February 5, 2006

Chosen by God

by Julianne Stokstad

(First in a series of sermons based on Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen)

Today I begin a four part series of sermons based on Henri Nouwen's book Life of the Beloved. His book and these sermons aim to provide ways to live fulfilling God's purposes in our modern secular world. It started when Nouwen was asked by secular young friend to write something that might answer his deep unspoken concerns: how to find hope when so much in our experience crushes it; how to trust when our institutions, our leaders have disappointed us and we are not sure whom we can trust; and how to speak of something or someone greater than ourselves...to speak of God. Nouwen focuses on four words: taken, blessed, broken and given to identify the movements of the Spirit in our lives. Not incidentally these are actions found in the sacrament of communion that binds us together as community. I hope by examining one word each week we can open and deepen our understanding of communion as we attempt to answer some of life's hard questions.

According to Nouwen our spiritual life begins with recognition of being God's beloved, being chosen or taken. You are God's Beloved. I am God's Beloved. Can you hear it? Do you believe what I say? If you do, I promise you it will affect you, change your life, change how you view yourself and everyone else. It is a very challenging idea to fully absorb. While we might be able to accept we are the chosen ones, the idea that everyone else is also beloved can be very hard to accept. Maybe this is why we find it hard to share and so easy to judge others because your worst enemy is God's Beloved; the beggars in India are God's Beloveds.

Some people understand concept of being chosen as a way to divide people into two categories: sheep and goats; good and bad; us and them. I find that elitist and exclusive. These days with more understanding of different religions than ever, interfaith dialogue and growing awareness of the interconnectedness of all life, it is time to let go of the exclusive claim of being the only ones loved by God. What kind of God would that be? Jesus reached out to non-Jews in his ministry, extending God's love for all people. To me, being chosen means simply being alive here on earth. It is quite a miraculous thing to be born, out of recycled molecules put together with a pattern and a spark of energy I call divine.

And so believing we all are God's beloved I came face to face with overwhelming suffering in India. I think that is why I wanted to go. I had to wonder about where God was in all this mess. You heard our scripture tell of Moses' call, how God sent him to lead the Israelites out of the suffering and slavery. The Buddha wrestled with the human suffering he saw and in his Enlightenment found a path to eliminate suffering. For me to be on a Buddhist pilgrimage was an ideal way to experience India and to see my own Christian response.

The evident suffering and poverty of India hit me in the face and confronted me at every turn. The pollution was of Biblical proportion. The earth was crying out, vomiting air pollution like I'd never seen and seemed to be covered with a layer of plastic garbage. Each time we went out, we were accosted by beggars. They descended upon us, more numerous than mosquitoes. They stuck to us more tightly than duct tape and their persistent desperation tore at our hearts. We were told not to give to them. I soon realized if I sold everything I had and gave to them, it would be just a drop in the ocean; it wouldn't make a difference to them, but would change me greatly and maybe that is what it is all about. After a few days, I began to see that begging was a business, the parents taught their children to beg. I saw children who were maimed to elicit more sympathy. I got angry. Finally I chose to respond with calmness and equanimity---the only hope of change is to change the system.

How can these people be chosen and suffer so much? In my Western mind, I wondered what I could do that would make a difference. Interestingly we visited a Japanese temple where one woman was doing something. Twenty-nine years ago Mrs. Tashiro founded a nursery school for poor children in Bodhgaya. She has educated the young children in this small town. It is very reminiscent of EDFK, the children are given health care (de-wormed mostly), given a meal each day and taught to play and learn letters. This woman said she started because the children are precious----precious, chosen by God. I don't presume to understand the complexity of India or even to judge the horrors I saw. I learned that there is no right response. In my responses to the poverty of India I clearly saw my own American middle class guilt, something the Indian people don't share.

I do believe we are all God's Beloveds. Especially here in the West where we have so much materially, it is not easy to hear this quiet inner voice speaking of our goodness in a world shouting at us that we are not good enough or beautiful enough or smart enough or rich enough or compassionate enough.

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us Beloved. For Nouwen, and I suspect for many of us, somehow we have come to believe the negative outer voices and they have become inner voices for us. As parents we have shaken our heads when our children believed more in their school companions' rejections than in their goodness and giftedness we can so clearly see.

In our competitive society we are taught to measure ourselves against others. Many things play up our fear of rejection, of failure, of not being good enough. It is a good way to control people. Advertising works so well because it plays to our fears. We confuse lessons we learn in our secular outer lives with our spiritual lives. Our spiritual life is not a win-lose contest. It is win-win because everyone is beloved. This is the nature of our true spiritual struggle: to claim this.

Nouwen lists three guidelines to help us in our struggle. First, "you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry and in the long run, destructive."(p. 49) When the world feeds you lies, when you feel rejected, you need perspective and the maturity to recognize what is happening. Being beloved doesn't mean becoming perfect, only God can be perfect, it means knowing you are God's beloved as you are.

"Secondly, you have to keep looking for people and places where your truth is spoken and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one." (p. 49-50). Gangs and cliques exist because of our human need to be accepted by others, but the glue that binds is fear, not love. Too many churches are like that as well. I believe we know it when we find a place where we are accepted, supported and loved unconditionally. It is my great hope that each of you experiences this here. I know I do.

"Thirdly, you have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying 'thank you' to God for having chosen you and 'thank you' to all who remind you of your chosenness." (p. 50)

We are all here on earth because God has chosen us. Only when we claim our own place in God's love can we experience this all-embracing love and feel truly safe. The world deals some very difficult situations that seem to stand in the face of God's love. But the real truth of our lives is found in the gift of being alive. God does not cause the suffering-disease, natural disasters, accidents and human economic and social systems cause suffering.

In the mini-bus on my trip, we had some wonderful Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Christianity from the beginning was never as single focused as Buddhism. Jesus healed many but in the best Jewish tradition, he worked also for justice for the weak and oppressed. Knowing we are all God's children, I do not see how we can wall ourselves off from those who are in need. We are here on earth to help each other because we are all Beloved by God. Amen