Saturday, October 8, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Claim your true vocation
A woman called out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”
We must look up first, and then out at each other. That’s what babies do, as they bond with their mamas. That’s astronauts do, as they blend into the universe. Seek first the Kingdom of God …
Just above my computer screen, when I look up, there is a big beautiful print of Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, a gift from our friend Cyndy many years ago. Henri Nouwen loved this painting and wrote a particularly confessional book with the same title. He went to Russia, to St. Petersburg, and spent hours in the Hermitage Museum looking into it more and more deeply.
Who did Henri identify with? Was he the prodigal? Or the elder son? Or even the father?
Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. You are all one in Christ Jesus.
Nouwen subtitled his book A Story of Homecoming. Perhaps he is all three characters in the story. Certainly we are all, all three. Nouwen’s gradual recognition of his own multiple personality is the story he tells in the book, a story of coming home to God, to the One who Loves.
He is amazed at the painting’s presence:
It is a huge work of oil on canvas, eight feet high by six feet wide. It took me awhile to simply be there, simply absorbing what I had so long hoped to see, simply enjoying the fact that I was all by myself sitting in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg looking at the “Prodigal Son” for as long as I wanted.
Rembrandt recognized the younger son in himself. Henri did too.
After all the work in my life, I felt homeless and very tired. When I saw the tender way in which the father touched the shoulders of his young son and held him close to his heart, I felt very deeply that I was that lost son and longed to return, as he did, to be embraced as he was.
But Henri had another side, and his friend Bart pointed that out to him. “I wonder if you are not more like the elder son.”
But isn’t that a good thing?
For my entire life I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But now I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was. I was the elder son for sure, and just as lost as the younger brother, even though I had stayed “home” all my life.
But the most intense was yet to come. At Daybreak, Nouwen fell into a deep disillusionment and depression. One day a founder of Daybreak, Sue Mosteller, surprised him with her frankness.
Henri, you have been looking for friends all your life. You have been craving affection as long as I’ve known you. You have been begging for attention, appreciation and affirmation left and right.
Henri stared at her. She did not blink as she continued,
The time has come to claim your true vocation – to be a father who can welcome his children home without asking them any questions and without wanting anything from them in return. Look at the father in your painting and you will know who you are called to be.
Henri might have felt ashamed. He might have felt any of a hundred falsely humbling weaknesses. Sue did not let him fall into the pit. She simply said,
We at Daybreak, and most people around you, don’t need you to be a good friend or even a kind brother. We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion.
Oh, yes. The authority of your true compassion frees me to weep, to feel my own weakness, to trust God’s touch through you. Can Henri Nouwen become that loving father at what turns out to be near the end of his life (he died suddenly at age 64)? His book makes that journey possible.
Nouwen wrote 39 books, including the aptly titled Wounded Healer. His heart gave out, but his heart also grew to bursting, and his life inspired so many others. Looking up, looking into the eyes of the authoritatively compassionate father, I am inspired too. Rembrandt and Nouwen, two of a kind, listening to God’s call and sharing it with the world.
Look to the Lord in his strength; seek to serve him at all times. Recall his wondrous deeds, his portents and his judgments. The Lord remembers his covenant forever.
(Galatians 3, Psalm 105, Luke 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
