In reflecting on the death of Mincaye, I have been thinking again about the martyrdom of those men sixty-four years ago. Jim Elliot’s older brother Bert and his wife Colleen were home in Portland on their first furlough after spending six years in the jungles of Peru. They visited Jim, Elisabeth and Valerie in Ecuador on their way home and learned of their desire to make contact with the Auca (now know as the Waodani).
Following the tragic death of those five men including Jim Elliot and Peter Fleming, the individual families held memorial services in their various cities.
The Fleming and Elliot families were close, so the Flemings asked Bert to speak at Pete’s memorial service in Seattle. Bert chose to center his remarks on the story of David and Bathsheba from 2 Samuel 11! I must say that, in all the funerals I’ve officiated through the years, I’ve never considered using that passage. The story tells us that David should have been on the battlefield leading his army to victory. Instead he was enjoying the comforts of palace life. He spotted Bathsheba, called for her and committed adultery. She discovered she was pregnant. To cover his sin, David brought Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, home from battle for a little bit of rest and relaxation. An honorable man, Uriah denied himself the pleasure of spending a night with his wife while his fellow soldiers were at war. Seeing that his cover-up attempt was thwarted, David sent Uriah back to war with instructions for the captain to put him in the fiercest battle and then to abandon him, assuring his death.
Bert continued:
Uriahs are rare in our day and age. And even we, as missionaries who have come home from the field, find a tendency to settle down in this materialistic age, to surround ourselves with comforts and to forget those who are there laboring faithfully for God. Jim’s last words in his last letter home are a note of confidence. He says, “I know you will pray. Our orders are the gospel to every creature.” But as I examine my own heart in the light of that word, I wonder, Have we been praying? I wonder, Did we pray? As I see it, my friends, we are very much like David in this day and age here in this country. We’re settled down. We leave the battle to others. And then David tries to cover his own sin by sending Uriah back in the appointed time with the message in his own hand: “Put Uriah in the thickest of the fray, where the battle is the hottest.” And though we sometimes permit our young men to go out and push the battle right into the very gates of the enemy’s territory while we sit back in our ease and forget them. And we are even too lazy and too tired and too burdened down with material things to pray for them. This is a message to my own heart. As we think of the problem, we are all prone to ask ourselves, “Why did God permit this thing that seems to us to be a tragedy? Why did He permit it?” The only answer I can come to is this, my friend: Conceivably these men could have gone in and established contact and won the Aucas to the Lord. Conceivably the Aucas could have been won at much lower cost. But I cannot conceive any other way God could have brought this congregation together here today to forget our sectarian feelings, to forget our pride, to sit in self-judgment. I cannot conceive another way God could have shaken the church in this country so greatly, except by the blood of those five men. Which means exactly this: that instead of laying the bloodguilt at the foot of the Aucas, it comes home to our own doors. It tracks us down. We’re guilty. God is speaking to us. Oh, that we might have tender hearts and open ears to the voice of God to hear His message to us in these days. That we might not settle down like David in our wealth and our luxury. That we might be men like Uriah, who has his heart out there in the field. Although his body might be home, his heart and soul are there where the battle is being fought. That we too might press the fray against Satan and against his emissaries in these days. May we not be found guilty of—as Nate said so fittingly—“the charge of not counting the cost.” God help us to act with Uriah’s integrity. Let us each one examine our own hearts and find ourselves at the crossroads today. May we not take advantage of self, and may we hear His voice, to take up our cross today and follow Him.