(~) A Saint for Labor Day
Sightings 9/1/05
A Saint for Labor Day
-- John Rollefson
Ninety-nine years ago a brilliant young theologian published his
four-hundred-page study of how scholars of the preceding century and a
half had variously attempted to understand Jesus. More often than not, he
found, they had discovered in their research into the "real Jesus" a
mirror image of themselves and their own ideals. The young scholar
concluded his study with these memorable words: "As one unknown and
nameless He comes to us, just as on the shores of the lake he approached
those men who knew not who he was. His words are the same: 'Follow me!'
and He puts us to the tasks which He has to carry out in our age."
This thirty-one-year-old professor and principal of the theological
seminary in Strasbourg, an ordained Lutheran pastor in the Evangelical
Church in Alsace, already the holder of degrees in the fields of theology
and philosophy, had just the previous year published in his spare time a
well-received study in French of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Moreover, he was himself a celebrated organist and recitalist, as well as
an expert on organ building.
The previous fall, this philosopher, theologian, pastor, musicologist, and
musician had begun medical studies leading to yet a third doctorate.
Nearly a decade earlier, at his home in his father's parsonage in a little
Alsatian village during the summer vacation of his twenty-first year, he
had suddenly been struck by the thought of how incomprehensible it was
that he should be allowed to lead such a happy, carefree student's life
while around him so many people were contending with care and suffering.
One brilliant summer morning, he later wrote in his autobiography, "there
came to me as I awoke, the thought that I must not accept this happiness
as a matter of course, but must give something in return for it .... While
the birds were singing outside, I settled with myself before I got up,
that I would consider myself justified in living till I was thirty for
science and art, in order to devote myself from that time forward to the
direct service of humanity." He concluded: "Now the answer was found. In
addition to the outward, I now had inward happiness."
And so, at age thirty, the young double doctor resolved to become a doctor
of medicine, as he explained it, in order "that I might be able to work
without having to talk. For years I had been giving myself out in words
and it was with joy that I had followed the calling of theological teacher
and of preacher. But this new form of activity I could not represent to
myself as being talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual
putting it into practice."
Albert Schweitzer long has served for me as a supreme exemplar of
Christian vocation, and I've often invoked him as a saint of the church
peculiarly appropriate to remember on the Sunday of our secular Labor Day
holiday, when our nation pauses to honor the work we do as a part of our
life's calling. Coincidentally, Schweitzer's death day commemoration falls
on September 4, which is usually the Sunday closest to Labor Day, and this
year happens to fall on the fortieth anniversary of his death in 1965.
Coming as it does on the heels of the recent Live 8 concerts held to raise
the consciousness of the world's population and its leaders regarding aid
to Africa, Schweitzer's call and commitment to Africa as his special
vocation deserves to be remembered and celebrated. He was, some claimed,
patriarchal and autocratic, and even a bit primitive in the medical
practice he personally conducted among the Gabonese people for the last
two-thirds of his ninety-one years of life. His theology and
reverence-for-life ethic were too spacious for some, especially many of
his fellow Lutherans.
But for his work for humanity and indeed all of life, Schweitzer was
honored with the Nobel Peace Prize more than a decade before his death. He
deserves to be remembered as an exemplar of the vocation of service to
others for our day.
John Rollefson is Pastor of Lutheran Church of the Master in west Los
Angeles, near UCLA.
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