Christmas: A Migration Perspective
One More Reason To Be Hospitable This Season
Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined,” where we dream about mission in a postcolonial world. Every Thursday, I share one thought that has spoken to me in the week, some resources I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission. I pray one of these will energise you in the coming week.
1. Thought I Can’t Shake Off
The story of Christmas is one of mission, migration, and hospitality (or lack thereof). It has to do with mission because it is essentially about God coming down to our world to redeem humanity and establish a community of God’s own people—followers of Christ—who, through the power of the Spirit, would work to establish the kingdom of God in all the earth. Many of us can make this connection without problems. We believe the incarnation to be God’s missionary trip to earth. However, the migration aspect of the story needs a little digging.
In its immediate context, the story of Christmas starts with Augustus Caesar’s call for a census that required everyone to go to “their own town to register” (Luke 2:3). Yet, the internal and external displacements of the people had been going on for centuries. People like Joseph and Mary, (or their parents), who had left their communities, needed to go back home to be registered. Indeed, for these two, the fact that they had migrated from Bethlehem (an important village with a powerful prophecy that a king would come out of it) to Nazareth (a village out of which nothing good was expected) is an important part of the story. As they made the long trip (of about 90 miles) from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary were like two diaspora children forced to go back home and, while there, their own child was born. They probably had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews, but when they arrived, the village was full—many others who had migrated away had also come back to register—and there was no guest room available for them. Jesus was born in this context—in a village where he was both a descendant and a stranger. He needed hospitality right from the start. His family, displaced as it were, not only to Nazareth but also in their own village of Bethlehem, needed others to be hospitable to them. Later on, they migrate further to Egypt, where they seek refuge to protect Jesus from Herod’s wrath.
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this season, may we find ways to be hospitable to those around us who are displaced. This story is impossible without migration.
2. Resources I am Enjoying
Video: Stellenbosch University: John Mbiti: Africa, Christianity and the Bible
In this 2016 video, John Mbiti speaks at the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. While this short conversation was only a response to some of the queries made during a series of seminars, the insights he shares are enlightening for the way we engage with African Christianity and mission in general. The discussion spans across multiple issues; Africa’s religiosity and its connection with the reception of Christianity on the continent, the complexities inherent in reading the Bible in foreign languages and how this affects how Africans understand the Christian faith. Of course, the complications created by Western influences on the understanding and practice of Christianity in Africa today should be instructive for other cultures as well. They should help us guard our efforts from the overwhelming tendencies to reproduce expressions of Christianity shaped by our own cultures in foreign lands.
3. Quotes I am Pondering
When, through the incarnation, divinity was translated into humanity, God in Christ as the second Adam fully and completely identified with fallen human nature in order to redeem it. God disempowered himself that he might empower his people in the course of mission. —J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
To have missional aspirations to reach out to indigenous people, whether of African or European descent, with a religious vocabulary and symbolisms that your audience cannot comprehend or access, is not only tragic but an affront to the missiological implications of the Christian doctrine of incarnation. — Bisi Adenekan-Koevoets
Christian mission encapsulates coverage (Mark 16:15), conversion (Matt. 28:19), and congregation (Matt. 16:18). — Asonzeh Ukah
I pray that you will be faithful to the mission God has for you this week.