Affective Meditation

Transcript (edited for readability).

The peace of the Lord be with you. And with thy spirit. This morning, I want to speak about effective meditation on the embodied word. Yesterday, I spoke about effective proclamation. Effective proclamation comes out of effective meditation. Luther, in commenting on Psalm 1, which he uses to teach meditation, says this: love itself teaches meditation. And at the beginning of Psalm 2, which speaks about the wicked and their meditation, he says hatred also teaches meditation. Love, hatred — they're the two drivers in our lives. They create spontaneous meditation. Love itself will teach meditation.

I remember vividly when I was going out with the woman who was later to become my wife, Claire. We were courting for five, four and a half years, nearly five years, before we got married. I'm a slow learner. And in those days we couldn't text or email, so we had to write letters. And we wrote letters almost every day, or every second day, during the Christmas holidays, and they were something special. I couldn't wait to get home to find out whether the mail had arrived and to see if there was any letter from her.

Now, I did something with those love letters from her that I'd never done before. Nobody taught me this. It was something that, I suppose, her love taught me. I read the letter not once, not twice, but over and over again. And not just that — by the time that I'd almost memorized it, I didn't just read it, but the next day, when I was working out in the paddocks, sewing up sacks of barley in the sun, I would put the letter in my pocket and have it there with me all day. I took it with me. Now, I didn't take it out and read it, but I had that letter there with me. And then maybe in the evening, when I came back home, I took it out and I would read it again — but not read it for the information that was in the letter, but for certain words and phrases which I would sip and savor and take to heart. Words that made me feel good, or better, words that showed me that she loved me and made me feel that she loved me. What I was doing was meditating on her words — paying attention not just to the information in the letter, but to the purpose, the emotion, the content of the letter. Its emotional purpose, for its emotional impact.

Now, meditation is something like that. The Bible speaks about effective meditation. Now, you know, there's a kind of approach to scripture that you learn in seminary and in Bible studies, which is to analyze the text for its content. And that's valid — that's very important. You do exegesis, interpret the text, to get the meaning of the text. Okay? Very important. But meditation is not that. Meditation is something else. You focus not on a large part of the text, but just on one word, one phrase, one verse.

Like this morning, we heard the wonderful words of Jesus: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my words and believes in me has eternal life" — not will have eternal life, has eternal life now. He has passed from death — he will not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Now, if I were meditating on that, I would focus on — and that's one of my favorite texts, by the way — he has already… he will not come into judgment, but here's the one that I've meditated on again: "has passed from death to life," not future tense, present tense.

Already in the Old Testament, the people of God practiced effective meditation — that is, meditation not just for the content of the text, but for its impact, particularly its emotional impact. You can see that in the great psalm on meditation, Psalm 119, which goes through the whole alphabet. Now, a lot of us Lutherans are put off by this psalm, because it seems to be all about law and it seems legalistic, because we don't realize that "law" in Hebrew means doctrine, teaching, Torah. What you need to do, to hear it right with your Lutheran ears, is to replace "law" with "word" or "teaching." The Psalmist in Psalm 119 meditates on the teaching of God's word, and doesn't just meditate on it cognitively, but effectively.

I challenge you just to get a photocopy of the text — you know, the colored kind of thing — and to underline all the affective terms. The Psalmist says how he delights in the law of the Lord. He rejoices in the law of the Lord. He treasures the law of the Lord. It's his joy. He rejoices in it, and so on. He loves it. So meditation is not just reflecting on a text to get its content. That's important, but you go beyond that, to let that text take its impact on you, have its proper effect on you.

Luther speaks about this very eloquently in his wonderful commentary on Psalm 1. Now, Psalm 1 is all about meditation. "Blessed" talks about the blessed man who doesn't walk in the way of the wicked and so on, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, on his word, he meditates day and night. Now, "delight" — keyword. Luther says you won't meditate on anything that you don't delight in. Whatever you delight in, whatever you love, you will quite spontaneously meditate on.

So this is what he has to say when he's reflecting on, meditating on, that term "delight." He picks that one word — delight. What's significant about this in connection with meditating? He says: "Note this well: it is the mode and nature of all who love to chatter, sing, compose, and frolic freely about what they love and enjoy hearing about." I love that — to frolic freely about what they love and enjoy hearing about. "Therefore this lover" — this blessed man — "has his love, the law of God, always in his mouth, always in his heart, and if possible always in his ear."

The way to the heart, Luther says again and again, is not through the eyes, but from the mouth to the ears into the heart. The word comes from outside and comes into the heart, and there it does its work on us. It has its impact on us.

Now, effective meditation, as I said, on God's word is the source of effective proclamation, and also effective pastoral care. The two go together. What we're called to give to people is not clinical pastoral care — there's a place for that, but that's not our business. The therapists of this world can do that far better than me. But what I'm called to do, to give to you and to every troubled person, every Christian, is effective pastoral care. And, boy, that's not easy.

Just listen to Paul's description of effective pastoral care, in eloquent words, in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 7 to 8. He says: "We were gentle with you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our very selves" — or our very souls, actually — "because you had become so very dear to us." Isn't that wonderful? Paul is speaking here, if you like, in maternal, motherly terms. Paul is mothering his people.

Now, the presupposition for effective meditation, and also for effective proclamation, is that through his words and deeds Jesus communicates to us effectively. There's always an affective dimension to Christ's teaching and practice. So every word of Christ in the gospels, the gospel stories, every word that Christ says is not philosophical, abstract reasoning, but has to do with — he gives comforting words. Every deed that he does is a comforting deed. Now, to read the New Testament and the Gospels correctly, that's one dimension that we need to focus on and meditate on — the comfort that he gives to people by how he deals with them, the comfort that he gives to people by the words, eminently, that he speaks to them.

As I said — oh yeah, before I go — just take two cases in particular, both of them from Mark's gospel, since it's the year of Mark. You remember, the disciples are going across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is in the hills praying, and the storm hits them and threatens to sink the boat. And then, when Jesus sees that they're making no headway, he comes to them walking on the water, and they're scared out of their wits. Then he says to them three wonderful words — remember them? "Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid." Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid. Oh, I'd love to spend half an hour unpacking those for you. Take heart, it is I, don't be afraid. That's in the beginning of Mark chapter 6.

And then later on in Mark chapter 5, you get the story of Jairus's daughter, who has died, and on his way to the home of Jairus, Jesus is traveling in a crowd. And you remember that woman with the uncontrolled hemorrhage, that's ruined her life in every possible way — she sneaks up behind him and touches the hem of his garment, and he feels the power going out of him, and he says, "Who touched me? Who touched me?" — looking around. And the woman's worst fears are realized. She's been sprung. She's been discovered. She's going to be shamed. She feels so small and wishes she could disappear from sight. And what does Jesus say? "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease." Daughter. The only time Jesus addresses any woman as "daughter." Why does he do that? To comfort her.

Jesus not only speaks words of comfort and does deeds of comfort with his people, but again and again he touches people — and I spoke about that yesterday. He reaches out, touches, lays hands on people, and offers them comfort, help, emotional help, in this way.

Now, there are two other dimensions to the aspect of comfort in the gospel stories. First of all, there's the explicit mention of Jesus's emotions in dealing with people. There's lots of mention of human emotions — that's another big story, but I'm interested in the emotion that Jesus exercises and shows to people.

Have you ever noticed the mention of the emotions of Jesus? Now, this sometimes almost shocks some people, who seem to think that Jesus is something of a zombie — well, maybe not a zombie, but a very cool guy who is very, very emotionally reserved. But just listen to some of the range of emotions that Jesus expresses appropriately. He doesn't gush emotionally. The most dominant emotion is compassion. He shows compassion to the leper who comes to him. He shows compassion to the widow at Nain, who's lost her only son. He shows compassion to the hungry crowd who've come to hear him speak. He shows compassion to the crowd, with all the sick and unwell and suffering people who are flocking to him. He shows compassion to the people who come to hear him, because they are like sheep without a shepherd — they have no one to shepherd them. He shows love for that rich young man who came to him and said, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" — remember that, in Mark again? He is filled with joy at the success of the seventy evangelists who come back rejoicing themselves, and so he rejoices in the Holy Spirit and he says, "Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth." You know that well — his joy, he shares their joy. He groans at the plight of the deaf and dumb man in Mark. This poor man, who's not only deaf but because he's deaf is also dumb, and Jesus groans at the plight of this poor man. He's filled with indignation at his disciples, who forbid mothers bringing children for him to touch and bless. He weeps — oh, how he weeps, with a broken heart, over Jerusalem, the holy city of God, and he weeps at the grave of Lazarus. He's filled with anger and grief at hardhearted people who have closed themselves, their hearts, to God, and have closed their hearts to each other. He's filled with sorrow, agony, in Gethsemane.

So you have the explicit mention of his emotions in dealing with people. But more common than that, every story of Jesus in the Gospels, every part of the teaching of Jesus, implicitly communicates his emotions — not so much his emotions, but how God the Father feels about the people that Jesus is dealing with. Now, there's an emotional intelligence challenge for you: to read every single text, not exclusively but partly, in emotional terms — to read the theological emotions there. They are God's emotions.

Paul picks this up, and he speaks about the tender compassion of Jesus, most memorably in Philippians. Just listen to two parts of Philippians, where he mentions not his emotion, his compassion, his affection, but Christ's compassion and affection. This is chapter one, verse 8. He says: "God is my witness, how I yearn for you with the affection of Christ Jesus." Now, there's a complex idea — Jesus yearns for the congregation in Philippi with tender affection, and Paul joins with Jesus, and he's in sync with Jesus in his emotions, so he, together with Jesus, hands on, expresses how Jesus feels about this wonderful congregation. Just listen again: "For God is my witness how I yearn for you all, not with my own affection, but with the affection of the Lord Jesus." He's the instrument of emotional communication from the risen Lord Jesus.

Then the next chapter, two, verses one to two: "So if there is any encouragement in Christ" — now, there is an affective term — "any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection" — that's the same word — "and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." Mind here is not being exclusively on the intellectual side — it's there, thinking the same, but also feeling the same. So he invites them not only to receive the affection of Jesus through Paul, but then to pass it on to each other, to share it with each other in the congregation. So you have a whole community that receives, that experiences the emotional communication, if I can use a modern term, through Jesus, from God the Father, through Paul, to each other.

Luther teaches a lot about effective meditation, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, because I've written about this elsewhere, and if you're interested I can give you references to it. I just want to summarize what Luther teaches about effective meditation. The common picture that he uses when he speaks about this is that the human heart is something like a musical instrument, with the Holy Spirit as a musician and singer. He's the Cantor Magnus — the great choir master. So the Holy Spirit is the singing musician, the choir master. But, as you know, a good choir master doesn't sing by himself, but gets others to sing with him. So the Holy Spirit is the choir master, the singing musician; the human heart is the stringed instrument; the hands that the Holy Spirit uses to pluck the strings of the heart are God's word; and the music is the song that the Holy Spirit plays in the heart of God's people. You get the basic picture? It's fairly complex, but it's a very beautiful picture. Through the Holy Spirit, through the word of God, he tunes the heart, so that the heart resonates together with the word of God, resonates with the heart of God, and is in tune with the heart of God, so it receives the gifts of God and transmits them to other people.

Now, let me use a very simple analogy. At the present time, we are all surrounded by radio waves at various lengths and frequencies. So there are all sorts of transmissions, whether they're radio transmissions or television transmissions, around us. Now, I can't put out my hand and receive the local TV station, but if I were a television set, if I was plugged into the electricity, and if I was tuned into the right frequency, I could receive the transmission from the local station, and could not only receive it, but also show it and transmit it to you. Now, if you like, that's a picture that I like to use about meditation, and also about worship. We receive the transmission from God in order to hand it on. But for us to do that, we need to be tuned to the right frequency.

Or think of it this way: if you're going to play a musical instrument in proper tune, it's got to be tuned to the right pitch. You have a very strange musical phenomenon — if you get a stringed instrument that's tuned to the same pitch as another one, once that one plays, the other instrument, that has no human player, will actually vibrate and will play in tune with the instrument that is playing the musical song. Our hearts need to be attuned to the heart of God, through the Holy Spirit, through the word of God, so that we receive God's gifts — all God's gifts — but also his emotional communication, so that we can receive it and pass it on to other people. Our heart needs to be conformed to the heart of Christ, so that we think as he does, feel as he does, and see ourselves and others with his eyes.

So the practice of effective meditation is to let that happen to us. So when we meditate effectively, we then receive emotional communication, if you like, from Jesus. Now, there are other aspects to meditation — you meditate in order to receive understanding, you meditate in order that your imagination is in tune with Christ's imagination, and so on. But I'm interested in that affective domain. So by listening, by meditating, by focusing on the word of God, and letting that word and the Holy Spirit attune us to Christ, we then receive comfort from him, so that we can, in turn, comfort other people.

Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3 to 4 — a very important passage for pastoral care. He says: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction, with the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." We receive comfort in order to give comfort, and unless we have received, we will have nothing to give. We comfort with the same comfort by which we ourselves have been comforted by God.

So Luther says you meditate partly in order to receive understanding — and that's not the same as knowledge, but understanding of what God says to us in the text. But more important than that, we meditate in order to receive what the text — this is a technical term — the "virtue" of the text. Virtue of the text means the power of the text, the effective power of the word. So we meditate in order to be empowered, to be energized by the word of God. We receive inexhaustible comfort.

Now, the content of the text — if you read a particular text closely, you can basically get the basic content of the text, and most of you would be biblically literate enough to have received the content of a text like the one that Matthew preached on this morning. Now, the content of that is exhaustible — we can get pretty close to getting the basic hang of it. But the comfort of the text, the power of the text, is inexhaustible. The emotional communication is endless.

Just think of the letter that I got from Claire. The first reading of the letter gave me the basic information of what she'd done the last week, or whatever it was since I had received the last letter. Okay, that's important — that's the building block. Then that's the basis for my effective meditation on the text, for that text to touch me, move me. And that was basically inexhaustible. I still have those letters. It's been a long time since I've had a look at them.

Listen to what Luther has to say about the inexhaustible word of God, in connection with Psalm 117, the shortest of all the psalms. You know it well, or maybe I'd better read it. Psalm 117: "Praise the Lord, all nations, extol him, all peoples, for great is his steadfast love" — or his mercy — "toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever" — actually, "triumphs forever," or "is powerful forever." "Praise the Lord." A very simple psalm — there's nothing much to it. But listen to what Luther says: "I have taken upon myself to interpret this psalm, so that one may see how clear God's word is, how simple and yet how inexhaustible. For even though everything were reasonable" — that's understandable, this is in the psalm, which is not the case — "yet it is inexhaustible in power and in virtue. It renews and refreshes the heart, restoring, relieving, comforting, and strengthening us constantly." It has inexhaustible — if you like — effective power. It renews, refreshes the heart; it restores, it relieves, it comforts, it strengthens us.

Or listen to what Luther has to say in his introduction to the Large Catechism, which speaks about catechismal meditation. He meditated on the catechism every day of his life. He said that's our basic handbook, or text, for meditation — the catechism. This is what he says in the introduction — even if he's talking about the people that you teach, the people in the church: "Even if their knowledge of the catechism were perfect — although it is impossible in this life — yet it is highly profitable and fruitful to read it daily, and make it the subject of meditation and conversation" — conversation in the sense of speaking it out loud to yourself, so, meditating and speaking it and meditating on it. "In such reading, conversation, and meditation, the Holy Spirit is present and bestows ever new light and devotion, so that it tastes better and better and is digested. God's word is the power of God that burns down the devil's house, and gives us inexhaustible strength, comfort, and help." I love that picture of him — the Holy Spirit as the firebug, burning down the devil's house. He's talking about the devil's house here, not out there, by the way — the word of God burns down the devil's house that he builds in our hearts, and gives us immeasurable comfort, strength, help.

Now, this aspect of the study of scripture, the reading of scripture, the meditation on scripture, didn't end with Luther. In fact, it was a regular part — and this has come to me as a surprise, given the picture that I have of Lutheran orthodoxy — it was a regular part of the teaching of the great orthodox theologians like Johann Gerhard. By the way, his very famous dogmatics, his Loci, his Commonplaces, is now in English. It's a great, great dogmatics — probably the best Lutheran dogmatics ever written. Now, I don't give that praise lightly.

The orthodox teachers spoke about two parts of doctrine. They said you understand doctrine — so you have doctrinal teaching on the one hand, and then you get the use of God's word to comfort people, the use of scripture to give words of comfort and hope to people. So in Gerhard's dogmatics, you get the usual analysis of the scriptural text, the reflection on the scriptural text, and then the last part of each section is called the "use" of the text, and this has to do with the effective use of the passages of scripture that teach this particular aspect of doctrine.

Now, the technical term, coming from Luther and going into orthodoxy, is the German word "Trost." Trost, very closely related to the English word "trust." We usually translate that as "comfort." Now, the word "comfort" had a far broader reach in the Middle Ages, in Luther's time, even in old English, than now. You still get the old usage in the translation of "Paraclete" — the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit as the Comforter. Okay, Holy Spirit, Comforter.

Now, "comfort" covers all these aspects — I don't know which of these would be the first word that comes to mind when you talk about the comfort that Christ gives us. Its basic meaning is strength. To comfort a person is to give them strength when they are fainthearted. To comfort a person is to encourage them when they are discouraged. To comfort a person is to give them courage in the face of danger and challenges, and particularly dangers and challenges that make them fearful and discouraged. Who of us is not in that situation? To comfort a person is to give them assurance in the face of uncertainty. To comfort a person is to give them confidence in the face of diffidence. To comfort a person is to give them hope when they feel hopeless and tempted to despair. To comfort a person — and this is our usual sense of comfort, I think, these days — is to console them in sorrow. To comfort a person is to give them condolence in grief and loss. To comfort a person is to give a person relief in suffering and pain, to soothe the suffering, to ease the pain. To comfort, most generally, is to give a disturbed person, or a person whose heart is troubled, peace.

So the word of God, doctrine, doesn't just give us understanding of God, but it comes to deliver comfort to us. And effective meditation is to tap into that, to receive that from the word of God. So people at the time of the Reformation — the English Reformation, the European Reformation — spoke about the words of the gospel as "comfortable words." By the way, that's a term that's in the Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer — comfortable words, which means words that are able to deliver comfort to us, comforting words. They are the words that have the power to comfort people in those various situations.

By the way, I could go on and add another dozen aspects to this — this is a very rich thing, but you get the basic hang of it. So what are comfortable words? What are words of comfort — words that give hope and arouse gratitude, words that dispel sadness and grief, shame and guilt, pain and loss; words that give hope and confidence from the assurance of salvation; words that relieve fear and ease anxiety. Have you noticed how we are plagued — we live in a society that is plagued by anxiety? How many people in your parish have anxiety attacks? How many of you here are plagued with anxiety? They are words that encourage and strengthen the heart. There are words that move the heart to devotion, that make the heart sing. Words by which God pours out his love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit — we heard about that this morning in our service, Romans chapter 5.

Again and again, Luther comes back to Romans 10, verse 10, where Paul says, "With the heart, one believes and is justified." He doesn't say with the intellect, the head, one believes and is justified — that's part of it. But the important thing is that with the heart one believes and is justified. Now, in one of his commentaries on this text, he says that there are three parts to believing in the heart. He says to believe in the heart, first of all, means to receive what the text says — receive what you hear from the text with understanding, that's the cognitive side. But you don't stop there. Then, secondly, you take it to heart in order to be affected by it — so it has its impact on you, takes its effect on you. And thirdly, he says, you take it to heart in order to have the Holy Spirit poured out, not upon you, but in you, in your heart, so that it speaks to you there, so that it ministers to you there, so that it sings there, and so that you can experience what you know to be true. So the first thing, you understand it, the truth of it, and then you experience the truth of it by its emotional impact.

How's time going? Okay, yes, I think I can. Now, after that theorizing, I want to go quite practical and suggest to you, or map out for you, a way of meditating effectively on the scriptures. It's the exercise of your emotional imagination in order to have emotional reception. This is to develop, not emotional intelligence, EI, but TEI — theological emotional intelligence. Now, there's a bit of a difference there, because emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and read human emotions. Theological emotional intelligence is to read the heart of God. Now, that requires a different set of skills that are not necessarily connected with what we now call emotional intelligence.

If I can just illustrate — there's a recent graduate from the seminary. Well, not that recent — this is an old man speaking — he graduated about five years ago. There was a lot of question about whether he should be a pastor, not because of his academic ability in his exams — he was a top student, he'd done a PhD in environmental science, a brilliant student — but he was on the autistic spectrum. He had problems in reading people's emotions. So what was quite disconcerting was that you could speak to him and there'd always be a delay in his response, because instead of responding emotionally, instinctively, instead of reading the face, reading the body, reading the situation, he had to go into rational mode and think it through, interpret it, and then you'd get the word, the response. And for people who didn't know him, it was a bit disconcerting at first.

There was some question then — they got him to do various tests, and it was confirmed that he was somewhere on that autistic spectrum, and had problems with what we now call emotional intelligence. However, I argued very strongly that he should be ordained, because he had something that nobody else had, and that was his spiritual intelligence, if I could put it that way. He could read situations, not emotionally, but spiritually and homiletically. He could read people, and people's hearts. And that has made him a brilliant pastor. Now, people have gotten used to the fact that he's a bit gauche, and can come across awkward, emotionally, but his heart may be defective from our human point of view in reading human emotions — yet his heart is attuned to the heart of Jesus and the heart of God.

Now, the presupposition for effective, emotional meditation is that God communicates emotionally with us in his word. And that's explicit in some places, but most commonly it's implicit — and that's what makes it hard for us human beings, that most of the communication is implicit, it's implied. So the aim of this kind of meditation is to discover and benefit from the emotional dimension of God's word, to receive comfort from it by its impact on us, to let it move us, move our hearts, so that we, in turn, may be able to move the hearts of other people. Get the basic thing? It's really quite simple at heart.

Now, how do I go about doing this? This is just my own approach — it's not the only way of meditating. I could give you a dozen other ways of meditating, but this is one of the ways that I've come to, in more recent times, as I've become more aware of this, to meditate on the text to get its emotional dimension. First of all, I ask: who are the main characters in a particular story of the gospels, in a passage in the gospels? I do this most of all with gospel stories, when I preach on one of the gospel lessons. The second question I ask is: how do the main characters feel about themselves, others, and God? That may not always be evident, but it's just as relevant. And then comes the important number three: how does God, or Jesus, feel toward them? And that then leads to: how does Jesus, or God, deal emotionally with them? And then lastly: how does this story then apply to me, affectively, emotionally? And that then leads to the application — how does this story speak to the hearts of the people whom I'm ministering to?

Now, to begin with a picture: recently Claire and I went on a music-art-wine snobs' tour down the Danube. We were a bit out of our depth, at least as far as the second one was concerned — the art. Wine, yes, I was very comfortable; music, Claire was very comfortable with. It's the arty-crafty part that is not really our scene, although we both like good art. Now, we went into the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and saw some lovely old medieval altar pieces and pictures, and there was one of them there in which you had a person kneeling on a kneeler, with a book of scriptures held here, and there's a funny V-shaped protuberance coming out of the scriptures, onto the mouth of the person kneeling. A little bit grotesque, actually, at least from my modern sensibility. But what's this about? This depicts what we do when we meditate. When we meditate, we are like a baby breastfeeding. Get the basic picture? So, to drink the milk of the word, like newborn babes — you know that — receive the pure milk of the word.

Now, I want to do two very quick meditations with you, and this is a bit artificial because it's schematic, and things never turn out quite like this, but this gives you some idea of how I go about it, and how you can then play with it and model it for yourself.

This first one is a very short little incident, two verses, and the main character is an impulsive woman. Since we have both sexes here, I thought that instead of what I usually do, which is sort of concentrate on the male side of things, both the stories that I'm going to meditate on have women as the main characters.

Now, the first one is a very interesting, colorful woman. It goes like this: "As Jesus was saying these things" — I'll come to in a minute what these things are — "a certain woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked.'" All American translations have "nursed" — you've got to be kidding — it's "sucked," or "suckled." Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked. And he — that's Jesus — said, "Blessed rather" — or probably more correctly, "even more blessed" — "are those who hear the word of God and keep it."

Now, what's the setting of this story? Well, earlier on in chapter 11, Jesus has been teaching his disciples about prayer, and then, immediately after that, he casts out a demon, and there's a controversy — people said he's casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub — and Jesus then meets that criticism, and he teaches them about exorcism. And he's just finished his teaching about prayer and exorcism when this woman blurts this out in the crowd. You know, there's a silence — it's as if one of you would stand up and shout something at me. So what's the setting? It's Jesus teaching; the main characters are Jesus, this impulsive woman, and the crowd. Very simple setting.

Now, I'd like to get you to put yourselves in the shoes of this woman, and, you know, flesh her out — and she's a very fleshly woman — flesh out her character, particularly the emotional side of it, because this is an emotional act. You know, the impulsive calling out is very emotional. What kind of a picture do you have of her? What's her life story? Why does she do this?

Well, the question I'd like to ask first of all is: how does she feel about herself and Jesus? And both of those, I think, are very evident. How does she feel about herself? Well, obviously — and that's apparent if you know the mores of the ancient world — she's a mother. She's a mother, and she's not only a mother, but she's what we Australians call an earth mother. She's a very earthy character — physical, frank, openly sexual, and proud of her femininity. How do we know that? Because she speaks quite openly about — what — her breasts and her womb. Now, these are taboo — maybe less taboo in ancient Israel than in modern America, but they're not taboo in Australia, which says something about us. So she's a very motherly kind of woman who takes pride in being a mother and in her vocation of motherhood. She's a very feminine, in the good sense of the word, woman.

But why does she say this about Jesus? Well, she's envious — not of Jesus, but of Mary. She says, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breast that you sucked" — she's envious of Mary as the mother of Jesus. Now, why is she envious of Mary? Why does she feel that way toward Mary as the mother of Jesus? Well, here I can surmise, and I think I'm on good ground — a woman who does that has probably had some children. She has her own son or sons, and she has, like most mothers, been disappointed by her son or her sons. She's a mother — her whole vocation is motherhood — and she's been frustrated and disappointed in her son or sons. And she thinks, "If only I had a son like Jesus" — a good son, and even better than that, a godly son. She's a devout woman; she would like to have had a son who'd become a pastor. You know the type — maybe some of you have that kind of mother. She's a disappointed mother, and so she has a longing for maternal fulfillment in having a good, godly son like Jesus.

Now, this touches on something that is a little bit taboo in modern society — an emotion that's very, very strong, which is the way mothers feel about their sons, and especially the firstborn son. Oh, that's the special one. All of you who are mothers and have sons, just think about how you feel about your firstborn son. And how that contradicts political correctness and the tenets of feminism — that's one of the most emotional relationships there is, more powerful, I think, than the marriage in some ways, more visceral than marriage.

Now, I've seen that very close at hand in my own marriage — how special it is, and how complicated it can then become, because the danger is that you live in and through your son. Well, so it's a very emotional, tangled situation. Okay? You get the basic picture, the emotional problem here — not just the negative side, but the positive side of it. She's a good woman. She's a godly woman. She's a devout woman.

Well, how does Jesus deal with her emotionally? Well, he takes her on her own terms, and he deals with her on her own terms. He deals emotionally with her, and he compares the womb, that gives life to a baby, a son, to the word of God. Hearing the word of God, the life-giving word of God, is like the womb of a woman. The word is the seed — yes, and that brings new life. And secondly, he compares meditating on the word, holding the word, to breastfeeding.

So just listen again: he said, "Blessed" — even more blessed than Mary, the mother of Jesus — "are those who hear the word," who hear the life-giving word, and receive it as a seed, not in their womb, but a seed in the heart. And they don't stop there — they don't just receive life from the word, but then they draw life from the word. They feed on the milk of the word. So notice the use here of very, very powerful emotive imagery, and it works equally for both sexes, I think. For me, particularly, the picture of a woman breastfeeding is one of the — arouses some of the strongest emotions possible for me. Or, some of you women are pregnant, and the sight of a pregnant woman somehow sets aside any sexual connotation and arouses a very strong paternal emotion in me. Likewise, women breastfeeding — why do we have such a taboo on that? You have these funny little boxes in the airports now for women to breastfeed babies. Funny business.

Now, a lot of people mishear what Jesus says — "blessed rather are those who hear the word of God" — Jesus is not rebuking her, he is affirming her. He affirms and encourages her by what he says. He says, yes, Mary is blessed, and you would be blessed if you were my mother, but even more blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Now, Mary is both — she is both mother of Jesus and disciple of Jesus. But here you get: Jesus says Mary is far more blessed as a disciple of Jesus than she is as a mother of Jesus. And this woman is — what — a disciple of Jesus. So she is just as blessed as Mary. Pure gospel. But he doesn't speak about justification or salvation — he speaks affectively to her, within her own frame of reference. He ministers warmly to her.

Okay, now, if you wanted to go one step further — and I won't explore that too far — in what way am I like that woman? And what emotional encouragement does Jesus offer me in and through this lovely little story? What does Jesus have to say to me as a disciple, as one who loves Mary the mother of Jesus? What does this have to say to me as a mother, or as a father, and my attachment to my children?

Second meditation — another very powerful story: the story of the widow's son at Nain, Luke 7, 11 to 17. Now, just let me check — I've got 40 minutes. "Soon afterward he" — that's Jesus — "went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. And as he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother" — another mother here, but in this case she's a widow. She's lost her husband, and now she's lost her only son — you can't get it worse than that. "And she was a widow, and a considerable crowd was with her. And when Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her, and he said to her, 'Do not weep.' Then he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, 'Young man, I say to you, arise.'" And the young man — actually the Greek says "the corpse" — a lot of our translations are very prissy, euphemistic — "the corpse sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother" — I should say "his mother," not "her mother" — he gave him back to his mother. "Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, 'A great prophet has risen among us,' and 'God has visited his people.' And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and the surrounding country."

Now, this is a very powerful story, emotionally, affectively, because it deals with the strongest emotion of all in practical terms, which is fear. We live in a society that's riddled with fear, in case it hasn't registered with you. We live in churches that are riddled with fear. Our hearts are riddled with fear. Now, the worst fear of all that I have, at least, is the death of a loved one. I don't know how I could bear the death of my wife. Even worse than that is the death of my children. Okay, that's the worst fear. But imagine that you were a widow, and you had only one son, and you lost your only son. Your whole world, your future, is lost. You have nothing to live for anymore.

I often look, sometimes, in my pessimistic mode, my pessimistic head, and I look on the world in the light of death, and what I see is dying people carrying dead people to be buried. T.S. Eliot, in his very famous poem "The Waste Land," commenting as he looks at Western society, says, "I had not thought death had undone so many" — not only those who died, but the living dead, the people who are dead before they die, the people who are afraid of death. And you know, from Hebrews, that the devil uses the fear of death to gain his power over us. Fear — okay, powerful, powerful emotion.

Now, what Jesus does is something utterly remarkable. He doesn't just turn grief into joy, but he turns the funeral procession around. You know, you get a funeral procession coming out of the city — he stops it, and then you get a victory procession that goes back into the city. Notice how Jesus deals emotionally, effectively, and appropriately with the woman — there are five different things that the story mentions, that each have their emotional dimension.

First of all, Jesus sees the woman. Now, when you read Mark's gospel again, notice how often Mark mentions that Jesus sees somebody, and he sees them before he ministers to them. He sees them — he doesn't just jump in, boots and all, but he assesses the situation, and he sees with the eyes of compassion, and he understands what's going on. He sees the woman. Likewise, Mark often mentions that people see Jesus. Now, for some reason, most preachers overlook that aspect in preaching and teaching — Jesus seeing me, and not just seeing me superficially, but seeing into my heart, and me seeing Jesus. So that's the sight of Jesus, the comforting sight of Jesus. How important that is in pastoral care, how important it is for preaching and communication — eye contact. It's not just words, touch, but eye contact — most of all when you're counseling, helping a person. Eye contact, you see.

Then, secondly, he has compassion for the grieving woman. And thirdly, he offers an amazing word of encouragement, and it's different to how it sounds. He says, "Don't weep." He doesn't say, "Oh, you shouldn't weep, toughen up, woman." No, he says, "Don't weep" — why? Because she no longer will have, she will soon have no reason to weep. He gives her reason not to weep. Thirdly — and most remarkably — he reaches out and touches the corpse, and by touching it he takes on death, and he gives that corpse his life. There's a great exchange. And then comes the culmination: he presents the living son back to the mother. Now, he doesn't say anything — he just gets him up, he stands up, and he takes him and offers him back to his mother. He doesn't say to the son, "Come and follow me" — he gives the son back to the mother. Can you just feel how wonderful that is, that gesture, and everything that's contained in it?

And the result of that is the emotional transformation of the woman — her double grief: her grief, first of all, at the loss of her husband, and then the grief at the loss of her son; her grief at her hopeless condition, no future, nobody to care for, nothing to live for — is replaced with joy and hope. Her tears are wiped away. But most interestingly, the focus is not just on the emotional transformation of the woman — the focus is on the emotional transformation of the crowd, the congregation around the woman. Their fear of death is replaced by the fear of God. Fear seizes them all — not bad fear, but good fear, the fear of God, which is reverence and awe and wonder and amazement. Their mourning at the loss of this son, which they share with this woman — it's a very small community, they know her well, they know how devastating this is for her, it's devastated the whole community, it's lost one of its very important members — their mourning is transformed into doxology.

Now, that's a very important theme through Luke — doxology. I've given you all the references there. The translations, once again, obscure it — you get a whole theology of doxology in Luke. And then they praise Jesus as the end-time prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18. And most importantly, they praise God for his final visitation of his people, as he had visited them in Egypt and in Babylon. Now, Tyler is going to speak about visitation — this is one of the very important texts on pastoral visitation, God's visitation of his people.

Now, very quickly, the pastoral application of this text is obvious, emotionally. When I preach this text, I preach it to people whom I know are suffering, have suffered bereavement, and are wracked with grief. I can't give them their loved one back — but who can? Who can give me back my brother-in-law, my best friend, my parents, my parents-in-law — all these loved people — who can give me back Ronald Foyhan, whom I'll be remembering? Jesus can. And he'll present them back to us then. And in a way, he presents them back to us every time we celebrate Holy Communion. Secondly, this is great comfort, then, to the whole congregation, and the members of the congregation who've each suffered bereavement and who grieve at their own mortality, who are afraid of death, and rightly afraid of death.

Conclusion now — I've gone over time. Two proverbs on the wisdom of effective speech, speech that has impact, emotional impact, on people. The first one is this: "Kindly words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul, and health to the body." Now, most proverbs have a little bit of a catch to them. Kindly words are like honeycomb — okay, sweetness to the soul, that's the throat, the taste, that makes sense — but then comes a surprise. I would expect "health to the spirit," or something like that, but it says "health to the body." Psychosomatic stuff. It's health to the body. By effective pastoral care, you offer health to the body. By meditating effectively, you receive help — sweetness for the soul, and health for the body.

Lastly: "The words of the wise at heart are called discerning" — or perceptive — "and the sweetness of the mouth," or speech, "increases reception." Now, do you get that? A wise person perceives, understands, sees — to use the word from the story — sees the situation, and sees it not intellectually but reads it emotionally, is discerning, and then speaks words that are not sour but sweet. And the sweet speech means that the words are received. So the sweetness of speech, effective speech, increases reception — means that people will perceive it. And, pray God, you may have that too.