God’s People on the Move: Biblical and Global Perspectives on Migration and Mission

God’s People on the Move

Biblical and Global Perspectives on Migration and Mission

edited by

vanThanh Nguyen and John M. Prior

GOD’S PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Biblical and Global Perspectives on Migration and Mission

Copyright © 2014 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978–1-62564–079-6

eisbn 13: 978–1-63087–751-4

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

God’s people on the move : biblical and global perspectives on migration and mission / edited by vanThanh Nguyen and John M. Prior.

xviii + 186 p. ; 23 cm. —Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 13: 978–1-62564–079-6

1. Emigration and immigration—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Globalization—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Missions—History—21st century. I. Title.

BR115.G59 G67 2014

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Dedicated to

Strangers, Migrants, and Refugees!

Contributors

Philemon Gibungula Beghela, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in missiology from the University of South Africa (UNISA). He is a researcher at UNISA and a Mennonite pastor.

Robert L. Gallagher, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Intercultural Studies, Chair of the Intercultural Studies department, and Director of the M.A. (Intercultural Studies) Program at Wheaton College Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois. He co-edited two books with Paul Hertig: Mission in Acts: Ancient Narratives in Contemporary Context (Orbis, 2004) and Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity (Orbis, 2009).

Sarita D. Gallagher, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of religion at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. She served as a missionary with the CRC Churches International in Papua New Guinea and Australia. She is the author of Abrahamic Blessing: A Missiological Narrative of Revival in Papua New Guinea (Pickwick, 2014).

Craig Steven Hendrickson, Ph.D., is an adjunct instructor in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a trainer and leadership partner with the Arrow Leadership Program. He is also the Athletic Chaplain and College Life Coordinator at North Park University in Chicago, IL.

Paul Hertig, Ph.D., is a Global Studies Professor at Azusa Pacific University (APU), Azusa, California. He co-edited two books with Robert Gallagher: Mission in Acts: Ancient Narratives in Contemporary Context and Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity.

Timothy A. Lenchak, S.V.D., S.Th.D., holds a Licentiate from the Pontifical Biblical Institute and a Doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is the author of Choose Life!: A Rhetorical-Critical Investigation of Deuteronomy 28, 69–30; The Spirituality of the Psalms (co-edited with Carroll Stuhlmueller); and a regular contributor to The Bible Today. He is currently the president of Divine Word College in Epworth, Iowa.

vanThanh Nguyen, S.V.D., S.Th.D., is an associate professor of New Testament Studies and the Director of the Master of Divinity Program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Peter and Cornelius: A Story of Conversion and Mission (Pickwick, 2012) and Stories of Early Christianity (Ligouri, 2013). Since 2013 he has been the convenor of the Bible Studies and Mission (BISAM) study group of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS).

John M. Prior, Ph.D., lectures in the contextual theology post-graduate programme at St. Paul’s Institute of Philosophy Ledalero, Indonesia. He is a board member of the Intercultural Bible Collective (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). From 2004–2012 he was convenor of the Bible Studies and Mission (BISAM) study group of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS). John is also an Honorary Researcher at MCD University of Divinity, Melbourne.

Amy C. West, Ph.D., is a Senior Scripture Engagement Consultant with SIL International. She facilitates workshops and seminars that focus on helping people use God’s Word to speak to the challenges of their culture.

George M. Wieland, Ph.D., is the Director of Mission Research and Training at Carey Baptist College, Auckland, New Zealand, where he also taught New Testament Studies for several years. He has worked in cross-cultural mission in Brazil and in pastoral and community ministry in the United Kingdom. He is the author of The Significance of Salvation: A Study of Salvation Language in the Pastoral Epistles (Paternoster, 2006).

Introduction

—vanThanh Nguyen and John M. Prior

On the highways and byways of every continent, hundreds of millions of immigrants are constantly on the move.¹ Because of growing inequalities of wealth caused by unregulated economic globalization, political and ethnic conflicts, environmental degradation, instant communication, and viable means of transportation, more and more people are migrating than ever before. Crossing international borders, whether compelled or voluntarily, is a major characteristic of our present epoch. No countries or regions are immune from this reality. Facing the growing scope, complexity and impact of the current worldwide phenomenon, God’s People on the Move seeks to develop appropriate biblical and missiological responses to the issue of human migration and dislocation.

Migration is by no means a recent happening. The Bible is filled with stories written by, for, and about strangers, migrants and refugees. It begins with the first human parents being exiled from Paradise and ends with the prophet John in exile on the island of Patmos envisioning all peoples migrating to the New Jerusalem. Encapsulated between these two bookends, namely Genesis and Revelation, are stories of God’s people constantly being purified and transformed as they struggled to find their way home to be with their creator. Thus, one scholar correctly noted that the Bible is essentially a literary tapestry woven from the stories of migrants.² Since the Bible is the word of God and the ultimate authority of faith and practice, contributors to this volume will turn to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures to search for guidance and attend responsibly to the issues of human dislocation. The purpose of this selection of articles is to offer fresh perspectives on these historic global realities and provide a biblical spirituality for immigrants as well as a missional theology of migration. Since every migrant is a potential missionary, migrants are not simply objects, but also agents of mission.

The book is divided into two major sections. Part one, Biblical Perspectives on Migration and Mission, contains six articles that focus on various biblical themes or texts that deal with migration and mission. In chapter one, Sarita Gallagher explores the relationship between the mission of God and Abraham’s life as a foreign migrant. In the narrative of Genesis, Abraham enters as a nomadic foreigner called by God as a representative of the nations for the nations. Of unknown ethnic heritage, the biblical text is remarkably silent on Abraham’s prior history, listing no personal achievements, no remarkable character traits, and no religious background. Yet it is through this unknown migrant that God chose to proclaim his greatest blessing, declaring that in [Abraham] all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:3). The missiological exploration of the person of Abraham usually ends with this divine proclamation, however this is simply the beginning of the outworking of God’s missional promise during Abraham’s lifetime. In analyzing Abraham’s cross-cultural encounters as a migrant the full importance of the fulfillment of Genesis 12:3 emerges in addition to God’s strategic implementation of mission from the periphery.

Chapter two, written by Timothy Lenchak, examines the lives of Israel’s ancestors Abraham and Sarah in order to discover what attitudes the Bible has toward strangers, migrants, and refugees. Genesis pictures Abraham and Sarah as gerim (a Hebrew term for resident aliens or immigrants) and Habiru (an Akkadian term for social outsiders who had neither citizenship nor legal rights). They lived lives of insecurity in a land that was promised to them but which they did not own. In their wanderings they sometimes sought hospitality from others. However, despite their outsider status, Genesis 18:1–15 reveals that Abraham and Sarah were models in offering hospitality. Their nephew Lot also knew how to offer hospitality in Gen 19:1–11. Hospitality is an important virtue in the Bible, and it was even incorporated into Israelite law. The God of Israel identified with the poor and the outsider and expected the Israelite to welcome even the stranger. The Book of Genesis challenges modern Christians to be hospitable toward others. If migration is characteristic of our modern age, then hospitality should be characteristic of today’s Christians.

In chapter three, Robert Gallagher investigates the relationship between the resident alien and the mission of God. This essay claims that migration served an important function of the mission of God in the Old Testament in two major aspects. First, as detailed in the Mosaic covenant, God’s people were to love the stranger in their midst, and in doing so offer an invitation to participate in the community. Second, God’s people in migration were potential agents of transformation in developing faith in the LORD within those nations they came into contact. The case study of David’s migrations to Gath shows the intersection of migration and mission. Because of the political turmoil within Israel, David was forced to immigrate to the city of Gath, which provided him an ongoing opportunity to intermingle with these Philistines. As a result, it would appear that King Achish was brought to some awareness of the Hebrew God, which influenced the evolving destiny of the inhabitants of that city. Whether deliberate or accidental, David showed that migration played a role in the mission of God, and should be considered as a strategy of the church today. Migratory movements of God’s people continue to serve as an important facet in the spread of the Christian faith to bring about the mission of God.

In chapter four, Paul Hertig examines Jesus’ migration in Matthew. According to Hertig, Jesus engages in the multicultural and migratory context of Galilee of the Gentiles, rooted in a history of invasion, migration, exile, and return. He eradicates boundaries, barriers, and borders in his childhood and adulthood journeys. This study explores the nuances and contexts of the verb withdraw in key turning points of Matthew’s gospel, depicting Jesus’ movement from the center to the margin as a place of refuge and transformation. The withdrawal represents a redirection of Jesus’ mission into uncharted territory, a rite of passage that detaches from fixed, religious paradigms and an entrance into new paradigms of mission. Of the six uses of withdrawal, five indicate Gentile presence and activity. Jesus’ withdrawals that separate from the old and prepare for the new, have parallels with what anthropologists call liminality, which detaches from fixed, religious paradigms and leads to unrestricted possibilities of spirituality, transformation, and mission.

In chapter five, vanThanh Nguyen argues that the early Christian migration movement, whether stimulated by mission or caused by persecution, was historically a prime factor in the expansion of the Good News of Jesus Christ and the church. The case of Priscilla and Aquila will demonstrate that migration and mission were closely connected. This Judean Christ-believing-couple was constantly on the move for the cause of the Gospel. They first settled in Rome then, forced to migrate to Corinth because of the Edict of Claudius in 49 CE, relocated in Ephesus for the purpose of evangelization, and finally returned to Rome after Claudius’ death in 54 CE. Having experienced the trauma and travail of displacement, up-rootedness, and migration, they knew the importance of being welcomed and providing hospitality to strangers. Consequently, the examination of this model immigrant couple can inspire every Christian who is on the move to become a potential missionary.

In chapter six, Amy West examines the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra. Ministering in cross-cultural contexts, God’s people are often faced with beliefs, relational structures and ritual practices that are very unfamiliar to them. When the underlying reasons and purposes of these practices are verbalized, people have the opportunity to grapple with them. This chapter draws lessons from Paul and Barnabas’ response to the Lycaonians in Acts 14. It considers the factors involved in decision-making with a special focus on Paul’s plea for them to turn to the living God. It then suggests present-day applications for those in cross-cultural ministry. Two lessons are drawn from this event: the necessity of understanding the new context’s rituals with their underlying relationships and beliefs and the necessity of addressing each of those elements from Scripture.

Part two, Contemporary Issues of Migration and Mission, contains six articles that address different immigration issues around the world. In chapter seven, Timothy Lenchak examines the situation of undocumented workers in the United States of America. This chapter argues that the Parable of the Good Samaritan can challenge our attitudes toward unauthorized workers. Every society must decide how to deal with those who do not belong – especially those who have entered a country illegally. The temptation is to reject their presence and deny their needs. In the United States undocumented workers are designated as illegal aliens, a term which tends to dehumanize them. Criminalizing unauthorized immigrants helps us to reject their humanity and ignore their suffering. But can Christians accept such an attitude? Jesus challenges the view that we must necessarily exclude strangers, foreigners, and outsiders, even if they are undocumented. His Parable of the Good Samaritan narrates the story of an outsider who cares for a complete stranger. It costs the outsider both time and money. The lawyer from the dominant culture who challenged Jesus reluctantly admits that the Samaritan acted as a neighbor to the victim. The question is whether or not we can learn the same lesson.

In chapter eight, Craig Hendrickson explores the urban culture of displacement in the North American church. He states that the culture of displacement characteristic of Western society, which is also shaping the social imagination of the church, has created significant challenges for congregations located in North America’s urban centers. The chapter seeks to develop a missional theology of place for churches located in these urban environments by first briefly exploring how Americans got here; that is, highlighting how place has been deconstructed and de-valued in the North American urban context through the influence of various forces characteristic of modernity and late capitalism. He then proposes a pathway forward for churches located in North American urban environments by examining the themes of placement (land), displacement (exile), and re-placement (homecoming) in the biblical narrative. He suggests that God’s desire is for local congregations to participate in his mission as a placed people in the current urban culture of displacement. The author concludes by recommending that both leaders and congregants of local churches are required to dwell with neighbors in humanized relationships, a presence characterized by reciprocal hospitality, mutuality, and interdependence, which can ultimately lead us towards embodying God’s shalom in our communities together.

In chapter nine, Philemon Beghela examines the situation of francophone migrant churches in Pretoria, South Africa. There are more than 30 francophone churches in Pretoria that minister to migrants from other African countries. This chapter explores how francophone migrant Christians interpret exilic passages like Jeremiah 29 and Psalm 137 to shape their Christian identity and sense of mission in a situation of displacement. Do they play a constructive missional role by singing the Lord’s song in the strange land of Pretoria? The chapter is based on interviews and focus groups conducted with members of these migrant churches. The interviews invited them to explore passages of scripture in relation to their everyday experiences and the role of the church in their lives. Complex questions of identity, faith and mission are explored, tracing the reflections of migrants on their vulnerable and uprooted existence but also on the opportunities they have for witness and service in a fast-changing urban environment. What emerges from the study is the resilient and creative witness of migrant Christian communities.

In chapter ten, John Prior examines the heartbreaking situation of failed migrants returning to Indonesia. The chapter details how an intuitive reading of the Book of Ruth by a group of HIV carriers from Flores island, Indonesia, renewed their faith. The men caught the virus as economic migrants and then proceeded to give it to their wives on returning home sick. Rejected by family and by many members of the clergy, they have formed their own support group. Coming from the interior, most were not regular churchgoers before contracting the virus. A few years ago they began reading the Scriptures regularly once a month. They easily identified with Naomi and Ruth, with their failed migration, and with the tactics they were forced to use in order to survive on returning to Bethlehem. Members of the HIV support group, originally unsupported by the institutional Church or by their extended families, have discovered in reading the Bible together a liberating Word that has rekindled a deep personal faith in the God of compassion.

In chapter eleven, George Wieland looks at the situation of migrants in Auckland, New Zealand. In a context of increasing demographic and cultural diversity the Christian community needs fresh direction and resourcing for mission. The book of Acts narrates a story of mission in which the themes of movement and migration are prominent. A missional hermeneutic that reads the biblical text within the larger story of the mission of God approaches the text in self-conscious locatedness in a contemporary mission context. As it adopts the posture of a participant in the continuing story of mission, it might have the potential to bring readers into an effective engagement with the biblical text that might in turn orient them towards mission in their context that is coherent with that discovered in the text. Some results of such readings in Auckland are illustrated.

Finally, in chapter twelve, vanThanh Nguyen examines the various current trends of migration in Asia, for example, temporary labor migrants, feminization, and highly qualified migrants and students. While the contemporary trends of labor migration have brought a breath of fresh air to the region’s economic landscape, the situation raises serious concerns about the inhumane treatment of the vulnerable migrant workers and their psychological marginalization and alienation while living away from home. It is even more heartbreaking to see the many host countries in Asia treating their very own Asian brothers and sisters as aliens and strangers without much dignity or rights. How should Christians therefore react and respond more appropriately to the migration issue today? The author turns to the Bible for guidance and inspiration. The author insists that hospitality, for example welcoming of the stranger, is the most appropriate response to migration demanded by the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as by other religions. This chapter will serve as a conclusion to the book.

The contributors of this volume are women and men from different ethnic backgrounds, working and living on all five continents. The internationality of the contributors gives this volume a unique global perspective on migration and mission. Many of the contributors are either immigrants themselves or working with immigrants or migrants. Most of these papers were first presented at the 13th Quadrennial Assembly of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) in Toronto, Canada (15–20 August 2012) at sessions of the Biblical Studies and Mission (BISAM) study group. Five BISAM papers that were presented in Toronto were published in Mission Studies 30.2 (2013), the journal of IAMS. Two of these articles reappear in this edited collection: Sarita D. Gallagher, Abraham on the Move: The Outpouring of God’s Blessing through a Migrant; and vanThanh Nguyen, Migrants as Missionaries: The Case of Priscilla and Aquila. We thank Brill Publishers for allowing us to reprint these two articles.

1. The United Nations Statistics Division collects statistics on international migration flows and on the stock of migrant population through the Demographic Yearbook data collection system. See, International Migration Report

2013

at http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/migration/migration-report-

2013

.shtml (accessed January

3

,

2014

).

2. Hoppe, Israel and Egypt,

209

.

Part I

Biblical Perspectives on Migration and Mission

1

Abraham on the Move

The Outpouring of God’s Blessing through a Migrant

—Sarita D. Gallagher

Where are you from? This is a question that I have been asked for the past twenty-three years. Having immigrated to the United States in 1990, my still-strong Australian accent has garnered attention wherever I go. Conversations regularly begin in this way:

Stranger: What a lovely accent. Where are you from?

Me: I’m originally from Australia.

Stranger: How wonderful. How long have you lived in the United States?

Me: Twenty-three years.

Stranger: But your accent is so strong!

Me: Yes, it is . . . .

Immigration has long been a part of my family tradition. It originated with the forced immigration of my convict ancestors to Australia, followed by my maternal grandparents’ immigration from Spain, and my immediate family’s transfer to the United States. The challenges associated with immigration have also been a constant in my family history. In particular, the struggle to adapt to new cultural traditions and values, language and communication barriers, the ache of family members left behind, and the reality of always being an outsider have marked my family’s journey. These challenges are familiar threads in the story of immigration.

In the narratives of Genesis, Abraham¹ was also identified as an immigrant and a stranger in the land. Like all immigrants, Abraham would have faced many of the same challenges: culture shock, social displacement, cultural confusion, and language barriers. In Genesis Abraham’s status as a nomadic foreigner is significant in the overarching narrative. In fact, it is Abraham’s identity as an immigrant that directly facilitates the outworking of God’s blessing given to Abraham in Genesis 12:3. In this essay, I explore this integral relationship between Abraham’s life as an immigrant and the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. It is in examining God’s original declaration to Abraham—I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you² (Gen 12:3)—that the true missional nature and purpose of God’s universal blessing is revealed.

In order to fully comprehend the missional significance of migration in Genesis, the life of the most prominent immigrant in biblical history, Abraham of Ur, must be considered. In the following section I thus examine Abraham’s life as an immigrant in addition to what we know of his familial, cultural, and religious background before his encounter with God. In the second section, I examine three cross-cultural narratives in which Abraham conveys the blessing or curse of God upon his foreign neighbors. Finally, I highlight the missional implications of God’s blessing being first distributed to the nations through the migratory journeys of Abraham, the wandering Aramean.

Abraham the Immigrant

Through archeological evidence and ancient literary archives, biblical scholars have pieced together most of what we know about Abraham. Originally said to be from a community of nomadic tribes called the Apiru, Abraham appears to have been a member of a group of traveling merchants who moved throughout Babylonia during the late third and early second millennium BCE.³ Although some scholars point