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[Silence] The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Great Twentieth-Century Christians." Albert Schweitzer.

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Twelve months ago, I initiated a series of sermons to be preached periodically across the year on great twentieth-century Christians. This morning, I conclude that series. The scripture reading of the morning is Luke, chapter 16, at verse 19. "There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

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And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

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And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

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And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' And he said, 'Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'

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He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" And may God bless to us these words which he inspired to the illumination of our hearts. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Some decades ago, at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the new students were arriving on the day before the new term began. Some boys were unloading their cars, and as they did so, an older gentleman with white hair and white mustache, dressed in rather rumpled clothes and speaking with a French accent, came over and asked if he could help them. 'Oh no,' they said, 'these things are too heavy, and the flight up those stairs is too long.' Whereupon the old man smiled and pitched right in helping them, and in fact carried more than any of them did, and further, was not winded when he was done.

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They turned to thank him, but he was gone. That night was the opening banquet of the new school year. The administration, faculty, older students, and new students were there. And the meal had been in process for about ten minutes, when the door opened, and through the door came the old man with the white hair and the white mustache, still wearing the same rumpled clothes. Immediately, conversation across the room quieted.

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The members of the board and administration and faculty stood to their feet. The senior students, the middler students, did the same. The younger students did not know who this man was, but they jumped to their feet as well, and all remained silent and standing until he was seated. After they were seated and had resumed the meal, one of the new students said to one of the older students, 'Who is that man?'

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And the older student looked at him with some surprise and said, 'Why, that is Albert Schweitzer.' Well, when the dinner was over, the young men, whom Schweitzer had helped that morning in carrying their luggage, went over to him, and they thanked him for his help. And he replied, 'Years ago, my wife and I were entering Terasson, a prison camp during the First World War. It was a scorching hot day, and we were carrying everything that we owned.

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An older crippled man came out and offered to help us. He would not take no for an answer. It was obvious that he was very poor, but when I tried to pay him, he would accept nothing. I vowed then that whenever I saw any person who was heavily burdened, I would help that person. And when I helped you this morning, I was just keeping my vow.'

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Who was this Albert Schweitzer? Well, he was a pastor in the German Evangelical Church, who had a doctorate in theology, and who turned the theological world upside down with his writings. He was also a Ph.D. in philosophy and wrote a multi-volume history of philosophy, which was widely heralded in his day but has been surpassed in our own. He was one of the most brilliant concert organists of his day, considered to be the foremost interpreter of the works of Bach and Mendelssohn.

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He still was giving solo recitals into his 80s, and his books on Bach and on organ building have never been equaled. He was also a medical doctor, having been trained both as a general practitioner and as a general surgeon. In addition to these things, he delivered every major lecture series in his fields of study at universities and colleges around the world. He received more than 200 honorary degrees. He was awarded the Goethe Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize.

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He subordinated all of this to spend his life in service in a jungle hospital at a place called Lamberini. He did it out of his obedience and love for Jesus. I cannot measure the might of a man like this in the few minutes we have together this morning, but let me take on a far more modest task. Let me simply suggest that we think of three things that he said and of what these things say to us in this day. Albert Schweitzer said, "I am the prisoner of Jesus Christ."

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Now, he was the son of an evangelical minister, and he began service in the church. At the same time, he was already known as a musician and as a philosopher and as a theologian. But in the year 1904, while sitting in his father's study, he picked up a magazine published by the Paris Missionary Society. And as he looked through it, he came upon an article which was entitled "The Needs of the Congo Mission."

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And that article concluded with this sentence, "The church seeks men and women who reply simply to Christ's call, 'Lord, I am coming.'" In his autobiography, Albert Schweitzer said, "When I finished the article, I laid the magazine down and I began my work. My search was over." You see, this man was gifted in so many areas, talented in so many different regards, that he could not decide what area of service in which to invest himself as a servant of Jesus. But here, in the reading of this magazine, the Holy Spirit claimed him for the mission field.

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Now, he discovered that medical doctors were more needed on the mission field than any other kind of person, and so he decided to go and earn a medical degree. And he did this while at the same time carrying on his church work, meeting publishing deadlines for his philosophy of history, and giving an equational organ recital in order to pay his bills. He used to stay up working at his desk all night, and he confided in one of his books that he learned how to do this by drinking gallons of coffee and always sitting with his feet in a tub of cold water. He got the medical degree and then headed for Africa.

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Now, this dedication to imitate Christ is the heart of Albert Schweitzer's theology. You see, he believed that the church had veered away from Jesus and had become involved in an elaborate dogma. He believed that the authentic Christ had been forgotten by the church or replaced by an interested and complicated system of theology. He understood it to be so.

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One can only come to know Christ through his service, and so if one sits down and fashions a theological system, that system will have no validity unless its author is actively serving Christ. For it is only through the living contact with Christ that the theology will take on real substance. Schweitzer said that theologians spent most of their time with reason and logic, and this in itself was not a bad thing. But they did not spend enough time with people actively engaged in the service of Jesus.

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And he said that the church and no theology would ever gain unity and power and real truth until it had the vision of Christ. And it would never have the vision of Christ until it was swallowed by Christ in the service of other people. Schweitzer said, "I am the prisoner of Jesus Christ." And he believed that that was the only way in which one could truly come to know this Jesus from Nazareth.

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Now theologians, of course, disagreed with him. One wrote, "How could one expect any reasonable theology to come out of a small African hospital whose operating room started its existence as a chicken coop? The whole idea is idiotic." And whenever I think of those words, I'm reminded of an occasion on which Schweitzer was very frustrated and running into repeated difficulties in getting his hospital started. And he said one day, "What an idiot I am to be trying to practice medicine here."

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And Joseph, we do not know his last name, one of Schweitzer's black friend, a native man, immediately replied, "Without any sentimentality, yes, you are a big idiot on earth, but not in heaven." Truth comes out of service. What Schweitzer was saying was this, that no matter how precise your religious philosophy or theology might be, you are ignorant of Jesus if you are not obedient to him. And the more of your life that you hold back from serving him, the less you will know about him.

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Now Schweitzer also said, "The ethical is the essence of religion." Schweitzer was not at all concerned with earthly possessions. He gave all of the money from the sale of his books, from his lecture series, from his concerts, and from his Nobel Peace Prize to the support of his hospital. He wouldn't even use shaving cream because he thought it an unnecessary extravagance.

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During all the time that he lived, only one room in the entire hospital had electricity, and that was the operating room. And someone asked him on one occasion why, when he traveled on a train, he always rode third class. And he replied, "Because there is no fourth class." He was not concerned with what he had.

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He was concerned with what others had. His interest was not in his rights, but in his responsibilities. And this led to the thought which is most associated with him and which is commonly called reverence for life. Now we all know that life is sacred.

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That's the reason we have police to protect us from those who would destroy life. That's the reason we drive our automobiles carefully to preserve our own lives and the lives of others. That's the reason we have a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. That's the reason we have environmental groups that protect our great lakes and streams, our trees, and our meadows.

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But this kind of concern for life is simply humanitarianism. Schweitzer's idea, when he spoke of reverence for life, was far more profound. It rested on three pillars. The first was that there is in all those who are mentally healthy an urge to live.

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The second pillar was that we live in a world which knows a great deal of suffering. And the third pillar was this. Valuing our own lives and yet knowing the kind of suffering that so many are called upon to endure in the world. Will we be able to come to the place where we offer our lives to save the lives of others

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when those others don't even appreciate what we're doing on their behalf? Now when Schweitzer said this, he was referring to all of life. Once Adlai Stevenson, who had been the governor of Illinois and ran twice against Dwight David Eisenhower for the presidency of the United States and went on to become our United Nations ambassador, Stevenson was visiting at the hospital in Lamberini

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and a mosquito landed on his arm and he reached over and swatted it. And Schweitzer looked at him and said very gruffly, and he had by nature a rather gruff manner, "That was my mosquito." Now, don't think that Schweitzer was stupid.

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Any man who could write six books about his own experience, two biographies, six major theological texts, four volumes on philosophy, one book on psychiatry, five books on music, three books on world peace, and 75 major articles which appeared in the most learned professional journals in the world, no such man is stupid. What Schweitzer meant was that, yes, lower forms of life must sometimes die in order to protect higher forms.

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After all, he ran a hospital. He had to kill germs and microbes and vermin and lice and other things for the health of his patients. He acknowledged that. But he said that life itself is the most precious gift of God. For if you do not have this gift, then you cannot receive any other gift.

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And because life was such a precious thing, no one had the right ever to handle it in a casual or a careless manner. No one had the right to thoughtlessly and unnecessarily abuse life in any creature. And he said that the great ethical struggle that goes on within the heart of a Christian is to know how precious one's life is and at the same time to be willing to give up that life in order to bless the lives of other people.

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Jesus put it this way, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life that others might live." When Schweitzer spoke to Stevenson about that mosquito, he was saying there was no necessity to extinguish its life. If it disturbed your comfort, you could have moved to another place. But to simply blot it out of existence as if life itself could be so casually and indeed cruelly treated was wrong.

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And Schweitzer worked in all of his life to so protect and value the lives of every living thing with which he came into contact. He would spend his mornings doctoring throughout the hospital. In the afternoon, he would lead construction teams because this hospital was only ten miles from the equator. It was an equatorial Africa and the jungle was always coming in and the dampness and rot were always destroying that which had already been built.

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Schweitzer always took the hardest tasks for himself and never asked anyone to do any job which he had not already done. Now those who worked with him were largely black and were used to the temperatures in that place. Schweitzer was not. Still, he worked with them side by side every afternoon in an average temperature of 110 degrees. At the end of the afternoon, the staff would meet together for a simple meal and afterwards, they would have devotions.

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Schweitzer was very entertaining at the meal because he had so many good stories to tell and was such a witty character. The devotions usually consisted of the reading of a passage of scripture, prayer, and then Schweitzer would go over to his piano and lead the group in the singing of a hymn. I never can get that picture completely out of my mind. This piano had been given to him by some friends in Paris. It was lined with lead in order to protect the hammers and the wires that were part of the mechanism of the instrument.

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And it had a fake organ footboard which made no sound but on which Schweitzer could move his feet and thus keep in practice. Now this piano had broken strings, cracked keys. Many of the notes didn't even sound when the key was depressed. And here was one of the great concert artists of his day sitting at such an instrument, leading the few people on his staff in the singing of a hymn. After dinner he would go to his tiny room, no larger than that of anyone else at the hospital, and he would spend the rest of the evening at work at his desk.

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He got thousands of letters from all over the world and he would answer every one of them by hand. Many of them came from children. Others came from presidents and kings. And he would also spend time working on the manuscripts of his books, all of which were written by hand. It was said that his light was the last one to go out at night at the hospital, his oil lamp the last extinguished. But he always left word that if any emergency cases were brought in, he was to be called.

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To imitate Jesus Christ meant to him to offer yourself utterly in the service of others. It meant the renunciation of everything but obedience to Christ. Now, renunciation only takes on meaning and significance in terms of what is renounced. If you renounce something that is insignificant, then the word renunciation in that context means nothing. But when you renounce the brilliant career of a theologian or a philosopher, of a musician or of a doctor, when you renounce all of that in order to serve other people,

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the vision of this led Schweitzer to almost become a mythical figure in his day. The world watched everything he did, and any communication from him to a publication was immediately available all around the world. See, the world is always looking for people who act like God, that is, who love so much that they offer themselves, their very lives, for the sake of others. This is what made Schweitzer one of the great saints of the 20th century.

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To him, religion meant service, and service meant action. One of his favorite sayings was the line of Goethe, "In the beginning was the deed, action." And this action was the working out of one's ethic, and it was the very essence of faith. And then Albert Schweitzer also said that piety is godliness out of an inner constraint.

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If you were to have visited the grounds of Lamberini Hospital in those days, you wouldn't have found Bible verses nailed to any of the trees. You would have found no tracks in the patients' rooms. No one was required, when they came there, to go to Bible study or prayer meeting before they could be assisted in the hospital or even be served while they were recuperating in the hospital. There were no Bibles in each room, though anyone who wished a Bible could have one.

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There were prayer groups, but you were not required to attend. You could go if you wished. No catechism had to be learned. Yes, there were devotions in the evenings, which you could come to if you wanted to. There was a Sunday school on Sunday mornings, where the patients and their families, who used to come to the hospital with them, that was the custom there,

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could go if they wished, and there was always a Sunday morning worship service at which Schweitzer himself preached or one of those associated with him. But there were not those things that the world and that many Christians think are the marks of real piety. But you see, to Schweitzer, real piety was service. He said, "You only pass through life once, and you cannot do it all. You cannot even do all that you want to do.

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But you must do, for Jesus' sake, what you can do." "God alone," he said, "gives the gift of life, commands life, but we are the ones who put the content into our lives." We can't all be Schweitzers, but we can all live up to our potential. And what he believed and practiced was that when you live up to your potential, then you discover your real purpose.

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And when you discover the purpose for your living, then you come to know Jesus as present power and strength in your everyday experience. It was no accident that Albert Schweitzer opened his hospital at Lamberini on Good Friday. He was taking up his cross to follow the Jesus who climbed a cross. And because of this, Schweitzer became a God-intoxicated man.

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For he lived the kind of piety which was not a matter of outward show, but which came from within, from his very heart, which was absolutely necessary for the living of his own life. This is what you see in Schweitzer. A genius who laid all of his skills aside and went to a little equatorial hospital

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and began there to atone to the black people of Africa for all the sins which the white world had committed against them. And who sent out from there the fruit of his thought to bless all those who would listen and read, but who more than anything else sought to be an example of what it is to be a Christian. His favorite passage of scripture was the passage I read just a few minutes ago, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

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And you will remember that what comes through very clearly in that parable is this. That the haves are called to serve the have-nots. And that suffering people are at one's very doorstep. Albert Schweitzer sought to live this parable.

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And that's the reason that Winston Churchill described him not as a musical genius, or a philosophical or theological or medical genius. He called him the genius of humanity. And this is why so many were won to the Christian faith by his example.

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It was perhaps never put more eloquently or more simply than when one of his black patients said, "The doctor is the slave of God, and I am the slave of the doctor." Albert Schweitzer died on September the 4th, 1965. He was 91 years old.

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And in his example and his spirit, go marching on. And I for one do not believe that that march will ever stop. Let us pray. We thank Thee, our Father, that as Christians we can look back across the history of the Church

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and know in every time and age those who have lived the faith in such a manner that it thrills us to contemplate them. Sometimes in tough times like these, we are inclined to think that saints were only a part of yesterday. But there are saints among us now by Thy grace. There are those who have lived in our own time and who have blessed millions.

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Theologians like Barth, writers like Barclay, evangelists like Graham, missionaries like Schweitzer, and so many others. Grant that seeing them, we might be more able to clearly see Thy Son, and more empowered to serve Him, even as these great Christians of our own century have sought to serve Him. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.