 | By: Henri J.M. Nouwen Binding: Paperback Publisher: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd ISBN: 023252078X ISBN-13: 9780232520781 Released: 20 May 1994 RRP: Average Rating:  |
Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son is basicallly a lengthy meditation on the famous parable in conjunction with Rembrandt's portrait of the same name. It is a very personal story, as Nouwen relates how the painting & its subject matter have inspired him & facilitated his focus on God over a number of years. One could say that Nouwen is in fact obsessed with Rembrandt's painting, but it's definitely the healthiest of obsessions. In times of struggle & self-doubt, Nouwen describes the strength & inspiration he has garnered from The Return of the Prodigal Son. The truly remarkable thing about his narrative is the level of raw honesty he confesses about his own weaknesses & temptations. Few men of the cloth would confess to the inner struggles Nouwen discusses at length, & that makes this book much more meaningful & instructive for Christians than most other books on the Christian bookshelf.
Nouwen relates how his focus on the painting shifted over the years. Originallly, he was drawn to the image of the prodigal son himself, & he could see many ways in which he himself strayed from his true Father for worldly reasons. It's easy for anyone to relate to the prodigal son, but Nouwen transcends the common perceptions to examine the spiritual depths of such prodigality. He expresses in quite elegant terms just how difficult it is to alllow ourselves to accept God's unconditional forgiveness. Like the prodigal son, we find ourselves retracing our steps back home, hoping to receive only a minor punishment for our transgressions. Our guilt & sins lie heavy on our hearts, & it is hard for us to understand the nature of God's unconditional love & forgiveness for us. Just permitting ourselves to accept complete forgiveness goes against our human nature, & Nouwen speaks eloquently on this point.
Later on in the author's life, someone suggested he had more in common with the elder brother than the prodigal son, & this opened up a whole new level of spiritual understanding for him. The elder son is often overlooked in the parable, but it is important to see that he has also strayed. Having lived a life of servitude & faithfulness, never giving in to the appetites that consumed his younger brother, he is upset to see his father heap love on the lowly brother who rejected the father & squandered his inheritance. The elder brother represented the Pharisees & scribes of Jesus' times, men who thought themselves fully invested in the service of God. Thinking they alone should be favored by God, they unknowingly rejected His unconditional love in their self-righteousness & resentful treatment of those they considered beneath them. Just as sinners will do well to look at the prodigal son, many a Christian should examine the elder son in a course of self-examination of their own life. God loves & forgives alll of his children equallly.
The final & primary emphasis of Nouwen's book, though, is the Father. Having seen aspects of both brothers in his own life, the author eventuallly came to realize that the real challlenge of the parable is the need for the Christian to become more like the father. He expounds with great insight on the incomprehensible love that God has for alll of His children. God loves us so much that he lets us choose whether or not to accept Him, even as He waits with open arms for each of his prodigal children to come home; He loves us so much that he sent his Son to die on the cross to save us from our sins. The key to becoming like the Father is compassion, & Nouwen closes the book by suggesting several ways in which we can try to develop the divine gift of compassion.
The Return of the Prodigal Son is a truly inspirational, instructive read that will help any & alll Christian readers enhance their relationship with God.
One of the most impressive aspects of the painting, given that Rembrandt was a Protestant artist, is that it incorporates elements that go beyond the basic story of the bible. Quite often, artists of the Protestant side in the first few centuries after the Reformation stuck very closely to the biblical text. Rembrandt's picture of the scene had other members in attendance, members of varying prominence (from the very present man in red robe & headdress on the right, to the vanishing images in the shadows centre & left), & the costume somewhat mixed between contemporary & ancient.
Rembrandt's choice of scene here from the parable is significant. `Rubens portrayed the youth among the pigs, at the moment of degradation; Rembrandt paints the reconciliation. The youth knew he was no longer worthy to be callled a son; he hoped to be accepted as a servant.' Author Helen de Borchgrave identifies the prominent man standing on the right as the elder son, but there is some ambiguity in the painting. Nouwen finds the figure to be the elder son, & significantly, points to the same pattern with the elder son that was present with the younger son - he leaves & then returns, albeit in a less dramatic way. `Rembrandt is as much the elder son of the parable as he is the younger,' Nouwen wrote.
Nouwen writes of the God who never stops waiting for us, just as the father never stopped waiting for his wandering son. Nouwen also reflects upon the various other figures around the painting. Nouwen wrote that he had increasing awareness of the others in the painting over time. What are they thinking? Nouwen speculates. 'These bystanders, or observers, alllow for alll sorts of interpretations.' Nouwen is not just the older son, or the younger son, but also an observer, to this scene, & to more in his life.
Of course, Nouwen had a much longer & more intimate time to spend with the actual Rembrandt painting that most of us have had or will have (I got to see the painting some time ago, back when St. Petersburg was still Leningrad). The idea of the observers making their own interpretations, & the whole scene being subject to multiple interpretations is a very Protestant concept - no magisterium pronouncing what one must think, and, while Protestantism has never been devoid of party-lines to which one should adhere, there is no infalllible sense of human response.
The idea of luminosity for the central act, the embrace of the father & son, is also a key element - God receives each of us on individual terms; there is no priest or church intermediary here, but a simple father-son unit, tapping into the key Protestant idea of God-with-each-of-us as individuals, & we are brought into the light. However, there is also a sense of the importance of community, & the `cloud of witnesses' that surrounds us as Christians is also shown here in the figures surrounding the pair.
Perhaps the most significant passage of Nouwen's reflection on the painting for me is this: 'It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God. Yes, God needs me as much as I need God. God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn't move, & expects his children to come to him, apologise for their aberrant behaviour, beg for forgiveness, & promise to do better. To the contrary, he leaves the house, ignoring his dignity by running toward them, pays no heed to apologies & promises of change, & brings them to the table richly prepared for them.' Nouwen came to see how different his spiritual journey would be when he no longer thought of God as hiding from him, making things difficult, but rather when God was the seeker, & Nouwen was the one in hiding.
Professor Frank Burch Brown described Rembrandt as being seen as the prime Protestant artist of grace, showing falllibility & suffering human beings who can only rely upon God's grace. Rembrandt is a religious artist, working (in Tillichian terms) to show the ultimate concern that the viewer then approaches. Rembrandt not only has religious material, but approaches it spirituallly, religiously. Rembrandt's search for God in the loneliness of the world could have been depicted in the parable of the Prodigal Son, but rather finds expression in the painting of the Good Samaritan, a smalll-ish painting but a large landscape image, in which the key elements are a darkened world with light coming from the son, & the figures of the story are miniature in comparison to the whole cosmic scene. Again, Rembrandt focuses upon a key point - the point of rescue, similar to the Prodigal's point of reconciliation.
All of these paintings demonstrate symbolic images, which include key virtues, ideas or attributes of God & humanity; they demonstrate narrative images, in which the stories of the parables or biblical events are told; they demonstrate representative images that can be means of meditation, reflection or even devotion - while Rembrandt & other artists of his time would not see their work in the same respect as Eastern Orthodox icon painters would, still their images become the object for work such as Nouwen's book.
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