Dr. David Trobisch
October 7, 2012
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
1:1 There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
2:1 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.
2:2 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it."
2:3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason."
2:4 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. 2:5 But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."
2:6 The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life."
2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 2:8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
2:9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die."
2:10 But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
The name of my grandfather was Ralph Hult. His family had emigrated from Sweden to Nebraska in the 18 hundreds.
As a young man he felt the call to ministry. He received a full scholarship to study at Augustana College in Rock Island.
At the age of thirty, he and my grandmother Gertrude served as missionaries in Africa. They first were in Nigeria, where Ralph Hult traveled inland and later also served in Nigeria, all in all for six years. During this time my uncles Paul and John and my mother Ingrid were born. And Ralph Hult had another daughter, Ruth, who died shortly after she was born, and who is buried in Tanzania, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Ralph Hult also traveled inland and became one of the first white men to travel through Central Africa.
In the area of what is today Chad, Ralph Hult had a spiritual experience. God wanted him to serve as a missionary to a specific tribe.
But when Ralph Hult returned to the United States on furlough, he was not able to persuade his mission board to send him back. In fact, the mission board had just decided that they would not continue the Sudan Mission into French speaking Africa, which Ralph Hult had pioneered.
Fifteen years later, in the dawn of World War Two, the German Lutheran missionaries in British East Africa either interned or deported because of the war. And the German Lutherans asked the American Lutherans to take over the mission fields that were left leaderless.
So the Mission Board in Minneapolis remembered that rogue pastor in Missouri, swallowed their pride, and sent him a letter. They inquired in cautious tones whether Ralph Hult, now fifty-two years old and the father of ten, would consider returning to Tanzania for the duration of the emergency. If he would help to organize the transition, they would in return send him to the tribe that he felt called to minister to.
It took the mission board 15 long years before they decided to send him to Africa again. And when they did, the year was 1940, the world was in turmoil, and the United States were just about to enter World War Two. Ralph Hult The boat, which was supposed to bring him to Tanzania, was the "Zamzam", an 8,000-ton ship, which had served as a British troopship during World War I. More than one hundred missionaries, some with wives and children, representing 20 different denominations, were on the Zamzam when it started out from New York in the spring of 1941.
Among the travelers was a group of young ambulance drivers who tried to escape the draft. And on the first evening, as the ship glided down the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty, 120 missionaries sang the hymn "Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me" while the ambulance drivers tried to drown them out with an impudent song of their own. If the missionaries are to believed, those young men were drunk most of the time.
But the real conflict, it seemed, was between the missionaries themselves.
There were Lutherans, Methodists, Adventists, Catholics, and Pentecostals on board. Knowing how stubborn my grandfather could be in matters of faith I do not find it hard to imagine that there may just have been a thing or two he wished to clarify with his fellow theologians.
The Egyptian crew mostly consisted of Muslims.
So what do we have: a ship, full of Christian missionaries, constantly rubbing soldiers steered by Muslims.
At some point during the voyage from Brazil to Capetown, the captain received orders to sail under blackout. British intelligence sent coded radio instructions charting a safe course.
And when everyone retired the evening of April 16th 1941 it felt like any other night on board the ship. They were counting off the days until the Cape would come in sight, and they would disembark and set foot on African soil for the first time.
Little did the passengers know that for days they had been secretly followed by a German raider.
My grandfather was awakened at dawn by what he thought at first was the crash of a large wave against the ship. The second "wave" however, made him realize that the ship was being shelled. He immediately got dressed and went on deck. The passengers seemed to be calm but the crew panicked. Nevertheless Ralph Hult was able to reach his assigned lifeboat. As soon as the boat had been lowered, however, they discovered that shrapnel of the shells had torn a hole in it. The boat tipped over, throwing all into the shark infested sea.
And when after a while the Egyptian seamen had managed to crawl up on the overturned boat were lifting up their arms to call on Allah, spirited Ralph Hult pleaded with them to lower their arms and pull at least the floating children out of the water.
The German raider sent out rescue boats. And in what my grandfather later would describe as "a business-like manner" brought passengers, baggage and other material from the Zamzam to the raider. Eight hours after the Zamzam had been shelled the ship sunk.
Miraculously, all passengers survived. Only two men had received severe injuries.
Of course: two ambulance drivers!
The Germans realized their mistake but they tried to hide the sinking. This incident could have triggered the US participation in World War 2 if it had been publicized.
There were 330 ship wrecked passengers from the Zamzam who had to be put up on the German ship: 35 children, 76 women -- 5 of the women were pregnant. But the German ship had accommodations for only 35 passengers. Three women were sharing two mattresses on the decks of public rooms. In the forward hatch 108 men were sleeping head to foot and shoulder to shoulder on rough wooden planks in a total space of 50 feet by 50 feet.
Ralph Hult was as I told you a good Lutheran. And so were the soldiers in Hitler's navy. Every Sunday there would be a Lutheran worship service on deck. And the German chaplain would preach. And the soldiers would sing hymns. And my grand father would know those hymns.
The toughest message these missionaries had to learn during their voyage was that the enemy Hitler's army shared the same Lutheran faith in a loving and caring God.
The German captain received instructions from Berlin to bring the passengers to a port in occupied France. To get there, however, the ship had to run through the British sea-blockade. All the passengers were forced under deck where they waited in complete darkness. Terrified. Afraid to be sunk again, but this time from their friends and allies. At any given moment ship could collide with a British mine or a torpedo could penetrate the iron hull of the ship.
The voyage from where the Zamzam sunk to the port France, where the passengers disembarked, lasted five weeks. By that time the mission boards had informed the families that the ship and every soul on it was lost. Memorial services were organized. My mother was 14 years old, when the principal of her school took her out of the class room and told her: "Ingrid, your father is dead."
One of the last three American passengers on the Zamzam to return to the US was Ralph Hult. After waiting for 15 years for his mission board to send him after being so close to the continent God called him to serve after surviving a shipwreck and barely avoiding a second one Ralph Hult was standing again at the peer in New York, where he had left.
Ralph Hult finally did make it to Tanzania. On board a monition ship. He helped take over the mission stations from the Germans. But on a trip to Dar es Salaam he died of heart failure in a hospital. He had checked himself in, but no one knew who he was and who to notify. Following the Islamic custom he was buried before sunset the same day. No friends, no colleagues, no family attended the ceremony.
Ralph Hult never made it to the tribe that God had called him to serve.
We tend to tell stories of God's promises to show how God is reliable, how God carries us through. But the Bible has other stories as well. Like the story of Job.
God and Satan have a bet. For no good reason, God admits in the story, He turned against Job and destroyed him.
And Job's family? How supportive are they? His wife looks at him sitting among the ashes, scratching his sores with a potsherd, and all the consolation she has to offer is: "Curse God and die!"
Being a Christian is about sharing a boat with people you do not necessarily like. The conflict is in the boat. Like in the Zamzam.
This is why we use the language of family when we talk about our faith community: we are brothers and sisters. We cannot choose our brother or our sister. Even if we don't like them, they will not go away.
I do not know if you ever were on a boat figuratively speaking shelled and sunk by your sisters and brothers in faith. Chances are, you know what I am talking about.
But the true conflict is not in the boat. The real problem is with God. Why is God so unreliable? Why doesn't God do what we ask God to do? Why do things happen to us that make no sense?
Why do things happen to us that make no sense?
Why does God do what God does? I have no good answer for you. But I can tell you that on other days the very same events look differently. In all the disappointments, tragedies, horrors and pain we can see the light. We can look at the exact same events in our past and see them as blessings. We can even say "Thank you" for what happened.
I cannot tell you why this is, but I can tell you that it is true. We call it hope. And faith.
My grandfather, Ralph Hult, was not an unhappy man.
Blessed is who feels a call from God - and responds to it. Life is a voyage. But it is not so much about arriving as it is about travelling.
God bless you all on your voyage!
AMEN
