Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the death of Albert Schweitzer, a remarkable human being by any standard. An acclaimed author and scholar, he could have spent his life in academia or as an internationally acclaimed musician or as a Lutheran pastor. Instead he used his gifts to fund his training in medicine and later to equip the hospital he founded in 1913 at Lambaréné in what was then French Equatorial Africa where he devoted his life to caring for the sick. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1952 and gave his prize money to help leprosy sufferers.
Schweitzer argued for a faith that makes sense in the modern world: “From my youth I have held the conviction that all religious truth must in the end be capable of being grasped as something that stands to reason. I, therefore, believe that Christianity, in the contest with philosophy and with other religions, should not ask for exceptional treatment, but should be in the thick of the battle of ideas, relying solely on the power of its own inherent truth.”
Action
But he was more than an ideas man; he was an action man. For him the ideas, the truths had to be lived – a point underlined in tomorrow’s readings.
The reading from the letter of James is a damning indictment of the preferential treatment often shown to people of means within the church at the expense of the poor: “If you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”
We are also told that words are not enough: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
The gospel reading tells us that the customs and traditions we inherit from the past may not always meet the needs of the present and the future.
Jesus is approached by a woman, a mother, on behalf of her sick child. She was a Syrophoenician, a Gentile, and Jesus initially appears to dismiss her saying that his mission is primarily to his own people, the Jews. His reaction seems particularly offensive in that he turns her down using contemporary slang which referred to Gentiles as dogs: “He said to her, ‘Let the children [The Jews] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Some may find it difficult to accept that Jesus could say such a thing but we are told he “was tempted in all things as we are tempted”. Jesus for a moment appears to be trapped by the culture of his upbringing which insisted he send her away.
The woman was in no position to take offence or get involved in an argument; she had a more important concern – her sick child – so she cleverly turns the remark back on Jesus: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She cannot have enjoyed the apparent humiliation but put up with it for her child’s sake. Jesus for his part recognised that the child’s welfare was more important than any customs or rules and help was given no matter what his critics might say.
Albert Schweitzer discovered that doing good brings its challenges: “Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.”
At the end of her ordeal that woman remained an outsider, a Gentile, a Syrophoenician, and for some with the status of a dog.
The key battle of ideas takes place within each individual.