9/10/61

Scripture: Psalm 46

Text: Psalm 46: 2; “Though the earth be removed.”

One of the men of our generation who is worth remembering is a fellow who died early this year at the age of 34 years. He was a young Irish doctor, serving with the US armed forces, when we became aware of the terrific need for medical help in a country other than his own. It was first a matter of general military necessity when he was sent ashore to do all he could in combat with disease. But he fell into the grip of something far beyond the duty of a military mission. The limitless opportunity for service, where serving was so greatly needed, gripped him. And when he finished his military duty, Dr. Tom Dooley went right on serving the people of Laos. With nothing but the barest essentials, he caused a hospital to be established in about the most needy part of that country that he could find. He was not content to spend only himself. He boldly enlisted the help of drug companies, transportation agencies and the like. Two or three years ago he was touring the campuses of American medical schools, challenging medical students to come out to Laos to give a year or two of their lives during their student clerkship. He spoke in Cleveland where one of my sons is studying medicine. And the effect of his idealism on students, many of whom have tended to be cynical, was electric. Many students really responded to his suggestion with eagerness!

Dr. Dooley was, by church preference, an Irish Catholic. But, as he himself quipped, he had no desire to make “mackerel snappers” out of people. What he wanted was able service for people who needed that service.

Long months ago Dr. Dooley knew that he was suffering from an incurable type of cancer, and that it would eventually, and rather soon, take his life. But he forged ahead with his missions of mercy! He had just returned from another trip to Laos when he entered a cancer hospital on the US mainland, where the severity of his illness caught up to him, and he died.

So long as he had life strength, Dr. Tom Dooley had pitted himself against pain and disease. He had worked with Schweitzer in Africa. He had established hospitals in parts of the world remote from the usual sources of medical help. He had founded “Medico.” He had written a couple of “best-sellers” about his experiences. He was a mortal enemy of disease. Yet, at age 34, he left this mortal life, himself a victim of incurable disease.

Some of us ask Why? When a man is as much needed as he is needed; is as gloriously happy as he was in the service of fellow men; why does he have to go from this scene of service at 34 years of age? I wish I knew the answer to that question. Perhaps, if we did know the answer, we would know the answer to almost everything. But it is not given us to know!

This much we do know: Christian service does not exempt Christians from the diseases that lay waste mankind. It does not exempt Christians from sorrow and frustration and heartache. If it did, then Christian service would be a kind of “insurance program” to cap all insurance programs. There would be no trouble getting people to join a church, for they would have a first rate selfish, or “self-preserving” motive for doing so. In fact it would not really be “Christian service” at all. Instead, it would merely be a kind of selfish self-preservation technique. It would be impossible to do anything out of disinterested goodness. There would always be that element of escaping trouble. Exemption from suffering would corrupt the purest Christian service.

I do not know why Dr. Tom Dooley could not have been spared to a needy, suffering world a while longer. But there is another question that is probably more pertinent to ask: why was he given to the world in the first place? Why will a man, as gifted as he, turn his back on some successful or even lucrative medical practice and plunge his life into the darkest spots of earth like some ray of light?

Dr. Dooley is not the only man to do this sort of thing. Years ago, I met a remarkable man who had caught a similar vision. Near the turn of the century he had been graduated from the medical school at Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Before opening a practice, he went on a tour of some of the church missions of the world with a wealthy philanthropist. The trip turned out to be more than just an interesting jaunt. He was so thoroughly impressed with the need for what he knew and could do, that he decided to invest his life in the Orient. He applied for service with the Presbyterian Church Board of missions and he went to Korea. There he not only practiced medicine and surgery, but he trained Korean young men to be physicians and surgeons, while his wife, herself a nurse, trained Korean young women to be nurses. A hospital was built with the aid of the philanthropist with whom he had first traveled, and was named Severance Hospital for that man. Dr. A. I. Ludlow became a world-renowned authority in diseases of the Orient.

When he himself developed symptoms of cancer of the throat his fellows urged him to go back to the Mayo Clinic in the US for treatment. He declined to do so, saying that he would instead submit his case to surgery by one of the Korean doctors whom he had trained himself. The result was an operation that saved his life.

Dr. A. I Ludlow lived, after he retired, to an advanced old age, in Ohio. Why he was spared to the world, while Dr. Dooley was taken from the world, I do not know. But this I do know; that he invested the same quality of life among people of every sort that Dooley did. Korean people with whom he worked loved and trusted him, because he loved them. Fellow missionaries loved him; people here in America loved him. Children loved him, and they were continually welcomed in his home. Though he and his wife had no children of their own, they were loved by the children of other families who affectionately called them Aunt and Uncle. [my own children included]

The spirit that is behind lives like these two doctors is love. Dr. Dooley found it so. He loved people of all mankind. He found identity with the children of God wherever anyone in pain could be relieved. When speaking before American audiences, urging their interest and the spending of their lives, he would say, “If any person anywhere needs me and I can help him, that person has a claim on me.”

Why does love get a hold on people like that? How can a man see jungle children in Laos as so real a part of the family of God that he wants to give his life to them? Why do the Tom Dooleys and the Irving Ludlows see the solidarity of humanity?

They seem to say what Ernest Hemingway said in one of his well-known writings: If someone dies in your village, do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for you. You have died a little. You are a part of everyone else in the community. And everyone else is a little part of you -- sometimes an important part. And love for one another illumines life.

Why should this be? The only satisfactory answer seems to be in the realm of faith. Tom Dooley had touched the ground of all being and had found good, as God. It there is a problem of evil, and admittedly there is, do not forget that there is also the ever-present, mysterious problem of good!

One of the few certainties of this life is what the Hebrew prophets and singers found long ago -- that we can not drift beyond God’s love and care. And even this certainty rests on faith. But there appears, in the lives of those who hold such faith, an assurance that though everything else has been let go, there is God, refusing to let us go. To our quest for certainty, the Scriptures speak. Here, for example, is the assurance found in an Old Testament Psalm:

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof --- God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved ..” And then, in the vividness of his imagination, the psalmist hears this assurance --- “Be still, and know that I am God.”

This 46th Psalm is often called “Luther’s Psalm.” It does not belong to Martin Luther in any way; for he has no exclusive claim staked out over it. But it is probably the source of his inspiration when he wrote his great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” There is something massive in this psalm that has a particular appeal for all who have felt God in great moments. This psalm shares a popular rating with the “Shepherd’s Psalm” [23rd].

The Scriptures speak to the same kind of certainty in the New Testament. When Paul wrote his letter to the Hebrews, he took the same kind of metaphor as his refrain. In this letter, the Lord is depicted as shaking the earth in order that the things that can not be shaken may remain. And that passage closes with the words: “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that can not be shaken.” [Hebrews 12: 27-28].

If the people of any time need, and seek, certainty, we are that people! We live amidst startling “change and decay.” And many pray, “O Thou who changest not, abide with me.” And we can become adjusted -- physically, mentally and emotionally -- to the vast technological changes of our time, because we are part of a mankind that is amazingly pliable. Only we still seek certainties.

Hosts of Christian people have found their certainties resting upon faith. However it is significant to remember that the psalm and the epistle both speak of the certainties coming after the experience of being shaken; of letting go. We can be laid hold of by God when we are willing to let go everything but God!

Last season in Chile, a visitor from our country was talking with a missionary who had lived through some serious earthquakes. The missionary said that the thing that impressed him most was the utter helplessness that overcomes you when the earth shakes beneath your feet, and some trembling crevice opens, crossing your path like a swift, startled snake. This missionary said that, in one particularly bad quake in a crowded plaza, he saw scores of Chilean men stand motionless while the earth trembled, remove their hats, and look upward as it toward heaven. It seemed to them the only thing to do. There was nothing else they could do just then.

Have you ever looked to God because there was nothing else for you to do? If not, it may be that you have an experience waiting for you in which you will find Him. Some of the experience of those Chileans, translated into spiritual terms, awaits each of us, and must happen to all of us. We can see God shaking life through judgment and grace in order that the things which can not be shaken may remain. Before we can be helped very much, we must realize our helplessness. One of the dangers of our affluence is that we become blinded to our basic dependence.

And here is what happens when a life encounters God; it fulfills itself in relationship to other people. It becomes Christ-like. It preaches and teaches and heals and helps. It gives itself away --- spends itself. And that is the way it finds itself.

Some time ago it was made known that the US military mission to Laos involved the spending of 300 million dollars in American money to try to keep the peace there -- 300 million dollars in jets and bombers and guns! And still the peace eludes that troubled area! It is quite possible that, even from the practical viewpoint (and there is no sin in being practical!), the efforts of the Dr. Tom Dooleys have done more to strengthen the cause of freedom, fortifying the spirits of people. And this, even though it was an all-too-briefly spent life, and the money involved in his effort was but a merest fraction of that spent on the military mission.

Are we so wrong if we ask: “Does not God want us to use more of the approach of love? --- the kind of love that is willing to let everything else go?” Those who have found it, and shared it, seem to have found everything that is worthwhile.

Is not this the meaning of discipleship? Was it not demonstrated ultimately on a cross? Is it not the pearl of great price which, to have, one must sell all other pearls to possess?

The certainties of the kingdom that can not be shaken wait upon God’s ultimate confidence in us. He reaches toward us in grace, as we reach toward Him in faith. In this is our refuge and strength.

AMEN

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, September 10, 1961

Babcock, WI, UCC, July 13, 1975

Nekoosa, WI, UCC, July 13, 1975

Waioli Church, January 18, 1976.