{"id":1541,"date":"2017-03-19T11:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2021-02-22T14:51:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T19:51:07","slug":"in-conversation-with-nouwen-the-life-of-the-beloved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2017\/03\/19\/in-conversation-with-nouwen-the-life-of-the-beloved\/","title":{"rendered":"In Conversation with Nouwen: The Life of the Beloved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to\u00a0the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

John\u00a0\u00a04:5-42<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

Life for All<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018A spring of water gushing up to eternal life\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

The gospel is our spoken gift of faith.<\/p>\n

Some will have seen the recent film \u2018La La Land\u2019, and recall the haunting soulful tune that knits the story together. That phrase of music is the refrain from which the story takes wing and to which it returns, moment by moment, as your life and soul life return, again and again, to the gospel, a spoken gift of faith, the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. Spoken, sung.<\/p>\n

Sung. Every bird sings faith, over the globe, through all time. Thurman loved penguins, odd and remote, and their dress, and their song. Listen. Along the Charles, in the spring, we make way for goslings and ducklings. Early in the summer mornings, out in the farmland where we live in the summer, the northeastern tip of Appalachia, and where we will be buried, where we are at home, at dawn a rooster. Two eagles\u2014they too mate for life, as in Christian marriage\u2014soaring–imagine their music. The owl at night. A swan song, a silver swan, who living had no note. The gospel is a bird in song, and all nature sings. Even if or when the preaching of the gospel by human imperfection abates, as it does threaten to do, birdsong will carry the tune. God can preach God\u2019s gospel through birdsong.<\/p>\n

Spoken. Derek Walcott, of Boston University, a Methodist: I seek, as climate seeks its style, to write verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight, cold as the curled wave, ordinary as a tumbler of island water.<\/em><\/p>\n

John<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Father Raymond Brown judged our passage today, John 4, to be the loveliest, finest narrative in the Fourth Gospel. The woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, meets Jesus and meets us in conversation. She is the quintessential conversationalist.<\/p>\n

And what a wonder is there in the faintest conversation, let alone this dominical discussion! Ours today, from John 4, is holy, telling conversation, full of the unexpected, full of surprise, full of the utterly personal, full of revelation, full of boundary breaking courage, full of what is saving, healthy, lasting, meaningful, real, and good. Conversation thrives when you know your content, your work, and your audience. There is a mystery lurking under the disarming surface of the simplest conversation. My friend says her favorite two words are \u2018awe\u2019 and \u2018conversation\u2019. We could add that the two are not very far removed, or apart from each other.<\/p>\n

It may have been that the community which gave birth to the Gospel of John included some Samaritans. This would explain the prominence of this long, intricate passage, devoted to the conversation of Jesus with a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were outsiders. Here, one of their own takes center stage. In our time when those outside\u2014immigrants, refugees, the poor, the different, the other\u2014are steadily subjected to heightened measures of exclusion, we benefit from reminders, like this from John 4, that we are called as people of faith, called as Christian people, to care, succor, attention and protection of the \u2018least\u2019 among us. The larger question, and it is very much an open question, is whether the humiliation spreading out right now through civil society and culture–wherein inherited, precious forms of civil society are daily shredded with a gratuitous cruelty–coming now to us over the next decade, will chasten us, will humble us, will in that way strengthen us by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. He it is, today, who announces His own presence, and Lordship, in the course of a meandering conversation: I am He, the One who is speaking to you\u2026A spring of water gushing up to eternal life<\/em><\/p>\n

Lenten Conversation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the year 2017, at Marsh Chapel, we are engaged in ministry with attention to conversation. Our Summer National Preacher Series will engage in conversation about new directions in discipleship. Our Lenten Series, beginning today, will engage in conversation with Henri Nouwen. Over the past decade, Lent by Lent, we have identified a theological conversation partner for the Lenten sermons, broadly speaking, out of the Calvinist tradition. For the next decade, we turn to the Catholic tradition. Over the next decade, beginning this Lent 2017, the Marsh pulpit, a traditionally Methodist one, will turn left, not right, toward Rome not Geneva, and we will preach with, and learn from the Roman Catholic tradition. We began March 5 with Henri Nouwen, and Sacrament<\/em>, continuing last week with Nouwen and Reaching Out.<\/em> Today, Nouwen and the Life of the Beloved.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nouwen (from the \u2018Nouwen Society\u2019)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe internationally renowned priest and author, respected professor and beloved pastor Henri Nouwen wrote over 40 books on the spiritual life. He corresponded regularly in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish with hundreds of friends and reached out to thousands through his Eucharistic celebrations, lectures and retreats. Since his death in 1996, ever-increasing numbers of readers, writers, teachers and seekers have been guided by his literary legacy. Nouwen\u2019s books have sold over 8 million copies and been published in over 28 languages.<\/p>\n

Born in Holland, 1932, Nouwen felt called to the priesthood at a very young age. He was ordained in 1957 as a diocesan priest and studied psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. In 1964 he moved to the United States to study at the Menninger Clinic. He went on to teach at the University of Notre Dame, and the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. For several months during the 1970s, Nouwen lived and worked with the Trappist monks in the Abbey of the Genesee, and in the early 1980s he lived with the poor in Peru. In 1985 he was called to join L\u2019Arche in Trosly, France, the first of over 100 communities founded by Jean Vanier where people with developmental disabilities live with assistants. A year later Nouwen came to make his home at L\u2019Arche Daybreak near Toronto, Canada. He died suddenly on September 21st<\/sup>, 1996, in Holland and is buried in Richmond Hill, Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nouwen believed that what is most personal is most universal; he wrote, \u201cBy giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Servants of God<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nouwen dedicated his life to the practice of genuine conversation, genuine faithfulness. He eschewed the false formal and prized the personal in piety. A story, from the same period, from Charles Rice at Drew, Nouwen would hae loved. A few years ago Rice spoke about the servant of the servants of God. He told about an Easter when he was in Greece. He sat in the Orthodox church and watched the faithful in devotions. There was a great glassed icon of Christ, to which, following prayers, women and men would move, then kneel, then as they rose they kissed the glassed icon. Every so often a woman dressed in black would emerge from the shadows with some cleanser, or windex, and a cloth and \u2013psh, psh\u2014would clean the image, making it clear again. Washing clean the image again, and freeing it from so much encrusted piety. And he had a revelation about service and power and authority and leadership. As he watched the woman in black cleaning the icon, he realized that this was what his ministry was meant to be. A daily washing away from the face of Christ all that obscured, all that distorted, all that blocked others from seeing his truth, goodness and beauty. Including a lot of piety<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Life of the Beloved<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Years ago, by accident, Nouwen met a man named Fred, a journalist who wanted to write a novel.\u00a0 (We had a saying in our family, when intrusive questions arose; \u2018Are you a journalist or writing a book?\u2019)\u00a0 Well, Fred was the former and hoping to do the latter.\u00a0 But he feared a shift in vocation, for all the usual suspect reasons.\u00a0 Henri though persisted in encouraging the man to leave his job and write his book.\u00a0 He went out of his way.\u00a0 Nouwen procured him a grant to do so!\u00a0 So the man entered a new season of vocational discernment, and though he never finished the novel, he did find a deeper level of living, a sense of meaning, and, in the bargain, a great friend in Nouwen.<\/p>\n

We might pause to wonder a bit about our callings.\u00a0 Is this your final resting place in vocation\u2014where you are now I mean?\u00a0 You have heard some sort of call, and heeded, or you would not be where you are.\u00a0 But what about the second call?\u00a0 Is there a knocking at your spiritual door, asking you to consider a second call, another call?\u00a0 Fred was a good journalist, but he heard a second call, to write, and in hearing, and in heeding, though not in his case in succeeding, he found himself closer to his own most self.\u00a0 Life is a series of invitations, and a process of discernment. We might pause right now, in front of God and everybody, to wonder about our callings.<\/p>\n

Last year at commencement we had a speaker who told about a second call.\u00a0 Not all commencement addresses need or even deserve remembrance.\u00a0 But it had a diamond embedded in it, a treasure buried in a field.\u00a0 The speaker graduated from BU as an actress and went to La La Land.\u00a0 She did what aspiring actors do.\u00a0 She waited tables.\u00a0 For a year.\u00a0 And another.\u00a0 And a third.\u00a0 Then she got a job, part time, on the business side of show business.\u00a0 You know what?\u00a0 She liked it.\u00a0 And it liked her.\u00a0 Then she said:\u00a0 \u201cI looked at my acting career lived out in waiting tables, and I made a decision.\u00a0 I decided my calling was to something else.\u00a0 I decided to (here is the gem) EDIT MY DREAMS.\u201d\u00a0 She decided to edit her dreams.\u00a0 So Nina Tassler, waitress, became the head of CBS entertainment. Yes.\u00a0 Sometimes a second call comes along and invites you to edit your dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

Henri Nouwen invited Fred to edit his dreams.\u00a0 And he did.\u00a0 Then Fred invited Henri to edit his dreams, in this way.\u00a0 He asked Nouwen to write a simple book about the spiritual life in a secular world, a book for ordinary people, not academics, ordinary people, not clergy, ordinary people, not even religious people.\u00a0 This took Nouwen out of his comfort zone, but out of that zone he went.\u00a0 He wrote a book, The Life of the Beloved.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our Gospel today, John 4, has a radiance of love within it, as does Nouwen\u2019s book.\u00a0 Here, in brief, is what Nouwen wrote, this esteemed Roman Catholic theologian, this Yale academic, this profoundly erudite priest.\u00a0 It is portable, what he wrote.\u00a0 You can carry it home after the sermon.\u00a0 You are beloved!\u00a0 You are loved.\u00a0 God loves, and loves you.\u00a0 And you need not do anything to prove it, to earn it, to achieve it, to deserve it.\u00a0 You:\u00a0 beloved.\u00a0 That is, in a single word, the life of the spirit.\u00a0 Beloved.<\/p>\n

But of course Nouwen went on to develop this theme, the trails and traces of the spirit in the single word.\u00a0 He put together a quadrilateral, what we can call the love quartet today.\u00a0 First, wrote Nouwen, to become beloved, we need to acknowledge that we are \u2018taken\u2019.\u00a0 Chosen.\u00a0 Wanted.\u00a0 And grateful for it!\u00a0 Second, to become beloved, we want to acknowledge that we are \u2018blessed\u2019.\u00a0 You are precious in God\u2019s sight, blessed, beloved.\u00a0 As you are, not as you might be later on.\u00a0 Right now, as you are right now.\u00a0 You claim your blessing through the practice of prayer and through attention to presence.\u00a0 My friend says her two favorite words are conversation and awe.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 There.\u00a0 Memorize a prayer or three (The Lord\u2019s Prayer, Wesley\u2019s Table Graces, the Prayer of Assisi).\u00a0 Third, to live as beloved we want to acknowledge our brokenness. \u201cEach human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers.\u201d (87)\u00a0 It will not do to repress our sadness, our resentment, our fear, our anger. No.\u00a0 We are human, beloved human beings, and so are honest about our fractures.\u00a0 Nouwen then wrote about AIDS, a crucial subject in that time (1992).\u00a0 To heal we have to step toward our pain.\u00a0 Here we can all learn from the 12 step programs, as long as we realize that there are many ways to be addicted that can have nothing to do with substances.\u00a0 You might be surprised to know that Nouwen\u2019s most personal example was his grief at the death of Leonard Bernstein.\u00a0 Fourth, we are given, as beloved ones.\u00a0 We are loved, but not just for our own sakes.\u00a0 As Huston Smith\u2014similarly an academic, similarly a theologian though a Methodist, similarly a cleric\u2014put it, thinking perhaps of his parents who were missionaries in China:\u00a0 \u2018we are in good hands, and so it behooves us to bear one another\u2019s burdens\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 When we enjoy others, and with joy give ourselves to others, and engage in enjoyment among others, then, in reality, we are given, because we are giving.\u00a0 You only truly have what you give away.\u00a0 Starting\u2014and ending\u2014with your time.\u00a0 Here Nouwen concludes, and rightly, by drawing us toward our own death, and the way we give of ourselves not just living but dying.\u00a0 (You remember my OOPS advice, as we prepare for the end of life:\u00a0 obituary, order of worship, photograph, special papers.) But Nouwen means something more:\u00a0 \u2018the spirit of love once freed from our mortal bodies will blow where it wills\u2019. (125).\u00a0 Chosen, Blessed, Broken, Given. \u201cEternal Life is the full revelation of what we have been and have lived all along\u201d (137).<\/p>\n

By grace we too, you and I, have been chosen and set in time and space, to live in faith. By grace we too, you and I have been blessed, sometimes with happiness and sometimes with loss, sometimes with fulfillment and sometimes with unrequited love. By grace, we too, you and I, in honesty, in confession, must add, we have been broken, our brokenness best sung maybe by Leonard Cohen\u2014ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that\u2019s how the light gets in\u2026forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that\u2019s how the light gets in\u2026there is a crack in everything, that\u2019s how the light gets in\u2026that\u2019s how the light gets in.<\/em> By grace we too, you and I have been given, to be gifts and become givers, to choose, tomorrow, one pure act of kindness, to imagine it, plan it, pray over it, do it, and watch it recede in the rear view window.<\/p>\n

In the student union, Thursday, a young pianist, of limited ability, but of great heart, played a tune, the haunting soulful tune you may have heard, remembered, from a current film. That phrase of music is the refrain from which the story takes wing and to which it returns, moment by moment, as your life and soul life return, again and again, to the gospel, a spoken gift of faith, the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.<\/p>\n

A spring of water gushing up to eternal life.<\/em><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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Click here to listen to\u00a0the full service John\u00a0\u00a04:5-42 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only Life for All \u2018A spring of water gushing up to eternal life\u2019. The gospel is our spoken gift of faith. Some will have seen the recent film \u2018La La Land\u2019, and recall the haunting soulful tune that knits the story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41,22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}