The Rev. Louis L. Knowles

Isaiah 65: 17-25

Matthew 13:31-33

I would like to start our reflection today with not one but two somewhat parallel stories, both from about a hundred years ago.

Our first story begins with a young American woman, on a warm evening in a town in southern India in 1892. She is the daughter of a missionary doctor, she grew up in India, but she has been away for many years, studying in the United States, preparing for a life in America, far away from the dusty, crowded by-ways of small-town India. She is home in India temporarily, helping her mother recover from an illness.

That evening, as Ida Scudder, for that was her name, sat writing letters in her parents' parlor; there came a knock at the door. She was the only person up and around that evening, her father having gone out, so she answered the door, to find a young Indian man, a high caste Hindu, standing before her. His message was simple, his wife was in childbirth, and things were not going well. Could the kind American lady please accompany him to his home to attend to his wife? Ida explained that unfortunately, she had no medical training, that it was her father who was the doctor, and she was sure that he would be back soon and could help the man's wife. But the Hindu husband slowly shook his head, "No, the kind young American lady did not understand, for no male doctor was allowed to attend to another's wife. Only a woman could help." Sadly, Ida had to turn him away. She went back to her letter writing with a heavy heart. Yet once again there was a knock at the door, and this time it was a Muslim man standing before her, a different religion and culture, with the same request for the same reason. Once again, Ida had to turn him away with the same inability to do anything for him or his wife. Then, incredibly, the scene played itself out a third time with a Hindu of another caste than the first, with the same result.

The next morning, Ida was horrified to learn that all three women had died the night before, for lack of medical attention. It was enough, and Ida realized that the voice of God was in these events. In the next few days, she re-examined her life, her goals, her dreams, and she realized that God was in fact calling her to Kingdom work, to end needless suffering. Perhaps she re-read the passage from Isaiah that is our Old Testament Scripture for today, which talks in specifics about what the Kingdom will mean for the young and the old. In any event, she changed her plans, and upon returning to the United States, she enrolled in medical school, one of the first women to attend and graduate from Cornell Medical College in New York. She returned to India in 1900 to found a mission, first providing medical care, then within a few years, starting to train Indian women to be nurses and doctors. The tiny clinic Dr. Scudder began with has grown now into the Christian Medical College at Vellore, an institution that ministers to a million and half people a year, has 2200 beds and trains the best doctors and nurses, both men and women in India. Now, owned by the churches of India, the faculty is entirely Indian, mostly Christian, but serving a patient load drawn from all faiths and social groups.

Our second story starts about the same time as Ida's story - in Alsace, that little province that lies betwixt and between Germany and France. There a young man who had already come to the notice of many people as a Biblical scholar and as a church organist, began to re-evaluate his life goals. Perhaps he had no "road to Damascus" experience as Ida did, but he nonetheless was re-evaluating his life plan. Perhaps it was the sheer spiritual force of the New Testament at play in his mind, for he had already begun the scholarly work that culminated in two great volumes, The Quest for the Historical Jesus" and a book on the teachings of the Apostle Paul. However it came about, he also decided to go to medical school, and later traveled to the heart of Africa, where he began a medical ministry. That young man, you may have guessed by now, was Albert Schweitzer. His work in Africa and his reflections on that work and his formulation of an ethic based on the sacredness of all life, human and otherwise, made him a world famous ethical voice. He was we might say, the Mother Theresa of his day, the first half of the twentieth century. The person whose selflessness and commitment to help his fellow human beings became the gold standard of behavior for a generation that stood in desperate need of positive ethical role models...

What can we learn from these two remarkable figures, Drs. Ida Scudder and Albert Schweitzer, both now almost a half century dead and receding into the dusty pages of history? Although so far as I know they never met, these two people were linked by a theological vision, one that was shared by many others of their day. That vision was of the Kingdom of God, and it was a vision that was quite tangible and earthy. Dr. Ida Scudder once famously said to her colleagues at a moment when perhaps their enthusiasm was flagging, "We are not building a medical college, we are building the Kingdom of God." Albert Schweitzer had this to say about the Kingdom of God:

. . . we are redeemed from our present unfortunate, irreligious situation by a vital hope and desire for the kingdom of God. In such a faith and hope and in an unconquerable moral spirit, we find steadfastness, freedom, and peace. As in the case of Jesus, by this faith and the vital energy which flows from it, we spread abroad the conviction and commitment that the highest good is focused in the kingdom of God and that for it we must live.

For both of these great souls, the Kingdom was not something mysterious that existed only in the spiritual realm, or in some remote future, it was a very real and concrete idea that was for them, easy to imagine. Both chose to pursue the Kingdom through a career of medical service. Perhaps that was because they lived at a time when the advances of modern medicine were dramatic and obvious in their effect on people's lives. The new insights into sanitation, microbes as causes of disease, sterile procedure, anesthetics and vaccines that took place in the late 19th century opened up a whole world of improved health for people, if only the knowledge and equipment of this new medical era could reach them. In the case of Ida Scudder there was an added perspective of the movement of women to emerge from second class status. Trained women were needed to overcome the entrenched cultural practices of India and other countries. Women's lives could be transformed through education.

This was a remarkable period for Christian mission. One can imagine both the terrific challenges faced by Scudder and Schweitzer and the many other progressive missionaries of that day and also the enormous sense of satisfaction and progress when their efforts took hold, when people were healed who previously would have been doomed, when babies started to survive in much larger numbers and women died in child birth in far smaller numbers. I am sure it was clear to them that modern medicine was a wonderful gift from God that was a cornerstone of the Kingdom of God that was emerging on earth, an earth that would be peaceful and soon free of so many plagues and terrors.

Now, well into the twenty-first century, that era seems a long time ago.

It has become theologically fashionable to poo poo the vision of the Kingdom that dominated the lives of Ida Scudder, Albert Schweitzer and so many others. To give an example, here is a comment I found in a recent commentary on this chapter of Mathew by a modern New Testament scholar: "The legacy of the understanding of the Kingdom of God popularized by protestant liberalism of the early twentieth century is still present in talk of 'spreading', 'building' and 'establishing' God's Kingdom, all of which is alien to biblical theology in general and Matthew in particular."

What has happened between then, the era of the Kingdom builders, and now? Well, the 20th century happened-and along with it the movement in theology we have dubbed "Neo-orthodoxy" To summarize an enormous amount that can be said about these past hundred years of history and theology, we have lost the great confidence that western science and civilization are capable of transforming human existence. We have been forced to confront the radical nature of evil, that includes the pervasive pride and self-satisfaction of Euro-American culture. A culture that can produce and sustain Hitler at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives ended and disrupted, what does that culture really have to offer to the world? Are we not trading in a sort of fool's gold when we promise development assistance? Is it not better to forgo dreams of heaven on earth and settle for a "realistic" foreign policy - one that recognizes our realistic need for oil, cheap labor and cheap consumer goods that we vacuum up from poor countries, giving them just enough rope in the form of token foreign aid to hang themselves?

Our vision of the Kingdom will be forever changed by the last century. Today is not a time for Americans and Europeans to be going out to create new institutions in developing countries, no matter how idealistic our intentions. The baton of leadership has changed hands, it is up to the people of the world to forge their destiny and to find their own way to the Kingdom. But that does not give us permission to lapse into irresponsibility. Because we cannot lead does not mean we are free to indulge in indifference.

In many ways and quite remarkably, the Christian Medical College at Vellore, the institutional legacy of Dr; Ida Scudder, is a self-sufficient institution. Owned and operated by Indian Christians, it remains a beacon of light and hope for the masses of India. In spite of the growth of other hospitals and medical services, in spite of all you read about clinics that are the equivalent of our own and where people from Europe and the U.S. are increasingly seeking inexpensive treatment, CMC Vellore continues to draw enormous crowds, treating 4,000 people a day, many of whom are too poor to pay more than a few cents for their care. And why these great numbers? Why the great crush of patients in a country with a rapidly expanding economy and new choices in medical care? Primarily, I think, because the Christian community that operates the college and hospital is committed to honesty and integrity in treatment. Over and over, it is said by patients that they come to CMC to be told honestly what their condition is and what treatments are necessary or highly recommended.

So, in a remarkable sort of way, the legacy of Christian leadership, springing from the root of Ida Scudder, planted in that far away age of the Kingdom builders, still plays an essential role in that great country, one of the two countries, along with China, that will shape the world of our children and grandchildren. For CMC Vellore is a model of what healthcare should be, an example of what it can be, if professionals will rise above petty self-interest and if society so structures its institutions that temptations to corruption are minimized.

We, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Kingdom builders, yes, we've seen a lot. We may smile at some of the naïve things our ancestors in the faith thought about the Kingdom. Above all else, we now see that the Spirit at work in the world to foster the Kingdom of God has chosen other leaders - in the case at hand, the Indian Christian health professionals of Vellore, to lead, and we are to follow - just as the church universal today should be listening to the voice of our brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and Latin America, so we are invited to participate in Kingdom work. God is teaching us that the dream of the Kingdom belongs to no one people or group. In fact, as we try to possess it, it ceases to be a dream of the Kingdom. Like manna kept too long, it goes bad.

Times have changed, theological fads have come and gone, but the Word abides with us still. It is the Word of promise, for the people of India and for people everywhere. God will bring the Kingdom to fruition, and it is that promise that guides us, that gives us the foundation of our ethic and the road map for our lives. We anticipate the Kingdom, we work toward it, we view it from afar, and we see it just around the corner. It is our light and our salvation. I will close with another passage from the writings of Albert Schweitzer, who never lost sight of the one who brings the Kingdom into our lives:

He comes to us as one unknown, nameless, just as in an ancient time, by the lakeside, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks the same word to us: "Follow me!" He places us at the tasks which he must fulfill in our time. To those who obey him, wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the labors, conflicts, and miseries they will experience in communion with him. As an ineffable mystery, they shall come inwardly to know who he is.