A Migration Bible?

The Bible is the ultimate book on any existential topic and question Christians encounter. Christians have a long history of identifying, putting together, reading, translating, and teaching the Bible as a collection of sacred texts. This long history is marked by questions of identity: who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? Who is the Holy Spirit? Who is the Trinity? Who is the human being? Who is the fellow human being? What is the Earth, the world, the universe and all that is in it? What is life? What does it mean to be a Christian? What is church? The who and what questions always go together with how and why questions, and they all relate to the existential questions of humans in search for meaning: who am I, and what is the meaning of my existence? What is my place in this complex world?

It is within this search for meaning and exploring Life in its fullness, through Love (relationship, Trinity), through the Way (how to walk/live, how to relate to each other) and through the Truth (confession pairing up with action), that migration becomes or might become an existential issue for people in different positions and under various conditions. In this sense, the Bible can be read as a guiding text navigating throughout life; it can be read as comfort and trust in difficult times; it can be read as a source of inspiration for guiding one’s life; it can be read as a call for justice and political action. Those who read the Bible always relate to what they read there.

It has been a year since the Migration Bible was published in September 2023. It is an English-language Bible that includes study notes, reading plans and much more. Publishing a Migration Bible in the complex realities of the lives of its readers is not without risk. Yet, it provides those labelled as migrants and those identifying as such to engage with the Bible through new perspectives.

My first reflections on a project like this took a rather poetical form as if signalling that  the Migration Bible opens more registers than conventional prose.

Migration Bible 

The Bible has been travelling, journeying, migrating through the ages;
It has been travelling crisscross the world and worlds,
It went even to the Moon.
The Bible has been written, rewritten, copied, translated.
It has been smuggled, thorn apart, ordered, confiscated, burned.
The Bible has been in tramples and prisons,
in refugee camps and high courts
in boarding schools and universities
in hotels and households
in ports and at airports

The Bible has been sold and has been selling.
It has been offered as a gift
and refused as a present.
The Bible has been used for target groups,
was forbidden and was made compulsory.
Was used to hit people.

 People hit with it.
People kiss it.
People swear on it.
People curse it,
put it in museums,
play it in theatres,
people make fun of it,
people find life in it,
people sing it, dance it,
paint it, draw it, play it.

The Bible has been heard and never heard of.
It has been seen, unseen, and revealed.
It has been tasted, even swallowed, and vomited out.
It has been put in mangers and graves.
It sank in the depths of the sea and in the sand of the dessert.
It has been consumed by all weather conditions.

 It has been in the hands of the kings and hands of the poor.
Many learned reading with it.
Many learned another language with it.
The Bible has been used to make slaves and to liberate slaves.
To oppress people and to free people.
To give land and to take away land.
To make war and seek peace.
To make God and to kill God,
to find God and to lose God,
to confess God and to deny God.

The Bible has been cited, recited, miscited
for better or for worse
in searching what is right and what is wrong
in the fight for the truth
and in the cry for love.

 What is the Bible after all?
It is more than the sum of 39 + 3•9.
It is more than an ordering of books, chapters and verses.
It is “God's word”, “living and powerful”.
It is God’s word:
communicating, migrating, journeying, travelling,
always with the people.

It is with you, here and now.
Who are you, reading this Bible, here and now?
What is your here and now?

Who am I?
A stranger, a refugee, a guest worker, an undocumented,
a stateless, a homeless, an expat, a tourist, a diplomat, a student?
Am I a migrant, an immigrant, an emigrant, a transmigrant?
Who am I?
A status holder or the one who decides about documents?
Who am I in this chaos of identifying and being identified with?
Am I reduced to a single label: conditioned by migration
or am I made by migration?

 I am
together with and in spite of…
I am
reading the Migration Bible.

Why? How?
Why yet another Bible?
Why make the Bible into the ultimate book on migration?
Why make Jesus into the ultimate migrant?
I am reading the Migration Bible.
Because migration matters
Because its migration matters.
Because I can cry and laugh,
feel hunger and cold,
sleep and wake up,
like all those the Bible talks about.
Their questions of life and death
are my questions about meaning,
are my search for a better life.

I am reading the Migration Bible
to tell and retell stories:
that you can never reduce people to a single label
that there is always more than the migrant.

The migrant Jesus was not only a child
welcomed by loving parents in an overcrowded town
The migrant Jesus was not only a wondering prophet
welcomed by corrupt tax-collectors called out from the crowd.
The migrant Jesus was not only the friend arriving
too late in a full house grieving for Lazarus.
The migrant Jesus was not only the Master entering
the temple and disturbing the mass.
The migrant Jesus was not only the One walking
on the waters or stilling the wind and the waves.

Jesus the migrant is also Jesus the crucified,
bitten, spitted on, ridiculed.
Jesus is also the humiliated one,
the dehumanized one.

Jesus the migrant is also Jesus who returns
to the grieving disciples at the tomb,
to the fearful disciples in a closed room,
to the troubled disciples at the open shore,
to the confused disciples on their way to Emmaus,
to the not-yet disciples on their way to Damascus.

Jesus the migrant is also Jesus who walks
the paths, roads, ways, waters,
hell and sky,
low and high;
and keeps coming and going,
answering the call of “who am I?”
in endless relationality.

Because together with
and beyond
migration matters,
Jesus is the Christ.
Jesus Christ.

This is how I read the Migration Bible.
This is why I keep reading the Bible:
to wonder, comprehend, be troubled by,
Question, wrestle with,
to search for the meaning of a life,
hidden in this one confession: Jesus Christ.

Because of Jesus Christ
migration matters even more.
It matters in its harsh realities,
in unjust systems and rules of discrimination,
in patterns of borders,
in rhythms of xenophobia,
in its forms of child labor and prostitution,
in its countless evil variations.

Why yet another Bible?
Which groups does the Migration Bible target?
All those who cry out and all those who should hear the cry:
Segregation no more!
Separation no more!

Buy a copy of the Migration Bible.