Last Sunday's reflection: the God in me who prays

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1669, detail)

Last week’s reflection ended with words of Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), unquestionably one of the twentieth century’s greatest spiritual writers. This week we reflect on why it is that Henri Nouwen’s words speak to us as powerfully as they do. Are there lessons for us in our own prayer life? He wrote over 40 books: few have read each and every one of his works and no claim to completeness is made here.

         The chronological listing of his works brings out the main periods of his life; but neither these influences on nor the precise contents of his writings is our principal concern here. What we are looking for are some of the keys as to why his writings continue to have such a profound influence on Christian spirituality sixteen years after his death. There are various descriptions which may convey something of their tone: vulnerability (Nouwen’s openness to God and to his reader); compassion (the concern for others as the practical outreach of spiritual development); the assertion of the capacity for forgiveness as the test of the Christian life; hospitality as the visible evidence of our faith; the sense of the Christian journey as one of movement, especially of homecoming to God; and finally his recognition that prayer in a busy world is difficult and demands discipline: there can be no Christian discipleship without discipline (Show me the Way, 62).

         Nouwen accepts that ‘prayer is not our most natural response to the world. Left to our own impulses, we will always want to do something else before we pray.’ Yet prayer ‘is in many ways the criterion of Christian life’, ‘our first concern’; ‘we can do nothing at all, but… God can do everything through us’ (Seeds of Hope, pp. 116-117). At first we prefer to cling to a sorry past rather than trust in a new future; only when we dare to let go and surrender some of our many fears can our hands relax and our palms spread out in a gesture of receiving. Only gradually is there a new found freedom, a suspicion that to pray is to live (ibid. 118-19). ‘Compassion’, Nouwen teaches us, ‘lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings… but … I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me’ (ibid. 124).

‘Now I know’, Nouwen reveals in Show me the Way, ‘that it is not I who pray but the Spirit of God who prays in me. Indeed, when God’s glory dwells in me, there is nothing too far away, nothing too painful, nothing too strange or too familiar that it cannot contain and renew by its touch… He himself prays in me and touches the whole world with his love right here and now’ (Show me the Way, 76). The spiritual life is the life of true freedom, where we allow the Holy Spirit, God’s love, to be our only guide (ibid. 98). ‘It is the Holy Spirit of God who prays in us, who offers us the gifts of love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace and joy. It is the Holy Spirit who offers us the life that death cannot destroy’ (Bread for the Journey, 158).

         Listening to God’s ‘still small voice’ (Show me the Way, 62; 1 Kings 19:12) is the beginning of the move to an obedient life to God. ‘Without silence the Word cannot become our inner guide; without meditation it cannot build its home in our hearts and speak from there’ (Spiritual Formation, 27). Spiritual formation is ‘the gradual development of the heart of God in the life of a human being…’ (ibid. 38), but with the important proviso that Christians are destined for life in community: ‘spiritual formation always includes formation to life in community’ (ibid. 29). As people who build up a common life, Christians ‘are sent into this world to be people of reconciliation’ (ibid. 144).

         The dominating image for Nouwen in later life was Rembrandt’s remarkable depiction of the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, to which he alludes in several different contexts but chiefly in The Return of the Prodigal Son. A Story of Homecoming and Home Tonight. Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. After the destruction of Armero in Colombia following a volcanic eruption in 1986, he reflected: ‘As I pray and lift the thousands of people buried in Armero up to God, I see once again Rembrandt’s painting of the old father welcoming his lost son home. His large red cape has become so wide that it covers the whole globe. He says again: “You are safe, my children, you are safe with me. I love you all with a love that never dies. Do not be afraid, but love one another as I love you”’ (Seeds of Hope, 218).

‘Here is the God I want to believe in’, Nouwen writes in The Return of the Prodigal Son: ‘a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting: never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless’ (The Return, 95-6). ‘The true centre of Rembrandt’s painting is the hands of the father. On all them all the light is concentrated; on them the eyes of the bystanders are focused; in them mercy becomes flesh; upon them forgiveness, reconciliation and healing come together, and through them, not only the tired son, but also the worn-out father find their rest… Those hands are God’s hands. They are also the hands of my parents, teachers, friends, healers and all those whom God has given me to remind me of how safely I am held. Not long after Rembrandt painted the father and his blessing hands, he died’ (ibid. 96).

         Reflecting on the relationship between Jesus and the Father in a workshop held on the Rembrandt painting, Nouwen concluded: ‘the parable of the prodigal son invites our reflection on this great, great revelation of amazing good news. The story embodies the relationship. Look again at the Rembrandt painting of a father laying hands on his young son. Feel those hands and remember how such loving tenderness affects us and makes us live. We may know the anguish of not being touched with love, but these incredible hands lift us from our knees in total forgiveness while healing our broken hearts’ (Home Tonight, 97).

Note: descriptions of Nouwen’s books are to be found on the website: www.henrinouwen.org/Books/Bibliography/Bibliography.aspx

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1669, detail)

Last Sunday’s thought (Bible Sunday): how might Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures? One suggested view.

Where does the term ‘Bible’ come from?
‘Do you remember how our hearts were burning inside us, as he talked to us on the road, as he opened up the Bible for us?’ Instead of translating the Greek Graphe with  the usual phrase ‘the Scriptures’, Tom Wright’s translation of Luke 24:32 in The New Testament for Everyone alludes to the Greek phrase ta biblia, ‘the books’, an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of Jesus. This is the origin of the English word ‘Bible’. (The Christian scriptures were referred to in Greek as Ta Biblia as early as c. 223 AD.)

Three big stories
In The Heart of Christianity. Rediscovering a Life of Faith (at p. 177), Marcus J. Borg writes: ‘strikingly, but not surprisingly, the New Testament understandings of Jesus correlate with the macro-stories of the Hebrew Bible. The story of Jesus thus becomes a story of salvation.’  This is only one way, among many others, of reading the Bible holistically, but it is worth seeing how this might work. What are the the big stories of the Hebrew Scriptures that are echoed in the New Testament? Borg describes three of the big stories as a ‘pastoral tool kit’, each one addressing a different dimension of the human condition.


1. For some of us the need is liberation. 
The story of the exodus from Egypt is seminal to the Hebrew people and is echoed throughout the Psalms. The human problem is akin to the bondage and slavery suffered by the Israelites in Egypt.  Pharoah was a real historical figure but is also a metaphor for what keeps us in bondage. It is a life of powerlessness and victimization. Exodus, liberation, the way out of Egypt is the solution, but not the end of the story, because the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
     
In the New Testament, the metaphorical equivalent of the exodus story is Jesus’ gospel of liberation, the story of the one who has come to set the captives free. It is centred on Jesus’ announcement of the Jubilee in Luke ch. 4: ‘the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” ’  Much of this gospel of liberation is announced in Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the Mount. It is radical stuff. It is what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of the world were not. In God’s kingdom, in contrast to the real kingdoms then in existence, and the real states in existence now, there would, for example, be enough bread for all.
 2. For others of us, the need is homecoming.  
The story of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE is well known because of Psalm 137: ‘By the waters of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!’ The Babylonian captivity is a story of separation and alienation both psychological and spiritual, which is only overcome with the right of return granted by King Darius and the reconnection with God through the rebuilding of the Temple. For the early followers of Jesus, the new faith was ‘the way’. The gospel story of his life, death and resurrection is about homecoming. Our salvation is about homecoming, it is about turning to God in repentance (metanoia); it is about an open heart; we see anew with ‘the eyes of our hearts enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:18). 

Among Jesus’ stories the one that captures this transformation or homecoming most readily is the  parable of the return of the Prodigal Son, the subject of a superb extended meditation by Henri J. M. Nouwen. He writes of ‘the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through his cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God. Jesus, who told the story to those who criticized him for associating with sinners, himself lived the long and painful journey that he describes.’