Dear Readers,
Today South Sudan marks ten years of independence. I spent too long on that verb choice, first writing “celebrates,” but that word doesn’t seem to fit a new country that struggles. I don’t know if celebrations are planned today. I have trouble finding news about South Sudan.
I spent two weeks in South Sudan (then still part of Sudan) in 2006, teaching Hebrew at a Bible college in Renk. The Episcopal Church in Sudan had grown during decades of civil war. The church ordained clergy who, with the war going on, did not have time for formal education. Now in the new fragile peace, they sought education from Episcopal partners outside Sudan, and Virginia Theological Seminary, where I was enrolled, had partnered with Duke Divinity School to send two grad students to teach twice a year. With the plethora of tribal languages as well as the trade languages of Arabic and English, Sudanese Christians realized the value of translating the Bible from the original languages rather than translations of translations. They identified learning Greek and Hebrew as priorities. We were trying to teach clergy who could go on to teach others.
I had no interest in “mission work,” but three years before, when Gary had been stationed at the Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown, the center held an International Maritime Officer’s Course. Two or three times a year, when a course finished, the base held a dinner honoring the students. At one such dinner, we were seated with an officer from Namibia. I told the table about my plans to start seminary the following fall, and how I hoped to work in a suburban parish after receiving my degree.
“Why do you only want to minister to rich white people in your own country?” the Namibian officer asked, perplexed. I tried to explain that I had never characterized ministry in that way. He seemed skeptical, and I never saw him again, but Gary reminded me of him when I laughingly told him that my friend Diane wanted me to teach Hebrew in Sudan. After Gary and Diane nudged me, I was accepted into the program and received a grant, so stopped laughing and reluctantly accepted that this seemed to be a call.
My discomfort didn’t dissipate in Sudan. Before traveling to Renk, where we would teach, my co-teacher and I spent the first evening with a priest named Father Joseph in Khartoum. As we ate dinner outside I felt exhausted by the stimuli of the day: the streets crowded not only with cars but donkey carts and rickshaws. I wanted a salad but was afraid to eat fresh vegetables because they would have been washed in water and we weren’t supposed to drink the water. As we sipped hot tea out of tea cups in saucers and ate beef kebobs from skewers, Father Joseph asked about my studies as a seminarian. I had just completed a short internship at a Lutheran church and mentioned preaching from the book of Job the previous Sunday.
“Job is a good book to preach here,” Father Joseph said, nodding, taking a sip of his tea, not looking at me. “You will preach to us on the book of Job. Not this Sunday, but the next one.” He set the cup down.
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” I said, panicking. I’d only brought a copy of the New Testament and psalms with me, so only had the text of Job in Hebrew, not to mention that I’d never written a sermon without extensively consulting commentaries. Not to mention that I wasn’t ordained yet. Not to mention that I’d never written a sermon by hand. “That’s so flattering, but I couldn’t possibly.”
“We are living the book of Job,” he said.
In Renk I saw donkeys and goats and cattle and realized that the book of Job in Renk, Sudan sounded different than it did to a mostly white Lutheran congregation in Arlington. In the evenings, after my hair was wet from a portable solar shower and I felt almost cool, I tried to read the book of Job in Hebrew and slowly, over several evenings, wrote a sermon by hand.
In my sermon I asked the people in the cathedral if they felt singled out for suffering, as Job did. I pointed out that God didn’t punish Job for expressing anger but saved his rebukes for Job’s friends.
I had to stop after every phrase or sentence to wait for it to be translated by another priest, Father Abraham, and I wondered if it was being translated accurately. What if he didn’t like my theology? I tried to make the sentences short and simple. “When Job suffered, he thought God had left him. At the end of the book, Job realized that God never abandons us, even when we suffer.” I felt absurd speaking of suffering to these Sudanese Christians who had been through decades of war.
I feel absurd now, writing about myself in Sudan instead of sharing important details about life in South Sudan today, but I’m not a journalist. I’m a parish priest who loves words, remembering people who also loved words so much that they tolerated me haltingly trying to teach them words in biblical Hebrew.
The painstaking work under those conditions frustrated everyone, but together they and I experienced joy when we read aloud the fourth line of the third chapter of first Samuel, “Then the Lord said, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’”
I pray that those words still resonate with them, but I worry that they are still living the Book of Job.
Blessings, Elizabeth
What I’m Reading:
I realized while making this list since the last newsletter that I have been on a fiction kick:
Revelations by Mary Sharratt. I loved this author’s novel about Hildegard of Bingen. This one is from the point of view of Margery Kempe but also features Julian of Norwich.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint. I’ve been obsessed with Greek mythology since I was ten and enjoy the current trend of retelling the stories from the perspective of the female characters.
Shiner by Amy Jo Burns. A novel with snake handlers.
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash. Cash just joined the faculty of the Spalding University, where I received an MFA. This one has snake handling, too.
What I’m Writing:
I confess that I am reading the book of Job for the first time now as my family goes through The Bible Challenge this year. I imagine it is a completely different experience reading it from that community and will think about that as I finish the last few chapters. I also recently read Circe, so if you haven’t read that one I’m sure you would enjoy it.
Reading this I can feel your discomfort while in South Sudan, but what an opportunity! Amazing, I wonder where this priests are today, what they preach on?
I love the book of Job in particular since I first heard Rabbi Kushner discuss Job (he wrote a book on Job as well that I now need to order, thanks for that!)