29 May 2006

Mission’s inevitable way of the cross

Dear Friends:

As a college student in 1977, and as a medical student in 1980, I worked in a Presbyterian medical clinic in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. One hot, muggy day at the overcrowded clinic, a woman brought to me a newborn baby wrapped in rags. The child had a myelomeningocele, a form of spina bifida. With no neurosurgery available to close the exposed spinal cord, I knew that the child nestled in my arms would soon die of meningitis, and that no medical treatment I could provide would save him.

Although I went on to complete my training, and have now served as a medical missionary for 17 years, I often find myself in the same situation I faced as a medical student in that refugee camp: I still care for dying patients for whom I am unable to provide the treatment they need.

Such situations are inevitable for missionaries sent into a world where resources are limited and unevenly distributed. Medical missionaries have the particular task of seeking out and ministering in the name of Christ to those for whom the world’s medical resources are unavailable. The church sends medical missionaries to comfort children with leukemia who have no hope for a curative bone marrow transplant, to pray with mothers who have end-stage renal disease but for whom dialysis is only a wish, and to hold the hands of fathers who are debilitated from coronary artery disease but for whom a stent or bypass surgery is way beyond their means.

It is not difficult to find people who are sick and in need of care. The hardest part for a medical missionary is forsaking technology in order to minister to people where that technology is rendered useless. How can he carry bone marrow transplant technology to a place where there is no electricity? What good is a dialysis machine without running water? How can he prescribe bypass surgery for a man who can’t afford to feed his family? Eventually, a medical missionary’s journey strips him of technology and his ability to cure, and leaves him powerless in the face of disease and death.

For all Christians, if we follow our calling far enough and deep enough, the missionary journey allows us to take nothing but ourselves and the faith that guides us. Whether God calls us to people on the other side of the world or to our neighbor down the street, eventually we must forsake what we have and what we can do and offer simply who we are as followers of Jesus Christ. It is mission’s inevitable way of the cross.

Although a common procedure in the United States, the surgery is not available in Nosrotpur or anywhere near there. Even if it were, the family could not afford it. So I did my best with medicines to make Mrs. Kisku feel better, but I knew that the medicines would ultimately fail.

Mrs. Kisku often came to see me for a check-up, and sometimes I would admit her to the hospital to adjust her medicines. As she was quite poor, I would arrange for her to receive assistance for her hospital stay and the medicines she needed. I cared for her in this way for several months. She told me once that she had sold her chickens to pay for the rickshaw and bus fare to come see me.

One day I made another mobile clinic visit to Nosrotpur, and I looked forward to checking up on Mrs. Kisku. When I arrived, however, her daughter told me that she had died. The daughter told me that as her mother lay dying she had asked for me. She had said, “I want Dr. Morgan to be here with me.”

I understood then that the mission of the church transcends the resources we might provide for those in need. In the end, we must present ourselves simply as believers. Just as God sent to us his son Jesus Christ, who was born, who suffered, died, and rose again in order to be with us forever, so we are called to be present to others in faith, in hope, and in love. This presence to others, in the name of Christ, is the principal evangelical task for all missionaries.

As I return to Bangladesh on June 29 to continue my missionary journey, I know I will once again find myself caring for someone for whom I can offer nothing but myself as a follower of Jesus Christ. But my time in the United States has taught me that I am not alone in that inevitable way of the cross. I am with all of you who live in faith as the body of Christ, bearing witness to his mercy and love.

Your fellow missionary,

Les

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 117