Life of the Beloved: Chosen

Last Fall, we held a book study on Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen.

In this book, Nouwen tells us that the life of a Christian is one of discovering our identity as God’s beloved. That identity has four movements, which he parallels to the movements of communion. Like the body of Christ in communion, we are also chosen, blessed, broken, and given.

This week, we’ll explore these four movements as a continuation of Sunday’s sermon on chosenness.

The first step of being the Beloved is realizing that you are chosen. God chose you. God chooses you. God will continue to choose you.

I recently finished Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, a memoir of the comedian’s life in South Africa. The title is based on the circumstances into which he was born. His mother is black and his father is white. Because Noah was born before the fall of apartheid, his mother and father’s union was illegal. Thus, he was born a crime, an identity that he now carries positively, but one that he struggled with growing up.

In the book, he explains that his relationship with his father was strained. His mother and father were not married when they had him and they never married after Apartheid. Trevor, being half-black and half-white, looked different than his mother who raised him. So, before apartheid fell, when she was in public, she had to pretend that she was Trevor’s maid, because being seen with a half-black, half-white son would have shown that she was in clear violation of apartheid laws. Of course, after apartheid, it was still far from culturally acceptable. Thus, because of the laws, shame, and being raised primarily by his mother (the black South African community was much more welcoming to a half-white child than the white South African community was to a half-black child), Trevor did not get to know his father very well.

But, through childhood and adolescence, he could never fully understand this dynamic. He saw it more as his father’s rejection of him. It seemed his father chose not to know him, to live a different life. Then, Trevor tells the story of reconnecting with his father in early adulthood. By this time, he was working as a comedian and radio host, and gaining some fame. As he grew, his desire to know his father also grew, even though it felt that his father had no interest in knowing him.

Despite his father moving to a different part of the country and being a very private person, Trevor finally finds him through a letter and reconnects after ten years of not seeing one another. Trevor visits his home in Cape Town (Trevor lived in Johannesburg). Upon arriving at his house, they sit down for a meal.

While I was eating he got up and went and picked up this book, an oversized photo album, and brought it back to the table. “I’ve been following you,” he said, and he opened it up. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done, every time my name was mentioned in a newspaper, everything from magazine covers to the tiniest club listings, from the beginning of my career all the way through to that week. He was smiling so big as he took me through it, looking at the headlines. “Trevor Noah Appearing This Saturday at the Blues Room.” “Trevor Noah Hosting New TV Show.”

I felt a flood of emotions rushing through me. It was everything I could do not to start crying. It felt like this ten-year gap in my life closed right up in an instant, like only a day had passed since I’d last seen him. For years I’d had so many questions. Is he thinking about me? Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of me? But he’d been with me the whole time. he’d always been proud of me. Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father.

I walked out of his house that day an inch taller. Seeing him had reaffirmed his choosing me. He chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. I was wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give another human being.

(Born a Crime, pp. 109-110)

“Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give another human being.”

I agree. Because it points to the divine. God chooses you. When we realize that, we walk out an inch taller. We realize we are wanted. We realize that we are beloved.

God chooses you. You belong. You are loved.

Our identity is God’s beloved.

From that identity, we have a task: go and reflect that “greatest gift” to another human being.