Henri Nouwen delivers a sermon on spiritual identity and the meaning of being "the Beloved"
A sermon by Henri Nouwen on claiming one's identity as the beloved of God.
Summary
This is a sermon by Henri Nouwen, delivered to a live audience, in which he presents his central spiritual conviction: that every human being is the beloved daughter or son of God. Nouwen argues that most people construct their identity around three false foundations — what they do, what others say about them, and what they have — and that this leads to a life of emotional instability, constant striving, and ultimately despair. He draws on the Gospel account of Jesus's temptation in the desert to illustrate how these three false identities are precisely what the devil offered Jesus, and how Jesus rejected them by holding fast to the voice that declared him beloved. Nouwen calls his audience to hear and internalize that same declaration for themselves, arguing that it is only from this foundation of "first love" — God's love that precedes all human love — that a person can live freely, forgive those who have hurt them, and love others without demanding that those others fill a void only God can fill.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Question of Identity
Henri Nouwen: I'm really grateful to be with you here this morning and to share my faith with you. At the core of that faith belongs my conviction that you, and that I, and that we, are the beloved daughters and sons of God. I might as well say that from the very beginning: you, we, are the beloved sons and daughters of God. And one of the enormous spiritual tasks we have is to claim that, and to live a life based on that knowledge. And that's not very easy. In fact, most of us fail constantly to claim the truth of who we are.
I took this flip chart here to give you a little idea about how we often live our lives. If I draw a little line here and say that's my life — my little chronology, you can also say my little clock time — well, I was born in 1932, and I wonder what I should put here. Maybe 2010. Not so bad. But that's really all I have. And now you may say, well, I came a little later. So you came here, and you may say, oh, I have a few more years here. But it doesn't make very much difference. It's still a small little life that you have, a tiny little life that goes by very, very fast. Like that.
And the question for you and for me is: who are we? Because that's the question that keeps us going. Because all during our lives we try to answer that question: who am I?
The Three False Identities
And the first answer we live with is: I am what I do. And that's very real. When I do good things and when I have a little success in life, I feel good about myself. But when I fail, then I start getting a little low or depressed. And as I'm getting older I might say, I cannot do much — but look at the trophies. Look, I did a lot of good things in my life. Or look at my books, or look at my music I wrote, or look at my children I educated. Look, look, look — I did something good.
Or we might say: I am what other people say about me. What others say — that's very, very powerful. What people say about you is, in fact, sometimes the most important thing. If people speak well about you, you can walk around quite freely. But when somebody starts talking behind your back, or when somebody starts saying negative things about you, you suddenly might feel very, very sad. When I remember speaking to thousands of people and people say, "That was wonderful what you said," but there was one man who said, "Hey, I thought it was a lot of nonsense" — that's the only man I remember. It seems as if when somebody talks against me, or against you, that can cut deep into your heart. And when somebody in the morning says something about you that's really hurtful — somebody called you stupid, or something like that — it can stay with you the whole day and ruin your mood.
And you might also say: I am what I have. I am a Dutch person. I have kind parents. I have a good education. I have good health. I have a lot of things. But as soon as I start losing any of it — if a family member dies, or if my health goes, or if I lose whatever property I might have — then I can slip into inner darkness.
And what I want you to hear for a moment is that quite often a lot of your energy and my energy goes into "I am what I do," "I am what people say about me," "I am what I have." And when that's the case, our life quickly becomes like this: because when people speak well about me, and when I have a lot of things, and when I do good things, I'm quite up, I'm excited. But when I start losing — when suddenly I find out that I cannot do anything anymore, when suddenly I find out that people talk against me, when finally I discover that I'm losing my friends — I might slip into depression and be very low. And before you realize it, you and I are on a zigzag. When these things are all right, we are up. When we start losing out, we are down.
And most of our mental work then is just to stay above the line. And we call that surviving. We want to survive. We want to hold on to our good name, hold on to some good product, hold on to our property. But we know somewhere that at the end there is a word that says: you're going to die after all. And when you live this kind of life with all these ups and downs, the end is death. When you are dead, you're dead. Nobody talks about you anymore. You don't have anything anymore. You can't do anything anymore. You lose it all. And that little life of you and of mine ends up in nothing.
The Lie the Demon Told Jesus
And what I want to say to you today is that this whole thing is wrong. That is not who you are, and that is not who I am. That's what the demon said to Jesus when he went to the desert. He said: turn these stones into bread and show you can do something. Jump from the temple and let people catch you so they speak well about you. Kneel in front of me and then I will give you a lot of possessions. Then you are loved — because you do something, people speak well about you, and you have something, and everybody's going to love you.
And Jesus says: that's a lie. That's the greatest lie. That makes you and me enter into relationships of violence and destruction. Because I know who I am. I know who I am because before the Spirit sent me to be tempted, the Spirit came upon me and said: you are the beloved child. You are my beloved Son. On you my favor rests. That's who you are. That's who I am.
And Jesus heard that voice — "You are my beloved, on you my favor rests" — and it was that voice that he clung to as he lived his life. And people praised him and people rejected him, and people said "Hosanna" and people crucified him. But Jesus held on to the truth: whatever happens, I am the beloved of God, and that is who I am. And that allows me to live in a world that keeps rejecting me or praising me or laughing at me or spitting on me. I am the beloved — not because people say I'm great, but because I am the beloved even before I was born.
You Are the Beloved
And dear friends, if there's anything I want you to hear this morning, it is that what is said of Jesus is said of you. You have to hear that you are the beloved daughter and son of God. And to hear it not here — in the head — but right here, in the heart. To hear it so that your whole life can be turned around.
And listen to the Scriptures: "I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have written your name in the palm of my hand. From all eternity I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I love you. I embrace you. You are mine and I am yours, and you belong to me."
You have to hear that. Because if you can hear that voice that speaks to you from all eternity to all eternity, your life will become more and more the life of the beloved — because that's who you are. Then you start discovering that all that you do here is nurtured from the knowledge that you are the beloved. That's who you are. And when you start believing this, that circle of knowledge will become bigger and bigger and bigger until it cuts right into your daily life.
You will still have rejections, and you will still have praise, and you will still have losses. But you will live no longer as a person searching for his or her identity. You will live as the beloved. You will live your pain and you will live your anguish and you will live your successes and you will live your failures as the one who knows who you are.
The First Love
And I want to give you a little word here. The voice that calls you the beloved is the voice of the first love. First love. John writes: love one another, because God has loved you first.
And the great struggle — and it's not easy, I'm not talking about something easy — is to claim that first love. We are loved before your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your teachers loved you. If you heard the story that Julian was talking about, it was a story of rejection. The people who love us don't always love us well. The people who care for us also wound us. And you might know from your own experience that those who are often closest to you — like your father, your mother, your children, your brother, your teachers, your churches — are also the ones who might hurt you most.
And how to live that. How to live the truth that in this world love and wounds are never separated. We can only live it when we always reclaim that first love — so that we can forgive those who love us poorly, but also so that we can recognize in the love that we do receive a hint, or a glimpse, of that first love that heals.
Could you hold on to that? Every time you have a temptation to become bitter, to become jealous, to lash out, to feel rejected — can you go back and say, "No, I am the beloved daughter of God, and even though I am rejected, that rejection should become for me a way to reclaim the truth"? It should be like a pruning that helps me to claim more fully and deeply the truth of my belovedness.
And if I can hold on to that and live in the world, then I can be free to love other people without expecting them to give me all that my heart desires. Because God has created you and me with a heart that only God's love can satisfy. And every other love will be partial, will be little, will be limited, will be painful. And if we are willing to let the pain not make us bitter but prune us — to give us a deeper sense of our belovedness — then we can be free as Jesus, and walk in this world and proclaim God's first love wherever we go.