Holy Conversation: Spirituality for Worship

Chapter 5: Reading

81 Chapter 5 Reading Reading is a basic Christian spiritual discipline, as our faith is a tradition of the book, the Bible. As a corollary to this fact, listening attentively to the Word of God read aloud in assembly is also a central feature of Christian spirituality. Our liturgical practice reverberates with the age of oral tradition, when texts were scarce and communities had to rely on the aural experience of the public reading of Scripture. Indeed, our liturgical service of readings relates intimately to the ancient practice of the Jewish synagogue, the liturgy of which was centered on attending to God’s scriptural Word. Reading is a kind of listening to texts even as listening to texts read aloud is a kind of reading, a practice that predates the age when most people could in fact actually read. As is the case when people read texts on the printed page, the aural experience involves seeking understanding, listening for the meanings of what is heard. This activity of seeking understanding and meaning constitutes a crucial feature of God’s Word understood as living and active (Heb. 4:12), offering to us an ongoing revelation centered in the once-and-for-all Revelation of Scripture, and applicable to our day. Our Spirit-inspired, active engagement in listening for what God intends to say through Scripture, and then discerning what that means for us in our own circumstances, is perhaps part of 82 holy conversation what Jesus meant when he promised in the Gospel of John that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 14:26; 16:12-13). Beyond the mechanics of reading lessons aloud, God’s Word here begins to make its claim on us as obedient (obedience has a Latin root, audire, meaning “to hear”) and faithful listeners, particularly as the Word begins to intersect with the particularities of our circumstances, attention to which has been drawn in the time of preparation at the gathering rite—What have we brought with us to this assembly? What is on our hearts and minds? We may not even be consciously aware of the Spirit’s quickening activity, but at perhaps preconscious levels, holy conversation begins to happen in the intersection between biblical narratives and our lives. This dialogical activity lays the foundation for the more intentional work of meditation to be taken up in the next movement of the liturgy, when a sermon or another form of interpretive discourse is undertaken. First, we carefully attend to the public reading of Scripture as God takes the lead in speaking in holy conversation. God’s Spirit is carried on the pages of Scripture and as the biblical stories are told anew in our public assemblies. In this movement of liturgical holy conversation , God’s voice in the Word, particularly the Spirit’s speaking through that Word, is primary. That is to say, God is the primary conversation partner at this point in the liturgy. The human role is secondary and focused on obedient listening toward receiving the fullness of this proclamation; we attempt to discern what God intends objectively to communicate. Human participation in this aspect of holy conversation is not absent, however. Those who read scriptural passages aloud are also partners in conversation, as are all the others in assembly who hear the Word and listen attentively. The Role of Readers in Holy Conversation The act of public reading lays before the assembly the very Word of God, thus continuing the holy conversation and providing the most profound content of that conversation. The role of the lectors is thus a crucial one, and cannot be underestimated, for they serve as vessels through which God’s voice mediated in the Scriptures is heard, and they share in the work of nurturing deepened holy conversation on behalf of the whole assembly. That the Holy Spirit would so employ public readers of Scripture is a remarkable gift indeed and might cause us to tremble in a posture of true worship, bowing before the Almighty in this sacred moment. Public reading of Scripture also anticipates the work of meditation when hearers discern what God intends to say and we begin to seek meaning for our 83 Reading time in the sense of ongoing revelation. Reading aloud contributes to this discernment as an act of interpretation in terms of pacing, tone of voice, emphasis, and so on. Calling attention by way of...