A Cure for Worrying: Commemorating Sr. Elizabeth Fedde

On February 25, Lutherans commemorate Elizabeth Fedde (1850-1921), a Norwegian deaconness who, at age 33, followed her brother's urging to come to New York City. At his request, she took up "the work among the poor and lost Norwegians”, but rather than confining herself to visit the ill and poor in their homes, she found herself working in hospitals, on ships and in the streets.

Three years later she asked the newly founded Norwegian Relief Society to start a deaconness home and hospital. Sr. Elizabeth became well-known, and after enlisting businessmen such as Charles Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller, a thirty-bed hospital at Fourth Avenue and 46th Street was dedicated in 1889. Soon the Norwegian Relief Society re-incorporated as the Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses’ Home and Hospital. Then, in April 1892, the first two deaconesses were consecrated in Brooklyn.

But besides being the "mover and shaker" in ever wider circles, Sr. Elizabeth remained dedicated to her work with the sick and the poor. Even though there was some financial support, she was a pioneer. Lack of sleep, being "on call" at all times and the many sick people she worked with -- all this took its toll on her, and she fell ill more and more frequently.

Her ill health made it necessary for Sr. Elizabeth to return to Norway in 1895, but her work lived on, and mightily so. When in 1956 Lutheran Norwegian Deaconess Home and Hospital merged with Lutheran Hospital of Manhattan, the result was Brooklyn's Lutheran Medical Center, which proudly honors Sr. Elizabeth as its founder.

I could write about Sr. Elizabeth because I am the child of a former deaconness. I could write about her because my first couple of years of chaplaincy training took place at Lutheran Medical Center. Or I could write about her because the first church I attended in the United States was on the very spot where Sr. Elizabeth's first hospital stood: 46th and 4th in Sunset Park. Even though those are all good reasons, today I want to write about her faith and her courage, and especially about her ability to trust God.

This is from Sr. Elizabeth's diary:

March 21: Should stay in and sew but was taken to a poor family; quite young people who have been without work so long that they had no money. Mrs. Børs’s $5 was a welcome gift, even though it brought tears; I asked the woman to come Monday to get clothes for the baby who will arrive shortly; I have nothing now, but because I need it, I believe something will come. March 22: Home for housework, and a woman came with a parcel of children’s clothes and asked if I had use for them. I knew I would have them in time for Monday. At meeting in the evening to get help for the poor... 

"I have nothing now, but because I need it, I believe something will come" -- that's putting into action what Jesus says in Sunday's Gospel: "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you -- you of little faith."

Sr. Elizabeth is not a woman of little faith, not by far, and somehow people around her begin to have a sense that God's love radiates from her.

Here's what she writes one cold January night:

Out in dreadfully cold weather to a poor family down in a cellar, and after talking to them awhile gave them what I had in my pocket because I thought my purse contained carfare; when I looked, I found nothing and I set out on foot late and in bad weather, but God can soften all hearts. A streetcar driver called and said, “Get on!” I said, “I have no money,” and he cried, “Just come!” That sort of thing has never happened to me before.

Her faithfulness shines especially with those who are skeptical. After describing the cyncial attitude of an unemployed and debilitated young man from Norway, she says, "We stood and talked long together. He stood his ground, but when I said that I prayed God every day that He would send me to those He wanted me to see and that I was sure that God had arranged the meeting with him, tears ran down his cheeks, and they said more than words."

Every so often Sr. Elizabeth admits to be "in a very bad humor". One of those times, she is quite frank in describing the effects of a board meeting on her (some of us have been there and felt similar!): "God be merciful! I have the whole board against me and everything is wrong and I wish I were dead. God be merciful to me, a sinner!"  

Yet some time later, her diary says this: "Tired from the day's work, I sit now and wish I had a thousand mouths and a thousand tongues in each mouth with which to praise God for all goodness to me."

Here is part of Sunday's Gospel in the "Cotton Patch Version" by Clarence Jordan:

So cut out your anxious talk about ‘what are we gonna eat, and what are we gonna drink, and what are we gonna wear.’ For the people of the world go tearing around after all these things. Listen, your spiritual Father is quite aware that you’ve got to have all such stuff. Then set your heart on the God Movement and its kind of life, and all these things will come as a matter of course. 

Sr. Elizabeth had her priorities right. Because her heart was set on God and God's kind of life, "all these things" people worry about, they came to her as a matter of course. She believed and thus she received. She remained in God's love, and God's love radiated out of her for all to see. May her faith embolden ours; may it help us navigate the world in new, more trusting, ways!

When everybody else worries his or her head off, it's our business to stay still. We will receive what we need, without fail.

Matthew 6:25-33

Being the "Poor in Spirit": Being God's Fools

Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th/6th century and is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Zen from India to China.  After he had arrived in China, for nine years he remained in a cave, meditating while facing the wall. Many came to persuade him to come out, ”Why don’t you talk to us? We ask questions and you give answers to the wall. It makes us uncomfortable.” But Bodhidharma said, ”Unless the man comes who has the ears and the heart to understand me, it is better to talk to the wall. At least no one is disappointed.” And then, one day the man came.

This man was a young man named Eka, who had traveled across the high mountains of eastern China in the cold of December. Eka was standing in waist deep snow outside of Bodhidharma's cave, cold tears freezing as they were running down his face. Inside the cave, Bodhidharma was in deep meditation.  

As he waited outside, despite the hardship, despite the suffering, Eka began looking within himself and began to let go off all aspirations and attachments. He simply waited outside for Bodhidharma to recognize him, not for his own sake or for any gain, but because he knew it was right somehow. But Bodhidharma ignored Eka, and stayed inside. Eka strengthened his resolve; he let go of all ambitions and all his ego attachments. 

Finally, at dawn, when the long cold night finally ended, the teacher emerged from the cave, seeing that his new student had indeed progressed quite nicely. Bodhidharma took pity on Eka and asked,“What are you after, standing there in the snow for such a long time?” Eka's tears of sorrow were falling even more profusely as he answered, “I simply ask that you have compassion on me and open the gate to what I long to learn.” 

Bodhidharma said, “That gate can only be opened for those who ceaselessly practice what is hard to practice and who ceaselessly endure what seems beyond endurance. But be warned, if you still rely upon a frivolous heart or on a prideful and conceited mind, you will toil in vain.” 

Eka was encouraged by Bodhidharma's words, but he knew he had to make one more demonstration to prove his worthiness to the Master. So Eka secretly took out a very sharp sword and with one quick stroke, cut off his left forearm. He took his left arm and threw it before Bodhidharma and said, ”If you don’t turn immediately towards me, I am going to cut off my head too.” 

Bodhidharma quickly turned, and said, ”So you have come! I have been waiting for nine years.” Bodhidharma added, "In their seeking the Way, all the masters, from the first, have laid down their own bodies for the sake of the Way. Now you have cut yourself free right before me, which is proof that there is good in what you are seeking.”

For the next eight years, Eka served as attendant to the Master in all his endeavors. He was a great, reliable spiritual friend for both ordinary people as well as for those in loftier positions, and he was a great teacher of the Way. And when the time came, Bodhidharma chose him as his successor.

Eka was inspired by Bodhidharma's words to arouse wisdom and finally cut himself free from any last vestiges of clinging and grasping, represented by his left forearm, and he then presented himself and his understanding to Bodhidharma for approval. The ancient masters maintain that when Eka cut off his arm, there was no effort involved; he was so relaxed, so trustful. He was relaxed and trusting because he had learned to let go. His ego was firmly in check.

The story of Bodhidharma and Eka is about letting go – and so is Jesus' First Beatitude (in today's Gospel text from Matthew 5):

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

When Johannes Jessen translated that sentence into the Lower German dialect of my home in Northern Germany, he rendered it this way:

Selig sünd de Minschen, de as beddelarme Lüd vör Godd sin Dör kamt un weet, dat se vör em niks uptowiesen hebbt -- ehr hört dat Himmelriek to!  (In plain English: Blessed are those who come to God's door as people who are dirt poor and know they have nothing to show for themselves -- the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.)

German mystic Meister Eckhart offers this interpretation: “A poor man is one who wants nothing, knows nothing and has nothing.”

• Eckhart says we need to be “poor of will”, by wanting just as little now as when we were too small and immature to have our current desires. 
• Eckhart says we need to be “poor of knowledge”, by freeing ourselves from all the knowledge that has been stuffed into us, and by realizing that such knowledge only ties us to this street theater called "the world". 
• Eckhart says we need to be “poor of having”, by freeing ourselves of all desire to control things with the things we own or cling to. He traces this thought even into our image of God, saying, “I pray to God to make me free of my ideas of God.” If we have ideas of God, we still retain control, and as truly detached believers we must surrender all control.

When we truly are in that place where we want nothing, know nothing and have nothing, we will be free and blessed as on our first day on this planet.

How can we achieve such freedom? Echoing the warning Bodhidharma had for his young student ("If you rely upon a frivolous heart or on a prideful and conceited mind, you will toil in vain"), Eckhart tells us to start the process of putting our ego in check in a very simple manner: “Take a look at yourself, and wherever you find yourself, deny yourself. That is best of all.”

Martin Luther, a theological giant of great fame and vast influence, said these words on his death bed: “We are beggars – this is true.” That's being “poor in the spirit” -- knowing that we come to God as people who have nothing to show for ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with that -- in fact, it's the only way to be right, for "without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God" (Oscar Romero, martyred Archbishop of El Salvador).

What is the result of such freedom? In embodying "a true spirit of poverty which makes the rich feel that they are closer brothers and sisters of the poor, and makes the poor feel that they are equal givers and not inferior" (Oscar Romero), the People of God find themselves in an acute clash with the values of the world, exposing themselves as foolish misfits and outcasts, as "God's fools".  Paul is very sober and clear-eyed when he says:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 

As people who live by the Wisdom of God rather than under the Wisdom of the World, we know that our values do not conform to those of competition and domination that are propagated by the world around us. As the People of God we are truly "countercultural". Our culture teaches us to be selfish, but the cross beckons us to have compassion. Our culture condemns the poor and homeless and blames them for their misfortune, but the cross beckons us to embrace them as sisters and brothers. Our culture teaches us to look down on those who have less, but the cross beckons us to feed them.

Being countercultural carries the very real risk of suffering and the cross, but the rewards are manifold, and far from just otherworldly: as the People of God we can tap into what Rabbi Michael Lerner calls the "irrepressible elements of human nature" shared by all humanity; in his recent article on the "State of the Spirit", Lerner says:

Human beings share a deep yearning to live in communities that provide a sense of purpose to their lives. Yearning to transcend the narrow visions of material self-interest, we long to connect to something of abiding value. We share a hard-wired empathy and love for others, as well as a deep need to be recognized, understood and loved not for what we can do or deliver for others, but for our own intrinsic worth (what the Torah calls being created in the image of God). And we have an irrepressible instinct to seek freedom; creativity; artistic expression; higher and higher levels of understanding and consciousness; love and caring for others; the creation and enjoyment of beauty and pleasure; and both joyous celebration of and awe-filled responses to all the wonders of life in this universe.  

Matthew 5:3; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31