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Romans 8:
28-30
August 16, 2009
Matthew 25: 31-40
AN ELECTION IN CANADA:
REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND SPIRIT OF NORMAN BETHUNE
("THE LIGHT THAT PURSUES KINDNESS")
If you looked at our sermon title for
today, you might very well have thought quite understandably -- that I was
going to talk about one of the political elections up in Canada, but that's not
the sort of election I have in mind, as you will see.
However, I do want to say that being up in
Canada over the last several weeks, in a place that has Universal Health Care
for its citizens, it was interesting to watch the political process down here
from a distance, through the lens of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and I
have to say at times I was embarrassed by the lack of civility in so much of
this debate. Sometimes we forget that the words "Civilization" and "Civil Body
Politic" begin with the word "civil" but you would never know it in the acrimony
and fear-mongering that's been so prevalent in so many of these so-called "town
meetings."
Surely, there are many different
perspectives on this issue, and surely reasonable and faithful people can
disagree on this or any other issue, but I would hope and pray that there might
be far more civility in our discussions. We all look at this issue through our
own lens, and so understandably there's bound to be a whole variety of different
perspectives. For me, coming at this issue from a pastoral perspective, I can
honestly say that hardly a day goes by that I do not hear about a member or
friend of our congregation who is trying to get by without any safety net at
all, having no medical insurance. Often these are those who are unemployed or
underemployed, those working for minimum wage, those who work for employers who
intentionally keep them just below the number of hours that would qualify them
for benefits, and so they languish and sometimes suffer from not getting the
kind of medical care they need and I would say deserve.
Now, regardless of what your political
persuasion may be, if you are a person of faith and if you believe in the life
and teachings of Jesus, the one known as the Good Physician, the one who said,
"in as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brothers and
sisters, you have done it unto me" then surely this is something you care about,
namely how to create a system of medical care that is fair and equitable for us
all, and while I don't presume to tell you or to know what that ideal system is,
I would urge us all to become better informed and to bring our own enlightened
and compassionate and hopefully civil and faith-inspired perspectives on this
issue.
This morning I would like to share with you
something of the life and spirit of a Canadian doctor, a man who came to be
called affectionately by the people of China as "the light that pursues
kindness", a man by the name of Norman Bethune, a man who's prophetic spirit
helped to reform the system of medical care in Canada. Suffering as he did from
Tuberculosis, he came to see how the poor did not receive the same treatment for
this disease as those who were wealthy.
Blessed are those prophetic voices in all
our nations who remind us of what our responsibilities are to the "least of
these our brothers and sisters", those who serve as champions for those who do
not have the same medical care the rest of us do, those who serve as a voice of
conscience for us all, and in that regard I'm very grateful to have with us this
morning as our lay reader, Senator Lowell Weicker who throughout his career and
now in his retirement has been a champion of justice and compassion on this and
many other issues as well.
This summer while we were up in New
Brunswick, Canada I read a biography of Norman Bethune written by Adrienne
Clarkson, the former Governor General of Canada. I was fascinated by the story
of this man who throughout his life, from the rugged and dangerous logging
communities of Ontario to the trenches of World War I to providing medical care
for the soldiers who were fighting fascism in Spain and China exemplified almost
unbelievable determination and compassion.
He was not what many would consider a
"saint"; he could be irascible, impatient and overbearing, and like the rest of
us, he had his own foibles and inward battles, some of which he won and some of
which he lost, but as a doctor, he offered nearly unbelievable care for what
Jesus referred to as "the least of these our brothers and sisters."
Some people collect baseball cards and I had
some good ones myself, including Mickey Mantle and Warren Spahn, which, if I
still had them, would be worth far more than my New England Savings Bank stock,
my one and only foray into the stock market. Unfortunately, my parents who
never threw anything else away dispensed with my collection when I was in
college, and so now instead of collecting baseball cards, I collect stories of
individuals, those who exemplify extraordinary faith and courage, those who have
allowed themselves to be the fulcrum on which the wheels of justice turn, those
who hit home runs for justice and compassion, those who run the bases with
reckless abandon, those who seem driven to make this a better world in which to
live, and I love to read their biographies and try to figure out what it was
that made them tick. How did they become so different than the average man or
woman? What was it that set them apart? And here is perhaps the most important
question, how does their example inspire or challenge me to become the person I
was created to be?
When we were in Canada we attended a very
small church that belongs to the United Church of Canada, a denomination that
came about as a result of the merger of the Congregational, Presbyterian and
Methodist churches and therefore a "sister" denomination to our own United
Church of Christ.
Norman Bethune was born in 1890, the son of
a father who was a Presbyterian minister, and so in reading his biography I felt
as if I were reading something about our own congregational tradition, albeit
from above the 49th parallel, a higher latitude.
With his father serving a church in a
logging community, he became aware at a very early age of the disparity between
health care for the rich and what was available for the poor. Also, one of his
father's churches was in a community in Ontario that was one of the
northern-most terminals of the Underground Railroad. These early experiences,
I'm sure, helped to form in him an understanding of justice and a passion for
service. The Christian faith, for him, was not a well-worn set of platitudes or
a piety that takes one to a higher, more ethereal altitude or a form of escapism
to take one deeper into oneself, but rather a call to duty and responsibility.
This summer I was reading this biography of
Norman Bethune at the same time as when we learned about the death in England of
Harry Patch at 111 years of age, one of the oldest, if not the oldest veteran of
World War I, that terrible war in which so many young men lost their lives or
were horribly mutilated or gassed, in trench warfare, just for the sake of
gaining but a few yards. Far from being a "war to end all wars", every bullet
that was fired, every bomb that was dropped was like a seed, preparing the way
for the next war.
With his medical expertise and passion for
service, Norman Bethune took time off from his medical studies to volunteer as a
stretcher-bearer in the trenches of World War I. At great risk to himself, he
ventured out onto the battlefield to rescue those who were wounded. This was at
a time when in order for there to be a blood transfusion, the donor had to be
literally right next to the recipient, but there in those horrible rat infested
trenches, Dr. Bethune began to envision the more modern procedure of blood
transfusions, where the donors' blood could be bottled and then transported to
where the wounded were, a procedure he would later develop during the Spanish
Civil War.
After World War I, he served in a variety of
places, including a medical practice in Montreal, a place where he is so revered
for his treatment of the poor they named a street in his honor.
It was St. Augustine who said, "My soul is
restless until it rests in thee." I thought of this when I read about how
restless Dr. Bethune was when he learned about the struggle in Spain, the
revolution to overthrow the fascist regime of Franco. Once again he volunteered
for service, not with guns and weapons, but rather with stethoscope, scalpel and
the blood transfusion technique he had helped to develop.
In reading about him, I was reminded of a
line from "The Phases of the Moon", a poem by William Butler Yeats in which the
poet describes the phases of the human spirit:
While the moon is rounding
towards the full
He follows whatever whim's most difficult
Among whims not impossible.
While far too many of us follow the line of
least resistance, preferring to accommodate ourselves to what is rather than be
a part of the change that the world so desperately needs, Norman Bethune, on the
other hand, seemed to know that just as there is no electricity without
resistance neither is there any spiritual energy without resistance and so he
felt perpetually more at home in what the poet referred to as the "heroic
phase." In the face of cruelty, ignorance and injustice, there's no time for
"waning" into domesticity, and so when this good doctor learned about the
revolution in China and the brutality of the Japanese aggression and fascism,
once again he felt that burning call to service, and off he went, not speaking a
word of Chinese, but relying upon a translator, he brought life and comfort and
hope to countless Chinese soldiers in much the same way as he had done in the
trenches of World War I.
According to his biographer, at one point
"he operated on 71 cases in forty hours with the aid of only 2 assistants whom
he trained." And this was done not in the sterility of a modern hospital
facility, but in squalid and dangerous conditions with the enemy never very far
away.
But alas, in the end it was not enemy
weapons that took his life, but a cut on his finger, incurred during surgery,
and he died of septicemia at only 49 years of age.
Out of gratitude for all the compassionate
medical care he had so generously provided, the Chinese honored him by giving
him the name, "The Light that Pursues Kindness."
But the question for us is how did he become
such a person; what was the engine that propelled him? What was the source of
his physical stamina and spiritual energy? What would lead a person to such a
life of service and compassion?
And so it is that we come to our sermon
title for today "An Election in Canada" not a political election, but rather
a spiritual one, one deeply rooted in our own protestant, puritan tradition.
As the son of a Presbyterian minister,
Norman Bethune either consciously or unconsciously -- would have been very
familiar with the more esoteric of our two scripture lessons for today, the
passage from St. Paul's letter to the Romans, which speaks of such things as
election, foreknowledge and predestination.
This particular passage was a cornerstone of
the Protestant theology of such people as John Knox and John Calvin.
Rightly or wrongly and you can make up
your own mind about this but they believed in humanity's "total depravity" and
that we are "saved" not by works but rather by grace, a grace that they
considered to be absolutely "irresistible."
Now, the problem was, how do you account for
the fact that some seem to be "redeemed" or "saved" and others do not? Some
exemplify the "fruits of the spirit" and some do not. How do you account for
these differences? Believing as they did in our "total depravity", our
essential sinful condition, they could hardly attribute goodness or redemption
to anything we could do, and so if you can follow this logic, they were brought
inevitably to the idea of election, a very old biblical notion. Some are
elected; some are chosen by God, and some are not. Some are "predestined" for
"glory" to use St. Paul's language and some are not.
I find it interesting, and maybe also a
little bit humorous, that the Protestant Work Ethic was born out this very
theological argument. If you're sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning, listening
to this protestant, puritan, Calvinistic theology, wondering whether or not you
are one of God's "Elect", wondering whether or not you have been elected,
selected, preordained, predestined for glory, what do you do, what can you do to
show that you have been one of the recipients of God's "irresistible Grace?"
You work like the devil to prove it! You
work as hard as you can to perfect yourself demonstrating as many of the fruits
of the spirit as you can. You work as hard as you can to prove to yourself and
prove to the world that you are indeed one of God's elect.
Now, here's my own commentary on this, which
you can do with, as you please, and please understand that volumes and volumes
have been written on these theological issues, and so what I say here is nothing
more than the equivalent of a "text message" on this subject.
I do not believe as those protestant
Calvinists did in humanity's "Total Depravity"; although I confess there's a lot
of horrible evidence in favor of their argument. Nevertheless, the glory of the
human spirit is also clearly evident in the best of our civilization
humanity's capacity for kindness and generosity and compassion, for forgiveness
and reconciliation, for self-sacrifice and courage, our capacity for knowledge
and enlightenment, our ability to surpass ourselves, to go beyond our own
expectations. The glory of the human spirit is evident in the music of Mozart,
the 9th Symphony of Beethoven, the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, the
spirit of so many of our churches and non-profit organizations that do all that
they can with limited resources to bring life and hope to what Jesus referred to
as "the least of these our brothers and sisters."
Nevertheless, speaking at
least autobiographically, if not philosophically, I believe we are "somewhat
depraved", that there is a fissure in the human spirit, that we have an enormous
capacity for goodness, but also we have an uncanny ability to mar the good and
noble spirit that God has given us. No need to give any illustrations here; we
all know them by heart.
I also have doubts about what the
theologians call God's "irresistible grace." It's been my own personal
experience that it's rather easy to resist God's grace, to turn my back on the
promptings of the Holy Spirit. (I may not be an expert on anything else, but on
this, I can speak with authority.)
Now, the doctrine of Election
is really a corollary to this notion of God's irresistible Grace, and I have to
say that I have problems with this notion as well. I believe with all of my
heart and soul in what might be called Universal Election; I believe that all
of us, not just some of us, are chosen by God for some high and noble purpose,
and I believe that all of us are "predestined for glory", not that any of us
ever fully realize that glory in this life, but the more we do, the more joyous
and meaningful our lives will be.
Shortly before his death in
1939, this is what Norman Bethune wrote in one his letters:
The last two years have
been the most significant, the most meaningful years of my life. Sometimes it
has been lonely, but I have found my highest fulfillment here
I am
tired but I don't think I have been so happy for a long time. I am
content. I am doing what I want to do.
I am grateful that at a very early age
Norman Bethune learned about God's love and grace and felt within himself that
he was "predestined for glory", that he was one of God's elect, chosen by God
for some high and noble purpose. I am grateful to the United Church of Canada
in which he learned this blessed truth. Blessed are all those churches large
and small of all denominations that endeavor to teach us that God's hand is
upon us I believe upon all of us -- and that true contentment can be found not
on easy street or in escapism or following the course of least resistance,
maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, but rather in living our lives in
synchronicity with God's love, feeling within ourselves that we have been chosen
by God and then doing all that we can with all that we have for what Jesus
called, "the least of these our brothers and sisters."
Amen.
David W. Good
Old Lyme, Connecticut
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