Nouwen’s first chapter of In the Name of Jesus is all about the temptation to be relevant, an acrid temptation for preachers (among other Christians). Nouwen spends a few concise words detailing how difficult it was for him to make the transition from being with people who he could constantly impress with his achievements to being with people who were not able to read his books, much less comprehend what it meant to “accomplish” something. Instead, he found himself faced with people who only cared about one thing: Who he was at that moment. The “disabled” people he lived among disabled his personhood. It was only then that he was able to rediscover his true identity:
“These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self—the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things—and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.”
Whatever happened to the notion that a church was supposed to be about carrying the gospel around in jars of clay, our temples of the Holy Spirit as cracked vessels by which God passes on the death and resurrection of Jesus from generation-to-generation? The church in America is in desperate need of an enema. We need to get about the business of simplifying our message, our lives, and our mission. We need to get about the business of not getting about the business.
Again, from Nouwen:
“I am telling you all this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.”
Wow. That’s good.
