How often have
you wanted to say to someone when they were talking about how wonderful their life
is, “Oh, get real!” Because sometimes,
life is whole lot more real than we would ever want it to be. We need an understanding of faith and God
that takes into account those times when life is a little too real. “Turn it over” or “Let it go” sounds good in
the abstract, but it isn’t always easy to implement. More than perhaps any other twentieth-century
theologian, Fr. Henri Nouwen lived his Christian life for all to see. His prolific writing laid bare almost
everything about him, including great spiritual discoveries, immense struggle
and despair, significant depression, and a longing to share his understanding
of human beings as God’s children or “beloved”.
It is true that, mostly after his death, his friends and colleagues
began to verify the suspicion of many that Nouwen was gay, but celibate. He was never able to “come out” about his
spirituality and it may be that his longing for a “particular friendship” and
his inability to be in the open about it was one of his greatest
struggles. Although he could not name
his sexuality publically, he was authentic.
None of those who knew him have ever even suggested that he was anything
other than completely celibate.
If you don’t
know of Fr. Nouwen’s works, you might want to start exploring them now. His writings, still being compiled and
published long after his death in 1996, would last you well into old age if you
were to read and absorb them. He was
born in Holland in 1932 and felt the call to the priesthood very early in
life. After study, he was ordained a
diocesan priest. During this time he
also studied psychology at a Dutch Catholic University. In 1964, he moved to the United States to
study at the Menninger Clinic. He also
taught there as well as the University of Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard. He spent some time during the 70’s with
Trappist monks in New York State and then in the early 80’s he spent some time
working with the poor in Peru.
In 1985, he
made the most significant move of his life and became affiliated with L’Arche
communities founded by Jean Vanier where communities of people with
developmental disabilities and their assistants lived side by side. Nouwen came to make the L’Arche Daybreak
Community near Toronto his home.
According to Sister Sue Mosteller, another religious pilgrim who found a
home in L’Arche communites, “His
passion was to teach pastoral theology, and his desire was to convince his
listeners that pastoring meant walking in the footsteps of Jesus with the
people close to those who suffer in body and spirit, unafraid of sharing the
pain and vulnerability and being present as a brother or sister”. Nouwen
was never really at peace in the halls of academia; and, instead, preferred to
live side by side with some of the neediest people on earth.
One of Nouwen’s earliest books is
called, The Wounded Healer. It is the book that first introduces many
seminarians to his belief that the only way we can serve others, whether as
clergy or laity, is to allow God to utilize one’s own pain as a channel of
healing for others. He said, “In our own woundedness, we can become
sources of life for others.” Nouwen’s books share with us his profound
suffering in his own humanity. And when
you read them, you feel a tremendous sensitivity at work. His call to all Christians, clergy and lay
alike is found in this statement: “In
a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged
vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal
all wounds.”
Henri
Nouwen embodied the belief that walking in the footsteps of Jesus demanded that
we be known in our own truth. But, this
did not mean wallowing in one’s pain or displaying it with flourishes and
trumpets. It meant, for Nouwen, simply
understanding pain as part of the nature of being human. More importantly, it meant becoming
completely human, as Jesus was completely human. And for us, it means
personifying the same compassion that flowed through Jesus in his earthly
ministry. “Compassion”, says Nouwen, “asks us to
go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness,
fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in
misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears.
Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the
vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion
in the condition of being human.”
Nouwen,
however, was not one to sit in an ivory tower and simply write books about
lofty theological concepts. His friend,
Sister Sue, tells us, “He loved to be where the action
was. He joined the Civil Rights march at Selma, he went to Martin Luther
King’s funeral, and he met with senators in Washington and elsewhere.” He tied together
the revolutionary and the mystic. He
calls us to understand. “It is my
growing conviction”, he says, “that in Jesus the mystical and revolutionary ways are not opposites, but two
sides of the same human mode of experiential transcendence. I am increasingly
convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution. Therefore
every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who
walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human
society. Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring
about radical change. No mystic can prevent himself from becoming a social
critic, since in self-reflection he will discover the roots of a sick society.
Similarly, no revolutionary can avoid facing his own human condition, since in
the midst of his struggle for a new world he will find that he is also fighting
his own reactionary fears and false ambitions.”
Some
of us might have found Nouwen tough to be around. He was so real, so thoroughly in touch with
every aspect of the human condition that I imagine people experienced him as a
little intense for everyday consumption.
And, yet, he was most at home with some of the simplest people on earth,
those who had been completely marginalized from society. His book, Adam, chronicled his caregiving relationship with one of the residents at
the community who could not speak. And,
yet, the story so powerfully tells of the relationship between the two of them
and the fulfillment that Nouwen experienced by meeting this young man’s daily
needs that one is moved to understand at a profound level the interaction of
compassion and love. Nouwen calls us to
explore our own woundedness so that we may be true spiritual companions to
those we meet along this sometimes rough and bumpy road.
This
embracing of our woundedness was thoroughly embedded in the experience of
knowing oneself as ‘beloved’. Perhaps
his most popular book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, helps us understand that we are all God’s children who are coming
home to the knowledge that we are loved by God.
He, himself, came to this understanding after a three year period of
great depression and searching. In the
midst of this spiritual crisis, he was touched by a painting of that homecoming
by Rembrandt. By sharing his experience,
he encouraged us to embrace our own ‘belovedness’. This is no easy task. Even today, if I asked you to pause for a
moment and allow God’s spirit to speak to you of being beloved by God, it would
be difficult for many—it is so hard for many of us to fully grasp that we, like
Jesus, are completely loved by God. We
allow our woundedness to separate us from God’s completely restoring love. Nouwen says, “One way to express the spiritual crisis
of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found
there.” Our first reading is a song of
praise by David after God saved him from his enemies and from Saul. Although, this is not the first time God has
saved him, David, nevertheless, is caught unaware. He says, “I stood there saved—surprised to be
loved!” Ah, David, we’re right there
with you. How often do we find ourselves
“surprised to be loved”. We have an
address—loved by God—but we are not found there. In our Gospel lesson we hear from Jesus, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When
you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic…” Joined with Jesus, our relationship is
intimately engaged with all of who we are and organically growing as we
encounter more and more of God.
A long period of declining energy led to his death on
September 21, 1996 from an unexpected heart attack. But he left us with a very different notion
of what it means to be a child of God in Christ. He calls us to wrap our loving arms around
our own hurts and scars and to allow God to do the same. Why?
So that we may show the face of one who knows she or he is beloved to
one who does not. He challenges us, “One
of the greatest tragedies of our life is that we
keep forgetting who we are”. Let us not
forget who we are this morning. May we
allow the gentle presence of God’s spirit to remind us that we are loved. May it be so.
98889Amen and amen and Namaste.
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