{"id":1544,"date":"2017-03-26T11:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1544"},"modified":"2021-02-22T14:50:49","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T19:50:49","slug":"in-conversation-with-nouwen-the-wounded-healer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2017\/03\/26\/in-conversation-with-nouwen-the-wounded-healer\/","title":{"rendered":"In Conversation with Nouwen: The Wounded Healer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the\u00a0full service<\/a><\/p>\n

John \u00a09:1-11<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u2018The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, \u2018Go to Siloam and wash\u2019. \u00a0Then I went and washed and received my sight.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us draw wisdom from Scripture, insight from theology, and encouragement from experience this Lord\u2019s day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scripture<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

(The Two Level Drama of the Fourth Gospel)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us draw wisdom from Scripture.<\/span><\/p>\n

John 9 describes the healing of a man born blind, and the communal controversy surrounding that healing. \u00a0Like the rest of the Gospel, this passage reports two layers of healing, of blindness, of community, and of controversy. \u00a0\u00a0On one hand, the passage remembers, perhaps by the aid of a source or as part of a source, a moment in the ministry of Jesus (30ad), in which a man is given sight. \u00a0On the other hand, the passage announces the spiritual unshackling of a hero in thecommunity (90ad), who bears witness to what Jesus has done for him, no matter the repercussions from others, from parents, from family, from community. <\/span><\/p>\n

The preacher in the Johannine community of the late first century is telling the story of the Son of Man. \u00a0To do so, he celebrates the courageous witness to healing, and the courageous endurance of expulsion, of a man born blind. \u00a0Here, he says, is what I mean by faith. \u00a0The story he<\/span> uses<\/span><\/i> comes, through un-trackable oral and written traditions, from 30ad. \u00a0The story he <\/span>tells<\/span><\/i> comes from 90ad. \u00a0Every character in the story has two roles. \u00a0Jesus is both earthly rabbi and heavenly redeemer. \u00a0The blind man is both historic patient and current hero. \u00a0The family is from both Palestinian memory and diaspora synagogue. \u00a0The Jews are both the contemporaries of Jesus and the nearby inhabitants of the synagogue, the Johannine community\u2019s former home. \u00a0\u00a0When Jesus gives sight, Christ gives freedom. \u00a0When the blind one is cured, the congregation sees truth. \u00a0When the man is cast out of his synagogue, the community of the beloved disciple recognizes their own most recent expulsion. \u00a0When the Jews criticize Jesus, the synagogue is criticizing the church. \u00a0When the healing story ends, the life of faith begins. \u00a0His voice both addresses you and emanates from you. \u00a0Not your voice, his is nonetheless your voice. <\/span><\/p>\n

John 9 illumines the central struggle of the community, their bitter spiritual itinerancy from the familiar confines of Christian Judaism, out into the unknown wilderness of Jewish Christianity. \u00a0History and the history of religions bear manifold witness to this kind of crisis in communal identity, and the long hard trail of travel from primary to secondary identity. \u00a0In retrospect, as the community gathers itself in its new setting (the pilgrims in Boston, the Mormons in Utah) the story of the tearful trail itself becomes the heart of communal memory and imagination.<\/p>\n

What is here unearthed in John 9 can also and readily be applied to the rest of the Gospel of John as well: \u00a0to the wedding at Cana, to Nicodemus, to the woman at the well, to the healing on the water, to the feeding of the thousands, to the controversies with the Jews, to the raising of Lazarus, to the farewell discourse, to the trial and passion. \u00a0All of these reflect the experience in dramatic interaction between the synagogue and John\u2019s church. This includes, later, the mysterious figure of the Paraclete, the Spirit, who functions as Jesus\u2019 eternal presence in the world, Jesus, God \u2018striding on earth\u2019 (Kasemann). \u00a0In this way, the Paraclete himself creates the two level drama. \u00a0Where the world is mono focal, and can see only the historical level of Jesus in history or only the theological level of Jesus in the witness of the Christian community, the Paraclete binds the two together. \u00a0The Word dwelling among us, and our beholding his glory, are not past events only. \u00a0They transpire in a two level drama. \u00a0They transpire both on the historical and contemporary levels, <\/span>OR NOT AT ALL<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0Their transpiration on both levels is itself the good news, an overture to the rapturous discoveries of freedom in disappointment, grace in dislocation, and love in departure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wisdom from Scripture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Theology<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

(The Voice of Henri Nouwen on the Wounded Healer)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us draw insight from theology.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a season of general, national interest in wounds and healing, it is timely, serendipitous even, for us to hear about the healing of the man born blind in John 9, and more so to hear from our celebrated, honored Roman Catholic theological conversation partner for Lent 2017, Henri Nouwen, of blessed memory, on his most revered theme, that of the \u2018wounded healer\u2019. \u00a0His book of that title reminded another generation, and can teach us all still, about the interconnection between our own wounds and the healing of others. \u00a0Nouwen explored in that monograph, <\/span>The Wounded Healer, <\/span><\/i>four different doors of entry into ministry: \u00a0the suffering world, a suffering generation, human suffering in general, and the condition of the suffering minister. \u00a0While Nouwen\u2019s work is sometimes criticized as \u2018theology lite\u2019, its accessibility has provided many with a profound sense of the relational dimensions of gospel, of philosophy, of preaching, of ministry and of therapy.<\/span><\/p>\n

His chief concern he identifies clearly (p 47):<\/span> \u2018The task of Christian leaders is to bring out the best in everyone and to lead them forward to a more human community; the danger is that their skillful diagnostic eye will become more an eye for the distant and detailed analysis than the eye of a compassionate partner. \u00a0And if priests and ministers think that more skill training is the solution for the problem of Christian leadership, they may end up being more frustrated and disappointed than the leaders of the past. \u00a0More training and structure are just as necessary as more bread for the journey. \u00a0But just as bread given without love can bring war instead of peace, professionalism without compassion will turn forgiveness into a gimmick, and the kingdom to come into a blindfold\u2019.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Compassion, not analysis, comes first. \u00a0Compassion, suffering with: \u00a0<\/span>It is not the task of Christian leaders to go around nervously trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them on the right track. \u00a0For we are redeemed, once and for all. \u00a0Christian leaders are called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the curtain of our painful symptoms, there is something to be seen: \u00a0the face of God in whose image we are shaped (48).<\/span><\/i> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The manner by which compassion comes into life is, for Nouwen, utterly personal. \u00a0While he was not a Lutheran\u2014far from it\u2014he would probably have agreed with Luther that the preaching of the Gospel is \u2018one beggar telling another where they both may find bread\u2019. \u00a0In fact, there is hardly a more personal calling than a calling to pastoral ministry. And what a privilege it is to enter and live in such a calling. \u00a0A privilege to be able to be with people at the dawn of life, in the twilight of life, under the shadows of life. \u00a0To hold murmuring infants, to confirm squirming teenagers, to bless nervous not to say clueless grooms and brides, to wring hands and pray at the bedside when the outcomes are uncertain at best, to listen in tears to the pain of loss, divorce, failure, emptiness, to stand over the open grave in quiet. \u00a0You can make a lot more money doing something else, and you can achieve a lot more influence, of a certain sort, doing something else, and you can have a lot more free time doing something else, and there are many worthy callings, many ways to keep faith. \u00a0But there is nothing quite like the privilege\u2014the joy, the hurt, the rigor, the demand\u2014the privilege of pastoral ministry. \u00a0And how hungry our people are for it. \u00a0There is nothing else like it in all of life. \u00a0\u2018<\/span>The emptiness of the past and future can never be filled with words, but only with the presence of a human being\u2019. (69).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Perhaps Nouwen is best remembered for this phrase, \u2018the wounded healer\u2019. \u00a0<\/span>\u2018Since it is their task to make visible the first vestiges of liberation for others, (ministers) must bind their own wounds carefully, in anticipation of the moment when they will be needed. \u00a0They are each called to be the wounded healer, the ones who must not only look after their own wounds but at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others. \u00a0They are both wounded ministers and healing ministers.\u2019 (88) <\/span><\/i>Now, when the balance between the two goes off-kilter, and wounds eclipse health, we have a problem. \u00a0But the appellation is true enough, when truly pursued. \u00a0It is perhaps most apparent in loneliness. \u00a0The ministry is lonely, but only lonely in a way representative of all faithful life. \u00a0In the last few years, the utter uniqueness of grief, for each person, the individuality of the way we grieve\u2014the very opposite of one size fits all\u2014has stood out, for me. \u00a0Your grief, though shared and made common in the community of faith, is nonetheless idiosyncratic\u2014your own most self in tears, your spiritual fingerprint, your religious voice, your manner of walking in walking the faith. \u00a0All the cautions of Nouwen\u2019s book are worthy. \u00a0But the capacity for hospitality, the power in hospitality, that comes here into ministry is unmistakable. \u00a0<\/span>Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes close-minded sectarians into recipients of new ideas and insights (95)\u2026.Ministers are not doctors whose primary task is to take away pain. \u00a0Rather, they deepen the pain to a level where it can be shared. \u00a0When people come with their loneliness to ministers, they can only expect that their loneliness will be understood and felt, so that they no longer have to run away from it, but can accept it as an expression of the basic human condition.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Insight from theology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Experience<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

(A Thought on Entering Ministry, 1953, Rev. Mr. Irving G. Hill)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

From experience we may draw encouragement. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is a memory, written in 2006, drawn from 1953. \u00a0That is, sixty-five years past, it is about the same distance from us in time as was the Gospel of John from the events in the life, death and destiny of Jesus of Nazareth. \u00a0The writer, my father, was soon to graduate from the School of Theology.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne balmy spring evening, in the early fifties, I was returning to our apartment at 17 Yarmouth Street in Boston\u2026<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

As I walked across Huntington Avenue, I looked to my left and saw the lighted dome of the Christian Science Mother Church. I had seen it many times before. \u00a0I had taken our youth fellowship there to visit and walk through the giant globe that is there. \u00a0But this evening as I made that familiar crossing I was struck, not by an auto, but by the reality that in just a few days I would receive my theological degree and become the pastor of the Brewerton Methodist Church. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

How could this be? What was I to do? I was only 24 years old. \u00a0I had never dealt with death except in theory. \u00a0I had never sat with a couple after the death of a child. \u00a0I had never counseled a couple preparing for marriage except in a classroom setting. \u00a0To my recollection I had never spoken with a person who had no belief in God or saw any reason for one. \u00a0I had never thought how a church budget was raised or more significantly how my salary would be paid. \u00a0In a few days, I would be facing all of these things and more.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I recalled a conversation that occurred at the just past annual conference with a committee from the Brewerton church. \u00a0One of the saints said to me, \u201cYoung man, if you get a better offer, you had better take it, I don\u2019t know how we will be able to pay your salary.\u201d How about that?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Now, I had grown up in the church, attended church school, taught church school. \u00a0I had been active in the youth fellowship at the local level and the conference level. \u00a0Marcia and I had spent one summer as life guards at Camp Casowasco. \u00a0But now I was to be the pastor of a church in a community that I had only driven through. \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Of course, I had graduated from a Methodist related university and had the privilege of studying at one of the better theological schools for three years, but on that June evening in the middle of that empty thoroughfare, I was totally lost. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Then I heard, \u201cYou don\u2019t think you are going to do this all by yourself do you? \u00a0Surely I will be with you.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I heard that voice as clearly as I have ever heard anything and it has remained with me for these past 53 years.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

It has taken the form of a loving, supportive wife, a devoted family, dedicated and caring lay people, inspired bishops, superintendents, and brother and sister clergy, group commanders, wing chaplains and people of God, just like you.\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Encouragement from experience.<\/p>\n

Scripture. Theology. Experience. \u00a0Wisdom. Insight. Encouragement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, \u2018Go to Siloam and wash\u2019. \u00a0Then I went and washed and received my sight.\u2019<\/span>
\nAmen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the\u00a0full service John \u00a09:1-11 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only \u2018The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, \u2018Go to Siloam and wash\u2019. \u00a0Then I went and washed and received my sight.\u2019 Let us draw wisdom from Scripture, insight from theology, and […]<\/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\/1544"}],"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=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1888,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions\/1888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}