5/23/54

Scripture: (Read Joshua 14: 1-13)

We have become almost obsessed with the desire for security. We would like to be insured, and assured, against almost any calamity or adversity -- particularly if a way can be found or devised wherein somebody else “pays the premiums.” Some seek the easiest road. Some frankly want to get something for nothing. Some feel that the world owes them a living, or at least the opportunity to earn it with little effort. And we lose our zest for adventure and the rewards of vigorous risk.

The cry for security sometimes betrays little concern for others. When it becomes a concern for one’s self or one’s group only, it takes on an immoral quality that in the long run becomes its downfall. A world in which national isolation from the needs of others, of concern only for those contacts that can be construed as profitable for one’s own nation, becomes the world in which the desperate turn willing ears to whoever makes the loudest offers of assistance. And it is not too difficult for the revolutionary tongue to persuade the “have-nots” to simply take it away from the “haves.”

Well, the cry for security and ease finds interesting challenge in the ancient story of Caleb. The promised land was being divided, after conquest, among the tribes of Israel. And Caleb chose what the others may not have wanted. It was rough land where his tribe would have to start nearly from bottom. If his people were to amount to anything, they would have to build an enduring monument to courage, strong faith and hard work out of elemental makings so far as the land was concerned.

The Book of Numbers has recounted the story of the Israelite spies sent into Canaan to see what the land was like, whether its people were strong or weak, and how many. They looked over the land from mountain to wilderness, from barren hills to river valley. They returned with samples of the fruit of the land -- pomegranates, figs and grapes. Indeed the account speaks of one bunch of grapes so heavy that it could be carried only on a pole between two men. (California take note!). When the spies gave their report, they said, “It’s a splendid land. But the people there are strong! Cities are walled. And we saw giants there. The obstacles are too great. And the residents are too strong. We’d better go back to Egypt and work for the taskmasters there.” [Numbers 13, 14: 1-4].

But Caleb was made of more adventurous stuff. No more slavery for him! “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it!” That much of the story is recounted in Numbers. The sequel of the story appears in the book of Joshua. Caleb’s dreams had been unfulfilled for forty years while the Israelites wandered in the desert. During this wandering, they were being transformed from ex-slaves, whose minds had always been made up for them, as it were, by taskmasters, into tough, independent, freedom-loving, courageous people. After 40 years, they were ready for the conquest. And when the conquest was successfully finished, and the land was being divided, Caleb chose the red clay hills around Hebron. Having been assigned this rough, stony, dangerous land, filled with obstacles, his people proceeded to make good.

American pioneers have known something of the same temper. There are few geographical frontiers now. But men of the past tackled rough land and made it good. To a degree, they are still at it. Riding out of coastal California where one takes for granted the fine vineyards and splendid fruit groves without realizing that those fields were desert until supplied with great quantities of water by irrigation, one passes over desolate wastes of earth, only to find, dotted here and there, date palm groves. These palms grow where it is dusty, hot and desolate, only because man has managed to get water out of the earth to keep the trees supplied. It isn’t easy, but it gets done!

The Mormon people offer an example of folk who chose rough land. Because of strange religious beliefs, some of which are quite unacceptable to most of us, they moved from the east into the middle west. Having been hounded from place to place, they put down roots in the Mississippi Valley at a place they called Nauvoo. They built a temple and started to rear families. But enemies followed them. Joseph Smith, their founder, and his brother Hiram Smith, were murdered in jail. Most of the Mormon folk moved again, abandoning the place they had tried to make fertile and beautiful at Nauvoo, and moving again westward. Led by Brigham Young, they traveled really far this time. Beset by sickness, floods, blizzards and enemies, they continued the slow trek across plains, into the great Rocky mountains. And finally they reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

As they came down a mountain canyon to a shoulder of earth where it was possible to look out over the vast valley toward the giant lake, Brigham Young, who had been ill, raised himself up, looked across the wild beautiful expanse, and said, “This is the place.” This vast, sage-brush covered desert looking to salt flats and a lake made nearly sterile by salt --- this was the place! Anyone who has visited the area recently knows how they made the place bloom. Fertile farms surround the great city so cleanly laid out. The capital of Utah testifies eloquently of a resourceful people who took rough land and made not only a living but a flourishing community.

Those of us who have become acquainted with them know that, despite the eccentricities of some of their religious tenets, the Mormon folk have a very solid streak in their spiritual makeup. The freedom they won was not freedom from religion but for their religion. They take it seriously and positively and practically. Good Mormons (and tremendous numbers of them are good in this sense) tithe faithfully to their church. With that much resource, they can build solidly and comprehensively their equipment and their missionary program.

When a Salt Lake City contractor had, in pre-depression days, a half million dollar business earning in a single year, he sent his son to the church’s bishop with a check for $50,000. The son demurred, suggesting that the money might better go back into the business. The father settled the matter with one brisk statement: “Take it to the Bishop. That money is not mine.” I heard the story in conversation with that son, who was a two-year missionary to Hawaiians while I lived and worked in the Islands.

Mormons were the first religious group which, after weathering the first shock of the depression, said, “Take our people off the government relief rolls. We’ll take care of them.” And they did! They have had the venture to make their portion of the earth produce their competent share of life.

One of the great stories of rural ministry in the Christian church is that of the Rev. John Frederick Oberlin. Though he was an Alsacian who never left Europe, there is nevertheless a college in Ohio named for him. Born in 1740, John Frederick Oberlin made up his mind while a theological student that he would serve a hard field, one which no other minister would serve. He received a call to Waldsbach, far back in the Vosges Mountains, and spent sixty years as pastor of that one parish.

When Oberlin arrived at Stone Valley parish in Waldsbach, he found it a place of terrible desolation. It had been overrun time after time during the Thirty Years’ War. There were no roads. People lived in filth and poverty. Children were illiterate. The church was impoverished. Oberlin and his bride, a girl from his home town, set out to change life in that parish. When he died at the age of 86, Stone Valley was world-famous for its great church, its excellent progressive schools, its good roads, its advanced agricultural methods, and the excellent Christian character of its people. All that came about principally because one consecrated servant of God chose rough land and set about making it God’s garden.

Today is known as Rural Life Sunday. It is so observed among churches of the open country and villages, and is marked among city churches as well. Our whole industrial type of civilization needs reminder that food, raw materials and even some human values come from the soil. The earth is good. It is the Lord’s. It challenges not the wantonness but the skill, the love, the expectation of man. Its resources must be husbanded, cultivated, replenished. Upon the people of city and farm alike rest responsibility for its conservation -- not just the saving of its wildness, but the coaxing and cultivation of its fruitfulness. And the earth responds to the wise concern of people.

Mankind gets ruthless. In his determination to grab what others have made to appear good, or to defend the earth from greedy desolation, both the earth and the people suffer. Palestine is pictured, in some of the Biblical times, as a fair land of great productivity. In recent ages, it has appeared barren. Now that Jewish folk again populate that portion of it which is known as Israel, some of the leaders are searching out, with surprising results, the springs that once watered terraced fields, the mines that once produced metals. It may be that, if the rapacity of man can be held in control, that land will be restored to a fruitfulness that none but Biblical historians have known.

One of the policies of our government that has had the most truly constructive possibilities for the world, is that which was simple called “point four” in a speech, most of which is otherwise not widely remembered. The effort to aid peoples in the development of their own land’s resources, for their own people, is one of those positive gestures of peace that has gone far, and could yet go much further, to ease the tension of a world wherein more than half the people know hunger! Among the world’s peoples, approximately one third are hungry to starving; one third are subsisting; one third have plenty and are even on a diet! Look out, in a world like that! Get it better balanced as quickly as possible!

A year and a half ago, our church delegation at the Winnebago Association meeting in Eagle River heard an African missionary speak. Rev. Sam Coles is an American Negro of the South, who was fired with a desire to serve the people of Africa. Surmounting incredible difficulty, “Old Sam” (as his younger school mates referred to him) finally got an academic education and a lot of earthy, practical experience. At length he was commissioned a missionary. His work is not alone the preaching of the gospel, but the building of faith within people on the soil. He makes improved tools, and teaches his people how to use them. He says, smiling and confident, “Give me enough good plows to help people in Africa to help themselves, and no one needs to worry about Communism in that part of Africa.”

The ability to live on and from the good earth must go hand in hand with the Christian faith that the world and all that is therein, soil and people, belong to God. We of this nation have become so used to the notion that big corporation methods make for the most efficient production in industry that we have somewhat assumed that the big farm, using large scale methods, is the answer to the production of foods and textile materials. Recent studies reveal that is not necessarily so. The human factor is still tremendously important. A study, undertaken by Stanley Hamilton of the Rural Life Association, of 2 comparable counties in Indiana is most revealing. Benton County has about 250,000 acres. So has Elkhart County. Benton County has more fertile and valuable land, worth an average of $209 per acre. It is mostly a commercial farming area (1,138 farms averaging 223 acres each.) Elkhart County has handicapped land, worth one $160 per acre. Small farms average only 86 acres each.

Benton County is 54.1% operated by tenants on the large scale operations. Elkhart farms are tilled by their owners; only 16.8% are not tilled by the owner. The eye-opener comes with the harvest figures. Benton County reports $14.8 million for the cash harvest, while Elkhart County walks off with $20.7 million! Large scale, tenant-using, Benton County has 37 rural churches. Homeowner-farming Elkhart County has 91 such churches. There appears to be a correlation between living on the land as owner and cultivator, and the community life represented in churches and community cooperation, with the actual production figures weighing in with the folk who live to live on, and farm the land! In real efficiency, people count far more than “farming the farmers.”

[Rev. Martin Schroeder, a leading minister of the United Lutheran fellowship, comments on a trip he took to Europe. “I was a member” .. etc. p609, Christian Century magazine; the rest of this reference is not with the manuscript - editor].

All of which suggests that it is wise to put some more emphasis upon ministers for rural areas who love the people and their vocation; and to put emphasis on home missionary programs for some promising areas. And if the land look rough or inadequate, then people of Christian faith, with the counsel of soil experts, and with the willingness to venture in a pioneering spirit, may build not just a production unit, but homes and communities, until the good earth becomes the good garden its Designer intends it to be.

The voice of a prophet says: “Look for the hill country” for there one may serve and bring hope and happiness to people.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 23, 1954.