Offering Grace

I'm in the concluding chapter of The Return of the Prodigal Son (Henri Nouwen), so these thoughts are generated by that reading.

There is a technique for exploring Bible passages that involves placing yourself in each character of the story.  For the characters in Jesus' parable of the two sons, we can explore how we are like the younger son, who runs away and looses everything, only to return.  We can explore how we are like the older son, who resents the joy with which the father accepts the return of the younger son.  And there is the father.  Are we like one of the sons? Or are we like the father?\

Nouwen writes:  Do I want to be like the father? Do I want to be not just the one who is being forgiven, but also the one who forgives; not just the one who is being welcomed home, but also the one who welcomes home; not just the one who receives compassion, but the one who offers it as well?

We talk so much about being like the sons when the real question is: Are you interested in being like that father?  It feels somehow good to be able to say: "These sons are like me." It gives a sense of being understood.  But how does it feel to say: "The father is like me"?

Do we only want to be the recipient of grace? Are we willing to be the one who offers it?

Two Hands

We've talked about this image before.  Take a look again.

In the book The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen encourages us to look at the father's hands in the image.  One of them - the father's left hand - for Nouwen, looks fatherly - masculine. Embracing, strong.  The father's right hand looks motherly - feminine.  In fact, scholars had compared the father's right hand to the right hand of the woman in the Rembrandt's painting, The Jewish Bride.  

At the WV Annual Conference last year, we considered a potential amendment to the United Methodist Constitution designed to make a statement about the worthiness of girls and women - designed to protect them from abuse.  I talked about my disappointment in the discussion about it here.

The amendment that was brought before the Annual Conference for approval in 2017 read:

Amendment 1: As the Holy Scripture reveals, both men and women are made in the image of God and, therefore, men and women are of equal value in the eyes of God. The United Methodist Church recognizes it is contrary to Scripture and to logic to say that God is male or female, as maleness and femaleness are characteristics of human bodies and cultures, not characteristics of the divine. The United Methodist Church acknowledges the long history of discrimination against women and girls. The United Methodist Church shall confront and seek to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large. The United Methodist Church shall work collaboratively with others to address concerns that threaten the cause of women’s and girl's equality and well-being.

See the underlined sentence?  That sentence was what caused such a heated discussion in our Annual Conference. It actually had been dropped by the General Conference but included in the version that went out for approval by mistake.  The version without that sentence was resent to Annual Conferences for a vote this year, in 2018.

But take a look at that sentence in the light of the Rembrant painting - in the light of scripture.  Don't we see what we might consider both maleness and femaleness in God's actions in the Bible? Don't we see God acting as a mother and acting as a father? Why are some people so threatened by the idea that God is bigger than our ability to describe him? (Or her?).  Our words, as you can see, don't work. 

I think of God as male, because I always have, but I know my thoughts about God are limited. My image of God is created by me and is not God. I love the idea that Rembrant, in 1669, understood that.  Why can't we?

Discipline of Gratitude

Think about gratitude. Gratitude is a necessary. It's not an obligation, like saying the "magic words" of thank you when someone does something for you.  It's a way of living.  It's how we step away from resentment, greed, and selfishness.  It's how we open ourselves up to a life with God.  

Read this from Henri Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son:

Gratitude, however, goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift.  In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Have you ever considered gratitude to be a discipline? Do you make an explicit, intentional effort to recognize that "all you are and have is given to you as a gift of love."

What would change in your life (and in mine) if we practiced the discipline of gratitude?

In the image

I've written using this image before - it's the Rembrandt painting that inspired Henri Nouwen to write the book of the same name, The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Take a look at the father and the elder son (the character to the far right). Don't you see their similarity? The red cloaks, the beards, the light on their faces. There is no doubt that they are father and son.

And yet, there are differences, too.  Nouwen points out the open nature of the father's cloak compared the to closed nature of the son. The body language of each - the father reaching toward the younger son; the elder son standing apart.  

If we think of the father as representative of God, and the elder son as any of us, then what does this say about us? We are sons (and daughters) of the father, so much so that we are made in God's image. We have been equipped to answer God's call in the world, and to be Christ to those who see us.  And yet we stand apart. We stand closed off in resentment.

What does this say about us? What does this speak to us about what changes we need to make in ourselves? What does this say to us about the changes grace needs to work in our lives?

Grace Greater

Think about the prodigal son.  Think about his conversation with himself as he contemplates returning home.  This is from Matthew 15, verses 17-19:

But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and  to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!  I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him,  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;  I am no longer worthy to be called your son;  treat me like one of your hired hands.”

Nouwen, in his book, writes that the son comes back, not claiming the dignity of the son, but hoping to be accepted as a servant.  As we look at the story, knowing how the son left, then we might say that he doesn't even deserve that much consideration. And yet the son dares to hope that he might receive at least the role of a servant in his father's home.

The son plans his return by practicing his speech. He has no expectation of grace. And we do that.  Nouwen writes:

"...I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of.  While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there.  

We never (or rarely) accept that grace is always -- always -- greater.

That Remains

I'm reading The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen.  Nouwen was very influenced by Rembrandt's painting of the same name.

If you look closely at the painting, you will see that the son, while in rags and broken shoes, is still wearing a short sword.  Nouwen wrote that this is "... the badge of his nobility. Even in the midst of his debasement, he had clung to the truth that he still was the son of his father....It was this remembered and valued son-ship that finally persuaded him to turn back."

When I think of his return, I remember the son's thoughts of the father's hired hands, and how if he returned, he would at least have food to eat as they do. I never considered that the son returned because he remembered being his father's son.  In fact, I would have thought he would find that hard to claim because of the way he had left - his actions proclaiming that to him, his father was dead.

Isn't it reassuring to us that grace means that even when we are lost, we are still claimed by God, and we can rely on that to bring us home again.  Even when all else is gone, that remains.

As if we do not have a home

From Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son:

Leaving home is, then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place.  it is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that a I am indeed carved in the palms of God's hands and hidden in their shadows.  leaving home means ignoring the truth that God has "fashioned me in secret, molded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in  my mother's womb."  Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.

Consider the younger son in the parable. Consider what it meant that left home. There are times when we are the younger son. When we leave home. Reading this quote, we can grasp the idea that turning away from God is in a way doing what the younger son did. We leave home. We leave God. We act as if we do not have a home in God, and we strike out, searching for our home. For where we belong.

Repentance, then, is the returning. It is the remember that we belong to God, have a home in God. The Father accepts our return - and in fact never let us leave him in the first place.

As I read from Nouwen's book this morning, though, I was saddened by the realization that we leave God "as if we do not have a home and must look far and wide to find one." 

It is no wonder that we feel lost.

How we see people or not

From Henri Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son:  "When no one wanted to give him the food he was giving to the pigs the younger son realized that he wasn't even considered a fellow human being."

As I read this morning, I was thinking about the policy of separating immigrant children from their families. I don't know how it can be justified.  It can't be, unless we stop seeing the people crossing our boarder as human beings.  

Do we do that? And do we do it on the street, as homeless people pass by? Do we do it in church, when someone disagrees with us? Do we turn human beings into obstacles? Into objects?

Is this what Christ calls us to do? 

The Volume of our Actions

I'm reading a book by Henri Nouwen called The Return of the Prodigal Son. I just started it yesterday, so I'm still in the Introduction.

Nouwen spent a year trying to discern if he should leave the work he was doing with university students, and move to a community called L'Arche: a place that "offers a home to people with mental handicaps." His discernment told him that, yes, this is what God was calling him to do. Even so, as he made the move, he faced it with trepidation.  He wrote, "I knew even less about announcing the Gospel of Jesus to people who listened more with their hearts than with their minds, and who were far more sensitive to what I lived that to what I said."

As I read that and stopped, struck by the words. I see what he's saying, but I think it is more widely applicable that L'Arche.  

We may think we listen with our minds, but don't you think we listen with our hearts? Even when we don't admit it? Aren't we all more sensitive to how others live than we are to what they say?

And, as a corollary, as we work to reach people with the light of Christ, don't we need to remember that what we say, while it can be important, isn't all that people hear? They hear (as they watch us) what we do. They "hear" how we treat other people - even as we say we love them.

Hypocrisy negates our words of faith because it speaks so loudly.