A TEACHER'S LESSON

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” (I Corinthians 10:1)

To use the old expression, “in my day” school always started after Labor Day. In fact, it usually started on the Wednesday after Labor Day. Tuesday was “teacher orientation day” and on Wednesday school began for the kids. (I always hated school starting up. And one of the really bad things about having a mid-September birthday is that I had to go back to school before I could celebrate my birthday!) The school where my wife Mary Ann works (Marian High School) DOES start after Labor Day (although she has a year round position) but most schools in the Boston suburbs have started classes this week.

In thinking about school and teachers this week, I thought about a female teacher from decades ago who made a huge mark on this world. She was an Albanian and was born Agnesi Gonxhe Bojaxihu. She never married. In fact, she was a Roman Catholic nun. (I still have a lot of problems with Roman Catholicism, BUT the mistake many evangelicals make is to forget the many wonderful, Christian people who are in the Roman Catholic church and are greatly used of God.) Agnesi became “Sister Teresa” and later “Mother Teresa”. She ministered to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India for over 45 years. She was the founder of the “Missionaries of Charity”. Bill Hybels tells her story on the final video presentation of the Willow Creek 2008 Leadership Summit. I was blessed to attend that event in August 2008 (watching by satellite in Greenwich, Connecticut). A few weeks ago, I showed Hybels’ talk about Mother Teresa on D.V.D. for our Men’s Fellowship.

As a young nun, Mother Teresa was an elementary school teacher, but she DESPERATELY wanted to be greatly used of God. She prayed and prayed and prayed asking God show her what she was called to do, and she promised God she would do ANYTHING for Him. This went on for some time, but finally on a train trip in the late 1940s God spoke to her heart and called her to work with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. Many of us would NOT have considered that to be a great assignment, but Teresa was ecstatic! She would have dug ditches for God....she would have lived in an igloo in northern Alaska, or in a jungle in the Congo basin...SHE JUST WANTED TO BE WHERE GOD WANTED HER TO BE AND DOING WHAT HE WANTED HER TO DO.

Fulfilling that call, however, would not be easy. Teresa went back to her teaching job. She kept asking her boss (the local priest) to give her permission to fulfill her calling. He kept telling her “NO” and to stick with the teaching job. She met with the priest and met with the priest trying to convince him. Rumors started up that she was having an affair with the priest! Finally, she wore him down, and he said, “OK” but now she’d have to clear it with the Bishop. And, it started all over again as she had to convince the Bishop of her calling. Like the priest, he kept saying “NO”. FINALLY, after an exhausting effort, she got all the permissions granted that she needed and she went to Calcutta.

At first, it was all overwhelming. She had to start from scratch building an organization. She hated raising money, but she HAD to raise money and she reluctantly learned to be a fundraiser. She had to buy property. She had to hire people and fire people, and (understandably) supervise people. PLUS, of course, she spent all the time she could ministering to the sick and dying and the poorest of the poor. During her last twenty years of life she was very famous. (She was born in 1910 and died in 1997) but for most of her career she ministered in obscurity. A couple of years ago, her private diaries were released which indicated that at times she went through great depression and doubt- not feeling God’s presence at all and wondering if He cared. YET, she ministered tirelessly and faithfully DESPITE HER PERSONAL FEELINGS.

Hybels held up this little old nun as an example for his mostly evangelical Protestant audience. We can be pretty smug about Catholics being “in error” about this or that. Yet, we’ll go and serve God if there’s a big salary and a new Cadillac as part of the deal, but would we do what she did? The part of the story that particularly touched me is how she pressed on to fulfill her calling, despite the difficulties. Notice that she was NOT defiant. She did not rebel against her superiors. Instead she prayed and trusted God until she gained their permission to go to India.

Some folks would say, “She gave up teaching to do the work she did in India”. NO! She was a teacher all her life. She taught by example. She ministered to the “least of these” (see Matthew ch. 25). On this week of school starting up, may we think about Mother Teresa. She was willing to do ANYTHING for God, and in fact, SHE DID!

Would you do ANYTHING God asked you to do? Would I?