Message at Dr Wu’s Memorial Service

Dr S. Wu’s Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice Mes­sage

By Rev. Alan K. Chan

My name is Alan K. Chan. I am the lead pas­tor of Chi­nese Chris­t­ian Union Church-North, High­land Park, IL, where Dick­son and Emi­ly attend my church.

Let me begin with Romans 1

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the pow­er of God for sal­va­tion to every­one who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.17 For in it the right­eous­ness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is writ­ten, “The right­eous shall live by faith.”

When and after Paul wrote these vers­es, he had become known for his mis­sion­ary works. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel. That’s why he shared the Gospel wher­ev­er he went and thus estab­lish­ing church­es in Asia Minor and in Europe.

Paul knows very well: Only through the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ, every­one who believes in Jesus would be saved by the pow­er of the Gospel. There is no oth­er sal­va­tion through any world reli­gions besides Chris­tian­i­ty.

Chris­tian­i­ty, how­ev­er, is not a reli­gion but a rela­tion­ship. Many in this world con­fuse Chris­tian­i­ty with one of the world major reli­gions. But Chris­tian­i­ty is NOT a reli­gion and let me tell you why.

Reli­gion, by def­i­n­i­tion, is human’s quest for God and they make gods out of stone and wood.

But Chris­tian­i­ty is God’s reveal­ing Him­self to mankind. In fact, Chris­tian­i­ty is God’s quest for all mankind, so they could come back to Him, trust Him and love Him. While reli­gions are human effort to look for God, and cre­at­ing gods to wor­ship, Chris­tian­i­ty is opposed to all reli­gions. God has revealed Him­self to man and has come to seek us.

Jesus said: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luk 19:10 ESV)”. God has come and is seek­ing to save those who are lost. Man is lost because they sin against God. They reject the true God who revealed Him­self in the Bible. When man is lost, they need to be found. And God wants to find the lost and save them.

Dr. Stew­art Wu, fol­low­ing the foot­step of Jesus Christ, went out to find and save the lost. Romans 1:16 says:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the pow­er of God for sal­va­tion to every­one who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Dr. Wu had lived out this verse in a con­tem­po­rary ver­sion.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the pow­er of God for sal­va­tion to every­one who believes, to the AMERICANS first and also to the CHINESE.

The church here, the Cal­vary Church, knows very well of Dr. Wu’s heart for the Gospel.  He went out all his way to save the lost. He was a med­ical mis­sion­ary all over the world, but his inter­ests in his own kins­men were quite obvi­ous, here in Valpo, in Chica­go Chi­na­town, and in Chi­na.

Dr. Wu’s love for his own kins­men was quite obvi­ous. Some­one cap­tures the impor­tance of the min­istry to Chi­nese. In a book called If the World Were a Vil­lage (pp.1–3):

As of 2002, the world pop­u­la­tion is 6.2 bil­lion. And 1.3 bil­lion is in Chi­na.

To make it more under­stand­able, let’s say the world’s total pop­u­la­tion is 100 peo­ple. Here is the dis­tri­b­u­tion:

*61 are from Asia, 13 from Africa, 12 from Europe, 8 from South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, 5 from US and Cana­da

*Half of the pop­u­la­tion comes from the 10 most pop­u­lat­ed coun­tries: 21 from Chi­na, 17 from India, 5 from US!

*In terms of lan­guage, if you can speak “Ni Hao Ma?” (in Man­darin, how are you), you can speak to 22 peo­ple in this 100 peo­ple glob­al vil­lage. That is 22% of the world pop­u­la­tion.

In this world, 22% are Chi­nese speak­ing peo­ple.  And Dr. Wu knew the urgency and impor­tance to min­is­ter to his own kins­men and he devot­ed his life to spread­ing the Gospel to them.

Dr. Wu was a grand­fa­ther of two beau­ti­ful boys from his son Dick­son. He could be like many grand­par­ents, stay­ing all the times at Dickson’s home – I am sure Dick­son wouldn’t mind his dad stay­ing with him. In fact, Dick­son and Emi­ly wel­comed him any­time to stay with them. Dr Wu could have cho­sen to play with the two grand­sons, spend­ing his retired years with them, just to enjoy life.  But he didn’t choose that kind of typ­i­cal grandparent’s life. Instead, he chose to use his pro­fes­sion to serve God by spread­ing the Gospel here and over­seas. 

I met Dr. Wu when he came to Chica­go Chi­na­town for a week­ly free med­ical clin­ic in 1980s. Almost every Wednes­day, he and a team of Chris­t­ian doc­tors would come to the Chi­na­town Church, offer­ing free med­ical check­up, advis­es and med­i­cine, to many. 99% of them are Chi­nese. I remem­bered I had flu one sum­mer, and he checked me out.

Ten years ago, Dr. Wu led me and a team of broth­ers and sis­ters from my church, CCUC-North, to go to Chi­na.  That was my church’s very first STM trip to Chi­na.

We heard from Dr. Wu how he went into some remote vil­lages in Chi­na to do med­ical mis­sions. How he had to walk sev­er­al hours, climb­ing moun­tains to reach these vil­lages. We heard about there was no bath­room in some places. And Dr Wu was not young and just like some senior cit­i­zens, he need­ed to go bath­room in the mid­dle of the night. When he shared with us this lack of bath­room, he sound­ed like he didn’t mind the incon­ve­nience.

And when in some of those places, when­ev­er he ate, the white rice imme­di­ate­ly turned black, because the white rice was cov­ered by flies. Yes, his food was cov­ered by flies. The flies and Dr Wu ate the same food. This to us, liv­ing in this land, is a hor­ri­ble sto­ry to hear, but when he shared, it seemed like noth­ing to him. It didn’t both­er him at all.

This is our Dr. Wu because Dr. Wu could say: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the pow­er of God for sal­va­tion to the AMERICANS first and also to the CHINESE.

I’d say that Dr. Wu died for what God called him to do. He prac­ti­cal­ly died on his last mis­sion trip to Chi­na. It was dur­ing his last mis­sion trip, he got an infec­tion. And he had to fly to Hong Kong for imme­di­ate med­ical atten­tion. I hap­pened to be in Hong Kong and we were in the same dis­trict, Shatin, New Ter­ri­to­ry, HK. Once I learned about his admis­sion to that hos­pi­tal, I took the bus to his hos­pi­tal. I vis­it­ed him sev­er­al times.

Dr. Wu was so sur­prised to see me, but I was thank­ful I could vis­it him then. After he took the long flight home with his son Dick­son, I still expect­ed to see him again back in Chica­go. But God took him into His eter­nal pres­ence. I think I might be the only one in my church who saw him dur­ing his last days.

Yes, I will see him again, not in this world but the world to come. We all expect to see him again in the world to come. We share the hope of res­ur­rec­tion because of our faith in Jesus Christ. But I am not sure whether every­one here has the same hope.  Do you have the hope that Dr. Wu had? He served peo­ple here and in Chi­na for that hope.

If Dr. Wu were here today, he’d say to all of us, espe­cial­ly for those who are not Chris­t­ian, who have not trust in Jesus Christ: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the pow­er of God for sal­va­tion to the AMERICANS first and also to the CHINESE.

For Dr. Wu, he trust­ed in the Gospel, he lived for the spread­ing of the Gospel and he spent the last moments of his life for the Gospel. In this memo­r­i­al ser­vice, if Dr. Wu were alive, he would tell me: “Don’t say too much about me. Say more about Jesus Christ, my Lord and Sav­ior. He saved me; He called me; He used me. Christ has done so much for me, what I did is noth­ing — what I did is noth­ing — com­pared to the great redemp­tive works God has done on the cross, in the emp­ty grave and in the sky.

Say or tell more about Jesus Christ, not me, because my life was to tell every­one about Jesus Christ.

Yes, Dr. Wu was not ashamed of the Gospel because he knew the Gospel had saved him. His prayer/wish was that every­one who knew Dr. Wu would become fol­low­ers of Jesus Christ.