March 11, 2009 + “The Road Map Through Lent and Beyond” (Joel 2:12-13; Psalm 1:1-2) + Hayward Fong

Over ten years ago, Catholic Father Henri Nouwen, world-renown spiritual writer prepared a Lenten booklet entitled, “Called to Life, Called To Love,” composed of reflections from his book, “Bread for the Journey,” a compilation of daily devotions. He died on September 21, 1996, shortly after preparing this Lenten booklet.

During this period of Lent, I thought it would be well to share his thoughts in our Wednesday worship. As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s worship service, Lent is a period for introspective examination.

Father Nouwen introduces his booklet with these words, “Lent is probably the most important time of the year to nurture our inner life. It is the time during which we not only prepare ourselves to celebrate the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but also the death and resurrection that constantly takes place within us. Life is a continuing process of the death of the old and the familiar, and being reborn again into a new hope, a new trust, and a new love. The death and resurrection of Jesus therefore is not just an historical event that took place a long time ago, but an inner event that takes place in our own heart when we are willing to be attentive to it.”

You will recall I said in last Wednesday’s homily, “Lent is a period for repentance.” To this, Father Nouwen writes, “True repentance is an interior attitude in which we are willing to let go of everything that prevents us from growing into spiritual maturity, and there is hardly a moment in our lives in which we are not invited to detach ourselves from certain ways of thinking, ways of speaking, ways of acting, that for a long time gave us energy, but that always again need to be renewed and recreated.”

He continues, “Lent offers a beautiful opportunity to discover the mystery of Christ within us. It is a gentle but also demanding time. It is a time of solitude but also community; it is a time of listening to the voice within, but also a time of paying attention to other people’s needs. It is a time to continuously make the passage to new inner life as well as to life with those around us.”

Henri Nouwen concludes his introduction with this thought for our journey through Lent, “When we live Lent attentively and gently, then Easter can truly be a celebration during which the full proclamation of the risen Christ will reverberate in the deepest place of our being.”

In a Lenten worship service last year, Elizabeth in her lesson for the children and Samuel in his sermon used the common seed of various plants to point out our uniqueness and the need of community to nurture our growth, not only our growth but the growth of those who surround us, physically and spiritually.

Our Old Testament reading this morning, Joel 2:12-13, is a traditional reading from the Lectionary for Ash Wednesday. Its theme is “God loves us and wants our love.” Nouwen asks the rhetorical question, “What can we say about God’s love?” You and I use the phrase that God’s love is unconditional, meaning to say that there are no “ands, buts, or ifs” in God’s heart. Father Nouwen reminds us that “God’s love for us does not depend on what we say or do, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity. God’s love for us existed before we were born, and will exist after we have died. God’s love is from eternity to eternity and is not bound to any time-related events or circumstances.”

You and I live in a real world. We do things we ought not to do and leave undone things that we ought to do. We say mean spirited and hateful words. We backbite, gossip. We waste and neglect God’s gifts, entrusted to us as His stewards.

To this backdrop of real life, Father Nouwen replies in this way to the rhetorical question, ‘Does that mean that God does not care what we do or say?’, “No, because God’s love wouldn’t be real if God didn’t care. To love without condition does not mean to love without concern. God’s desire to enter into relationship with us wants our love in return.” This intimate relationship calls for one without fear, trusting that we will receive love, love, and more love.”

Nouwen continues, “We often confuse unconditional love with unconditional approval. God loves us without conditions but does not approve of every human behavior. God doesn’t approve of violence, hatred, and all other expressions of evil, because they all contradict the love God wants to instill in the human heart. Evil is the absence of God’s love. Evil does not belong to God.

“God’s unconditional love means that God continues to love us as a loving parent waits for the return of a lost child. It is important for us to hold on to the truth that God never gives up loving us even when God is saddened by what we do. That truth will help us from wandering away from God’s ever-present love.”

So how do we translate His love into our daily living? Here we come face to face with God’s strategy. He works out His purposes through people. If He wants a task done He has to find the people willing to do it for Him. As someone put it, “God is everywhere looking for hands to use.” Or as someone else has said, “The greatest thing about God is that He allows us to do so much for Him.” Without any intention of irreverence, we can say that God is as helpless without us as we are without Him. It is He who supplies the vision and the power to carry out that vision; but He has to find the men and women to give the vision and power to.
Here we have the supreme honor which Jesus has given us. He is depending on us, you and me, to see to it that the building of the Kingdom which He began is brought to its completion and the campaign which He entered is brought to its triumphant conclusion. It is true that without Him we can do nothing; but it is also true that without us His work cannot go on.

As we set out on the Christian way, it is the end of self. One can no longer please himself; he must place himself under the orders of Jesus Christ. The cost of following Him is the abandonment of our own wishes and complete submission to His. But the submission is not that of a slave to a master or of a subject to a tyrant, but a submission of love…our love in return for His love.

It we set out on the Christian way, it is the end of the world’s scale of values. Whereas, society in general measures a man by his wealth or power, Christianity assesses the person by what he has given away and by the service he has rendered. Society’s principle is that a person should live for himself, whereas the Christian principle is that a person should live for others. The way corporate America behaves or for that matter international corporations also, are good examples of what I speak. Corporate power is measured by the profit line of the balance sheet.

If we set out on the Christian way there is a new scale of loyalties. Our relationship to Jesus Christ is a relationship of love and there is a certain exclusiveness in love. When a person begins the Christian way, that person must realize that Jesus Christ must have first place in his or her life. That is the road map through Lent to the Resurrection and beyond.