Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky - A Tangled Path, A Straight Way

     Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness,
         because of those who lie in wait for me;
         make your way straight before me. 
     Psalm 5:8

The day’s readings

Make your way straight before me—It’s ironic that this should be the psalm of the day that we remember Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky. Well, I remember Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky. I hope after today you will too.

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky’s life hardly appears on surface to be a straight way. It began in Lithuania on May 6, 1831. He was educated according to his family’s intent that he become a rabbi. The first turn came when somebody gave him a New Testament written in Hebrew. He read it, came to believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah, and became a Christian.

His studies continued in Frankfurt, where he added German to his Yiddish, Polish, and Russian. Then off to the United States where he was baptized at the age of twenty-four, then entered a Presbyterian seminary. What twist of God’s path for him led him to join an anti-semitic faith community where he dropped the “Schereschewsky” to conceal his origins?

Was that why he became an Episcopalian?

What seems a most tangled thread then led him from Lithuania to Germany to the United States to China. He was there ordained a priest and later bishop of Shanghai. Ill health led him back to the United States, where he served as Bishop of Missouri, until he was able to return to Asia.

The thread becomes clearer in China. Rooted in his love of the Word of God, first planted in his childhood studies of the Torah and Talmud; watered by his gift of languages; then strengthened by his passion to share the Gospel: Schereschewsky’s life bore fruit in his translations of the Bible into Mandarin and Wenli, and later Japanese. His work continued even after ill health led to his paralysis, painfully typing out the words with two fingers.

Schereschewsky entered his greater glory and was buried in Tokyo on October 15, 1906.

I first learned about Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky in Salt Lake City, from a priest who had heard about him because of his brief stint as bishop of Missouri. I was on my own tangled journey, many twists of which made no sense at the time.

Cleaving to the way, I have woven my own life, and am ending up where I am supposed to be.

What about you? Can you discern a thread for your life?