A Workshop In Listening

Welcome, Prayer, and Morning Talk: Jim Calhoun

Heavenly Father Help us to live in the world as it is.
Just this, just now
Help us when we are ill or injured and bring us to rights
The deep pain of losing loved ones when it comes all at once or slowly over time
The sorrow of seeing others in pain or disappointed or grieving
The anxiety of what the future may bring us and the fears that we may not be up to the challenge
Help us to live in the world as it is
With every blade of grass shimmering
Every leaf trembling
Every cloud floating by
Every burst of laughter
Every shared moment
Every hope
Every dream
Every joy
Every love
Knowing every grace is your grace
Just this, just now
Help us to hold it all at once
Help us to hold it all together
Lord, please, hold us together
In the world as it is
Amen

Lectio Divina

Today we are going to have a group Lectio Divina session. This is a spiritual exercise in which we listen to God’s Spirit speaking to us through the Scriptures. Our application of it this morning will be similar to what we do during the week but adjusted a little for our situation this morning.
Lectio is an amazing practice that helps us better listen to God
It helps us hear God, the still and quiet voice, that is calling to us with tenderness, comfort, direction, correction, instruction and affection.
It helps us hear God and not just repeat our anxieties or shame to ourselves.
It helps us hear God and break out from all of the messages, good and hurtful, that we carry from our families and friends.
It helps us hear God and point us to a liberation from the demands, concerns, expectations of our society.
You know, how we look, what we drive, our status, our wealth, our place in comparison with others.
Slowly, over time we grow past all of these things and find new ground, fresh territory in the Kingdom Of God.
We find new life.
This, today is a workshop and we will be practicing spiritual listening.
For more than a dozen years we have been doing these groups in homes and also online.

Combined with quiet sitting this has been our focus.
We have wanted to know God in some way that is personal, meaningful, relational instead of simply know about God from the perspective of one tradition or another.

By the way, I have no bone to pick with the traditions of the Church.
The major traditions are important.
The Orthodox Church of Greece and later Russia.
The Church of Rome which we most often call the Catholic Church
The English Church
The Church of Europe either from Luther or Calvin
The Church of America which grew out of The English Church and took on a distinctive American turn with the teachings of John Wesley and his followers.
Of course there are others, Baptists, Anabaptists, And more.
All this to say each of these churches have a beauty in them.
A sanctity, a holiness.
There are members full of the Spirit and love with great generosity and sacrifice in each and every one.
And there is ugliness as well.
Self serving, moral double dealing, pride and all that goes with it.
And this is the risk of following a tradition, we can be blind to our foibles.
We may not see at all what everyone else sees plain as day.
We may justify the impossible because it is our tradition.
Then we get lost all over again and never quite understand it.
Lectio can awaken us.
From our families, from our spiritual traditions and habits and from our society.
We can awaken and take another step into freedom.
So today we are workshopping, practicing, listening.

The process is simple in that there aren’t many steps and the steps are easy to understand and implement.
I’ll give you clear instructions along the way.
The process is demanding and transformative because it takes our whole selves to engage.
We encounter God in the reading of the passage both aloud and quietly.
We encounter God in the silence between the readings.
We encounter God in our brothers and sisters as they share.
Not everything is that you hear is needed today.
That is okay.
Hold it loosely and let it go.

This is a devotional practice.
It is rooted in affection.
Recognizing how God has come to us in one way or another and our gratitude in response.
It isn’t about the one right answer.
Your response maybe very different from mine.
Even opposite. Why?

God remains the same and the Scriptures hold true.
That isn’t the issue.
The differences are found in us.
We are each solving a different problem in a different context.
God is guiding us through.
I may need to learn appropriate boundaries in this moment and you may need to develop your depth of generosity and we may find the same phrase in the same passage is teaching us these two very different things.
This isn’t troubling.
It is a gift.

So in this way we don’t monitor or correct what another person is working out.
We let them do their work and trust God to lead them from this place to the next.
If what another says stirs us up we need to decide if we will let it go or if we need to hold it close.
Is it an example of iron sharpening iron?
Is it for someone else?
These sorts of questions are the heart of discernment.
We ask God in real time what we might do with what we read and hear.

If you find any of this overwhelming just step back a little and take a breath or two.
Allow yourself just to observe if you like.
There are no demands or expectations for you in this.
All may share if you like and none are required.

Now let’s turn to Matthew
Matthew is written in pairs of story and teaching, narrative and discourse.
There are five pairs.
Our section today is toward the end of the second discourse or group of teachings.
The stories just before this in chapters 8 and 9 show Jesus doing the work of the messiah.
He is healing, casting out demons and all sorts of signs and wonders.
He is making his declaration of who he is by being who he is.

At the end of chapter 9, Jesus seems to be concerned for so many people who need his help.
They are spread all about and he doesn’t have time or physical energy to reach them all.
But he declares that the harvest is ready, but the workers are few.

At the beginning of chapter 10 Jesus calls together his disciples, the twelve, and sets about to address the problem of too few workers.
This chapter is sometimes called the little commission in contrast to the great commission at the end of the gospel, “Go into all the world . . . ” (Mt. 28:19-20).
But here the mission is to go into the local area and continue my work among the people of Israel.
And then he gives a lot of thought concerning the difficulties connected with the task.

We pick up his message at the next to last section of this chapter.
It was what we covered in Lectio two weeks ago.
There are hard sayings here.
We will work our way into it with gentleness for each other and for ourselves.
An act of devotion and affection, hoping to hear a little something for the day that is nourishing.

(These instructions were followed by a time of practice with those of our Reflexion community who were present this morning)