God on the go

LOUISVILLE — The Bible is replete with accounts of people on the move. They’re people under the care of a migrant God with a watchful eye and agile wheels.

“As political discourse today imprisons and mistreats migrants and treats them like monsters taking our resources, we need to be reminded that God is with the migrants, those we have deemed to be the other,” said the Rev. Dr. Safwat Marzouk, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, during a 90-minute preaching webinar offered Wednesday by the Synod of the Covenant.

Marzouk posed three questions for exploration during the webinar, offered each month for preachers both inside and outside the Synod of the Covenant:

• What difference does it make to read the Bible with and through the eyes of migrants?
• How does hospitality transform reality?
• Who should we become as a faith community in response to the phenomenon of migration?

Marzouk used the Joseph story in Gensis 37 and 39-50 as an example of a diaspora novella, “to be read similarly to the story of Esther or Daniel and Daniel’s friends,” he said. Using that lens, Joseph’s struggles in Egypt “is a story about migration, where God and God’s people find themselves outside the land of promise, having to interact with people different than they are, ethnically and religiously.”

God can be seen as a migrant, according to Marzouk, in such places as Genesis 39, which details the scheme of Potiphar’s wife, and Genesis 46, the account of Jacob bringing his entire family to Egypt. In Genesis 39, the Lord “was with Joseph in Egypt — not from a distance, in this land that was foreign, even when [Joseph] is in prison,” Marzouk said. “We are accustomed to spiritualizing this language,” but “in the biblical tradition, God is on the move with God’s people. God is a migrant God. That makes migration a theological question.”

In Genesis 41, the migrant Joseph “gives meaning to nightmares” and offers a solution for how pharaoh can face the famine. “Not only are the dreams of the migrant and the host interdependent,” Marzouk said, “they see each other as spiritual beings through whom God reveals God’s will and saves [the nation] from famine.”

Then Marzouk asked webinar participants, “What kind of spaces can we create in the church for telling stories of migration? How does telling our stories of migration transform how we see migrants today?”

When he teaches a class on migration, Marzouk has students write and share their story of migration. Some know the story of when their ancestors came to this country, and others don’t. “For some, that brings pain and confusion,” he said. “What kind of loss have people experienced because they are unable to trace their genealogy? What kind of pastoral care can we offer? Not everyone can tell their story,” said Marzouk, who was ordained as a pastor in 2002 by the Delta Presbytery of the Synod of the Nile, the governing body of the Presbyterian Church in Egypt. “People can become nativist over against the migrant because they themselves don’t know their history.”

As an Egyptian-American “living in hybrid spaces at the same time, I don’t think of identity as pure and rigid,” he said. “It’s more hybrid and porous and ever-unfolding. But we all need a sense of connection to the land and to others around us.” The problem is “when that happens over against others, when we build walls rather than lines that can be crossed in and out.”

He then turned to the Book of Ruth to illustrate how hospitality can transform reality.

“When Boaz offers water and food to a Moabite, he breaks the cycle of violence” found in Deuteronomy 23 and other places, according to Marzouk. Ruth is a hard-working migrant who’s sustaining her mother-in-law. We learn later that Boaz is one of her redeemers. “Ruth’s valor and steadfast love are recognized,” Marzouk said. “Boaz tells her, ‘May God reward you.’ Only God can reward her courageous deeds. Boaz recognizes the limits of what humans can do. He offers inclusion and a way to break the cycle of violence.”

Boaz “is not simply being nice,” Marzouk said. “Courageously, he is countering another theological and political voice about who we should become as people of God. He’s saying inclusion is the way to go. Opening the door and extending the table is what God expects us to do.”

“It’s about creating boundaries that can be crossed,” Marzouk said. For churches, hospitality is part of “a posture of repentance for the harm we have caused in people’s lives.”

One story that’s instructive is Luke’s account of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10, which includes Peter’s classic confession, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”

“The church is God’s project. The Holy Spirit comes freely to the Gentiles,” Marzouk pointed out. “We may love the way we do worship, but at the end of the day, the church is not ours, It’s God’s.”

In this account and in others, “God works by bringing people who are different from one another. The conversion is not happening just to outsiders, but to those who consider themselves insiders,” Marzouk said. “Peter’s hunger is not just for food, but how he sees others. Both Peter and Cornelius are transformed,” although it didn’t take Cornelius three tries to understand that transformation was necessary.

“Sometimes, we in the church are a little stubborn,” Marzouk pointed out with a smile.

He suggested those on the call connect with a neighboring migrant community of faith and consider opening their worship space to that community.

“I too get very concerned about our lack of understanding about all God’s people,” said one participant. “The Bible is God’s Word and it speaks to all.”