Nouwen: More on the Elder Brother

Here I see how lost the elder son is. He has become a foreigner in his own home. True communion is gone. Every relationship is pervaded by the darkness. To be afraid or to show disdain, to suffer submission or to enforce control, to be an oppressor or to be a victim: these have become the choices for one outside of the light. Sins cannot be confessed, forgiveness cannot be received, the mutuality of love cannot exist. True communication has become impossible.

I know the pain of this predicament. In it, everything loses its spontaneity. Everything becomes suspect, self-conscious, calculated, and full of second-guessing. There is no longer any trust. Each little move calls for a countermove; each little remark begs for analysis; the smallest gesture has to be evaluated. This is the pathology of darkness.

Is there a way out? I don’t think there is—at least not on my side. It often seems that the more I try to disentangle myself from the darkness, the darker it becomes. I need light, but that light has to conquer my darkness, and that I cannot bring about myself. I cannot forgive myself. I cannot make myself feel loved. By myself I cannot leave the land of my anger. I cannot bring myself home nor can I create communion on my own. I can desire it, hope for it, wait for it, yes, pray for it. But my true freedom I cannot fabricate for myself. That must be given to me. I am lost. I must be found and brought home by the shepherd who goes out to me. - Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p.82

The Case Against Marriage

Here's something to think about, from the June 21 issue of Newsweek:

Comments, anyone?

Weeds

I was out last week pulling weeds in the flowerbed under the tree and got to thinking, not for the first time, about how the Church can be more like a weed than a flower or a fruit tree.

Every time I try to get rid of the weeds I marvel at how resilient they are. Most of the time you don’t really pull them out by the roots; you break them off, and they’ll just happily regrow. They not only survive but thrive in conditions that would kill any plant you really want to grow. Can you imagine trying to get a tomato plant to grow out of a crack in the sidewalk? Yet I’ve seen crabgrass flourishing on a cement surface hot enough to fry an egg. The deadliest herbicide known, which is most familiar under the trade name Roundup, is supposed to leave any area where it’s sprayed totally devoid of plant life. But I’ve gone over an area with this nuclear option, watched the weeds wither and die, only to notice them coming back a few days or weeks later. Did some survive the onslaught? Did new seeds blow in? It really doesn’t matter, because the weeds won. They always do.

Well, the Church is like that in a lot of ways: not always pretty, but tough and resilient, popping up again and again in places where it was supposed to be dead or dying, reseeding itself in places where it was supposed to be stamped out, growing in places you would swear couldn’t support life. You can pull it up, root it out, spray it with Roundup and pave over it, but it will always come back. The gates of Hell haven’t got a chance. (Matthew 16:18)

I first met Avon Murray when I went to the first church I served as a pastor. Avon was about 90 at the time and had attended an agricultural college for a couple of years after graduating from high school, which was an unusual thing for farm boys from Missouri in the early part of the 20th century. He told me that on the first day of class he learned the definition a weed: a weed, he was told, is “a plant out of place.” Every gardener, every farmer, can testify to the appropriateness of that definition. If you plant corn and it comes up, that’s good. If you plant soybeans and corn sprouts up because some seed stayed in the ground over the winter, that's bad. That corn just became a weed, like the volunteer tomatoes in my pea patch.

Sometimes the Church, too, is “out of place,” not accidentally, but by design. When we challenge conventional wisdom, when we speak out against injustice, when we witness to the good news of Jesus in a world of fear and unbelief, we are often told to get back in our proper place. And it’s tempting to do just that. That’s when we need to remember that we don’t get to pick the place where we are supposed to grow. That’s up to God. We may find ourselves planted, as the Church so often has over the millennia, in a pretty inhospitable place. If so, that may well be where we need to be. Remember that plants produce fruit, but they also, over time, break down rocks. And that may be what we’re called to do, too.

Nouwen: the Underside of Virtue

The more I reflect on the elder son in me, the more I realize how deeply rooted this form of lostness really is and how hard it is to return home from there. Returning home from a lustful escapade seems so much easier than returning home from a cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being. My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally.
It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue. - Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p.75, my emphasis

Spiritual Letdowns

Reading over the story of Elijah's encounter with the “still, small voice” of God in 1 Kings 19, I was struck, as I almost always am, by how this episode comes immediately after what most people would consider Elijah’s greatest triumph.

According to 1 Kings 18, the kingdom is in the third year of a God-ordained drought, a drought meant to bring the people to their senses and leave off the worship of Baal. Baal-worship, you may remember, had been introduced by King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Apparently now the time is ripe for a direct confrontation between Elijah, the one prophet of Israel’s God, and the 450 prophets of Baal.

This is a vivid, memorable story: the construction of the two altars, the preparation of the two sacrifices, the prophets of Baal “limping” around the altar (1 Kings 18:26, NRSV), crying out to their god, cutting themselves “as was their custom” and being mocked by Elijah: “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” (1 Kings 18:27 NRS) The writer concludes, “Midday passed, and they ranted on until the time when the offering is presented; but there was no voice, no answer, no sign of attention.” (1 Kings 18:29 NJB)

You remember the rest: unlike the unresponsive Baal, the Lord answered with fire that burned up not only the offering, but the very stones of the altar. This was followed by a bloodbath as the people seized the Baal-prophets at Elijah’s instigation and slaughtered them to a man. Then Elijah prayed, and the rains came (1 Kings 18:41ff., a passage cited by James 5:17-18 to illustrate the power of prayer).

Elijah should have been on top of the world. He had demonstrated decisively who was the true God in Israel, and had established himself as God’s prophet. But when Jezebel sent word that she was planning to have him killed for his part in the challenge to the state religion, Elijah went into a funk. He ran off to the desert and hid in a cave. When God challenged him, he whined, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” (1 Kings 19:10 NRS)

I don’t know about you, but that’s been true to my experience, though on a much smaller scale. I’ve been part of something really good in the church—a baptism, a Confirmation Class, a special service of some kind—and felt blessed and lifted up by it. Then I come down to earth and start feeling sorry for myself, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because, like Elijah, I expect God’s voice to come out of the wind, earthquake, and fire, and I’m disappointed that it’s only “a sound of sheer silence.” (1 Kings 19:12, NRSV) But that's often the way God chooses to speak to me, and who am I to tell God how to communicate?

The other thing about the story, of course, is that Elijah thinks he’s all alone, the last man standing, the only faithful follower in Israel. No, says God; I have chosen a king to succeed Ahab, I have chosen a prophet to succeed you, and I have seven thousand faithful people. Not many, in terms of the whole population, but enough. God is still at work, whether we know it or not. And that’s the good news.

Nouwen on the Elder Brother

The obedient and dutiful life of which I am proud or for which I am praised feels, sometimes, like a burden that was laid on my shoulders and continues to oppress me, even when I have accepted it to such a degree that I cannot throw it off. I have no difficulty identifying with the elder son of the parable who complained, “All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends.” In this complaint, obedience and duty have become a burden, and service has become slavery. - Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p.70

Prayer for the Day

Found this today in the Book of Common Worship for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time:

Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labor and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do your will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.