Who Are We? Exploring Our Christian Identity1
What I would like to do is to start talking to you a little bit about living away from home. Living in a far country; living in the darkness; they’re all words that come from scripture. And I simply would like you to ask yourself if you can recognize some of that in your own life. If you can say, “Oh yeah, I’m a little bit like that.” Because only when you are willing to recognize your darkness can you really receive the light well. So I’m going to talk a little bit first about what’s happening in our lives in ways that often pull us away from home and makes us end up far away from where we really want to be.
I’m going to draw a little line here, a little line on this paper here, just a little line. And at the beginning of this line I’m going to write a year, 1932. That’s when I was born. I’m going to put a year here too…2010 OK? That gives me still 20 years, that’s not bad…now, that’s a tiny little life, OK? A tiny little life. And it goes fast, very quickly because I’m, my goodness, 59 now so I can sort of see the end and I can sort of ask myself “what are you going to do these last few years?” It’s a very little life. And you might say, “Well, man, I’m, I was born here!” Well, you will maybe make it to here [laughter] but it doesn’t make much difference. And some of you, I don’t know may just be here and may wonder how long but it’s all little! It’s little, a little life. We call that clock time, our little chronology. That’s all we have. It’s not much.
And the question that I think dominates often our life, and in a way should dominate our life, is the question Who am I? Who am I? Who is the person that lives this little life? And I think, now you might disagree, and I think that I’m constantly answering that question by saying “I am what I have”. I am what I have ok? Now, I have very kind parents, I have a country, Holland, I have a good education, I’ve a body that can stand on its own, I have ok health at this moment, I have quite a few friends, I have lots of education behind me and I did quite a few things and I have it all in my knapsack. And I walk through life with my knapsack.
And you have your knapsack full of things too. You know, you might be from Ireland, or you have another type of education, and its first and if we meet each other we start comparing what we have in our knapsack. “Oh you’re from Holland that’s interesting! Tulips…and windmills…Oh you went to university that’s interesting I went to university too you know him! I know him too! Oh that’s interesting.
And quite often that’s how we relate to each other. And if we have a lot of things we feel good about ourselves and if we lose things we start feeling not so good. If you lose a job if you lose a friend if you lose anything, then, somewhere in you, you start wondering who you are you feel threatened, you lose, OK?
And another answer that I always give myself and I think many people give “I am what other people say about me.” What others say, Ok. It’s really important, more and more in our culture, what people say about you is terribly important. I know it. I know its true.
I say “I don’t care what people say” well wait until they say something you don’t like to hear. And you know it’s really true, and if somebody at breakfast says, “I really think you’re an awful person, I never told you so, but you’re awful” it doesn’t help the rest of my day! It makes me... And if I talk to a large audience, like you and you say, “Oh what Henri says is really nice” And one people gets up and says, “It’s a lot of nonsense!” That’s the person I’m going to remember. If somebody, everybody praises you and there is one person who says “You, your not making any sense or you’re dumb or you’re stupid or you don’t know what you’re talking about” That’s the person I’m going to remember, I’m going to think about “Why did he say it” and “I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about” and get angry and upset, that’s first. And in our world, what people say about us is terribly important. And if they speak well about us we feel well ok, but then people start criticizing us we can really slip into a dark place. And we can feel threatened. We lose our sense of self. You know.
And what I would like to suggest to you that quite often our life is like full of ups and downs. We go up and down this line. As long as we have a lot of things and as long as people speak well about us we’re sort of above the line and as soon as we start losing friends or our job or whatever we go underneath it. We feel depressed. And it’s interesting how often our life goes like this: one moment you feel good one moment you feel bad as long as you feel you’re still in control over what you have you’re ok as long as people speak well about you you’re fine but as soon as you start losing out you go right under the line and you slip! And you wonder if you’re worthwhile anything. You lose yourself.
And much energy that takes place in the so called “helping professions” whether it’s psychology or psychiatry or medicine or ministry is to keep people above the line! To keep you sort of happy. “Oh yes, that’s very painful but let me try to help you make it again for another day, for another week, for another year.” And so a lot of our life is sort of surviving. To cope with life. To make it another day another year another month. Surviving. And even ministry is quite often helping people to make to help them not feel so bad about themselves, to prevent them from losing their sense of self.
But you know, I don’t know if you recognize something of that in yourself. If you can sort of see “Yeah, that’s true of me too a little bit.” And if you can see, if that’s your life, you’re very dependent on moods. Good moods, bad moods. And you’re very vulnerable there. Because what’s happening, in fact, you are being told what you are by the world surrounding you. If people give you a lot of things and if people talk well about you, you feel good – if they take things away from you and they talk badly about you you feel bad but somewhere you are what your surrounding makes you you’re the victim of the world around you. I am what I have, I am what people say about me and if I don’t have much anymore and people don’t talk well about me I am nothing anymore.
And that, the gospel calls, “belonging to the world.” That’s what “Belonging to the world” is all about. That the world determines who you are. And the final statement when you come to the end of the line is a very simple statement that is this: “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” When you’re dead – gone. It’s over. You don’t have anything and nobody talks about you anymore. It’s all gone. When you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s amazing you know, how people can be so busy, and so anxious, and so nervous one day and the other day they’re gone. Over, out, gone forgotten. Think about how anxious you can be how worried you are how busy how urgent everything is how important it is to do all these things and suddenly it all stops and its all gone and you’re gone and nobody is sort of interested in you any more. It’s really important because that’s what living in the darkness is all about. And you’re not really living, you’re surviving. And the tragedy is finally you fail! Finally, you and I fail! Finally when it’s all said and done, you have failed in surviving you’re going to die. You know it’s simple, but it’s very basic, it’s very real.
And I am very much a victim of all that I’m very anxious about what happens in my life. And I suddenly realize that I’m so anxious that, that I forget why I’m living! And somewhere underneath there is this anxious feeling that everything comes to nothing, so I don’t want to face it so I keep busy but in the long run I know I’m not going to make it.
And I want you to realize for a moment that the world in which we live likes us to remain there because when you can control people’s moods when you can make people feel who they are because what they have or by what you say about them there’s a lot of money in there, there’s a lot of success in there, there’s a lot of control in there, people can make you anxious can make you happy can make you buy things can make you do things by manipulating your fears and you become the victim of the world you’re not free! You are a victim. And we are! I’m very much a victim I constantly feel myself pushed or pulled by exterior factors. And what I would like to say to you if you can recognize some of that in you then you are in touch with the darkness, you’re in touch with the foreign country where the prodigal country and ended up with the pigs, and the people in the foreign country controlled his destiny and they let him do what they wanted to him do. He lost his freedom gradually and he was gone. And the two aspects of our identity that I mentioned “I am what I possess” and “I am what people say about me” are parallel to the two great vices lust and anger.
If you are what you have you want more and more and more you’re very lustful. If you are what others think about you you’re very sensitive to what others think about you and get very angry when others don’t speak well about you.
And anger and lust from the desert fathers on have been considered the great enemies of the spiritual life. The great enemies of the spiritual life. So, I now want to start talking what the spiritual life is all about, but I thought I’d mention this first to you OK? So that’s the first part. Now start with the second reflection and I want you to listen from here [heart], not from here [head], from here [head] it’s sort of obvious from here [heart] it isn’t. And what I want you to hear is that what I just said to you is about our identity is a lie.
Jesus’ whole message is saying, “You are not what you have nor what people say about you” even when that’s important and even though it make you suffer and even when it make you happy that’s not who you are. I come Jesus said to reveal to you who you truly are. And who are you? You are…a child of God. You are…the one who I call my child. Now child doesn’t mean little child, child means “son or daughter” You are my son, you are my daughter and I want you just a moment to think interiorly about this and listen to the words that are given to us.
“I hold you in the palm of my hands.” “I have engraved you…in my hands. I have called you from all eternity. I have fashioned you in the depths of the earth. I have molded you together In your mother’s womb, You belong to me, I belong to you, and we are united to love from all eternity, before your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters your teachers, your school touched you, I loved you. I cared for you. I held you safe. I saw you and I embraced you. You are my child. You are my daughter. You belong to me.
Now this is the voice that you have to hear and to keep hearing. And the spiritual life is a life in which you more and more and more hear that voice. In which you come gradually in touch with the mysterious truth that you were loved and cared for and looked at with immense affection long before you entered into this little world this little chronos this little clock time.
I called you from all eternity I have loved you from all eternity, you belong to me, and I am your lover. And I loved you not because you did good things, not because you have a lot of things, not because people speak well about you, not because you’re so exciting or have so many talents. I love you because I love you because I love you because I love you. And as my child who belongs to me I am sending you into the world where people will laugh at you and people will praise you where people will reject you and people will accept you where people will speak well of you and people will speak bad of you but whatever happens over there you are not belonging to that world you belong to me! Long, long before you could even think, speak, talk, or love yourself.
And I want you to hear that from within because if you can hear that you can gradually discover what it means to love in this world and to live in this world. What it means to live! What it means to love! What it means to be! You belong to God for all eternity and you are sent into this world for a little moment and are called back to be. For all eternity in that great embrace of love.
And you can claim that, to claim that from within. That’s the hardest thing to do. Because the world doesn’t want you to believe that. The world wants you to keep believing that you’re not loved; you’re only loved when you do right things. And I want to tell you that my whole decision for going to l’Arche2 to leave the university was related to that question. Because I was very much caught in a very ambitious competitive world and I was trying to please everyone – to be loved: Do you like me do you love me do you think it’s ok what I say what I right do you think I’m ok? And I was going around begging for compliments so to say. And it gives you good salary and it gives you good money and it gives you good career and all that. But somehow I felt I was losing touch with the truth of who I am.
And when I was invited by Jean Vanier to come to France and to come to meet him and his community – suddenly people who had never read any of my books and who didn’t know anything about me and who hadn’t see me do anything special embraced me in a way that I knew suddenly that I was not loved because I do so many good things. That I didn’t have to earn my love. That I was loved because God decided to love me and God is love. And the most broken, poor and often marginal people were sent to me by God to reveal to me God’s first love, that’s the name for it. God’s first love: you can love one another because I have loved you first! And you and I are called constantly to claim that first love.
And the great temptation is to not believe in that. I will love you if you change stones into bread. I will love you when you jump from the Temple and then angel will catch you. I will love you when you have a little power then you will be ok. No. That’s a lie. My love doesn’t depend on my success, my love does not depend on my popularity, my love doesn’t depend on my power – my love depends on a God who is only love and out of whose love I’m born and who has given me a heart to love and there’s nothing else there than that. That’s who I am. And that’s what I have to claim.
And I tell you it’s really hard. But you know, it has enormous consequences. Because you and I are people who have been poorly loved in this world. Your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters, your teachers, your church, they all have loved you but they also have hurt you. In this world, people who love us are also the ones who hurt us. You know, where’s your pain coming from? Your pain is coming from rejections. From the experience of people who care for you but suddenly are disappointing you. And it’s often the people who are closest to you who hurt you most. People who love you most are people who hurt you most. The mystery of life is that we are wounded by those who love us precisely because those who love us are so imperfect and can only love a little bit. And sometimes we spent a lot of our energy to find out what happened in our lives to be so hurting, to be so depressed to be so angry to be so jealous to be so resentful and we say “Well look at my father, look at my mother, or look at my church or look at my bishop or look at my friends what they have done to me, and look, you know, and look I got hurt, I got rejected and I’m getting more and more angry because people don’t really give me what I should have.”
And you can spend a lot of time - and it’s not wrong, sometimes some psychological help to find out where it all happened. It’s good to know. It’s good to face your own wounded ness it’s good look at it. But how can you face it? How can you really look at it? Only when you believe when you trust (that’s the word for faith) that before all these second loves touched you, you were held safe in the first love.
If you are in touch with the first love then you will be able to forgive those who only loved you in a limited partial way. And therefore the word for love in our world is often forgiveness. To forgive those who loved you for not loving you perfectly. To love those who cared for you for not caring for you the way you wanted to be cared for.
Because God has given you a heart that is created by God and it will only be satisfied by a love that is as great as the love of the one who created you. And every time you are asking of a human person the love that only God can give you become violent. You become demanding: Love me, I’m so lonely. Love me, I’m so depressed. Love me...hold and that other person is saying “Yeah, I want to love you, but don’t ask more than I can give, I’m only a limited person!” But I’m so lonely, I need you… And so we start clinging to each other. And you see it all the time, that caressing becomes slapping, and kissing becomes biting and looking tenderly becomes looking suspiciously and hearing becomes overhearing and before you know it your desire to love ends up hurting other people in violence. I cannot forgive. I need you, I… And you see it all over the place, you see it constantly. In myself, I get so spiteful or angry or complaintive because I’ve lost touch with the first love. And I ask of people to be like God and when you ask people to be like God you become a demon.
Just look a second at my hands, ok? This is me. Quite nervous, anxious, a little lonely, wondering what I’m all about. Well here comes somebody else coming…anxious, lonely, wondering what it’s all about – or maybe quite compatible. Why not get closer together? I’m lonely, you’re lonely – maybe together? And then you get stuck. Interlocking fingers! I’ve been living with you maybe for a year and you still don’t love me as I hoped to. Well, I’m trying but I can’t…oh… Complaints. Disappointments.
Whether it’s friendships, whether its marriage, whether it’s community, there’s always that stockiness when we expect from each other things we cannot give to each other. And it’s always there because our heart, our heart trembles to be loved unconditionally, and we want it – that’s how we are created! Our hearts yearns and yearns for communion. But if we want that communion, that full communion from another person before we know it we get caught in addictions – whether it’s sexual addictions or emotional addictions or alcohol addictions or just work addictions – we want it over there and it’s not there and the more we try the more we try the more we’re disappointed and we try again until we get hooked in it.
And it’s so important that you recognize that. Because what the real call it is to recognize that you are loved – you are loved eternally by God. And this person is loved eternally too. And that you are a child of God. That you’re well held there….and this person’s a child of God too. And when you come together the God in you recognizes the God in the other and you can start building a home. And sometimes you can be very close and sometimes there’s a lot of distance…but you have a space there where new life can grow – because you’re not clinging to each other but you come to each other without arms – disarmed. Simple. Poor. As the one who knows you are loved and so you can come together and you can form a home – form a community. And can receive in that home joy, peace, guests children and friends. And suddenly you realize that if you believe that you belong to God and that your life is called to be lived in communion with God then you can live in community.
Whether it’s marriage, whether it’s friendship or whether it’s a formal community because you’re not asking from each other what you cannot give to each other. And in community there’s always someone who creates problems for you. Somebody says to me once, “Community is the place where the person I least want to live with always lives.” It’s true! Jesus started to – he prayed during the night and in the morning he called his twelve disciples and one of them he said was a traitor. There’s always one of them that just a difficulty. One of them is not necessarily a traitor but sometimes somebody who makes it hard on you. They’re a way to remind us deeply that where our heart is satisfied is there. And that we are called to live from here, and to more and more believe that this is, this is who we really are here and that’s what we have to deepen and strengthen and as children of God we can live in this world knowing that we belong to God only then can we really develop really good interpersonal relationships. Only when we live in communion with God we can create community. And communion is not something we can always feel, not always something we can immediately experience in your mind or your heart because God is greater than your mind or your heart but something you have to trust.
And Jesus says “Blessed are those who trust, and that’s why they will be healed, that’s why they will be given new life. And one of the things you realize, is that’s if that’s the truth, when you come to the end of the line your death is no longer death, because it’s simply a return home. A return to that space where you were so safely held and for a long time you may not have felt it but you have trusted it and have acted out of that trust and all sort of things were possible because somehow you can life in this life freely and joyfully and suffer in it, even when you, when it’s hard. As long as you know you belong to that embrace are rooted in that love you can life the second love with joy and receive it as a gift.
Ok, I’m going to start with the third part and I’m – I want to give you four words before you go home. Four words to remember- and you know these words but I want to talk to you about them in a way that you might hear them for the first time. And these four words are words that help you to identify the life in the light. The life in the Spirit. The life in God. So far I’ve only said to you you don’t belong to the world you belong to God’s love. But how do we live it completely? What’s going on? How can we identify it and how can we help others to live it too? That’s what ministry is about. And I’ve talked to you about communion, a bit about community but I also want to talk to you a little about ministry.
Now what is so amazing to me, is that at the multiplication of bread. At the last supper. At the meal with the disciples of Emmaus and in the early church we find constantly these four words: he took, he blessed, he broke and he gave. Taking, blessing, breaking and giving. And these four words summarized the life of Jesus. Jesus is taken by God, blessed by God, broken by God and given to the world by God. And that is your life too. Jesus calls you to become a son and a daughter by God who is taken who is blessed, who is broken and who is given. And it is precisely there that you recognize your life in God. And so I want to say something about these words because they’re really important. You have to believe very intimately that you are taken, and a better word is chosen…that you are chosen people. That you have been seen in your terrible uniqueness – that God saw you and chose you from all eternity.
And most people that I meet don’t believe in that. They think well, I came around…just one of the many…I just came around to my great parents’ surprise. A lot people walk around with this deep, deep feeling they are not seen in their individuality. They’re not really precious in anyone’s eyes. And the greatest act of faith you can have is to say I am chosen, I am seen as precious in God’s eyes! And I have to claim that for myself. Now the mystery is if you are chosen that doesn’t mean the others are rejected. See in the football game that’s the case if you are counted off the rest is not, if your chosen it’s too bad for the rest. I’m the lucky one. The mystery of God is if you are chosen you will have new eyes to recognize the chosen ness of others. If you believe deeply that God loves you intimately and personally you will be able to see how much others are loved.
If you doubt in yourself and suddenly start comparing yourself and saying “I’m better” and so on and “They are marginal, and they’re not useful people and they have no…they are not like me and they are special but I don’t want to talk to them or they are…outcast” or what. But if you come in touch with your chosen ness then you can discover the chosen ness of others. That’s what ministry is about. To help other people see that they are chosen.
And the second word is blessed. That’s a word I really hope you will restore to it’s beauty. When Jesus left the Jordan River there was a voice that said “You are my Beloved. On you my favour rests.” That’s a blessing. And Jesus lived his whole life as the Blessed One. As the beloved one. People loved him, people hated him. People accepted him, people rejected him. People wanted him to be king, people crucified him. But in the midst of it all he remained the Beloved, the one on whom God’s favour rests. “Everyone will leave me, you will all leave me but my Father will never leave me alone. I am the Beloved.” And Jesus is saying that you and I have that same blessing on us. And to pray means to listen to the voice who calls you the Beloved. To pray means to let all the noises and the sounds of the world recede and to hear that soft voice that speaks in the center of your being and says “You are my Beloved daughter, on you my favour rests. You are my Beloved son, on you my favour rests. You are my Beloved. You are my Blessed one. And please try to claim that blessing because so many people don’t feel blessed they feel cursed. They feel that they are no good. They feel that they are nobody’s favourite. They feel that ah…they start drinking or using all sort of means to forget themselves because they feel so cursed.
You know the Latin word for “blessing” is “benediction”. “Bene” means “good”, “diction” means “saying”. To say good things. God is saying good things of us, and he wants us to say good things of each other. Not because we do a lot of good things not to give each other compliments but to recognize in each other that we are the people who are blessed. Who are called God’s favoured ones, God’s beloved. Think about yourselves as the beloved daughter of God as the beloved Son of God and you don’t have to walk around this way you can stand straight. I’m the Beloved. That’s such a great spiritual challenge. Because the greatest temptation is of us human beings is self-rejection, to think we’re no good, to think we’re useless to think no one pays attention to us, to say “oh well, you know.” But that’s a lie. It’s a sin! If there is any sin it’s the sin of self-rejection because you are the Beloved one! And as the Beloved One you have to live in this world and to proclaim the lover who calls you the Beloved One.
 |
|
|
Everyone