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". Here, 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 us to... imaginatively place ourselves into a very different situation.
Sacraments require us to trans-contextualize, to imaginatively place 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-contextualizing himself back with his forebears as they prepared to leave Egypt on a journey to freedom.
This type of remembering involves our heart, not just remembering in our minds that an event happened. I have always known that D-Day happened in June 1944, but 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.
See in the stranger an experience from their collective past, so that the stranger is in fact no longer strange.
And so it follows that 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 a call to engage their memories and imaginations, to put their hearts back into the context that their forbears experienced in Egypt. In other words, to see in the stranger an experience from their collective past, so that the stranger is in fact no longer strange, but a reminder of Israel's situation in an earlier iteration. Because of their past there is to be a rich experience of bonding, of fellow-feeling, with the strangers the people of Israel were to encounter.
The stranger is to be a sort of sacramental "symbol, figure and sign representing spiritual realities" (Cyprian as quoted in the Sacraments section of "The New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic") that reminds them of what the Lord has done for them and how they have become who they are.
The majority of readers here are probably not strangers or immigrants, and—distinct from 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 little or no emotional weight for us. But becoming a Christian, entering the new creation, throws us into a similar separation, a 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 marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9). Thus, migrants are those whose lives and experiences can teach us how to live in the new country (new creation) which by faith we have now entered. "My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people" (Deuteronomy 26:5), Abraham’s descendants were reminded. By becoming children of Abraham we now also join that tribe of wandering migrants.
So, how does sensing the heart of a migrant become a means of grace able to shape our spirituality?
1. 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 physically 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.
The capacity of migrants to constructively serve in our society... is a model of the double belonging that all Christians must take on board.
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") 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" (Jeremiah 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 the 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 Corinthians 6:8-10). The destabilizing 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.
2. 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 that the past holds a definite loss—of family, of familiarity, possibly of status, all exchanged for an unknown and indefinite 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 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 recently 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 the UK 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 döner 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.
The positivity of the migrant experience should resonate with that of Christians.
The 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 double-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, benefited 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. While the term migrant similarly highlights the risk, the disruption, the never-fully-at-homeness of being Christian, it does so with elements of positivity, hope and creativity.
3. 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 (in the UK at least) 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 experience 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.
Budget for suffering in the life we follow.
Our own sin, the sacrifices we make, and 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’?
1. Listen to their stories
We come to 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 black 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. 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" is an extraordinarily engaging account of the remarkable experience of migrating to England 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" 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 Evangelization 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."
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.
2. Receive their gifts
Bishop Martyn Snow’s stimulating book "An Intercultural Church for a Multicultural World" 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 essay 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.
Consciously seek to relate to minority ethnic churches, willing to internalize their experience and spirituality.
Further afield, especially given that the bulk and energy of migrant, diasporic Christianity is found outside the Church of England, it is important that we consciously seek to relate to minority ethnic churches, willing to internalize 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. In turn, they can learn from our hard-won experience of grappling with difficult questions raised by Enlightenment rationalism rather than simply dismissing it or running from such questions.
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.
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 neighbors 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 internalize.
Originally published by John Root on his Out of Many One People Substack. Republished with permission.
John Root was a curate in the colorfully multi-ethnic residential suburb of Harlesden in the London Borough of Brent. He led an estate church plant in the London Borough of Hackney, planted two Asian language congregations in Wembley, and is now involved with a retirement ministry in Tottenham, still in London.
