The Only Way To Make Life Real
Sermon
A SEASON OF SAINTS
Sermons For Festivals And Commemorations After Pentecost
August 13
Florence Nightingale, 1910;
Clara Maass, 1901; Renewers of Society
Today's two saints of blessed memory are more modern and probably more familiar to you than some of the people we've commemorated previously. Florence Nightingale was the famous English woman who, in the 1850s, shocked her wealthy and proper family by announcing that she wanted to become a nurse, which in those days was a job for women who couldn't find work as maids or washerwomen. She further embarrassed her peers by volunteering to be the first woman nurse in the British Army during the Crimean War, and almost singlehandedly made military nursing humane and efficient. After the war she returned to England and used the lessons she had learned during the war to establish modern nursing as a healthcare profession.
Clara Maass might be called Florence Nightingale's American counterpart. She was also an early practitioner of clean, compassionate, modern nursing and volunteered for army nursing during the Spanish-American War. Her career led her into the fight against tropical diseases that afflicted servicemen, and she died at the age of 25 in an effort to stop yellow fever.
The lives of these two pioneer nurses are a two-sided reminder of what the modern medical profession is all about. When Florence Nightingale decided to become a nurse, hospitals were trash cans, a place to put away the sick and dying so their suffering and stink wouldn't offend decent people. Hospitals were dirty and noisy, antibiotics and painkillers were unknown. Nurses were menial workers who neglected their patients, ignored the orders of doctors (who often didn't much care, anyway), and were likely as not to be drunk on the job. It's no wonder that her well-bred family was horrified, and tried everything they could to persuade Florence that nursing was beneath her.
Medicine has changed in 140 years. To be sure, we complain about the high cost of medical care, and about doctors who keep us waiting, and about cold X-ray tables and immodest hospital gowns. But our complaints are trivial. Diseases that were rampant killers a generation or two ago have been eliminated or reduced to office-visit complaints. We may gripe if we wish, but we can't take for granted the advances in medical care that have been made since Florence Nightingale pinned on her nursing cap.
On the other hand, the commemoration of these nurses reminds the medical establishment - and our whole society - that medicine is a serving profession. Modern medical schools can train technically brilliant doctors, who can cure diseases that hadn't been discovered yet in the 19th century, more easily than teach them to care about their patients as human beings. "Holistic medicine" is a term in vogue - referring to medicine that deals with the whole lives of whole people - but it's sad that such a concept is still a novel idea. Holistic medicine is what Florence Nightingale was practicing in 1854, as she walked through hospital wards at night carrying a lamp, kissing the foreheads of young soldiers hallucinating about homes and families they would never see again, holding the hands of her volunteer nurses overwhelmed by the pain and carnage of war. Medical care is not just a technology; it is not just a business or a service industry; it is a humane ministry to people in need.
But the lessons we learn from our two nurses today go far beyond the medical profession. These two women were models of Christian compassion in all walks of life. They both chose nursing careers as a way to put their concern for other people into action, and both women declared that their self-sacrificing love of other people grew out of their faith in Christ.
Florence Nightingale grew up in a wealthy home full of pampering servants, but even as a young girl she would leave her home to go sit with poorer families who were suffering illness or tragedy. Once when her mother scolded her for staying with a sick woman rather than coming home for dinner, she said, "I can't sit down to a grand dinner while this poor woman is suffering so much and no one else can help her." When she was eight years old, her grandmother described her as "both Martha and Mary, two excellent characters blended."15 Later, at the age when other young women of her social class were looking for wealthy young gentlemen to marry, she declared that "the only way to make life real is to do something to relieve human misery."16 Before she left home to become a nurse, she conducted a school for the poor children of her town.
The life of Clara Maass is an even more dramatic story of self-sacrifice for the good of others. As an army nurse during the Spanish-American War, she saw the suffering and death caused by malaria and other tropical fevers. When the war ended, she volunteered to help the doctors who were trying to wipe out yellow fever. The goal of the research was to determine how yellow fever was transmitted, to stop its spread. Mosquitoes were suspected of spreading the fever and Clara Maass volunteered to let herself be bitten by mosquitoes to test the hypothesis. After her first voluntary bite she contracted a mild case of yellow fever from which she recovered. But she
volunteered for a second test-bite, and died 10 days later. She was the only woman and the only American who gave her life in this research effort, which did eventually control yellow fever.
Jesus said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (John 15:13)." Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass set an example of obedient discipleship that few of us can hope to follow. And the people they served by their sacrifice were the people society turned its back on: the poor, the sick, the dying, maimed soldiers far from home, fever-stricken villagers in the Caribbean. In Matthew 25, Jesus suggests that the measure of the Christian life, the scale on which our entire lives are balanced, is our service to the least of his brothers and sisters. Someone else has said that the Christian life is like ripening grain: the more mature it gets, the lower it hangs its head.
"The Son of God goes forth to war," the hymn insists: "who follows in his train? (LBW 183)." You don't have to be a charity nurse or an experimental volunteer to follow in the train of Jesus. But a Christian in any profession, situation or walk of life is led by the teaching that Florence Nightingale discovered: "the only way to make life real is to do something to relieve human misery." Opportunities to relieve human misery are endless. You can help in a ministry to the homeless. You can give to the church's hunger program. You can be a Red Cross volunteer, or a hospital candy striper, or a blood donor. You can visit nursing homes, or be a big brother or big sister, or volunteer in a hospice program.
The Son of God goes forth to war against all human misery of the body, mind and spirit. Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass followed in his train, and you and I can, too, inspired, fueled and propelled by his Spirit of love.
One last thing these two women remind us of today is our freedom to do the unexpected, even the unapproved. Florence Nightingale did the opposite of what every custom and social convention told her to do. Nice girls don't become nurses, she was told, and she did. Women don't go to war zones, she was told, and she did. A single woman in a menial occupation can't change society, she was told, and she became a great hero and a pioneer of a modern way of life. Self-preservation is the single greatest drive of every creature, Clara Maass knew, and she intentionally exposed herself to a deadly disease to help save other people's lives.
Christians are mold-breakers. We do what our Lord tells us to do, not what our society or our families or our etiquette books tell us. And our Lord was the great mold-breaker of all time. Martin Luther King, Jr., once wrote that "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted," a description appropriate of Jesus as well as of Doctor King, Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass.17
The freedom to break the bonds of the merely conventional is a great gift of the Christian life. Our self-esteem comes from being held in the arms of God, not from the approval of our peers. Our goal is the Kingdom of God, not worldly success. Our justification in life is the blood of Christ on the cross and nothing else.
Who follows in the train of Jesus? The creatively maladjusted. People who think and do what others tell them can't be done. People who place the needs of other people ahead of their own. People who know how to make life real. Amen.
Florence Nightingale, 1910;
Clara Maass, 1901; Renewers of Society
Today's two saints of blessed memory are more modern and probably more familiar to you than some of the people we've commemorated previously. Florence Nightingale was the famous English woman who, in the 1850s, shocked her wealthy and proper family by announcing that she wanted to become a nurse, which in those days was a job for women who couldn't find work as maids or washerwomen. She further embarrassed her peers by volunteering to be the first woman nurse in the British Army during the Crimean War, and almost singlehandedly made military nursing humane and efficient. After the war she returned to England and used the lessons she had learned during the war to establish modern nursing as a healthcare profession.
Clara Maass might be called Florence Nightingale's American counterpart. She was also an early practitioner of clean, compassionate, modern nursing and volunteered for army nursing during the Spanish-American War. Her career led her into the fight against tropical diseases that afflicted servicemen, and she died at the age of 25 in an effort to stop yellow fever.
The lives of these two pioneer nurses are a two-sided reminder of what the modern medical profession is all about. When Florence Nightingale decided to become a nurse, hospitals were trash cans, a place to put away the sick and dying so their suffering and stink wouldn't offend decent people. Hospitals were dirty and noisy, antibiotics and painkillers were unknown. Nurses were menial workers who neglected their patients, ignored the orders of doctors (who often didn't much care, anyway), and were likely as not to be drunk on the job. It's no wonder that her well-bred family was horrified, and tried everything they could to persuade Florence that nursing was beneath her.
Medicine has changed in 140 years. To be sure, we complain about the high cost of medical care, and about doctors who keep us waiting, and about cold X-ray tables and immodest hospital gowns. But our complaints are trivial. Diseases that were rampant killers a generation or two ago have been eliminated or reduced to office-visit complaints. We may gripe if we wish, but we can't take for granted the advances in medical care that have been made since Florence Nightingale pinned on her nursing cap.
On the other hand, the commemoration of these nurses reminds the medical establishment - and our whole society - that medicine is a serving profession. Modern medical schools can train technically brilliant doctors, who can cure diseases that hadn't been discovered yet in the 19th century, more easily than teach them to care about their patients as human beings. "Holistic medicine" is a term in vogue - referring to medicine that deals with the whole lives of whole people - but it's sad that such a concept is still a novel idea. Holistic medicine is what Florence Nightingale was practicing in 1854, as she walked through hospital wards at night carrying a lamp, kissing the foreheads of young soldiers hallucinating about homes and families they would never see again, holding the hands of her volunteer nurses overwhelmed by the pain and carnage of war. Medical care is not just a technology; it is not just a business or a service industry; it is a humane ministry to people in need.
But the lessons we learn from our two nurses today go far beyond the medical profession. These two women were models of Christian compassion in all walks of life. They both chose nursing careers as a way to put their concern for other people into action, and both women declared that their self-sacrificing love of other people grew out of their faith in Christ.
Florence Nightingale grew up in a wealthy home full of pampering servants, but even as a young girl she would leave her home to go sit with poorer families who were suffering illness or tragedy. Once when her mother scolded her for staying with a sick woman rather than coming home for dinner, she said, "I can't sit down to a grand dinner while this poor woman is suffering so much and no one else can help her." When she was eight years old, her grandmother described her as "both Martha and Mary, two excellent characters blended."15 Later, at the age when other young women of her social class were looking for wealthy young gentlemen to marry, she declared that "the only way to make life real is to do something to relieve human misery."16 Before she left home to become a nurse, she conducted a school for the poor children of her town.
The life of Clara Maass is an even more dramatic story of self-sacrifice for the good of others. As an army nurse during the Spanish-American War, she saw the suffering and death caused by malaria and other tropical fevers. When the war ended, she volunteered to help the doctors who were trying to wipe out yellow fever. The goal of the research was to determine how yellow fever was transmitted, to stop its spread. Mosquitoes were suspected of spreading the fever and Clara Maass volunteered to let herself be bitten by mosquitoes to test the hypothesis. After her first voluntary bite she contracted a mild case of yellow fever from which she recovered. But she
volunteered for a second test-bite, and died 10 days later. She was the only woman and the only American who gave her life in this research effort, which did eventually control yellow fever.
Jesus said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (John 15:13)." Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass set an example of obedient discipleship that few of us can hope to follow. And the people they served by their sacrifice were the people society turned its back on: the poor, the sick, the dying, maimed soldiers far from home, fever-stricken villagers in the Caribbean. In Matthew 25, Jesus suggests that the measure of the Christian life, the scale on which our entire lives are balanced, is our service to the least of his brothers and sisters. Someone else has said that the Christian life is like ripening grain: the more mature it gets, the lower it hangs its head.
"The Son of God goes forth to war," the hymn insists: "who follows in his train? (LBW 183)." You don't have to be a charity nurse or an experimental volunteer to follow in the train of Jesus. But a Christian in any profession, situation or walk of life is led by the teaching that Florence Nightingale discovered: "the only way to make life real is to do something to relieve human misery." Opportunities to relieve human misery are endless. You can help in a ministry to the homeless. You can give to the church's hunger program. You can be a Red Cross volunteer, or a hospital candy striper, or a blood donor. You can visit nursing homes, or be a big brother or big sister, or volunteer in a hospice program.
The Son of God goes forth to war against all human misery of the body, mind and spirit. Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass followed in his train, and you and I can, too, inspired, fueled and propelled by his Spirit of love.
One last thing these two women remind us of today is our freedom to do the unexpected, even the unapproved. Florence Nightingale did the opposite of what every custom and social convention told her to do. Nice girls don't become nurses, she was told, and she did. Women don't go to war zones, she was told, and she did. A single woman in a menial occupation can't change society, she was told, and she became a great hero and a pioneer of a modern way of life. Self-preservation is the single greatest drive of every creature, Clara Maass knew, and she intentionally exposed herself to a deadly disease to help save other people's lives.
Christians are mold-breakers. We do what our Lord tells us to do, not what our society or our families or our etiquette books tell us. And our Lord was the great mold-breaker of all time. Martin Luther King, Jr., once wrote that "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted," a description appropriate of Jesus as well as of Doctor King, Florence Nightingale and Clara Maass.17
The freedom to break the bonds of the merely conventional is a great gift of the Christian life. Our self-esteem comes from being held in the arms of God, not from the approval of our peers. Our goal is the Kingdom of God, not worldly success. Our justification in life is the blood of Christ on the cross and nothing else.
Who follows in the train of Jesus? The creatively maladjusted. People who think and do what others tell them can't be done. People who place the needs of other people ahead of their own. People who know how to make life real. Amen.
