Monday, September 9, 2019

Jean Vanier and being witnesses to each others vulnerability


This is an excerpt from  Jesus Heist regarding the reality that we are all better off when we are real with one another and share our struggles. Otherwise, we end up hustling for attention and comparing our insides with other people's outsides. We as clergy know this best. Yet, we oftentimes struggle to be honest with each other about the reality of ministry. You can purchase the book here.

Excerpt from Chapter 10: Walking Together
Jean Vanier, founder of the L’arche communities,[i] believes it is a more nourishing to our human relationships when we share our weakness and difficulties than when we share our qualities and successes.[ii] When we bear witness to the cross in one another’s life, we recognize that “to be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unloveable.” Vanier continues, “Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.”[iii] The work of Jesus is the work of seeing one another for who they and we really are. We must quit the illusions of success and perfection. Instead we must own our brokenness, our starvation, our suffering, our struggles, and our deep poverty of spirit. In doing this, we are Christ to the other; we are genuinely present for the other.
Vanier writes, “Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus”[iv] This is a tragedy of course. That there is suffering in the world is tragic, and that they should suffer alone is horrific. God in Christ Jesus upon the cross steps into the suffering lives of people to bring about great healing. This is the paradox of Christianity and the cross. So too when we step alongside the lost and least. This living as Jesus, this being, and doing as Jesus is how we are to make our way in the world. Rather than some kind of moral law, Jesus offers us life with one another. In this, there is something beyond a life of agony for all.      
I believe that if we look at Jesus and his relating to others, we see this very different way of living, moving, and being in the world. The church that is challenged to be the ecclesia must learn to stop pretending righteousness in order to enter the world as Jesus does. Furthermore, we can’t expect anything in return—no butts in pews. We enter, witness, and are present at the foot of another’s cross. There is no bait and switch. We are simply giving up our safety and walking into the streets of Nanjing, come what may. We are giving up our safety and entering the fray of the world. After all, Jesus never promised safety. He did promise a cross. We walk into the wilderness with Jesus and we are going to do some things that will make our righteous friends raise eyebrows.
       


[i] L’Arche communities are residences where people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together. You can read more about their work here: http://www.larche.org/
[ii]  Pamela Cushing, “To Be Fully Human,” Jean Vanier, accessed May 13, 2016, http://www.jean-vanier.org/en/his_message/jean_vanier_on_becoming_human/to_be_fully_human
[iii] Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (Paulist Press: New York, 1998), 10.
[iv] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (Paulist Press: New York, 1989), 95.

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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball