A wandering Arminian was my grandfather (with apologies to Deuteronomy 26:5). He was a devout Methodist and was well on his way to becoming an ordained Methodist missionary like his father before him when the seminary terminated its relationship with him before he could graduate. Apparently it involved a lightbulb, India ink and some part of the anatomy of the dean’s son, a person Grandfather held was a bit of a sycophantic snitch. And so Grandfather, whom I know felt a real duty and a call to serve Christ in the mission field, was expelled from seminary for a childish prank. His expulsion caused deep disappointment in the heart of his missionary father and the whole Methodist family, something that was, in a small way I hope, revenged when I surprised everyone including myself by graduating from the same continuing seminary 75 years later, albeit as a devout Calvinist rather than an Arminian.
And so Grandfather became a bit of a footloose wanderer for a time, working for the Kaslo Slocan Railroad and the sawmills and silver mines in the New Denver, Sandon and Silverton areas of the Kootenays in B.C. But it did not last. Duty reared its head and Grandfather marched off to the Great War exactly 100 years ago this month.
Like most Canadians who bravely marched off to France, the First World War began for him in 1915 not 1914. I suppose it took that long for enlistment, training and mobilization to happen for many men. One thing is for sure though, the reality of trench warfare had fully come home by 1915 and the men who were signing up by mid-1915 knew well the horror that awaited them. But they went anyway, in droves, many out of a deep sense of duty if not adventure.
According to official Canadian service records and the 54th Battalion historical records, Private Frederick Vickery Webber enlisted on June 13, 1915, sailed with his battalion aboard the RMS Saxonia on November 22, 1915, and arrived in England eight days later. After more training, the 54th Battalion joined the 4th Canadian Division, 11th Infantry Brigade in France on August 13, 1916. The 54th was in the thick of the conflict for the duration of the war, and was awarded battle honours at the Somme, Ancre Heights, Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Ypres, Passchendaele, Scarpe, Drocourt-Queant, Canal du Nord, Valenciennes and Sambre. Grandfather and the bulk of the 54th Kootenay Battalion were demobilized on June 13, 1919 in Revelstoke, B.C., after four hard years of service. According to the 54th Battalion records, there were 775 lives lost, and 1,909 wounded out of the 4,391 men who served in its ranks during those years.
My recent retirement has gifted me with some extra time to research histories of individual members of my family going back a hundred years and more. As I have, two things keep cropping up: the obvious deep sense of duty that people seemed to have in those days, as well as a commitment to a calling on one’s life. It seems to stand in stark contrast to my own sense of duty and calling, which like many in my society, seems rather pale and flabby compared to people a hundred years ago, more of a duty to self than anything else. With a revisionist view of history one can perhaps find all kinds of fault with what was done out of a sense of duty and calling in those long ago days, but one cannot find much in this day and age to compare with people’s abiding sense of selfless duty and faith to family and country and, to the point of this story, to Christ and his church.
So as I look at my grandfather who gave of himself to serve his country through two world wars and never was able to scrape together enough money to own even a single grain of its soil during his lifetime; at my great-grandfather who gave of himself serving Christ and the people of the rugged coast and mountains of B.C. as a Methodist missionary and who lies in an unmarked indigent’s grave in this country’s soil somewhere in Kamloops, B.C.; and at my great-great-grandmother who gave herself to her country and family, having and raising 10 children in 16 years to fuel the appetites of her nation’s rampant industrialism; as I look at them with all of their deep sense of duty lived out in selfless and costly ways, it causes me to look at my own life and ask a very simple and searching question: What is my duty and am I willingly doing it?
For me the context of this question ends up being completely connected to my faith in Jesus as it is lived out in and through his church in Canada. That’s just who I am and where I live. When I ask the question in this context, I have to drag the question through scripture. And when I do this, of all the possibilities, I find myself compelled to consider a candid saying of Jesus in the Gospel of John.
Jesus is asked a simple question by a bunch of folks who have just experienced what is often called the feeding of the 5,000. They really want to follow him because of what they experienced and so they ask: “What must we do to do the works God requires?” It’s a stark and simple question. Boiled down, it really is asking, “If we follow you Jesus, what is our duty?” Jesus’ answer is simple and without guile: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:28–29).
That question and answer have often haunted me. What is my duty in following Jesus and doing the works of God? Jesus says, ‘Believe in me.’ That seems to be such a nebulous thing, perhaps an easy thing, too. But as I reflect on believing in Jesus as a sense of duty—selfless duty like a person going over the top numerous times into deadly machine gun fire, cannon fire and poisonous gas, or a person daily sailing off on a tiny boat into the deadly maritime waters of British Columbia’s Pacific coast to proclaim the gospel to a few lonely folks in completely isolated communities, or a woman entering into a relationship to risk her life in childbirth 10 or more times in as many years—well I think I begin to get the picture. What Jesus seems to be saying to me is, if I am interested in following him and doing the works of God then I must be prepared to lose myself in believing in him; believing in who he is, in what he teaches, in how he lives and imitating it with my life. Be prepared to do my duty. And that’s no small thing. It amounts to a lifelong challenge every day of my life.
