Lent #26: Discipline 6 of 7—reading and meditating on scripture.

Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.

(First Timothy 4:13)

Linda and I took up reading aloud to one another Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It has been laying around. Linda was supposed to read it for book club, but never did. We had lost the habit of reading aloud to one another. There’s something about hearing it read in the voice of the other. Scripture is like that. It’s best heard in the voice of another.

Reading, for the ancients, was something done aloud, even when reading to oneself. Notice how Jesus reads scripture (Lk 4:16-21):

When Jesus stood up to read, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Jesus said to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Notice the drama: “The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.” A scroll so precious that today all 24 feet of it is displayed in Jerusalem at the Shrine of the Book museum. Notice how Jesus takes his time to “unroll the scroll”—no turning pages; no chapter and verse to help him find “the place where it is written.” You just have to know the scroll to find the place.

When Jesus finds “the place where it is written” he begins to read it out loud, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” I would love to hear Jesus reading scripture—His voice? Then, when “the eyes of all …were fixed on him;” Jesus says something about what he had just read, that only he can say, “It speaks of me” (Lk 24:27). With our eyes fixed on Jesus, scripture has a way of causing “our hearts to burn within us” (Lk 24:32).

East of Eden isn’t Scripture, but there would be no “East of Eden” if it were not for Scripture: “Cain went out …and settled in the land on the Nod, east of Eden” (Gn 4:16). Like all true fiction, the novel has to do with people and places, with history and redemption. That’s the Bible story: “On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place far off” (Gn 22:4). It is about what happen on that third day of the journey when Abraham “saw the place far off.” That’s worth meditating on—a Lenten meditation.