The Gigantic Wrestler

January 14, 1965
Rochester

The Gigantic Wrestler

A few days ago Albert Schweitzer observed his 90th birthday in his jungle hospital deep in what was once French Africa, but is now Gabon. Albert Schweitzer, who is eminent as theologian, philosopher, musician, physician, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has spent most of his time for more than fifty years in a fever-ridden, disease-haunted primitive section of Africa.

Albert Schweitzer is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, undoubtedly the most famous one. He is also a Lutheran minister. Can he be both? Certainly as far as Unitarian Universalism is concerned, he can, for we demand no creedal or dogmatic conformity. Whether he still qualifies as a Lutheran only Lutherans can say. George Marshall, director of the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship quoted a noted theologian Walter Horton who wrote in 1938, “I do not want to give the impression that liberal theology in France is altogether mute and apologetic, or on the defensive ... There is one unabashed and unrepentant liberal in France who would give the lie to any such assertion: Albert Schweitzer. Whether he is really a Frenchman or a citizen of the world is a bit problematic; he does not ’stay put’ long enough to become a settled inhabitant of any land .. but whether he is a Frenchman or not, there is no doubt that Schweitzer is a liberal. ... What we moderns must do, he believes, is to ’take the ethical religion of Jesus out of the setting of his worldview and put it in our own’ and thus under the influence of the spirit of his ethical religion, to make ’the kingdom of God a reality in this world by works of love.’” (Walter Horton, CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL THEOLOGY,” 1938)

I want to place Albert Schweitzer in today’s sermon as a living text. He supplied the words himself in 1932 on occasion when he delivered the prize address at the 100th anniversary of the great German humanist scholar and poet Goethe. At that celebration, which was as much a recognition of Schweitzer as Goethe, and at a time when Fascism and Nazism had come to power while a complacent, indifferent world disregarded danger signals, Schweitzer said the words which have led some to call him “The Gigantic Wrestler”: “We must wrestle with circumstances so that those who are imprisoned by them in their exhausting jobs may nevertheless be able to preserve their spiritual lives. We must wrestle with men, so that distracted as they constantly are by the external things so prominent in our time, they may find the road to inwardness and remain on it. We must wrestle with ourselves and with everyone else, so that in an age of confusion and inhumanity, we may remain loyal to the great humane ideals of the 18th century – translating them into thoughts of our age and attempting to realize them.”

Most of you know the story of Albert Schweitzer. A preacher’s son, it was not surprising that he had an interest in theology and philosophy. He performed notable scholastic achievement in the realm of philosophy when he took a doctorate for his studies of Immanuel Kant, a profound and difficult philosopher for anyone to master. Turning to the field of religion, Schweitzer studied all the lives that had been written of Jesus. Then turning to the gospels, he studied them meticulously and sensitively. The result of his studies is the book which in the English translation is called THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS. This study of the life of Jesus was a bombshell in the scholastic world of the early years of the 20th century. Schweitzer would not accept the old doctrinal ideas that had grown around Jesus. Neither would he swallow the blithe notion that Jesus was a rational man of Enlightenment, curiously appearing in Galilee so long ago. Schweitzer was also convinced that Jesus had been a real person, not a fantasy. Schweitzer was determined to find the Jesus that really lived and walked the dusty roads of Palestine. Such a method was flagrant heresy to many of that time of sixty years ago – it would be heresy still to many. THE QUEST has been modified in its impact by the studies that have continued. Of course. But it is still a significant contribution to the extensive library about Jesus.

A ranking philosopher and perceptive theologian seldom has other outstanding qualities. But Schweitzer has other facets of brilliance. Along with philosophy and theology, he cultivated his capacity for music. Studying under Widor, then Europe’s most noted organist and interpreter of Bach he was soon instructing the teacher, developing for him some of the qualities of Bach, his architectonics, or as Schweitzer put it more simply, the truth of Bach’s religious feelings which were expressed through music.

Schweitzer was not satisfied to be the greatest interpreter of Bach, nor was it enough that he was the most sought-after organist for consorts and lectures in Europe. Schweitzer found music such a compelling religious experience that he also became a master of organ architecture – one of the competent authorities on organ building. His advice was sought by many of the deans of great cathedrals and churches of Europe who were concerned about preserving their great organs. He was a champion of the hand-built organ and fought against assembly-line instruments which he regarded as incapable of developing the warmth, grandeur, the lilt ... [words missing from copy] of the wind organ created by the hands of a ....

... happened in Schweitzer’s life before he was thirty years of age. Why did a man who through genius and his enormous capacity for hard work had won a scholastic doctorate in philosophy, another in theology, and a third doctorate in music suddenly turn to medical school to become a physician, specializing in tropical diseases?

Schweitzer says that he set himself the goal of studying until he was thirty and then devoting himself to helping mankind in an active and specific manner from then on. Some say that Schweitzer was unable to reconcile his deep religious beliefs with the realities of European power politics – the unscrupulous, imperialistic, nationalism that led to the first World War. Therefore, say the suspicious, Schweitzer rand away from the dilemma of a peaceful man in a world soon to become engulfed in a horrible war; that he ran away from a world that was so foreign to his inner feelings and escaped to the “primeval forest” where his conflict with civilization could be forgotten in serving the sick and ailing natives of Africa. No one can fully understand his own motives, not even a man as brilliant as Schweitzer. But it is doubtful if someone wishing to run from responsibility would escape by plunging into a life of incredible toil, danger and frustration.

It would seem that Schweitzer was beginning the great task of meeting life as it really is, in all its dirt and disease as well as its moments of high nobility and sophistication. Furthermore he was meeting life where he could do something to change it for the better.

First of all, said Schweitzer, in his Goethe Prize address, 33 years ago, (and this many years after the beginnings of the African adventure), “we must wrestle with circumstance so that those who are imprisoned by them in their exhausting jobs may nevertheless preserve their spiritual lives.

Schweitzer has never been entirely optimistic. In his great philosophical work, CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS, he expressed the belief that in spite of gleaming towers of steel and concrete, vast quantities of scientific knowledge and invention, the conquest of air, water and the atom, our civilization is decaying. He sees too many losing moral courage, too many seem to be willing to be bribed by paltry gadgets and to be deluded that the great values lie in what we have, rather than what we are.

He heels the same faint dread when examining lives. When one closely observes; and this is the opinion of other [wise] people who have lived a long time and watched many decades of human procession pass in review, there comes to the heart a feeling that life’s fulfillments never match life’s promises, that life “suggests a good which it somehow fails to impart.”

But, maintains Schweitzer, even though circumstances seem to imprison us, wrestle with them we must in order to retain our moral life. Did he do this?

One of the aspects of civilization which tortured Schweitzer as a young man was the nature of the hate-breeding nationalism which was characteristic in Europe in the days before World War One, and exists today, of course. Schweitzer had come to the conviction, greatly influenced by his studies of Jesus, that the needed work of the world should be done for persons as persons for reasons of simple humanity. He believed that to think of one’s self as being a German or a Frenchman or an Englishman and to classify others by nationality, in preference to thinking of them first as human beings with human needs, was a violation of the spirit of Jesus – to Schweitzer the spirit of Jesus was the spirit of true religion.

How did he wrestle with the circumstances of nationalism in his world of international suspicion and smoldering hates? Schweitzer, born in Alsace, was a German subject. Most of his education had been in German universities. When he decided to dedicate himself to the service of humanity, particularly the needs of human beings in the ... tropics, he could have gone to the German church ... been assigned by that group to one of its mission ... tions. Instead, however, he rose above what he thought ... ht be a tendency to think of human beings second. He went to the Paris Missionary Society and requested permission to serve one of the French missionary stations. At first the mission directors were reluctant to accept this genius and religious prophet. He was a German subject and the French hated the Germans. He was a non-conformist. The non-conformist has always been suspected by bureaucracies, even church and mission bureaucracies. Not only did Schweitzer not accept the orthodox evangelical ideas about Jesus, but by his study of Jesus and the publication of the book, others had been led to admire the humanity of Jesus rather than worship his divinity. Schweitzer asked for no money or equipment. He would furnish all needs through the generosity of friends and what he could make through the publication of his books and his organ recitals on his rare trips back to the continent from his labors. Although the Paris Missionary Society did accept him, he was intern[ed] for periods as an enemy alien during portions of World War I. By the time of World War II, however, so securely had Schweitzer established himself as a missionary doctor rather than a German national, so world-wide had been the recognition that his was a completely unselfish service to humanity, that his mission station, although administered by Schweitzer, a German National, received needed quantities of drugs from the United States in an area that was the possession of a France which had surrendered to Hitler.

The circumstances of nationalism confront us all. Schweitzer wrestled with it and preserved his spiritual life.

There were other circumstances with which this good doctor had to contend. Among the difficulties Schweitzer and all missionaries in that part of Africa had to wrestle with were white ants that consume paper, books, curtains, cloth and floor coverings; menacing mosquitoes spreading malaria and fever; biting flies of numerous varieties, and each variety, it seemed, spreading a different disease; jiggers that live by burrowing into the skin of one’s feet; rats that eat the patients’ food and nibble patients’ feet at night; fleas that carry the plague; bush cats that kill the poultry; elephants that trample gardens, baboons that uproot the crops; violent storms which with little warning blow off roofs. All of this and more in an area with an average temperature of 110 to 120º F and an average humidity of 98%.

Schweitzer wrestled with these and many more aggravating circumstances which took his time and energy but which could not deprive him of his spiritual life, because he never conceded that humanity and humanity’s needs were not worth the struggle.

We, like Schweitzer, have an inheritance of faith. It is dynamic – or should be, spurring us constantly to find new ways to speed to ever-changing man; persisting in the effort to communicate the high goals of man to a fast-changing culture. We should not try to escape that religious responsibility. Of course we know the words about Creation, truth, service, fellowship, love – but who doesn’t? I’m told that in London, the Hyde Park section is similar to Boston’s Common in that there is an opportunity for the soap box orators to let off steam and expound their ideas. One religious skeptic is alleged to have shouted, “Look at me! I’m a h’atheist, and I’m ’appy, than Gawd.”

It’s just as ridiculous to think one’s self a believer, to use the words but not wrestle with the circumstances which prevent religion from being as valuable and effective tool for living as it might.

Secondly, Schweitzer said we must “wrestle with men, so that distracted as they constantly are by the external things so prominent in our time, they may find the road to inwardness and remain on it.”

There is considerable irony in the fact that Schweitzer’s mission stands in the area where once was the center of slave traffic with the United States. Should not we wrestle with men when they are so driven by greed as to transport nearly sixteen million human souls from Africa. A little more than five million survived. Over ten million are believed to have died on the jungle trails on the way to deportation or to have died in the foul holds of the slave ships. Has there ever been a time when there was no need to wrestle with man so that they may find the strength of inner honesty and outward ethics[?] All religious institutions, including the Christian Church, [have] been guided many times by what is, rather than what ought to be. In the slave-trading days, some allegedly pious Christians advanced the feeble and contemptuous rationalization that the captured Africans were better off as Christian slaves than free primitives. Schweitzer has never tried to interfere with native, tribal customs. But he does try and heal the wounds and cure the ills of the African, who lives not in a primitive Eden, but a rather green and steaming hell. One of Schweitzer’s motives in dedicating his life to the needs of jungle people was his conviction that one thing he could do was to dedicate his life to making small an individual atonement for the great wrong done to the peoples of Africa by centuries of cruel Colonial exploitation. [Although what he has done is small only in his own appraisal.]

Schweitzer wrestles not only with the consequence of the past and present evils done by white peoples, but also he wrestles with the ignorance, apathy, and superstition of the native. Schweitzer has always wrestled and more strenuously today than ever with the suspicion that the African naturally feels deeply-wronged toward the white man.

Schweitzer has wrestled for more than fifty years with people everywhere so that they will not forget the mission station at Lambarene. Supplies must come through under difficult conditions. Drugs must be packaged in precise ways or they will become useless in the scorching climate. In the late evening and morning hours, the old physician must not only labor with the task of finishing his scholarly studies of a philosophy of civilization, he must write hundreds of letters to friends and sponsors in all parts of the world so that the support of his mission station may not falter. People forget even good causes without constant reminder. In his latter years, the gifts have come much more freely, but the problem is always substantial.

In recent years, particularly during the increasing ferment of African revolutionary nationalism, which has brought about so many new African nations, there have been bitter criticism of Schweitzer. Whereas 20 years ago he would have been easily named either just ahead or just behind Gandhi as the greatest man living in the 20th century, today there are many disenchanted critics who assert that Schweitzer the legend is great, but that Schweitzer the real man is little.

What are the charges:

Schweitzer is labeled an “opportunist” who regularly seeks headlines to advance his own image in the public eye and to increase the flow of money to his mission enterprise.

He is charged with autocratic behavior at Lambarene, running the mission as a dictator.

He is accused of being not only a segregationist, but also of holding a low opinion of African mentality, believing the African too immature for the responsibilities of life.

He is charged with maintaining inferior hospital standards, of not putting into use modern medical equipment, methods, drugs and techniques.

Perhaps the most vitriolic charges come from those who lambaste him because he has failed to play any role in the nationalistic liberation movements in Africa.

The temptation is great to ignore charges – and merely point to the man. He says nothing (the thought occurs of the spiritual written about Jesus standing before Pilate, “he never said a mumbling word.”) Schweitzer would not be the first authentically great religious man to have experienced calumny in his lifetime. But the collection of accusations is a mixed bag of truth, half-truth and utter falsehood; and his accusers may have a greater readiness to call names than a willingness to endure hardship for the sake of one’s religious commitment.

Is Schweitzer an opportunist? True it is he has gone to Europe many times and America at least once on fund-raising journeys for his mission. The mission has cost large sums – but let him cast the first charge who has never worked for a Community Chest build-up and drive or church fund appeal or financial program for an institution that helps people.

True, Schweitzer acquired many headlines when he appealed, cajoled, begged the powerful nations to do away with atomic testing, to reject forever the use of such weapons of global disaster and race suicide. Are you not glad he maintains this strong voice for peace? His name is not on the treaty between the US and USSR banning testing in the atmosphere, but no one can persuade me that his influence was not of importance.

He is charged with autocratic behavior and segregationist policies. He does run Lambarene as far as staff and visitor’s quarters and meals are concerned. As Donald Harrington pointed out, Schweitzer is the old “German professor” type who does give the orders. As far as segregation at the hospital is concerned, we might wish for him to be more in tune with today’s necessities, but he is not. But I believe only those who have authentically suffered for the sake of a non-segregated society have the right to be judgmental of him. Furthermore, do you know of any hospitals in Africa, in the U.S., in New York, in Rochester, operated on the town meeting system for policy directions and decisions? Do not compare Schweitzer’s hospital with an annual parish meeting of a liberal society in the U.S. - compare it with a hospital.

As far as inferior standards are concerned and lack of modern methods, how many 90-year old physicians do you know whose offices and equipment are the most modern? How many 90 year old physicians do you know who are still practicing? Schweitzer’s jungle complex comprises 70 buildings, plus a separated leper village with a staff of four doctors and thirty nurses and aides. Each year 1,000 new patients come to the jungle hospital village. Schweitzer has long held the theory that he must conduct his medical mission in terms that the African tribes will understand. Thus the patient’s family will come with him and live at the village. It is more a hospital community than a hospital. Usually there are 1000 persons, plus 120 in the leper village, living in the complex. True the village has no modern plumbing (but this is the African jungle).

But the operating room is well equipped and thoroughly hygienic. Mortality from surgery is about ½ of 1%. Infections arising after operations are at a lower rate than large university hospitals in the U.S.

Schweitzer, perhaps, could improve the facilities, just as he could provide better living quarters for himself than the two cluttered rooms in which he lives. True, at 90, he needs seven to eight hours sleep at night, rather than the three to four hours which sufficed for many years.

But some of his critics make their charge from the comfort and luxury of highly-paid city practices. Some are African doctors, who did not return to the jungle to practice, but who would not be in the world, perhaps, but for Schweitzer who may have saved the life of parents or grandparents.

Has Schweitzer’s halo tarnished? The halo was never there. He is human, not supernatural. As Mangus Ratter, one of his biographers wrote, “Albert Schweitzer is an ordinary man, doing extraordinary things. Inspiration is not lacking in his life, but sweat and purpose, hallowed by consecration that makes him great.”

As for Schweitzer’s failing to support African nationalistic movements, those who criticize should reflect on the events of more than one-half century ago. Schweitzer of course doesn’t defend himself. It was the hateful atmosphere of European nationalism which was the significant influence in the life of an Alsatian, subjected to German rule, who went to Africa as a missionary for a French religious society; he was interned as an enemy alien during parts of World War I. Nationalism to Schweitzer always has been one of the necessary burdens carried by the family of man.

How can 90-year-old Schweitzer, this gigantic old wrestler be expected to see the liberation spirit behind the complexities and violence of African nationalism? Perhaps it is a grievous paradox that the European nationalistic spirit which he rightfully rejected in 1914 is quite different from the African nationalistic spirit which has opened a chasm between Schweitzer and his contemporaries in the 1960s.

So Schweitzer still wrestles with men today because most of us are so distracted with external things that we forget the dream too often, the goal of what ought to be. There is no known person in the world who combines the mental genius and physical stamina with humanitarian impulses as does Albert Schweitzer.

Lastly, Schweitzer challenges us with the greatest and most formidable opponent of them all: “We must wrestle with ourselves and translate the great humane ideals into the thought of our age and attempt to realize them.”

Perhaps when time has rolled over the deeds of the present, Schweitzer will have made the greatest impact on his time with his life of unselfish service. Perhaps on history he will have made his greatest mark with his philosophy of life, two volumes of which are still in preparation. Wrestling with himself as he was deeply moved by Jesus’ ethic of love, he confronted himself time and again with the question: “What does it mean to me? How shall I love my neighbor as myself? How shall I love the Lord my God with all my heart and mind and strength?”

He discovered in himself, as we all may in ourselves, a will-to-live. We do struggle to preserve ourselves. Quicker than thought, we ward off the sudden peril or falling object. And our will-to-live, reasons Schweitzer, is set among everyone else’s will-to-live. After years of thought he came to a guiding spirit, “Reverence for all life.” The doctor realizes that all life lives on all other life, vegetable and animal. Yet his religion of “reverence for life” insists that there shall be no unnecessary waste of life. He will kill a snake which threatens the life of a human, but he will also take a snake sunning itself on the road and place it by the side of the road so the wheels of a truck or cart will not destroy the snake. (Adlai Stevenson mosquito. “my”)

In reverence for all that lives, Schweitzer finds the answer to the question that wells up so frequently from the depths of our emotions, “Why?” “Why am I?” “What is life?” By wrestling with himself, he found himself compelled inwardly to satisfy a demand that life made upon him. By wrestling with himself, as well as studying the truths he found in theology, music, philosophy – in the life of Jesus, he found how he ought to live. Then he set about to live that way. And after he put his hand to the plough he has never looked behind him.

Perhaps those three formidable opponents which Schweitzer name for us, Circumstances, Men, Ourselves are the same temptations that Jesus and other persons meet who have fully accepted the challenge that life plants in every human heart. We wrestle with temptation – and the temptations present themselves in Circumstance, Men, Ourselves. Browning must have anticipated a man like Schweitzer when he wrote,

“What are temptations but for man to meet,
To grapple with and trample under feet,
and so be pedestaled in triumph.”