SCRIPTURE: Luke 9:3-4a (TM) – larger reading Luke 9:1-6
He said, "Don't load
yourselves up with equipment. Keep it simple; you are the equipment.
STORY:
Philip
Yancey in his book, The Jesus I Never
Knew, shares this story: Blessed are the merciful. I learned the truth
of this Beatitude from Henri Nouwen, a priest who used to teach at Harvard
University. At the height of his career, Nouwen moved from Harvard to a
community called Daybreak, near Tornonto, in order to take on the demanding
chores required by his friendship with a man named Adam. Nouwen now ministers
not to the intellectuals but to a young man who is considered by many a useless
person who should have been aborted.
Nouwen
describes his friend: “Adam is a 25-year-old man who cannot speak, cannot dress
or undress himself, cannot walk alone, cannot eat without much help. He does
not cry or laugh. Only occasionally does he make eye contact. His back is
distorted. His arm and leg movements are twisted. He suffers from severe
epilepsy and, despite heavy medication, sees few days without grand-mal
seizures. Sometimes, as he grows suddenly rigid, he utters a howling groan. On
a few occasions I’ve seen one big tear roll down his cheek.
“It
takes me about an hour and a half to wake Adam up, give him his medication,
carry him to his bath, wash him, shave him, clean his teeth, dress him, walk
him to the kitchen, give him his breakfast, put him in his wheelchair and bring
him to the place where he spends most of his day with therapeutic exercises.”
On a visit to Nouwen in Toronto, I watched him perform that routine with Adam,
and I must admit I had a fleeting as to whether this was the best use of his
time. I have heard Henri Nouwen speak, and have read many of his books. He has
much to offer. Could not someone else take over the menial task of caring for
Adam? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed
me that I had completely misinterpreted what was going on. “I am not giving up
anything,” he insisted. “It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our
friendship.”
Then
Nouwen began listing for me all the benefits he has gained. The hours spent
with Adam, he said, have given him an inner peace so fulfilling that it makes
most of his other, more high-minded tasks seem boring and superficial by
contrast. Early on, as he sat beside that helpless child-man, he realized how
marked with rivalry and competition, how obsessive, was his drive for success
in academia and Christian ministry. Adam taught him that “what makes us human is
not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.”
From Adam’s simple nature, he had glimpsed the “emptiness that desert monks
achieved only after much searching and discipline.
All
during the rest of our interview, Henri Nouwen circled back to my question, as
if he could not believe I could ask such a thing. He kept thinking of other
ways he had benefited from his relationship with Adam. Truly, he was enjoying a
new kind of spiritual peace, acquired not within the stately quadrangles of
Harvard, but by the bedside of incontinent Adam. I left Daybreak convicted of
my own spiritual poverty, I who so carefully arrange my writer’s life to make
it efficient and single-focused. The merciful are indeed blessed, I learned,
for they will be shown mercy.
OBSERVATION:
In his instructions to the
disciples Jesus boiled down their real challenge… “to keep it simple” as
paraphrased in The Message. His point is well taken: “you are the equipment”.
Somehow, over time, we the church have lost sight of that truth.
Our ministry and life has
become extremely complicated. Henri Nouwen discovered a truth that escapes the
best of us. How many of us would have walked about away from Harvard to take on
the humble role of servant? How many of us would relinquish the opportunities
of speaking engagements, staying at the finest hotels and eating at 5-star
restaurants to be the caregiver of a total invalid? How many of us would pass
up on the notoriety of a successful writing career to be a nursemaid to a
man-child?
My guess… not one of us… no,
not one. But, could it be that the fame, the fortune, the notoriety, the books,
the speaking engagements was simply loading down Dr. Nouwen with unnecessary
“equipment”? By moving to Daybreak and taking up the responsibilities of caring
for Adam was his way of keeping it simple?
In considering Jesus’
instructions to his disciples we just might to think differently about the idea
of “equipment” and “keeping it simple”. How much of what we are presently doing
is just going through the motions? How much of the “trappings” of our church
and really unnecessary “equipment”?
How can we make our witness
more effective? What needs to change to find the peace, spiritual peace, that
Dr. Nouwen discovered by taking on the role of a servant? I know that I am not
up to the task, but the Christ in me is if I would but give him the freedom to
move in that direction.
PRAYER:
Make me a captive Lord and
then I shall be free.
