The Night of the Iguana; 3 visits to the Kingdom of God
By Elizabeth Wrightman 3-23-2025
I would like to bring a few voices into our sacred space this morning. The first one is that of an author writing in one of my favorite books, the impossible Will Take a Little While. She writes,
“I came across a photo in a magazine that left a deep impression on me. A woman is lying on a bed with two children. Their arms are across her body, as if it were a natural, ordinary peaceful afternoon. One is asleep, and one partly awake. The woman lies on her side with her eyes open, alert caution and some fear in her eyes. But also her expression conveys deep calm, as well, and intensity. Her face, for these reasons in particular is beautiful. Here was the caption:
Irene Siegel, a Jewish American sleeps in the home of a Palestinian family in Beit Jala as part of a human shield campaign to deter Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes. It is not the present war that we have heard of and seen for 15 months. (A war which is presently in fragile ceasefire phase.) This story in the magazine is now most likely 25 years old.
The woman herself, Irene, states, when she is interviewed about the photo,
“Magdalene, my Palestinian hostess looked at me sideways and said softly, ‘Are you Jewish?’ And I nodded. She threw her arms around me and said, ‘You know I love you, Irene. I love you like a sister.’ And I cried. And so did she…………
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, this American Jew is lying on that bed, in that village, in this moment (in Beit Jala) guarding those napping children with her body, with her heart, with her passion, as if they were her own.
All what we would call powerless.
The Jewish woman, the two children, and their own mother, Magdalene appear defenseless, as being in the pathway of war. Their powerlessness, which St. Paul speaks about in one of our readings today, in Second Corinthians, calls forth the veritable intervention of God. A person comes who has power------but the power of resistance; resistance in overcoming the power of evil by good. She has the power not of the kingdom of the world, but that which comes from the Kingdom of God. In a sense this woman, risking her life to act with solidarity (meaning to her these are actually just like her own children, to her) and with compassion; her action is the act of protecting them, with her very life. The Kingdom of God; Jesus’s favorite theme.
Each of these people will tell us a story, a story about the Christian vision; living right in the Kingdom of God, amidst our living on this often troubled earth. Oh, the word Christian may not appear, or the name of Jesus….or the words, Kingdom of God. Nevertheless the people in these stories experience...or might even sometimes cause to occur, these core teachings; the values seen from the earliest days of the Church. And embody the actions of Jesus Christ.
So I would now like you to meet Fr. Henri Nouwen…….to bring a part of his story into the room, as told by a colleague;
Henry was a priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He taught at Notre Dame and at the Divinity schools of Yale and Harvard. Nouwen’s extensive writings have influenced countless lives, including both Pastor Paul and me.
Fr. Nouwen was prone to what was then called a nervous breakdown. He was considered melancholy and had periods of severe depression and anxiety. Nouwen becomes the full time caregiver for Adam, at L’Arche Daybreak Community, in Canada. I will speak more about L’Arche in a minute.
Adam is also powerless, his physical and cognitive impairments so great that he lives life more like an infant. He is vulnerable, dependent on others for every way of staying alive; his food, his hygiene, his medical care, where he can live, where he can have dignity.
So we have three people here. Henri, Adam, and Philip Yancey. (Yancey is a bestselling Christian author and former editor-at-large of Christianity Today magazine.) Let us hear as Philip Yancey begins his own story. In Yancey’s words;
“On a visit to Nouwen in Toronto, I watched him perform that routine with Adam, and I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of his time.” Yancey refers to Adam, this 25-year-old man who cannot speak, cannot dress or undress himself, cannot walk alone, and cannot do so at all without much help. He is nearly blind. He does not cry or laugh. Adam’s back is distorted, his arm and leg movements twisted. He has few days without grand-mal seizures. Nouwen lived at L’Arche community, with folks who live in one of a number of world-renowned communities of worship and solidarity with residents who have profound disabilities.
When I cautiously broached the subject with Henri Nouwen, continues Yancey, could not someone else take over these menial tasks? Nouwen informed me that I had missed the point. ‘I am not giving up anything’ he said. ‘It is I, not Adam, who benefits more from our relationship.’
‘These hours have given me an inner peace so fulfilling’ “that it made most of his others seem boring and superficial. He had soon realized his own rivalry and competitiveness, how obsessive his drive for success in academia and Christian ministry.” ‘Adam taught me’, said Fr. Nouwen, ‘what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.’
“From Adam’s simple nature”, writes Yancey, “he had glimpsed the ‘emptiness’ necessary before one can be filled by God—the kind of emptiness that desert monks achieved only after much soul searching and discipline. “
Adam’s being calls forth from Fr. Henri Nowen the action of service. It requires great creativity to overcome evil with love. It happens, for instance when we say prayers for our enemy. It happens when Jesus prays on the cross for forgiveness, not only for the soldiers who are executing him, but for those who called for his death, before Pilate, or for those who constantly badgered him with questions, like inquisitors, to trap him into heresy leading to torture and an early death, and with friends, country people and family who abandoned him at his lowest.
Where do we see the teachings of Jesus here so far? Perhaps we are recalling some of the beatitudes, or some of the parables. Perhaps you are remembering the passage about little children. Perhaps as we continue to listen, even more of these will come to mind for you, as they do for me.
Now let me take us down another path here…our third and final one. To do so I would like to speak about a 1964 movie, taken from a Tennessee Williams play, the Night of the Iguana. (I see some of you have seen it too.) What I remember most from the film is not the general narrative, which contained a curious tale of four people thrown together one night. A night of crossroads…of coming to forks in the road.
I had forgotten much of the story, but have never forgotten a few lines as the play nears it close; the statement made at the very end, about mercy. I was a young woman at the time. I understood that the whole story was about the destiny of the title character of the film. The iguana…… defenseless, a mere reptile, unable to save itself from humans, and Tennessee Williams in his play, has made the iguana the silent spokesperson for the playwright’s vision about humanity. His vision about redemption. The concept of mercy had not yet been a strong chord in my life. I had not yet read much great literature or seen many films. But here I was meeting the gospel head on, in a unique and memorable way. Partly for sure, as I loved animals so much, it was a strong image for me. But it was more than that. I was seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ and the words of .St. Paul both. Mercy on the one hand. The powerless and vulnerable, on the other….and their intense connection with the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world…..but in it. ---sometimes because of the most unlikely circumstances.
Mr. Shannon is a defrocked minister, now working as a tour guide in Mexico. He is suicidal, this night, from a crisis of faith, from an addiction to alcohol, from the loss of his final attempt to hold down a job. At a small villa, become a resort, he stumbles upon what the word Malachi means in Hebrew; the Hebrew word for ‘angel’, a messenger from God. Throughout the evening, as his dark night of the soul unspools, an iguana is tied up below the deck. The minister meets hope and in some sense his lost faith through this spiritual guide, Hannah Jelkes, played by Deborah Kerr. (A Malachi figure in the play; an ‘angel’.)
“He’ still struggling” says Hannah, as they look down at the iguana from the deck above.
“Yes, he’s got to the end of his rope.” Says Richard Burton, who is cast as Reverend Shannon, a lost soul in self-imposed exile and who is deeply entrenched, this night among others, in his own serious breakdown.
“Can you not tell me that he’s not able to feel pain and panic” Hannah asks?
“Mr. Shannon, cut him loose.”
They get a machete and cut the rope around the neck of the iguana. “I just cut loose one of God’s creatures, at the end of his rope.” Says the erstwhile Rev. Shannon.
His longtime friend, who is played by Ava Gardner comes up the outside stairway and demands, as the owner of the inn what he has done!
“I just cut loose one of God’s creatures at the end of his rope.
“Why”? She asks, but more gently………
“So that one of God’s creatures could be free of panic and scamper home safe and free. A little act of grace.”
The former Rev. Shannon understands the suffering of the other, as fear and panic are his demons as well. He identifies with the struggling animal entirely. He sees himself in the tied up, frightened creature. It is no longer an ‘it’ to him, but is in the identical predicament as he. The animal tied up to be killed and eaten, calls forth mercy and compassion. “He and I are the same,” concludes the ‘defrocked’ minister. Shannon was attempting to kill himself this night…. and the iguana was imminently bound for the kitchen.
Somehow in liberating the sizable, exotic reptile he acts; not an act entirely of the kingdom of earth; with logic, with practicality, with hardness of heart, with ‘business as usual’. His act is more akin to dwellers of the Kingdom of God, that upside down world we see over and over in the parables and actions of Jesus. Where there is plenty of power around, more than enough to go around….but more invisible, more seemingly at risk, more humble we could say, more loving? Power which looks, sounds, and acts……………… completely different.
The voices speaking for us today about the Kingdom of God? The first was about Irene, the American Jewish woman acting as a human shield for a Palestinian home. In an area scheduled to be bombed. The second is a writer called Philip Yancey, from one of his bestselling works on Jesus of Nazareth. He speaks to us of Fr. Henri Nouwen and his care for Adam.
The third: we see the playwright Tennessee Williams speaking to us in the Night of the Iguana; the liberating of one who is ‘at the end of his rope’. Although the name Jesus is never spoken, and the Kingdom of God is never mentioned, we have nevertheless seen and heard them here. Seen how the Kingdom looks in real time here. Amen
Rev. Elizabeth Wrightman
Community Church of the Monterey Peninsula