Lament for South Sudan

God most High, who designed this earth in fine detail,
You blessed this fertile land and formed the peoples who call it home.
We see them laugh, embracing life, teeth gleaming white against night-dark skin.
Ornate beadwork and bright flowing robes distinctly mark their tribe.
They are always eager to welcome a stranger with a meal.
Tall, strong people, their courage proved by the deep cuts of the knife in their youth that leave the scars across their forehead.
Some tilled fertile land to abundant harvest or plied the web of rivers rich with fish.
Others raised their boys to follow the cows – perhaps hundreds, kept without fences because they were affectionately known and cared for.
Lord, we celebrate these beautiful and diverse peoples in the land of South Sudan,
Surely you blessed them by giving them this land.

The tribes together endured the long years of war with their northern neighbor,
oppressed and forgotten as power changed hands.
They cried out to you, God, earnest prayers of united hope,
While working and fighting for years on end.
You answered their prayers, rescued them.
Independence at last, and freedom from oppressor.
“We praise and glorify you for your grace on South Sudan”,
declare the opening words of the national anthem.
You answered prayers – surely peace had finally come.

Lord, we cry to you – we trust in you;
You alone are our salvation, you alone are our hope.

Lord, did you turn away just as South Sudan rejoiced?
‘Uphold us united in peace and harmony’, people sang at national events;
But inner turmoil quickly soured the barely tasted peace.
Cattle raiding, revenge killing, child abductions, ethnic cleansing;
People are fleeing, weeping, hiding, dying.
Forced from home, waiting in camps for elusive peace;
New enemies now– hunger, cholera, poverty, despair.
A fresh agreement signed by factions, but hopes dashed when hostility resumes.
Lord, where are you now?

Lord, we cry to you – we trust in you;
You alone are our salvation, you alone are our hope.

Lord, do you see your children here?
Susan, a widow, scrubs floors and washes clothes,
But does not earn enough for her son to go to school.
We watch boys wearily pick up their cardboard mats in the early morning,
building a fire out of trash to warm themselves. They left their families – because of hunger? Or war?
Or pushed out when poverty weighed down and parents needed someone to blame.
Eager young children want to go to school –the future of South Sudan, people say.
But long months without pay make teachers desperate –
they refuse to teach, or withhold the reports that allow students to start a new year.
Prices climb higher, but salaries don’t, as the currency slides.
Now the sack of flour that feeds ten days takes the whole month’s lot.
Even the soil heaves a sigh and shudders from the struggle,
Farmers too afraid to plant because of raiders lurking near.
Lord, we know that you see the suffering, you care for the poor.
Why do you let this continue? Will there never be relief??

Lord, we cry to you – we trust in you;
You alone are our salvation, you alone are our hope.

God, you created this mosaic of peoples, you called them good.
You gave them faith that perseveres, that continues to call out to you.
In spite of the greed or power or disregard from their leaders,
The people low in the world continue to hold up this land;
As they gather to worship and pray for peace
They are the hope for South Sudan.

Lord, we cry to you – we trust in you;
You alone are our salvation, you alone are our hope.

Contextual Theology

When Pope John Paul VI spoke to a Pan-African gathering of African Catholic Bishops in 1969, he affirmed their cultural roots with his memorable statement “You may, and you must, have an African Christianity.”  He shared with them how expressions of the Christian faith are manifold and should be suited to the tongue, style and culture of those who profess the faith.  Moreover, a richness that is genuinely African would add itself to the faith (Shorter, 1977). 

Next month, one of the classes I will teach is called Contextual Theology.  In “Classical Theology” we find two major tenets, scripture and tradition.  From these two tenets we often assume a universalistic notion of theology, sequestered almost exclusively to the domain of academia and dominated by eminent and quotable theologians both past and present.  In this classicist notion, ideas about Jesus and the Godhead are understood as static, less concerned with how peoples of host cultures receive and ingest their newfound faith according to their own worldview, their own culture, and their own philosophical system of meanings. 

Contextual Theology, or “local theologies,” on the other hand, adds a third tenet to the equation:  experience.  Contextual theologians argue persuasively, and I would add accurately, that static notions of universal theological understanding transcending ages and cultures does not adequately reflect reality.  While God indeed transcends ages and cultures, how we perceive God varies. Proponents of contextual theology are not arguing for an “anything goes” understanding of God, or an understanding which is highly subjective, rather they contend that this stool we call theology needs three legs, not two, those legs being scripture, tradition, and experience, experience birthed from specific cultural, communal and personal milieus.  After all, was it not Moses, the Hebrew child of promise, who experienced God speaking to him uniquely and personally from a burning bush, a bush which was not consumed?  Did not Jesus, Son of the Living God, hear a voice from Heaven saying, “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased”?  When the Apostle Paul (formerly Saul) was struck down by a blinding light on his way to Damascus did he and his companions not hear a voice say to him “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 

In later centuries Francis of Assis heard a voice telling him, “Francis, repair my church.”  The Belhar Confession, drafted by South African Christians and recently adopted by the Presbyterian Church (USA), brought to light the oppressive policy of Apartheid towards Blacks, Coloreds (mixed race) and Indians in South Africa.  Karl Barth and others of the Confessing Church wrote The Theological Declaration of Barmen in response to Hitler and the German Christians who had lifted allegiance to the Third Reich over allegiance to God Almighty.  The whole notion of Liberation Theology, birthed in Latin America, was the Church’s response to nation states’ abuse and oppression of the poor.  This list of examples could go on and on, pointing to the central tenant of Contextual Theology – our experience of reality and our experience of God stand on par with both scripture and Church tradition.

This is the primary text I will be using
for this course

This course, Contextual Theology, interests me greatly, and I hope that my passion for this subject will be caught by my students. One of the challenges here in Africa is that over the last one hundred and fifty years missionaries came from the West, namely Europe and North America, doing boatloads of good, but they also brought with them a Christianity shaped by their alien culture which largely answered questions Christians from the West had been asking – questions related primarily to individual salvation and morality.  

While those questions are valid and appropriate, and answers are both needed and provided by the Christian faith, African peoples and cultures, being more collective in nature, had a host of other questions that, in most cases, remained unanswered.  For instance, they would have asked, “How do we now think about our ancestors with whom we continue to fellowship?”  “With this new faith, what role will our elders continue to have in giving shape to our community?”  “What do I do with my other wives now that I am being told to chase them away so that I can participate in communion and church leadership?  Is it not understood that they will be left to beg or become prostitutes?”  “What about witchcraft?  Is it really superstition as I am now being told, or are there indeed powers at work that I need to be aware of?”

In this course, Contextual Theology, we will study together a host of examples that will help us see the necessity of experience as we seek to understand how we understand God. Moreover, quoting from the course description which I have been given, “A goal is to let the Word of God speak in a specific way into the African, particularly the [South] Sudanese context.” 

Lord, I humbly and passionately pray that the Gospel of peace can be experienced in the deepest recesses, in the core person and communities of our dear sisters and brothers here in South Sudan.  

            

Afternoon tea

Come along with us back to our neighborhood tea stall. It is late Tuesday afternoon, when the heat is just starting to lessen but still 95 degrees in the shade. We pick our way over the ruts and trash in the dirt alleyway of the market to where there are some chairs set up in the shade along a wall. This spot is the afternoon location for Mary’s ‘mahel shayi’, or tea stall. In the midst of greeting Mary, I hear someone yell “Kristi!” and see a shape come flying towards me. Mary’s daughter Fonfon, about age 9, runs around the corner and wraps her arms around me in an exuberant hug. She is with her sister and cousin, and we exchange greetings and congratulate her on the recent award she won for being the top student in her class.

Then we go and greet each of the three men sitting in the chairs, sitting down ourselves at the end of the row. We exchange greetings with Mary, asking about her other children and family. We order our tea – Bob, hibiscus with ginger, and me, green tea. Mary teases, asking if I drink green tea because I am on a diet as she turns and goes to make our tea. Perhaps it is the Arabic culture and Sudan to the North who have passed to the South Sudanese the habit of drinking hot tea even on a hot day. People in Juba can drink tea all day long, and it is one of the most common small businesses for women.

We notice Bushara, another regular at the tea stall, standing a few paces away at his table, set up in the alley where he is repairing electronic devices like cameras and printers. Bushara is a basketball coach, and we have seen him a few times at the basketball stadium with his team as we pass by on our walks in the neighborhood. Bushara likes to talk to Bob about NBA basketball; he is a fan of the Chicago Bulls, but concedes that they aren’t very good. Somehow we start talking about his time in Khartoum many years ago. He tells us how while in the army, when they issued him an ID card, they marked his religion as ‘Muslim’ because of his name. When he told them he was a Christian, they mocked him and started making life difficult. One of the reasons many Southerners left Khartoum was because they were persecuted there for being Christians. But then Bushara also tells us about a girls basketball team in the North who prayed and worshipped together and had great faith. “They won,” he said, “because of their great faith.” As Bushara animatedly tells his story, we struggle a bit to follow his Khartoum sounding Arabic, able however to get at least the sense of the story. “People used to have faith here, Bushara continues “but then with the war and the economic crisis, it is no longer like that. People just want money.” Like so many others, he laments the current struggle in South Sudan.

As we talk with Bushara, Santino, a stately older gentelmen who is another regular, walks up with another man. They greet everyone and find chairs in the middle of our row along the wall. His friend asked our names and how long we have been in Juba. “About seven months”, Bob replies in Arabic. “No, seven years!” he adamantly replies. “No, seven months,” Bob says again. “Not possible.” the man insists. “You can not speak Arabic like that in seven months.” We laugh, and ask Santino to vouch for us that we indeed came to Juba just last year. Before leaving, we learn that the man is actually Santino’s younger brother, which means that he is of the same tribe as Santino. Bob has intentionally learned some greetings and phrases in some of the local tribal languages and greets him in Bari. “Oh, you speak Bari?” the man replies in Bari. This, of course, is beyond what we know in that language, and we are befuddled. But Bob, always eager to learn, has him repeat the phrase until he can write it down and repeat it.

Finally, after an hour of talking and drinking tea, we get up to leave. We are grateful for these familiar and friendly people who help us feel connected in the community and who help us as we practice and learn Arabic. We wish that we could show you a picture of this wonderful place of hospitality, but we do not take pictures in public in Juba because it often makes people angry. So, you wil lhave to imagine from our word picture, and give thanks to God with us for these inspiring and helpful people that we drink tea with in the shade. 

Abiding in Christ, Resting in the Lord

While living in Rwanda several years back, Antoine RUTAYISIRE, then team leader of African Evangelistic Enterprise (AEE) Rwanda, and I would spend a week in prayer and fasting as we began the New Year.  We enjoyed being refreshed together by God’s presence, earnestly crying out to the Lord about life and ministry issues which lay deep in our hearts.  While in seminary at Fuller, each year I would take a few days of retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey up in the High Desert of Southern California where I would reflect over the past year while seeking God’s presence and will for the year to come.  Those were incredibly meaningful times of prayer and silence and enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. 

The majestic and famed Nile River

The day after Christmas Kristi and I spent several days doing a prayer retreat on the shores of the Nile River here in Juba, South Sudan.  It was an enjoyable, restful, and relaxing time of reflection, enjoying nature, and praying over 2018.  We spent many hours just sitting alongside the giant river, watching the methodical current flow northward.  Sitting by the river and simply being still has a calming, healing effect.  I believe that God inspired our minds and our prayers during our time there. 

Gazing at the glorious sunrise on the horizon

In reflecting on 2017, Kristi and I realized that this last year has been one of “surrender” and “giving up control.”  Major decisions were made last year greatly affecting us over which we had no control.  We simply had to submit to these decisions as God’s will.  Moreover, we also came to a place of surrender – realizing that we had to hand over to the Lord significant  hopes and dreams, knowing that there was nothing in our strength or power we could do to make them happen.  To surrender and not have control are humbling realities which refine our character and build our faith.  During our time of reflection, we gave thanks for the many wonderful things that happened over this last year.  We could see God’s hand of blessing, grace and goodness in our lives regarding new and old friendships, memorable experiences, and a good transition to South Sudan. 

The Oasis Camp, a local guesthouse, was the picture
of warmth, hospitality and peace 

In looking forward to 2018, we each chose a word and a scripture verse as thematic for hopes in this upcoming year.  As Kristi took time to pray, the word that came to mind for her was “abide,” from Jesus’ words to his disciples in John chapter fifteen.  She considered concrete ways that she can abide in Christ, such as finding new and creative ways for prayer, being present to others, and cultivating our home as a place of sanctuary and freedom.  For me, the word that came to mind was “rest,” inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah, “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says, ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…’” (Is 30: 15).  In being afflicted by the Epstein - Barr Virus (EBV) for almost eight months now, rest has been a constant theme; it is from the place of rest where I gain strength and freedom and even ‘salvation’ from the worries of a harried world.  This unwelcomed guest, EBV, has taught me to slow down, to see people and issues more clearly and more deeply.  Richard Rohr, the Franciscan monk and priest, says that mystics of ages past use the verb “rest” more than any other verb.  On that note, as we enter the gravitas of a New Year, I feel the need and the desire to “rest in the Lord” moment by moment, day by day, week by week, month by month. 

Perhaps difficult to see, but two Giant Kingfishers sit
a few balconies down, gracing our environs each morning

Some hopes and prayer for the New Year include:  physical healing for me, greater clarity for Kristi in her ministry role, wisdom for me in my teaching coupled with a love for my students, continued progress and comfort with Juba Arabic, finding a rhythm of life that works for us, having restorative times away (R&R, vacation), finding a church community to regularly worship and connect with, wisdom regarding opportunities to collaborate with other ministries, finding ways to be more organized, staying connected with family and friends back home.  We invite you to pray with us regarding these hopes for 2018. 

We also invite you to consider a word and scripture that would be an anchor for you in this New Year.  We invite you to join us in this journey of abiding in Christ and resting in the Lord.  Grace and peace to you, today and always!