William Carey
I am taking the opportunity today to go back to my missionary roots. The motto “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God” comes from William Carey, sometimes called the father of the modern missionary movement.
There were of course missionaries from the beginning of the Christian church. Starting with the first apostles (including Paul), Christians crossed all kinds of boundaries carrying the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead. By the 1700s, however, the missionary movement of the church had subsided, except for Roman Catholic missionaries and some from the Moravian Church.
William Carey was a Baptist minister in England who believed strongly that Jesus’ last words, the Great Commission, were God’s call to the church today. Many of his contemporaries believed that the command to make disciples of all nations was intended for the first generation of Christians. On one occasion, Carey asked why the church in England was not going to the world around them with the gospel, an older minister responded: “Young man, sit down; when God is pleased to convert the heathen world, He will do it without your help or mine.”
Carey was not convinced, and over the next few years he studied Scripture and listened for God’s call. In 1792, he published a short book arguing that the Great Commission still applies today, titled: “An Inquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens”. So persuasive were his arguments that they led to the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society, and a year later Carey and his family sailed for India, where he died 41 years later. He never returned home, but made India his home.
Carey began his adult life as a cobbler, a maker and repairer of shoes. He studied Greek and Hebrew on his own so as to read the Scriptures. He crossed the ocean to India when he was 32 years old and became a scholar in Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, and other languages of India. He helped begin a printing press that helped to save Bengali oral literature from being lost in the modern era. Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian Christian, describes the many facets of Indian life in which Carey was formative – from Bengali literature to the study of Indian flora and fauna, to promoting education for all the people of India, to the campaign to abolish the death of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre.
Carey had his faults as well. His family life was problematic – I can say more about that during the Sunday School hour. He was also a product of his time in his valuation of English culture as superior to Indian. But when all allowances have been made for his faults, he lived by the motto, “expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”
James and John
I wonder if Carey ever felt like James and John in our gospel reading. They had certainly seen Jesus do “great things”. They had become accustomed to “signs and wonders”, and they could reasonably expect to see more. It made sense to them that Jesus was about to bring in his reign in glory, so they asked if they might sit on either side of him when he began to reign. “Expect great things; attempt great things!
Jesus responded kindly but clearly. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. I am about to be killed on a cross. Can you walk the path of the cross with me? Actually, you will walk it, whether you want to or not. But the honour you seek belongs to God the Father, and he alone will give it.”
Then Jesus used the whole exchange to remind all the disciples what he had been saying all along. He redefined “greatness” to mean servanthood, and he reminded them that even he, the Messiah, came “not be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The Danger
Carey knew the trap that James and John fell into. It is said that as he lay dying, a missionary colleague named Duff visited him. Duff spent time reliving Carey’s life and assuring him of all the good he had done, until Carey stopped him with one word, “Pray.” Duff prayed with Carey and then turned to leave. Carey called him back for one last statement: “Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey; when I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey — speak about Dr. Carey’s Saviour.”
Carey was right. We serve Jesus, and we serve each other, and we serve the world. But when we see what God is doing, we feel a bit like James and John. We want to celebrate our success! Carey’s life ushered in what one missionary historian has called “the Great Century of Missions”. The 1800s saw the gospel preached around the world more than ever before. The fruits of that mission are a church that is stronger and more vibrant in Africa and Asia and South America than it is in North America and Europe. The “mission field” has become the “sending church.”
So successful were the 1800s that missionaries in the early 1900s thought they could finish the task of preaching the gospel to all people. In 1910, they held a major missionary conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is known still today simply as Edinburgh 1910. Six thousand missionaries from Europe and North America gathered together under a banner that read, “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation!”
Four years later, Europe was torn apart by war, World War One. Missionary confidence was shattered. They thought that they were about to enter the kingdom, and instead they found themselves walking the way of the cross.
At the turn of this century, a similar confidence pervaded missionary thinking. An organization called Global Frontier Missions began an outreach project they called the Joshua Project, with a goal of reaching every ethnic group in the world with the gospel. Much that they have done is laudable, but I wonder if they have a sense that they can bring in the kingdom of God through their preaching. I wonder if our big plans – attempt great things! – sometimes turn into the question James and John asked Jesus.
The Antidote
The antidote to this danger is the cross itself, in which our view is directed towards Jesus. We see Jesus and not ourselves. That’s also what happened in Job 38. Job had been challenging God and asking all the hard questions of his life, but when he saw God, the questions evaporated. When he saw God, he stopped looking at himself. The antidote to our pride is a proper focus on God.
The opposite of pride, humility, is not the act of debasing ourselves; rather it is the attitude of focussing on God and on others. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, “Think of others’ needs as more important than your own.” That is, become a servant, serving God and serving the world around you.
Gladys Aylward
I have another missionary story, quite different from Carey, and yet also much like his story. Glady Aylward was born in 1902 in a poor working-class family. She felt God’s call to go to China as a missionary, but no mission agency would take her. Finally, the China Inland Mission accepted her into a training course. The CIM was known for accepting candidates that other mission agencies thought were not suitable or qualified, but after the three month course, CIM told her they also could not send her to China. She was unable, they felt, to learn the Chinese language, and she was just not suitable material for a life in China.
Gladys Aylward found a job as a housemaid and set about finding a way to China. She had a contact there, an older woman who ran an inn (the Inn of Eight Happinesses) for travelling merchants. Buying a ticket to sail to China was beyond her means, so she went to a travel agent and opened an account to buy a train ticket. Each week she would take what little money she could save and put it towards the ticket, until finally in 1930 she had enough money to go to China by train.
Except that the train stopped in Russia. China and Russia were at war. She spoke only English and refused to get off the train at the last stop. She ended up at the front lines of the war and had to walk back to the last station. She made her way to Vladivostok, where she fell in with some people who took her passport and prepared to send her to work in Siberia. One person took pity on her and helped her find her passport and escape to the British Consul, who sent her across the channel to Japan. From there she made her way back across the water to China and finally found Jeanie Lawson at the Inn of Eight Happinesses.
Mrs Lawson soon left China, and Gladys was alone in a country where she knew neither the language nor the people. That is when she discovered that she could learn the language. She was no good in the classroom, but immersed in China, she found herself at home with the people. As the proprietor of the Inn, she learned Chinese so well and became so at home that the Chinese government employed her in their efforts to help the women of the Chinese countryside.
War with Russia was followed by the Second World War. By this time, Gladys had started an orphanage. When World War Two was followed by a civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, she ended up trekking through the mountains with several hundred children, bringing them all through great odds to safety. You may have heard of her as “the small woman” – five feet tall, without formal training, but a hero to the Chinese people. When the Communists expelled the missionaries, she ended up in Taiwan, where she died in 1970.
In many ways, she is the opposite of Carey, and yet she accomplished an amazing amount by simply following Jesus where he led her. Hollywood made a movie about her life, and in true Hollywood fashion cast Ingrid Bergman as Glady Waylward. A five-foot nine Swedish blonde portraying a five-foot-tall dark haired English woman! Hollywood doesn’t understand what it means to be a servant, but Gladys did.
Near the end of her life, she was asked why she went to China. She said, “I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China, I don’t know who it was. It must have been a man, a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing, and God looked down and saw Gladys Aylward and God said, ‘Well, she’s willing.’”
Taizé
I have a final story this morning, the story of the Taizé community. We sing their music often, and we have heard already something about life at Taizé. I want to say a bit more because the examples of Carey and Aylward can make serving God sound like an individualistic endeavour. True service is manifested most often through community, so we finish with a story about the Taizé community. (The data below comes from "Taizé, a musical monastic community, formed in response to a global crisis. Today, it faces new ones: climate change and sex abuse" in America Magazine)
In 1940, Roger Schütz (a 26-year-old son of a Protestant pastor) bought a house in the village of Taizé, in occupied France near his native Switzerland. He wanted it to be a place of refuge for people fleeing the war. For several years it was occupied by the Gestapo, and Brother Roger (as he came to be known) was only able to take up residency again in 1944. Three other brothers joined him, and they formed a small intentional community. After the war, they opened themselves especially to German prisoners held in a nearby prisoner of war camp.
The focus of their life together was to be prayer and reconciliation. Gradually, other brothers joined the community, and they structured their lives around three times of music and prayer each day. From the beginning, there were struggles between the churches from which the brothers came. They wanted to be a place of reconciliation, but while some Protestant and Catholic leaders supported them, others rejected them. Brother Roger did what he could, and the community grew. Young people from Europe and North America began to make Taizé a place of pilgrimage, joining in the community’s life for a week or so at a time. Taizé developed a reputation of being a place of peace and trust.
By the 1970s, the brothers had built a church where 2,000 could worship together. Then, in 1971, 6,000 young people registered to come for a week. The brothers removed the back wall of the sanctuary and put up tents so that everyone could sing and pray together. By this time, they had developed the style of music that we find in our hymnal as songs from Taizé. They sang together and prayed together, leading up to a time of silence.
Covid was a difficult time. There were perhaps 200 brother when Lois and I visited them in 2003, but their numbers declined following covid and today there are about 80 of them. Still the young people come, thousands each week. Then came their greatest challenge. I am now quoting from my basic source, an article in America Magazine (a Catholic Jesuit magazine).
In many ways, these last years have been some of the most challenging in Taizé’s history. They have also been devastating for the Catholic Church in France. On June 4, 2019, Brother Alois stood in front of the Church of Reconciliation, crowded with young visitors assembled for prayer, and read from a letter he and the brothers had prepared. “At a time when society and the church are attempting to shed light on sexual abuses and assaults,” he began, “notably towards minors and fragile persons, my brothers and I have judged it necessary to speak out as well.”The community had learned of five cases of sexual assault by three different brothers at Taizé between 1950 and 1980. Two perpetrators already had died. A third had left the community decades before. Subsequently, accusations against two other living brothers came to light. The community reported those individuals to the authorities and both left the community.“We recognize that these assaults committed in the past by brothers are also part of our history,” Brother Alois continued. “If I am speaking today, it is because we owe this to the survivors, to those close to them, and to all those who seek at Taizé a space of trust, safety and truth.”Brother Alois and the other brothers were determined to face the issue with transparency and to center their response on the survivors. They began to hold a weekly open meeting where the brothers could talk with visitors about the accusations of past abuse, give them space to ask questions and encourage any other survivors to come forward.In the meantime, Catholics in France were reeling as a series of revelations emerged that well-known founders of religious communities like Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, Marie-Dominique Philippe, the founder of the Community of Saint John, and Thierry de Roucy, the founder of Heart’s Home, had abused.The brothers continued speaking out to the youth, one another and the press. They prayed for survivors in the evening prayer in front of thousands of young people. The brothers enforced strict safeguarding measures and continued their weekly meetings with pilgrims on the subject of abuse.“The people who come here—they not only have the right, but they must know these things,” Brother Alois tells me with emotion.After two years, the brothers felt confident that the young people had been informed of what had happened in the past and that no new survivors would come forward. It was only then that something unexpected happened at Taizé. The brothers decided to continue holding the meetings, and the young people kept showing up. For the most part, they no longer wanted to talk about what had happened at Taizé. They were ready to talk about abuse taking place in churches all over the world, sometimes in their own communities. They wanted to ask questions, to voice their anger, to grieve.A door had, unexpectedly, been opened.“The astonishing thing was that the trust of the young people toward us did not diminish,” Brother Alois tells me, “but it was growing. Because they felt that they knew more concretely our weakness, that we are not the perfect Christians who are teaching what is right to everybody, but that we are also on the way.”
Conclusion
The story of Taizé reminds us that God sees greatness quite differently than we do. Expect great things. Attempt great things. And remember that greatness is found in serving God and serving others. God’s reign is upon us, and we see God in those who serve.
Texts
Job 38:1-7
Mark 10:35-45
Focus Statement
Humility (being aware of who we are before God) is basic to Christian living and prepares us for God's great work in us.
Living Your Faith Questions
What do you think “Greatness” involves? What makes something great?
How do you respond to slogans like this one: “Expect great things; attempt great things”?
How can humility make us proud? What happens to us if we become proud of our humility?
How would you define humility?
So, what should we do for God?
