio Divina. It is, as you say, a challenge when one has learned to read quickly to cover lots of material.
There was a BBC news item that came and went a week or so ago about the archaelogical find of the remains of a modest house in Nazareth that dates to the time when Jesus would have grown up there.
One feature of the house, which the article said was often found in Galilean houses of those days, was an underground dugout reached through a trapdoor, to hide when the Romans came through doing search-and-destroy missions against Zealots and suchlike. (The parallels to villages in Vietnam in the 1960's, or Iraq and Afghanistan today, are unsettling).
The article described Nazareth as you did; a thoroughly out-of-the-way, obscure hamlet of about forty or fifty houses. The aforementioned Roman visits happened, the article said, hardly at all in Nazareth, unlike some more strategic neighboring towns such as Cana.
As you say, Joseph was probably delighted to find the place. Even in such a place, there was much to fear.
But "perfect love casts out fear."
"Of the Father's love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be...."
He has come to, in the end, cast fear completely out of the universe. "They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it." (Micah 4:4)
Post a Comment