8/2/70

"On Earth, as it is in Heaven"

Scripture: Psalm 72: 1-14, read responsively; I Samuel 16: 1-13.

It may be that today’s address from this pulpit is, in the main, less a sermon than a description of some of the travel experiences that Mrs. Kingdon and I have had during the past year. It was a trip made possible by the splendid gift given to us on the 40th anniversary of my ordination by members of this congregation, and many other friends. There is so much in the year’s experience that has been spiritually rewarding that I want to share a bit of it with you here this morning.

Last September 8th we left Wisconsin Rapids, not to return until nearly 9 months later on June 2nd. From Chicago we flew, on September 10th, to Hawaii, where I was to serve for more than 4 months as interim pastor of Imiola Congregational Church of Waimea. The town is headquarters of the great Parker Ranch on the big island of Hawaii. Its post office and airport are known as Kamuela, Hawaii.

Imiola Congregational Church, now a member congregation of the United Church of Christ, was founded in 1832. First missionaries in the area had been the Bishop family and the first church building, erected by order of the chiefs and dedicated in 1830 by the young King Kamehameha III had been a grass edifice. Next missionaries assigned to Waimea in 1832 were Dr. Dwight Baldwin and his wife, Charlotte. Dr. Baldwin was a great grandfather of the late Henry P. Baldwin II whom some of you remember as an active member of this church and community here in Wisconsin Rapids. The Baldwins were joined, later in 1832, by the Rev. Lorenzo Lyons and his young bride who was then barely 19 years of age. All together, they organized the church.

Three years later, in 1835, the Baldwins were removed to the mission in Lahaina, on the island of Maui. The work at Waimea continued for the next half century under the consecrated, untiring effort of the man who is still affectionately called “Father Lyons.”

The present church edifice which is still used by the worshipping congregation, erected by the stupendous labor of its people under direction and encouragement by Father Lyons, was dedicated in 1857. The building and congregation are called Imiola, “seeking life.” One speaks of that name as one might refer to an individual, valued friend.

The year 1970 has seen the sesquicentennial celebration of 150 years of Christian service in Hawaii since the coming of the first New England missionaries in 1820. At one of the great gatherings in the famed Kawaiahao Church in Honolulu, I found myself, as interim pastor of Imiola church, representing one of the 3 or 4 oldest congregations in the state of Hawaii. The little congregation of Imiola Church is inter-racial, but dominantly people of Hawaiian ancestry. They are earnest Christian people, many of them deeply committed to the Christ whose gospel was brought to them generations ago by the missionaries sent to them by our spiritual ancestors --- ministers, teachers, printers, agricultural experts and others commissioned to help bring enlightenment and green fields to a land which proved ready for their coming.

It had been my privilege to serve, years ago, in that missionary succession, for the first eight years of my ordained ministry were invested as a pastor at Kahului and a missionary of the Hawaiian Board. To return for a short time to Hawaii nei has been a privilege and a significant and joyful experience.

Having finished my temporary assignment, we Kingdons left on February 2nd from Honolulu for Tokyo and a trip the rest of the way around the world. We not only saw sights and places new to us, but we had direct contact with Christian missions and missionaries all along the way.

In Japan, we stayed for 5 days at Amherst House on the campus of Doshisha University in Kyoto. Doshisha is one of the great universities of Japan with a Christian origin and orientation. We were at Amherst House by arrangement with Otis and Alice Carey. Otis is an Amherst College associate professor on leave to Doshisha University. Alice is a doctor of medicine serving as a medical supervisor for missionaries connected with the United Church of Christ in Japan and is teaching a graduate course in medical problems. They are exceedingly busy, and are highly regarded people.

While in Kyoto, we attended a Sunday morning church service in a Kyondan Church (that is, one of our Christian denomination.) Everything was in the Japanese language -- sermon, scripture, prayers and music. But, though I understood none of the language, it was not difficult to find myself at worship in the spirit, with fellow Christians of Japan.

We spent ten days in Korea. There, our chief contacts, church-wise, were with Presbyterian people. Mrs. Kingdon had been born in the home of Presbyterian missionaries to Korea. Among older folk who still remember them, we found a still-continuing veneration and affectionate respect for the service of her parents. One of the most inspiring church services I ever attended, or expect to experience, was in the Young Nak Presbyterian Church of Seoul. It was on the 8th day of February and the weather had turned severely cold. There was no central heating, and everyone was glad to keep winter clothing on, including overcoats and winter footwear. But the atmosphere was warm and earnest. Everyone, men and women, but perhaps especially the men, joined heartily in hymns and responses. The entire assembly gave rapt attention to the eloquent sermon. There were 8,000 people present in, and overflowing from, the great church! There was superb music by a big choir of talented voices. There were earphones (like those at United Nations) by which we few foreigners could hear the sermon translated into English for our benefit.

And that was only one of three great congregations to gather for worship on that day, and each Sunday of the year. The four ministers find themselves preaching to, and ministering among, Korean parishioners, most of whom have been Christian refugees from the now-Communist North. Their faith and their chosen way of life are bought continually at great price. To feel one’s self a part of their church body, even for an hour, is to find the company of true disciples!

We visited Presbyterian missionaries in Seoul and Pusan and saw the great Presbyterian Hospital of Taegu -- one of the outstanding institutions of all Korea. We attended a Christian College commencement in Seoul, where Mrs. Kingdon’s father, the late Dr. George Shannon McCune is still respected and revered as 4th President of the school. The winter air was so cold in the great auditorium that one could easily see the icy breath of graduates rising from their faces as they waited for their diplomas. And we were grateful for a little portable heater by our feet. But the atmosphere was warm and eager.

Our United Church of Christ has little direct mission work in Korea. Presbyterians took the gospel there while Congregational and Evangelical and Reformed missionaries worked among the people of Japan. But our United Church Board for World Ministries has been related to a nationwide Church World Service program and 2 hospitals in Pusan: (1) the Il Sin women’s Hospital of the Australian Presbyterian Mission, and (2) the Children’s Charity Hospital. A distant relative of ours in Pusan took us to visit the Women’s Hospital. We found an overworked staff doing a remarkably effective piece of work. Any church member giving to the mission work of his church would be proud to see his dollars at work in such practical service!

From that part of the Asian Far East, we proceeded through Okinawa and Taiwan to Hong Kong. In the great British-governed colony we spent less time seeing the sights than in visiting the scenes of mission outreach. So many tourists visit Hong Kong that it would be an extravagant expenditure of time for individual missionaries to show visitors around. And so, cooperating through Church World Service; free, guided bus trips are provided several times each week whereon the visitor can see at least 3 projects in an afternoon. We took such a trip.

First, we visited a church-sponsored vocational school where young people, usually of refugee families, are trained in wood work, metal work, drafting and other vocations that will prepare them for constructive production in the economic life of the Far East. The obvious, evident ability of the missionary directors, the use of well-trained Chinese resident teachers, the order and eager interest of the pupils, makes one proud to be a tiny, distant part of such necessary and hope-giving work.

From that school we went deep into the area where refugees from mainland China have swarmed in and settled. Fleeing from communist domination to the freedom of Hong Kong, they have found themselves in unspeakable squalor and hideous crowding. For some time, anything that could put a shanty roof over their heads -- cardboard, old boards, cloths and rags, tin cans and corrugated iron -- was used by hoardes of people. Now, most of that is replaced by great block-long concrete buildings erected by the Hong Kong government. It is an improvement, but it is still abject, revolting squalor by the standards under which we live. A family of 4 may have a single space no bigger than my study at home. A family of 7 or 8 might be fortunate enough to have twice that space. There are no individual kitchens or toilets. There may be three kitchen areas for one whole floor of those block-long tenements; and toilets in like proportion. But hoardes of people live there and try to find jobs from there. And into that ant-hill of human misery and hope, our church representatives plunge with what help they can offer, in encouraging people to continue helping themselves.

We climbed up 7 flights of concrete steps to visit a place where church-sponsored self-help projects enable people, especially women, to make neck ties, scarves, sweaters and other garments and coverings. It was missionary encouragement to people who fight for life a day at a time -- a small raft on a sea of need -- but a real raft.

The third stop made on that day’s tour was at the Yang Social Service Center of Kowloon. That center is sponsored by a Methodist Church, with funds from American Methodist churches. It serves the needy, regardless of religious affiliation or cultural background. It works in family service, in training for social service and nursing, in some cash assistance for persons who can not even meet minimum needs for food, rent, medical fees and school assistance; in home nursing, in dental service, in day nursery supervision, in guidance for volunteer service, and in research orientation. These are no small enterprises! They are intelligent, far-reaching efforts to help willing people to help themselves.

On another day of our Hong Kong stay we went out to Junk Bay to see our own United Church of Christ missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. W. B. Whitehill at work. Dr. Ben works under the Junk Bay Medical Relief Council. One of its projects is the Haven of Hope Tuberculosis Sanitarium, which we saw and from which the little Whitehill children are rigidly excluded, lest they be unduly exposed to the disease. The doctor is a graduate of Grinnell College and of Harvard Medical School, with post-graduate work in chest medicine. Were he not pouring his life into a mission-sponsored project in the Far East, he could be a qualified specialist in some American clinic. His wife is a college graduate with a Master’s degree in social work, highly competent in church and community work, and in interpreting the Junk Bay projects to many visitors. We had luncheon with the Whitehills and their two children in their home.

Another project of that Medical Relief Council is the Rennie’s Mill Church Clinic and the Sunnyside Children’s Preventorium. We saw a class of these cheerful little Chinese kids being cared for in the Preventorium kindergarten, away from their tubercular parents while the Preventorium tries to keep the children free from tuberculosis. Rennie’s Mill is a refugee community of people, living on the crowded hillside below an abandoned mill. Streets are steep walks for feet only -- there is not a road in the place wide enough or level enough for a car. Plumbing is mostly open ditches. Dr. Whitehill doubts that there are as many as a half dozen toilets in the whole community. The stench in summer is terrific, and the danger of epidemic disease an appalling nightmare. But refugees come there hoping to get jobs in nearby Hong Kong or Kowloon. And so a missionary project there is the Rennie’s Mill Church Clinic. I can’t think of a better project, or any place more in need of it. Nor can I think of people better qualified, or more dedicated, to head the work with their own minds and hands and talents than Dr. and Mrs. Whitehill.

I’m glad that a little of our General Synod giving through our Board for World Ministries eventually gets to that spot to uphold the hands of these very human, very able, wholly dedicated, missionaries of ours.

From Hong Kong we flew, by way of Bangkok and Colombo, to Jaffna on the Island of Ceylon, off the south tip of India. There we were guests of the Uduvil Girls’ School, whose principal, Miss Arain Paramasomy, was a missionary speaker here in Wisconsin Rapids, and a guest in our home, for a couple of days in 1964. This splendid woman of Ceylon, Miss Paramasomy, more than “rolled out the red carpet” for us. She ordered every care and comfort for us; introduced us to the Bishop of the United Church in Ceylon, and to the President of Jaffna College and to other persons of note and importance. She explained the difficulties of keeping the Uduvil Girls’ School going, difficulties made more acute, I am sure, by the recent change in the government of Ceylon. The affectionate respect of those Jaffna people for the missionaries who had been sent to their land, some of whom succumbed to disease early and died quite young and whose bodies lie in a cherished cemetery, was made evident to us. And their own Christian dedication and sacrificial living was a humbling and inspiring experience.

It was pleasing to sit with the school girls, on the floor of their airy chapel as they worshipped in their own tongue, sang their kind of music to their kind of instruments, and then went out to their classes. Only Christian girls were expected to attend chapel. Others were not compelled to be there.

The same was true of the girls at Lady Doak College at Maderai in South India, where we stopped next. There I was asked to speak briefly, at one of the daily chapel periods, by our missionary hostess, Miss Miriam Brown, who had earlier been a speaker here in the Wisconsin Rapids neighborhood. Maderai is the community where our own daughter, Anna Carol, spent 2 years as an associate missionary of the American Board between her college course and her graduate years.

Some few of you remember Anna Carol’s marriage here at our church in the old stone church sanctuary in 1956. Her husband is Richard Dudley, who, born in India, has spent something like 18 years of his life in that land. You may remember that Anna Carol’s matron of honor was a young woman of India, married to an American man now serving as a career missionary in Maderai. We were dinner guests of Rev. and Mrs. David Gallup. David is now chaplain at American College for men. Padmasoni, with her master’s degree in zoology from Oberlin, and her continuing work in theology at an Indian college, continues to do translating and other valuable work while she cares for 4 children and a busy household, and gets up at 4 AM to write her papers and read her graduate assignments.

Those two church-approved colleges in Maderai, Lady Doak College for women and American College for men, are another facet of our warm missionary interest.

From Maderai, we went to Delhi for a fortnight’s visit with our daughter and son-in-law and grandsons. They are stationed there for 2 years, supervising American students abroad in Indian universities. Then via Kabul, Afghanistan, on to Beirut in Lebanon, where we attended Good Friday and Easter services. We had Easter morning communion and breakfast at the home of the Rev. David Byers, our missionary chaplain at the American University in Beirut.

Next came three well-packed and unforgettable days in the Holy Land, now ruled by Israel. We were directed by kindly clergy of the Church of England, and more especially by our own missionary, the Rev. Kenneth Ziebell in Jerusalem, whose staff introduced us to the refugee camp and training classes at Jericho.

In Istanbul, where we went after Tel Aviv, we were guests of the Rev. and Mrs. Perry Avery. Perry, a former minister of our Grand Avenue Congregational Church of Milwaukee, invited me to preach to his Union Church congregation in the Dutch Chapel. He acquainted us with a bit of his church work there with a foreign congregation (mostly American); with his ministry of service to American military personnel; and with problem American young people, many of them hippies. Dr. Avery’s experience underlines the desperate need for understanding (even when agreement can not be achieved) between that segment of the world’s youth and the generation of parents, teachers, and “social establishment” which those young folk have rejected.

After Istanbul we were more tourist-like as we visited the ancient culture of Athens. Then we joined our eldest son for six weeks of seeing 6 or 8 of Europe’s great cities. We attended masses in the Vatican; Russian Orthodox Easter services in Geneva; Dutch services at Peterkirk in Leiden, where the Pilgrims led by John Robinson worshipped before taking the Mayflower for our new world; and a Sunday service at City Temple in London.

As we winged our way back across the sea to our families remaining in the USA; to our home in Wisconsin Rapids and to you, our friends in this church; we found that one impression stands out vividly among the others which we remember. The cause of Christian concern, expressed in mission outreach, is still centrally important in the life of our world. Numerically, we Christians are “snowed under” by hosts of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, agnostics, and even atheists in many parts of the world. But we have a gospel which that world needs! It is far and away the best hope of freedom-loving people, as it is our own best hope in our inadequate and often warped lives. Our own desire to become better Christians, and our missionary concern for others, is the most effective way yet discovered for the advance of God’s Kingdom of goodness. And the Christian church, at its best, is still going to be the missionary church.

One telling experience jolted me in Hong Kong. I sized up 4 young people in our church project tour, as hippies interested in a free ride. They looked like hippies -- bearded fellows and girls with long stringy hair. But we soon realized that they were asking the most discerning and penetrating questions of our guide. Finally, after that long wearing climb up 7 flights of bleak concrete steps to see the church-sponsored self-help project, one bearded youth turned to the other and said: “Now you know what happens to the money you put in the mission side of your church offering envelope!” I suppose my jaw dropped open in complete surprise to learn that he was a member of the United Church of Canada, and his observation taught me something that day!

The third verse of a not too familiar hymn, No. 484 in our hymnal, goes like this:

God bless the men and women

Who serve Him overseas;

God raise more to help them

To set the nations free.

Till all the distant people

In every foreign place

Shall understand His kingdom

And come into His grace.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, August 2, 1970.

Also at Delta, WI (St. Paul’s UCC) May 16, 1971.

Also at Cable, WI (Congregational UCC) May 16, 1971.

And at Moravian Church, Wisconsin Rapids, June 10, 1973.