The Living Reminder - Henri Nouwen

The Living Reminder
Service and prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ

Ranking: Lewis.5
(Scale: Osteen, Lucado, Colson, Yancey, Lewis, Brueggemann, Moltmann)

Depth: (Easy, Intermediate, Difficult)
Intermediate

Books Premise:

Presence with God and others isn’t a means to an end but they are ends in themselves. When we realize and live into that; life seems to be much richer.

Nouwen takes three themes which are ministry as healing reminder, sustaining reminder and guiding reminder and works through them. Nouwen was introduced to these themes by Seward Hiltner in Preface to Pastoral Theology.

I have read many Nouwen books and almost all of them are terrific. This book stands out to me though as one of his best.


Good Quotes:

We have fallen into the temptation of separating ministry from spirituality, service from prayer. Our demon says: "We are too busy to pray; we have too many needs to attend to, too many people to respond to, too many wounds to heal. Prayer is a luxury, something to do during a free hour, a day away from work, or on a retreat. … Service and prayer can never be separated …Service is prayer and prayer is service.

The great vocation of the minister is to continually make connections between the human story and the divine story. …memories formerly seemed only destructive are now reclaimed as part of a redemptive event.

It is obvious that Jesus does not maintain his relationship with the father as a means of fulfilling his ministry. The relationship with the father is the core of Jesus ministry.

It is in the silence and solitude of prayer that the minister becomes a minister.

…(prayer) unmasks the illusion of busyness, usefulness, and indispensability.

Whenever I become a little bit useless I know that God is calling me to a new life far beyond the boundaries of my usefulness.

As long as we have stories to tell each other there is still hope.

All this means that to be guiding ministers, we must be prophets who, by appealing to memories, encourage our fellow human beings to move forward.


Why should someone buy this book?

In a world full of program and measurable outcomes we need a guide like Nouwen to paint a picture of why we must be present with God (in prayer), with people (in service) and with ourselves. Through this we will be able to tie people’s wounds to the redemptive story of God and challenge them to live into that story.

I recently was at a conference and heard Tony Campolo speaking at a breakout session about spiritual depth. I’m fairly sure he loosely quoted something out of the Introduction of this book. Tony had also spoken the night before at a main session so candidly and passionately but somehow still gently about living deeply into God and deeply among the injustices of this world. I find this book pushed me in the same direction. I think it’s a kick in the pants we all need to not just read about this stuff but to BE it.

Philip Yancey spoke at this same event I was at and he said one thing that I thought was amazing. He said “I’ve really been wrestling with the question of why Jesus Christ needed to spend all this time in prayer?” and later he said “I think what he was doing while he was praying war remembering. Remembering how the kingdom works.” This book feeds into those thoughts in a way that I hope transforms how view prayer and eventually who I am and how I live.

Other sources on this subject:
This is similar to an idea put forth by Dorothy Day (I think) called being “dual contemplatives.” This idea means taking long amounts of time to see Jesus in solitude and in others. I downloaded a lecture by Charles Ringma for $5 that mentioned this idea and I have found it to be helpful.

The Power and the Glory

It's impossible to start writing about books that Christians need to read without starting with Graham Greene's brilliant novel The Power and the Glory. It just doesn't get any better than this! In a fairly short novel, Greene was able to write a fictionalized realization of lived-out Latin American liberation theology.

Ranking
To rank this book on our current scale (Oseen - Lucado - Colson - Yancey - Lewis - Brueggemann - Moltmann), I would put Greene's theological thinking with Brueggemann's, although it is fictional rather than theological, which makes it difficult to rank in our current scheme. Alas, we start where we start. I guess you can just call it some good old fashioned narrative liberation theology and be done with it. And it is brilliant.

A Brief Summary
To be brief, The Power and the Glory is the story of a priest in a communist territory in Mexico, who refuses to leave, though it would mean his life. Every other priest has either fled, gotten married, or been killed. He doesn't like any of these options, though he ends up embodying all of them. The priest travels from town to town, delivering the sacraments and hating himself for being a drunken coward. It is the story of a true-life saint, a man who is weak and meek, and totally unable to realize that what he is doing is important both theologically and politically, and that every time he hears confession and provides the sacraments, he is turning the power of the state on its head.

Who should read this?
I think pastors or anybody who believes in the priesthood of all believers should read this, and be reminded of what it is that we are doing and how God uses the weak and pitiful to work in his kingdom. While this poor, pathetic priest does the work God has called him to, his former colleagues sit on comfy couches, getting fat and talking theology. If I ran a seminary, this book would be required reading. Also, anybody who just likes a good story will enjoy Greene's work.

Buy it. Read it. Then read it again.