EAST CRAFTSBURY – It is a strange coincidence of history that the Battle of Gettysburg came only days before Independence Day 1863. I grew up in North Carolina with both Southern and Yankee family, and my great-great-grandfather was a first-generation German immigrant and Lutheran minister who studied at Gettysburg Seminary shortly before the war.
A few years ago, I was able to visit the Seminary library and see his handwriting preserved in one of his student essays, bringing the historical gap into perspective.
It was not so long ago that we were fighting and dying over the right to enslave fellow human beings. This occurred in a Christian society but was the extreme opposite of what Paul writes in Galatians 6, calling us to bear each other’s burdens and not sow to the flesh, but the spirit. Instead, slaves were being told they must bear another’s burdens while sowing not only in the fields, but to the flesh. And as we know, bringing it to an end did not suddenly end all American evils nor slaveries by other names.
As for our current cultural moment, perhaps the stakes feel as high to us in our political climate, or perhaps that comparison is insulting. Perhaps we don’t really know how our current conflict maps onto the long hindsight view of history that is so clear now. But perhaps because I know only a small bit of the history of Gettysburg Seminary, I know that even at the point of warring visions of what America should be, there were things that were timeless, wholesome, good and true even in the midst of evil.
During the battle, Gettysburg Seminary was turned into a field hospital for both sides, treating some 700, while far greater numbers of men lay face-down beyond treatment on the battlefield. The place meant to train ministers like my great-great-grandfather was temporarily a different kind of training ground, where unpaid and untrained local volunteers, many of whom were women, streamed in at the edges of the battlefield to try to salvage what life there was to salvage. The trained doctors who did show up did not have their normal supplies and could only do so much. While they could not stop the war or the bloodshed, I doubt there has been a better use or symbol of a seminary in the 162 years since.
It’s important to note that the Seminary did not enter into this role by choice. Becoming a hospital was less about any goodness of the church than simply the fact that it was there, perhaps subconsciously aided by the fact that people knew what, and who, that seminary was supposed to stand for. It has long been said (with no confirmable attribution) that the church is “not a museum for saints, it is a hospital for sinners.” Some have further suggested that it is, too, a morgue for the dead, yet a strange one. People arrive dead in the flesh, and through the saving work of Christ leave alive.
I think about Paul’s lines about bearing each other’s burdens in such times and wonder how we can be a better field hospital for souls in our community. As he writes, “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.” (Gal 6:9)
I know that whatever our political feelings are, this time is a time for weariness. Yet let us take that hope: what do we want to sow? If we don’t like what the government sows, what is it that we want to sow instead? Beyond the “anti-vision” that opposes the powerful, what is the vision of the wholesome, the true, the timeless good? What are the seeds of the spirit that God hopes we might help him sow?
This is a challenge when, sometimes, our analysis and diagnosis of what is being sown and reaped by our enemies can be self-serving. This isn’t to say that sometimes, we really are in the right and our enemies wrong; the point is not moral equivalency. The truth cannot be in the middle when the question comes to slavery.
But also, there is a deeper underlying point that we can take from Paul: if we don’t like what we see going on in the world, and don’t want to reap it, what is it that we ought to be sowing in our community instead?
What are the seeds of the spirit that we can throw from the windows of the field hospital for souls?
Perhaps you can throw the seeds of fairness, justice, good faith, truth, honesty and integrity. When the soldier from the other army comes into your midst, even when you know they support something evil, can you fight for what is right while still treating them with dignity? If we see people acting with inhumanity toward their neighbor, can we sow not more seeds of the flesh through more inhumanity, but the seeds of the spirit that Christ sows? Can we not lose our compass of what is right while also bearing the burdens and treating the wounds of our enemy?
In the Northeast Kingdom, I think and I know we can. And I hope and pray that our churches, if nothing else, can be field hospitals to care for all who are wounded in our physical, cultural and spiritual battles today.
The good news is that we don’t have to be especially good, because we’re not; we’re getting treated in the hospital too. Like the seminary that became a hospital, we just happen to be here. But while we’re here, we can always let people know this is a soul’s hospital. In God’s grace, our churches can even be a morgue where those who have died to sin find a new life in Christ. This is certainly what I hope for at East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church.
If you are weary like the Galatians were, keep hoping and keep sowing. We can’t control the world. We can’t control the weather in our field. But besides pushing back what we are against, we can keep sowing the spirit we are for. For even where death and evil had seemed to rule, Christ sowed his entire being that we may reap life.
Rev. Joe Welker serves the East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church. More of his writing can be found on indwelling.net.
