Migrants as a Means of Grace. # 164. 18/06/2024

Out of Many, One People.

Welcome. Tomorrow there is an important conference on ‘Global Migration in Christian Perspective’ in London and on-line, with speakers includingChris Wright, Krish Kandiah and Harvey Kwiyani. (Surely this was arranged, prophetically, before they knew there would be a General Election, with immigration now put centre stage!) The following seeks to set out one perspective on a massive wide-ranging phenomena.

Migrants as a Means of Grace.

“You shall not oppress a stranger; you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9, RSV).

Marriage is described as ‘a means of grace’ – it is through an intimate, life-committed relationship with someone of the opposite sex that God can grow us in depth of character and godliness. Marriage in some churches is regarded as a sacrament – in Augustine’s words as ’a visible form of an invisible grace’. In this blog I want to suggest that people who are migrants – no longer living in their country of origin – are to the rest of us a ‘means of grace’; even, in a wider sense, sacramental.

Sacraments require a ‘trans-contextualisation’ of ourselves, imaginatively identifying ourselves into a very different situation. ’Do this in memory of me’ takes us from our present situation and puts us both at the Last Supper, and more specifically surveying the cross on which Jesus died. It is a movement of our heart to bring into consciousness all that Jesus suffered and all that he achieved for us, just as at the Last Supper he in turn was ‘trans-contextualising’ himself back with his forebears as they prepared to leave Egypt on a journey to freedom.

Such ‘remembering’ involves our heart, not just remembering that an event happened. I have always known that D-Day happened in June 1944, that falls far short of my heart engaging with the fear, courage, patriotism and horrified terror that must have been the experience of those who took part. Thus when the Lord tells Israel not to oppress strangers it is more than just an instruction about how to properly relate to other people, it is to engage their memories and imaginations, to put their hearts back into the context that their forbears experienced in Egypt – to see in the stranger an experience in their collective past, so that the stranger is in fact no longer ‘strange’, but themselves in an earlier iteration. Because of their past there is to be a rich experience of bonding, of fellow-feeling, with the strangers they encounter. The stranger is to be a sort of sacramental ‘symbol, figure and sign representing spiritual realities’ (referring to Cyprian in ‘Sacraments’ in ‘The New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic) that reminds them of what the Lord has dome for them and how they have become who they are.

The majority of us reading this blog are not strangers or immigrants, and – in distinction to the people of Israel – our story of once being migrants may well be so far back in the migrations and invasions of the first millennium that it has no emotional weight for us. But becoming a Christian, entering a new creation, throws us into that disjunct, the transition, that is the characteristic of all migrants. Migrants, then, have had a physical and material experience that figures the experience of all those who have been called ‘out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9). Thus migrants are those whose lives and experiences can teach us how to live in the new country which by faith we have now entered. ‘My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people’

Abraham’s descendants were reminded; by becoming children of Abraham we now also join that tribe of wandering immigrants.

So, how does sensing the heart of a migrant be a means of grace to shape our spirituality?

By the experience of being ‘in’ but not ‘of’.

‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world’ (John 17:15,16). Jesus’ followers are called to be in the world as he was – serving, blessing, restoring, and yet with an orientation very different from that world. A migrant’s heart always bears, to a varying degree, the country they are from, but now they are ‘in’ another country, a country they will always see with something of an outsider’s perspective, yet ideally not only with a commitment to survive but also to flourish and contribute. Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon (the focus of Joe Aldred’s recent book ‘Flourishing in Babylon: Black British Agency and Self-Determination’, blog review coming shortly) calls upon the exiles not to abandon their Jewish identity, not to become ‘of’ Babylon, but to seek the good of the city, to be ‘in’ Babylon and ‘seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you’ (Jm 29:7). The capacity of migrants to constructively serve in our society, and yet also have a strong concern for (and send remittances to) their motherland is a model of double belonging that all Christians must take on board.

It is an ambivalence at the heart of Christian experience. As St Paul puts it: ‘We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;  as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed;  as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything’ (2 Cor 6:8-10). The destabilising and shaking of their roots that migrants undergo is now the lot of all Christians, we no longer have a single, clear perspective on life in this world.

By having taken a step of faith.

Migrants have taken a big step of faith – it is why Abraham is the great father figure of both migrants and Christians. It means as regards the past a definite loss – of family, of familiarity, possibly of status, all exchanged for an unknown and uncertain future. Again, the parallels with turning to Christ are obvious. Migrants have moved from one circle of experience to another circle. Thinking in terms of a Venn diagram, it is possible that the two circles may never overlap. The poor migrant is left isolated and lost in a no-person’s land between the two, deprived of past identity and now with little that nourishes their souls in the new context. Such sad outcomes are by no means unknown, but too often, I believe, this desolate picture is presented as, if not the norm nonetheless a strongly common migrant experience. But in reality far more migrants, as per the Venn diagram, find themselves in the overlap of the circles, nourished by the richness of their motherland culture whilst drawing on all the opportunities available to them in their new context. Marc Guehi, the son of a pastor from the Ivory Coast (and thrust into prominence this week as the likely answer to English football’s need for a top class central defender) has commented ‘You get to see both sides. You grew up in England, you speak the language, you go to school here and you get to experience the culture. Then you go home to African parents and you experience where they are from, their heritage and how they want you to be raised so you get to experience the best of both worlds’.

It is this widespread, if often over-looked, perspective that enabled the Sewell Report to stress the significance of ‘immigrant optimism’ – the belief that despite all the challenges life in this country offers opportunities to learn, to work, to make your own choices, to adapt and improvise, and most especially to provide a good life and opportunities for your children. The outcome is the vitality and creativity that often marks migrant communities, from Turks in Berlin inventing the doner kebab to the lists of prize-nominated novelists writing in English whilst coming from migrant backgrounds; and indeed the growing list of important figures in British life who have non-English names.

This positivity of the migrant experience should resonate with that of Christians. Rightly handled the experience of living with two separate identities – from the land of our birth and from our rebirth – gives a two-eyed depth to our perspectives; it provides complexity and stimulation to our perceptions. Perhaps it explains why historically so many important figures in our national life, even if not themselves Christians, benefitted from being raised in homes with conceptual diversity and tension.

I think this positive picture of the migrant as a prototype for Christians is helpful. James K A Smith has taken issue with the common account of Christians as ‘pilgrims’, pointing out that it is a too comfortable and secure depiction, after all the pilgrim knows they have a home to go back to. Instead he prefers the starker figure of the refugee, someone cast out upon life and struggling to survive and make their way. However, I think we should resist this rather tragic, even pitiable, avatar of Christian being. Whilst ‘migrant’ similarly highlight the risk, the disruption, the never-fully-at-homeness of being Christian, yet it does so with elements of positivity, hope and creativity.

By growing through suffering.

The positive emphasis of the previous section should not be allowed to obliterate another aspect of migrant experience nor its resonance with being a Christian. In forsaking their country of birth migrants incur loss of a familiar home, likely homesickness; of possibly living in a much less spacious home, working at a lower status job, or experiencing relentless cold, grey weather. And on top of all that the tricky and exhausting challenges of learning about and adjusting to a strange new culture, quite possibly stranger than they had originally envisaged. Besides all this they will certainly have experienced racism in various forms, and at different levels of intensity. All these factors weigh against their hopeful and optimistic expectations and so give a palette of contrasting experiences.

‘For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come’ Hebrews 13:14 reminds us.Migrants know that their journey has not yet taken them to the land of milk and honey. Geographically settled Christians may need the reminder even more sharply. Much as we rejoice in the grace of God working in us, and in the opportunities and challenges of living by faith; for all that causes us to grow in following Jesus and drawing closer to the Father, yet we too know we have not yet arrived. Our own sin, the sacrifices we make, the rejections we can experience remind us to budget for suffering in the life we follow. ‘Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you’ warns Peter (1 Peter 4:12). Migrants are a reminder to Christians of the pains that come from living between two worlds, and the necessity of being prepared for it.

How might we develop ‘migrant spirituality’?

Listen to their stories,

We know the heart of a migrant by listening to them, and getting a sense of what they have felt. I have previously written of how listening to the music of back Americans who had been part of the post-war ‘great migration’ from the the rural south to the industrial north made a strong emotional connection for me (see blog # 130 ‘It’s (not) only rock ‘n’ roll – my ‘race’ story’). Muddy Waters ‘Louisiana Blues’ is a particularly poignant example. Listening to music, reading life stories helps enlarge our experience of what it is like to live between two worlds. Khalad Hussain’s ‘Against the Grain’ (which I reviewed  in blog # 161) is an extraordinarily engaging account of the remarkable experience of migrating here alone as a twelve-year old. Early in my ministry books such as Wallace Collins ‘Jamaican Migrant’ or Ursula Sharma’s ‘Rampal and his Family’ (1971, used for £0.75 or new for £408 on Amazon) were very helpful in getting a sense of what life was like for those who had migrated.

The importance of engaging with such stories is picked up in a Reflection on ‘Evangelisation and Loving Difference’ by Willie James Jennings in his commentary on ‘Acts’: ‘A disciple of Jesus is someone who not only enters the story of another people, Israel, but also someone ready to enter the stories of those to whom she is sent by God. Christians have often failed to see difference as an invitation to change, transform, and expand our identities into the ways of life of other peoples. So our embrace of other cultures and ways of life have most often in our long history not pressed towards the depth and intensity of the divine embrace of their lives’ (p 88). Too often we have not taken the many opportunities presented to us of ‘pressing towards’ the intriguing and often inspiring stories of work colleagues or fellow church members.

Receiving their gifts.

Bishop Martyn Snow’s stimulating book ‘An Intercultural Church for a Multicultural World’ (reviewed in blog # 153) offers, as indicated by its sub-title ‘Reflections on Gift Exchange’, an approach to a multi-cultural society where we both offer gifts but are also clearly conscious that we have much to receive. The main section of this blog has sought to identify particular areas where we have much to learn through the experience of migrants. This means, as Bishop Martyn stresses, that churches consciously seek to be intercultural so that there is a sharing of gifts within the congregation. Further afield, especially given that the bulk and energy of migrant, ‘diasporic’ Christianity is found outside the Church of England, it is important to be consciously seeking to relate to minority ethnic churches, and begin to internalise their experience and spirituality. Those whose faith has not been worn down by encountering the hard material of post-Enlightenment rationality can refresh us, notably in their confidence in the power of prayer, their single-minded dedication to fasting, and in their open freedom in witnessing to faith in Jesus; as they too can learn from our hard-won experience of grappling with difficult questions raised by Enlightenment rationalism rather than simply dismissing it or running from them.

It is good that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent Lent book, ‘Tarry Awhile’ by Selina Stone, draws from her experience in an African Caribbean Pentecostal church, albeit a generation or so from the personal experience of migration. This encounter is not primarily conceptual or easy to define; rather it is by being impacted by the different emotional texture of migrant Christianity that our own faith is slowly enriched and extended.  

Before an election when migration, and therefore migrants, are being kicked around like a political football it is good to remember that we are not only involved in a complex economic and political issue, but are talking about our neighbours whose lives and experiences should be approached with reverence and respect, and who offer us gifts at the very heart of our faith that we should treasure and internalise.

Related Blogs:

# 14 04/02/2021 ‘Anywhere People/Somewhere People’ is particularly relevant.