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God’s reception of hostile humanity into divine communion is a model of how human beings should relate to the other.
Miroslav Volf, Croatian theologian[1]
It was nearly sunset when Miriam returned to her son’s tent in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. She had been with her husband and a number of her children at the UNHCR offices in Zahle where they had waited for over ten hours with hundreds of other Syrians for their case to be processed. It was a difficult day in what had become a nightmare month.
Miriam had had a simple life in Syria, in a countryside spread with orchards, farms, and the homes of her large extended family. She had raised her children there and then watched her children begin to raise their children. Then the conflict erupted. For two years Miriam and her family remained in their homes, even as the area became a battleground with rockets and shelling. Schools stopped operating, movement was restricted, and life became a struggle for survival amidst siege-like conditions. Family members were killed; loved ones began to scatter.
In the spring of 2013, Miriam and her family were faced with no choice but to flee. They first moved to another part of Syria but found no protection. They were then forced to make a risky entry into Lebanon. Miriam’s initial plan was to stay near to the Syrian border, wait for the conditions to quiet down, and then return to her land. That’s the only thing she wanted, to be back in the only place she and her family have ever known as home. As weeks turned into months and the fighting became a stalemate, Miriam saw the unavoidable reality that any prospects of a return were nil. That was when she went to Zahle, where other relatives had settled nearby, to formally register with the UN.
Weary from the years and exhausted from the day, Miriam sat down and showed a piece of paper that would determine her practical status and dominate her psychological state. “It’s official; we are refugees,” she lamented. They had spent years avoiding this situation but now found it inevitable, and the indictment was total. Miriam, a grandmother who had simply intended to live out her days on her land in the company of her family, had reached rock bottom. She had become an occupier of another person’s space, an unwanted guest in a foreign land, a liability to her new country of residency, and a legal dilemma for her world. Miriam had become a refugee.
Being hospitable to the foreigner and the weary traveller is a very ancient Middle Eastern tradition which is still practiced today by many Near Eastern tribes and communities. In the days when there were no hotels and very few caravan sarais,[2] welcoming travelling strangers was one way of ensuring that they did not die of hunger and thirst or become victims of bandits.[3] This quality of graciousness also has deep roots in Scripture. Abraham showed hospitality to three strangers, who only afterwards reveal that they were God’s messengers (Gen 18:2–8). In the Old Testament the attitude of hospitality, of caring for the foreigner, was shown in many different forms. As with Abraham, local people were to provide the foreigner travelling through the land with food, shelter, and protection (Gen 19:1–8; Job 31:32). Foreigners along with the poor were allowed to harvest the edges of the fields after they had been harvested (Lev 19:9–10; Ruth 2:2–17). Hospitality was a quality that leaders of the early church were required to have (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7–8).
Caring for those living on the margins of society, those branded as derelicts unworthy of human dignity and rights, is truly a prophetic act. It is a radical form of protest that points to another world, another reality completely contrary to the one we live in. This active compassion demonstrates what the kingdom of God is really like – where the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, the broken, the refugee, and those rejected for whatever reason are not discarded but rather valued as individual human beings who belong. It speaks about the honour and worth of each person in the economy of God. He created them; they are of great value regardless of social or economic status, legal standing, gender, nationality, or ethnicity.
Does God care that so many are trapped in poverty and others are uprooted from their homes and find themselves with no place to belong? Jürgen Moltmann gives insight when he writes about the crucified God. He refers to the Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel’s concept of the pathos of God.[4] This pathos is not what he calls “irrational human emotions” but describes how God is affected by events, human actions, and suffering in history. Moltmann writes, “He is affected by them because he is interested in his creation, his people.”[5] This pathos is contrasted with the apatheia of the gods of the religions of the ancient world that Jews and early Christians encountered. Apatheia was their inability to feel or be influenced. It has been transformational for many Muslim refugees and migrants to discover that God is compelled by his own nature to be deeply concerned for them and troubled by their suffering. This revelation of a compassionate Lord draws them into an intimate relationship with the living God.
God by his very nature feels, and he created human beings to be like him, to be able to feel joy, a sense of satisfaction, sorrow, disappointment, and the anguish of loss. As God sees evil and sin distort his image in the poor and the displaced, and as he sees injustice inflict merciless suffering, his pathos turns to wrath and judgment of those who try to destroy his creation. Old Testament scholar Timothy Laniak explains that because human beings everywhere bear God’s image and likeness, God has a stake in how humans are treated.[6]
Rather than destroy the people he created, God suffers the anguish and agony of his own judgment. When God was crucified in Christ, he experienced a level of pain, abandonment, and suffering that had previously been unknown to him, all in order to bring healing to his creation. Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori writes, “The Lord wants to heal our wounds, which were caused by God’s wrath; this Lord suffers wounds, himself receiving his wrath. ‘. . . with his stripes we are healed’ (Isa. 53:5). . . . A task of the ‘theology of the pain of God’ is to win over the theology which advocates a God who has no pain.”[7] By failing to grasp the depth of God’s feelings for his creation, especially human beings endowed with his own image, people too often picture a God who is Almighty but distant and uncaring.
The pathos of God is the compassion that motivated Jesus throughout his ministry. The apostle Matthew observing Jesus wrote, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36). When Jesus healed, it was because he was moved with compassion (Matt 14:14). When he taught using parables, Jesus spoke about the compassion a father felt towards his rebellious son (Luke 15:20). Sri Lankan missiologist D. Preman Niles explains that the Greek word for compassion is splanchnizomai and literally means, “to be moved in the inward parts.” It connotes a strong physical and emotional reaction, “a gut wrenching response.”[8] It is the idea of pathos. Niles says that the word splanchnizomai only occurs in the Gospels and is only used to describe Jesus’s reactions. “It is used . . . to describe the attitude of Jesus to people defined as the [multitudes] and the action that ensues from that attitude.”[9] Without doubt it is the way God views the displaced today.
As God views broken humanity in the forms of the poor, the displaced, the abused, the tortured, the violated, the abandoned, and those suffering from incurable ailments and disease, his gut wrenching response is to heal, comfort, and provide. He is the God “who comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Cor 1:4). In his anger and wrath, he brings justice, and one day his kingdom will be established in all its fullness. Then all that has been perverted by sin and evil will be made whole again. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’” (Rev 21:3–4). God is working in history to establish his kingdom. He is working through his people today to reveal what this kingdom looks like – a place of compassion for those broken by the harsh realities of life.
A question to ask is whether concern for the foreigner was unique to Israel’s values and culture. While ancient Egyptian wisdom texts and prayers and the royal ideology of other ancient Near Eastern nations contain much that is similar on being just and compassionate to the poor (mainly widows and orphans) in everyday life, in business dealings, and in the court, only in the Old Testament is there concern for and care of the stranger. This care is fleshed out in detail in the second giving of the law in Deuteronomy, though the idea is present in the first giving of the law (the Covenant Code) in Exodus.
Prior to the giving of the law for the first time at Mt Sinai, the formulaic language identifying the poor had been the “widow and the orphan.” Nobert Lohfink suggests a variety of possible historical and sociological influences for adding the “stranger,”[10] but God states his reason in the law. Exodus 3:9 and Deuteronomy 26:7 describe the treatment of the Israelites in Egypt as being oppressed. At the end of the Covenant Code in Exodus 23:9, using the same language, God states, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” The experience and history of the Israelites would have given them a fresh and deep understanding of this new dimension of poverty and exclusion, and impacted how they defined themselves as a society.[11] Henceforth whenever the term poor was used, it would now mean the “widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land.”
It is important to note that there is a major difference between hospitality shown towards the traveller and care for the vulnerable foreigner who lived in Israel. Hospitality was only temporary, lasting as long as travellers stayed with their host.[12] This tradition was practiced by most societies and cultures in the ancient world and was not unique to Israel. Care for the foreigner described in Exodus and Deuteronomy is compassion for vulnerable foreigners who were living in Israel and had no social support of a family or tribe to provide for and protect them. In the ancient world, care for the poor, who were mostly widows and orphans, was the responsibility of the king and the wealthy. The foreigner in their midst who was poor was of no concern for them.[13] So the requirements in the Mosaic law for the care and protection of foreigners in Israelite communities was exceptional in the ancient world.
This law for his people reveals the character of God. He identifies himself as the protector of the poor and vulnerable. In Psalm 82:3–4, God challenges the “gods” to, “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” The gods failed to accomplish this, and the implication is that God is the only One who can truly provide justice and deliver the poor and vulnerable.[14]
God’s defence of the poor is an integral part of his character and how he identifies himself. Psalm 68:5 states, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.” Deuteronomy 15:9 and 24:15 both state that when the poor have been taken advantage of and cry out to God against their oppressors, the oppressors will be guilty of sin.[15] The seriousness of the crime and the severity of the punishment are described by Lohfink. “The connected sanction is that whoever forces the poor to cry will be in the state of hêt’. Now hêt’ is not just any sin. As [Old Testament scholar] Klaus Koch has shown, hêt’ is a sin which can be expiated only by the death of the sinner.”[16] Unlike the ancient gods who heard the cry of the poor and either blessed them or cursed them, God defends the poor and considers their oppressors to be breaking his laws. Their condemnation is clear. Deuteronomy 27:19 states, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Exodus 22:21–24 is even more explicit. “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.”
Japanese theologian Kasuke Koyama writes about the implications of these passages. The issue is not just about being kind to strangers; it is a reflection of the wholeness, healing, and shalom that God intends for his creation.
This extraordinary thought cultivates and expands the horizon of the human soul. It is derived from a theologically informed experience of conversion (metanoia). It reveals the truth about the creation and maintenance of shalom (wholesomeness, well-being, integrity) in human community. “You shall not oppress a resident alien,” a socially marginal people. This command has remained relevant throughout the history of human civilization, and it is becoming even more significant in our own day as the number of uprooted people from political and racial oppression, inhuman poverty and ethnic conflict, civil war and natural disaster has been steadily increasing.[17]
A major distinction between Israel’s social contract and the legal codes of the surrounding ancient kingdoms is that responsibility for the care of the poor and the vulnerable shifted from the king and the wealthy to the community who received the Mosaic law. The commands in Exodus 22:21–24 are clearly addressed to everyone in the community and not just to the ruler and elites. The Mosaic law described how the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners were to be taken care of by the entire community and ensured that these people were entitled to justice.
However, by the time the monarchy was firmly established in Israel in the eighth century BC, right through to the New Testament, care of foreigners seems to have been on a decline, and it is not mentioned in later Greco-Roman lists of virtues. However, Jesus resurrected the idea through his teachings (Matt 25:31–46), emphasizing that hospitality towards a stranger is an integral part of what it means to follow him. The apostles writing to the young churches command hospitality as a part of their witness as followers of Christ (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 5:10; Titus 1:8; Heb 13:1–2; 3 John 5–8).
Koyama connects the understanding and practice of hospitality to the great commandments – of loving God and your neighbour – and what it means to live a life that is pleasing to God. Koyama writes,
Our “extending hospitality to strangers” happens “by the mercies of God,” and when this happens our life becomes a “living sacrifice,” which is “holy and acceptable to God,” and it is an essential part of our “spiritual worship.” There is a living connection between “extending hospitality to strangers” and “loving your God and loving your neighbor” (Mark 12:28–34) of which Christ says “there is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:31). And his directive to love enemies (Matt 5:44) is the ultimate of extending hospitality to strangers.[18]
Whether it is giving hospitality to a foreign traveller passing through or longer term compassion for a foreigner in their communities who have no support or protection, the people of God are to demonstrate a different standard than the surrounding cultures whose concern is only for those who belonged to their community.
Giving hospitality and showing compassion for the foreigner is not something that only individuals do. It is also the responsibility of the church to demonstrate the love of Christ in these ways. Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, now at Yale, introduces the concept of exclusion and embrace that emphasizes the importance of community and belonging. He writes that so many of the sins we commit against our neighbour are acts of exclusion.[19]
Volf describes exclusion as “not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to the pattern of interdependence. The other then emerges as an inferior being who must either be assimilated by being made like the self or be subjugated to the self.”[20] Rather than accepting the worth and uniqueness of each individual and understanding the richness of being interdependent with each other, we either physically and socially exclude those who do not belong to our community or require them to deny who they are and conform to the image of the community. The conforming is not to the image of Christ or to the values and standards of God, but to the social expectations of the community. From the vantage point of exclusion, the foreigner, the refugee, and the migrant are seen as a threat to the values and security of the community because they are different. Volf writes that societies who exclude have a false sense of purity and “want the world cleansed of the other rather than the heart cleansed of the evil that drives people out by calling those who are clean ‘unclean’ and refusing to help make clean those who are unclean.”[21]
By understanding how refugees and migrants are widely mistreated and excluded from society, we can see that the basis for any ministry to them is found in God’s act of redemption. Volf writes, “God’s reception of hostile humanity into divine communion is a model of how human beings should relate to the other.”[22] He explains that in order to move from exclusion to embrace, people need moments that provide space for repentance, forgiveness, making space in oneself for the other, and healing of memory.
In a world where violence against migrants and refugees is becoming commonplace because of the perceived threat they pose, Volf states that neutrality is not an option for the people of God, because taking the side of the suffering is the prophetic and apostolic tradition of the Bible. He writes, “These people hear the groans of the suffering, take a stance, and act. . . . After all, they are called to seek and struggle for God’s justice, not their own.”[23]
In order to understand Volf’s concept of social exclusion, in particular with regards to refugees, Ibn Khaldun, a fourteenth century Arab historian and sociologist, provides insight into the nature of collectivist or communal societies. He writes, “Only tribes held together by group feelings can live in the desert” since the group ensured the survival and well-being of the individual.[24] Yet this obligation in the tribal societies of the Arab world was always limited in practice to the immediate group, family, or clan and very rarely beyond it. The reason is the concept of assabiyah, which Ibn Khaldun says refers to group solidarity or group consciousness. Assabiyah is what binds society, family, tribe, religion, and nation. It gives people a sense of belonging and ensures the stability of institutions in the community.[25] The fear is that a loss of group cohesion as described by assabiyah will result in the destruction of the community. A focus on the group cohesion ensures the survival of the group but in the process excludes the outsider or other groups.
Biblical scholar Bruce Malina explains this concept further. He writes that some societies are individualists and others are collectivists. He describes individualistic societies as contexts where “individualism is characterized by internal control and identity, as well as internal responsibility and worth.” On the other, he writes,
Collectivism may be described as the belief that groups in which a person is embedded are each and singly an end in themselves. . . . In collectivistic cultures most people’s social behavior is largely determined by group goals that require the pursuit of achievements, which improve the position of the group. The defining attributes of collectivistic cultures are family integrity, solidarity, and keeping the primary in-group in “good health.” . . . Should a group member fall ill, the goal of an individual’s healing is group well-being. Focus is on the in-group, cooperation with in-group members, maintenance of ascribed status, and group-centred values.[26]
These ideas provide a foundation for ministering to the displaced. Refugees, migrants, and stateless individuals not only need food, shelter, access to healthcare, jobs, and education for their children; more than anything else, they need to find a community in which they can belong. In the midst of their displacement, refugees have lost their community who supported them and provided them with their social, religious, cultural, and ethnic identity. As refugees they have become foreigners who do not belong in their host communities either. As Brueggemann states, the crisis is one of rootlessness; without being physically, socially, and culturally rooted, individuals cannot find life and meaning.
In this context the church needs to be an inclusive community that embrace the outsider. If the refugees, the migrants, and the stateless are to know and experience the living God revealed in Jesus Christ, it will be through a community of God’s people who help them rediscover their identity and enable them to belong somewhere again.
In trying to develop foundations for a theology of migration, Daniel Groody identifies four divides that need to be crossed. The first divide to be crossed is the problem-person divide. This divide is one of language that places the focus on the problem of migration rather than migrating people. Labelling people as refugees, migrants, forced migrants, immigrants, undocumented, internally displaced person, and aliens categorizes them based on issues and problems. Groody quotes Roger Zetter: “Far from clarifying an identity, the label conveys, instead, an extremely complex set of values, and judgments which are far more than just definitional.”[27] To cross this divide, Groody states that human beings are made in the image of God – imago Dei.[28] This is not just another label “but a way of speaking profoundly about human nature.”[29] Imago Dei resets any conversation about migrants and the displaced and provides a different starting point for how those who do not belong are to be viewed. The focus is not on the problem, but on people in need, which ensures the dignity of all people.
The second divide to be crossed is the divine-human divide, which involves the story of the incarnation. Groody refers to Karl Barth in stating that the incarnation is the “way of the Son of God into the far country.”[30] Groody writes, “God overcomes the barriers caused by sin, redraws the borders created by people who have withdrawn from God, and enters into the most remote and abandoned places of the human condition.”[31] While human migration often strives for upward mobility and trying to live with dignity, the incarnation is downward mobility and the divine willingness to undergo the most horrific degrading indignities possible (Phil 2:5–11). To cross this divide, God gives himself. “This gratuitous nature of the incarnation offers a different framework for evaluating human migration and questions some of the underlying premises of the debate. . . . [It] makes profound demands on those who receive [the gift of the incarnation]”[32] and challenges us to assess our response to God’s gift.
The third divide to cross is the human-human divide. Reconciliation between human beings is at the core of crossing this divide. Groody writes about the human tendency to idolize “the state, religion or a particular ideology and use it as a force that excludes and alienates, even when it does so under the guise of obedience to a greater cause.”[33] Groody concludes,
The missio Dei, in which the church participates, is not just about helping the poor but about following Christ and discovering that those whom one is called to serve also have something to give. . . . Creating space is foundational to a theology of migration because it sees the missio Dei not first as an imposing evangelisation but as a ministry of generous hospitality, one that is mutually enriching for those who give and those who receive.[34]
The final divide to cross is the country-kingdom divide. Christian discipleship, while rooted in the realities of this world, needs to ultimately be grounded in citizenship in the kingdom of God. Our vision of the kingdom of God needs to take root in the realities of our daily lives and the social contexts in which we live. It should “transfigure” the way we look at and understand migrants and others who have been displaced. It “challenges people to move beyond an identity based on a narrow sense of national, racial, or psychological territoriality. It holds out instead the possibility of defining life on much more expansive spiritual terrain consistent with the kingdom of God.”[35]
Groody concludes that a theology of migration and its missiological implications “illuminates the gift and demand of Christian faith in the light of the pressing social problems of the modern world, and it opens up a space to bring out what is most human in a debate that often diminishes and dehumanizes those forcibly displaced.”[36] A missiology of migration focuses on human beings who are in need rather than on trying to solve a problem. By emulating God who crosses seemingly impossible divides to relate to his creation that has been debased and degraded, a missiology of migration challenges us to see beyond our self-imposed boundaries and view those who are different, and sometimes threatening, as also being made in the image of God and as people to be welcomed.
Any missiology that addresses human displacement must be rooted in understanding God’s care for all human beings, especially the poor, the vulnerable, and those who do not belong. We should not respond to human need from the goodness of our hearts but in response to God’s crossing the divine-human divide so that we can experience being loved and belonging to his eternal kingdom. Because of what we experience and witness, we are able to cross our own self-imposed barriers and divides and encounter those who are different. Ministering to their needs is not only transformative for them, but also changes us. Miroslav Volf refers to this approach as an embrace rather than exclusion. Such an embrace is showing hospitality not just to a stranger passing by but to those in our communities who have been rejected and live on its margins.
1. The pathos of God is what motivates him to respond to human need. What motivates you to want to help people?
2. What are some barriers you or your church face in trying to minister to “outsiders” in your community? What could you do to overcome them?
3. What are some ways you or your church could show hospitality to the foreigners, the lonely, and the migrants in your community?