Abstract
This essay takes up Luke’s invitation to follow the roads Jesus walked and the roads his followers traveled by exploring the literary and theological functions of movement, travel, hospitality, and place in Luke-Acts. These texts can help shape an imagination and communal identity that sees other communities as partners in faithful discernment, not as foreign threats or strange folks one must merely tolerate. In this way, “a gospel on the move” shapes an imagination of welcome, wonder, and embrace when it comes to migrants, immigrants, and other “people on the move.”
We would be forgiven if we assumed that Luke was a frequent traveler. The characters in his twin narratives certainly are. Jesus and his followers are people on the move. The roads and seaways of the ancient world are the setting for the spreading of the gospel in Luke-Acts.
In this essay, I will take up Luke’s invitation to follow the roads Jesus walked and the paths his followers traveled. The discussion will explore the literary and theological functions of movement, travel, hospitality, and place in Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus and his earliest followers. Such a reading focused on movement might prove vital in our times, when questions about migration and immigration are so pressing. To be sure, the injunction to welcome the stranger, the foreigner, and the refugee is as clear a mandate as any we can find in the Scriptures. But how do we move from narration to injunction, from storytelling to ethics, and from narrative to action?
To begin, let’s note that the theological vision of Luke-Acts is not simply imitative. That is, we are not meant to fashion our practices and proclamation by simply copying the models set therein. Luke-Acts does not provide a set blueprint for action, even as its protagonists act in exemplary ways worthy of imitation. Neither is Luke-Acts merely historical remembrance or an idealistic account of when followers of Jesus perfectly embodied the call of the gospel. Instead, the theology of Luke-Acts is primarily imaginative, precisely because it is set within a narrative framework. So, when we turn to Luke-Acts hoping to discern how we might respond to the contemporary phenomenon of peoples on the move (migrants, immigrants, refugees, etc.), we are searching not just for models of hospitality and welcome but a theological imagination for a “people on the move.” We are searching for a theological imagination that can encourage prophetic action, compassionate care, and a communal identity open to God’s transformative activity among and with us.
As Luke Timothy Johnson has written, “The first readers of Luke’s narrative would perhaps not have seen his story as a nostalgic recollection of a time past but rather as a summons to an ideal that might be in danger of being lost, not as a work of bland historiography but as a thrilling act of utopian imagination, less a neutral report on how things were than as a normative prescription for how things ought to be.” 1 That is, we will come up short if we turn to Luke-Acts looking for a clear outline of immigration policies or precise guidance for responding to a refugee crisis. Luke-Acts will not walk in lockstep with our own partisan commitments. Though this theological imagination can lead to political action, the kind of theological imagination Luke-Acts projects is an embodied one that tends to rupture partisan ideologies. Luke-Acts can project an imagination, narrate possibilities, stretch our hopes, and make clear our deepest fears.
The essay begins with an overview of Luke as a “Gospel on the Move.” Then it traces several examples of Luke’s imagination for a people on the move. “Practices on the Move” point to the ways hospitality and meals become spaces of belonging. These moments of welcome and embrace are not just markers of hospitality but instantiations of inclusion and belonging. These meals transform the identities of those who sit with Jesus. How we interpret these stories can shift our own sense of identity as well. “Proclamation on the Move” looks at the way that local contexts shaped how and what was preached and taught about the gospel. Especially in Acts, locales shape how and what the followers of Jesus say and do. That is, local contexts give shape to the gospel. The gospel finds a home in many places, not by universalizing the good news in a way applicable in various places but by localizing the good news. I conclude with a gesture towards “Place on the Move.” Luke’s narration of place is an act of creative cartography, an imaginative and theological terraforming of lands dominated by the Roman Empire. Any place, in all its particularity, and any people, in all their particularity, are fertile ground for the flourishing of the gospel. In short, Luke-Acts can help shape an imagination and communal identity that sees other communities as partners in faithful discernment, not as foreign threats or strange folks one must merely tolerate.
A Gospel on the Move
That Luke-Acts pays careful attention to place and movement is no surprise; scholars have been noting this literary and theological element of the twin narratives for some time. 2 Jesus’s birth and early life is marked by Mary’s travels to see Elizabeth (Luke 1), the family’s travels to Bethlehem in the shadow of the empire’s census (Luke 1–2), and even the family’s travel to Jerusalem to worship (Luke 3). Jesus’s ministry is itinerant, moving from place to place throughout but especially in the “travel narrative” spanning from 9:51, when Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem,” through 19:27, when he finally arrives after much teaching and wandering. Acts, too, is a narrative on the move. An expansive group of Jews from around the Mediterranean world are gathered in Jerusalem to greet the disciples at Pentecost and receive the gift of speaking many languages (Acts 1–2). The maps of Paul’s journeys in the back of study Bibles illustrate the routes of mission itineraries Acts contains. A literary and theological pattern draws Paul out into the Mediterranean world but always back to Jerusalem. The closing chapters of Acts include storms on the high seas, shipwrecks, and finally Paul’s arrival into the heart of the Roman Empire.
To be sure, the other Gospels record Jesus’s movements, but not with as much attention as Luke’s accounts give. Luke seems to imbue these travels with more than narrative leverage; these travels carry theological significance beyond mere movement. For instance, many stories unique to Luke’s Gospel are reserved for the travel narrative. 3 It is on the road when Luke’s Jesus shares powerful stories about the shape of salvation, grace, and community. A gospel on the move is a gospel that encounters all kinds of people and all kinds of stories. A gospel on the move is a gospel that upturns our assumptions and expectations about who belongs. Such a gospel resonates on the roads Jesus travels and the meals Jesus shares with others while on the move.
Why would Luke narrate such a gospel on the move? Travel in Luke-Acts is not just a matter of moving characters from one place to another but about making a bold theological claim: wherever Jesus and his followers walk is fertile ground for the planting and sowing of good news. Wherever Jesus and his followers go, there they find faithful recipients and proclaimers of a gospel that turns the world upside down. So, the gospel is first announced by Mary, a young woman from a remote area of the world, who has little influence, but whose courageous voice reverberates in the life of her son and in the lives of his followers as they spread the gospel throughout the world. From Nazareth to Rome, the gospel eventually finds a home in every corner of the world Luke’s readers knew. In Jerusalem and Athens, in Ephesus and Bethlehem, God’s good news resonates in the many languages the protagonists of the narrative speak and in the many places where God has called them. Though the gospel has its roots in a particular time and place, it flourishes far and wide and finds a home anywhere God calls.
Practices on the Move
Eating Together as a Test Case for Belonging
Eating is a defining component of the ministry of Luke’s Jesus. 4 Early on, critics accuse Jesus of being a “glutton and a drunkard” (7:34; cf. Deut 21:20), a characterization Luke does not work particularly hard to discredit. Jesus finds himself at meals and around food regularly in Luke (e.g., 5:33–39; 7:36–50; 9:10–17; 10:38–42; 14:15–24; 16:19–31; 22:7–23; 24:28–35). Meals in Luke-Acts are not just opportune settings for Jesus’s teaching but a symbol of the kind of belonging the narratives help us imagine. Like meals today, meals in antiquity were pregnant with social significance. The details of such customs and arrangements are beyond the scope of this essay. 5 Yet the Gospel text itself provides a fascinating glimpse into these cultural practices. Who was gathered mattered. Jesus eats with the wrong kind of people and thus brings their opprobrium upon himself (Luke 15:1–2). The quality of your company was a reflection of your own status, but Jesus imagined an upturning of the expectation that an invitation to dine required reciprocation (Luke 14:12–14).
Stories of Jesus eating with outcasts narrate imaginative possibilities of belonging—to embrace and be embraced at a bountiful table. Jean Francois Millet (1814–1875), “The Harvesters’ Meal.” Watercolor, pastel, black chalk on paper. Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY.
How people gathered mattered, yet even an invitation was not sufficient to merit the highest social status, for even where one sits at the table is significant (see Luke 14:7–11). Jesus’s words and actions at these settings were then especially poignant, particularly infused with meaning, and for Luke, perhaps, particularly central to the theological vision he casts. The meals Luke narrates are symbols and embodiments of belonging. Rather than dictate how such belonging must happen, the stories narrate imaginative possibilities of belonging. That is, Luke-Acts does not contain within it blueprints for hospitality so much as a vision of what belonging could be. The texts can reveal that our imaginations are too narrow and that, in the light of God’s welcome, still much more is possible than we can even imagine. The stories connote what it feels like to embrace and be embraced at a bountiful table.
Abundance in Desolate Places
Such bounty is central in Luke’s account of the feeding of the 5,000 in Luke 9:10–17. The context of the miracle is critical. The disciples, having just returned from a ministry like Jesus’s (9:1–6), rejoice with him. Once again, the crowds find him, yearning for healing. The disciples suggest to Jesus that he should disperse the crowd so that they might go find some food and a place to stay, “…for we are here in a deserted place” (v. 12). Notice the truncated imagination of the disciples. They are in a crowd of 5,000 men plus an unnamed number of women and children. How can such a crowd occupy a space anyone would call deserted? Plus, Jesus is in their midst! In the light of Jesus’s teaching and healing ministry, how can any place where he is present be considered desolate? Even after their experiences of God’s power in their ministry at the beginning of ch. 9, they look around, and all they see is what they do not have. They don’t see the bounty of the people’s hopes or the abundance of Jesus’s salvific presence. When Jesus asks them to give the crowds something to eat (v. 13), he is not asking for them to do something miraculous so much as asking them to believe in the abundance of Jesus’s presence, the overflowing of grace evident wherever Jesus walks. Last, notice that this is not so much a miracle of sustenance as one of abundance. “And all ate and were filled” (v. 17). And there were leftovers, “twelve baskets of broken pieces.” The table Jesus sets is not merely sufficient; it is excessive though not wasteful. It is abundant though not merely extravagant.
God’s abundance can be seen in this detail of the miracle of the loaves and fishes on a sixth-century ivory plaque. Museo Arcivescovile, Ravenna, Italy. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
The “Sinner”: Redefining Identity at the Table
Meals in Luke are moments of healing and restoration. Such healing and restoration clarifies identity in the midst of practices of hospitality. That is, identity is not just named or claimed but something embodied and experienced at the tables where Jesus eats. Such meals are transformative spaces because of Jesus’s presence and because those who are not asked to join these meals nevertheless find an invitation in light of Jesus’s mere presence. Luke 7:36–50 features a meal hosted by a Pharisee named Simon. This distinguished host reminds us that while Jesus ate many meals with “sinners and tax collectors,” he also dined with people of status like this Pharisee. In this case, a sinner intrudes upon the festivities and washes Jesus’s feet. Simon thinks to himself that if Jesus were the prophet everyone says he is, he would know “… who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner” (v. 39). Probably noting the look of disapproval on his face, Jesus tells Simon a short parable and then forgives the woman in front of her neighbors.
In Luke, being a “sinner” is not just a marker of religious unrighteousness. 6 And neither is it an inclusive category like it is in so many Protestant churches where we tend to be rather comfortable in acknowledging that we are all sinners in need of grace. The use of the term in Luke is more exclusive. It doesn’t signify all of us or even most of us. It points to “those people,” people with whom we would not want to associate. “Sinners” dwell on the edges of their communities; they are people without a place, people with whom most of us would not want to share a table. Sinners do not belong. It matters very little what they may have done in their past. It matters very little what their behavior is. It’s their identity that matters. When we see “sinners,” we do not see neighbors, friends, siblings, or fellow guests at a table; we see a body to exclude.
So, Jesus’s forgiveness of this unnamed woman is not just a religious declaration of restored righteousness but a wholesale reorientation of her identity, both in her eyes and in the eyes of her neighbors. Remember how Jesus asks Simon, “Do you see this woman?” (v. 44). No, he does not see “this woman.” He does not see a neighbor or a fellow child of Abraham. So also, when Jesus declares her sins forgiven, “those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’” (v. 49). What if their objection is not just cultic but social? That is, who is this who dares rearrange people’s standing in our midst? Jesus’s audacity perhaps is to include someone this community has deemed an outsider.
Two potential moments of conversion emerge in this story. The first is the woman whose passionate welcome of Jesus is a sign of her deep desire for the embrace of another. Her life is transformed in the granting of a new identity at a table whose host did not offer an invitation, but Jesus’s presence opens up the guest list. The second conversion is potential, possible though not narrated. Did the community that surrounds her shift their sense of who she was? Did they concur with Jesus that she was no longer a “sinner?” Did they embody her radical hospitality? I wonder if that’s the imaginative hook of this story. In our wondering of what her life might have been like in the wake of Jesus’s audacious embrace, did her neighbors follow suit? Would we in our own communities follow suit if Jesus did the same in our midst?
In this story, the gospel is on the move in that it reorients the standing of people in this community, both sinner and righteous alike. Identity is clarified as an outsider and a sinner is deemed an insider and beloved. Meals in Luke teach communities who they are but also who they might be when they embrace the “sinner” who encroaches upon our finely set tables and guest lists.
Seeing Zacchaeus as Kin
Turning to the story of Zacchaeus can bring the insight of the identity-bending power of meals into even further sharpness. The most common interpretation of 19:1–10 narrates how Zacchaeus, a corrupt chief tax collector, encounters Jesus, who dines at Zacchaeus’s house. Verse 8 then contains Zacchaeus’s words of contrition and a commitment to a new way of life. Joel Green, however, has suggested another interpretation. 7 In v. 8, Green argues, Zacchaeus is not projecting his behavior into the future; he is naming his everyday habits. Specifically, Green observes that the tense of the verbs didōmi and apodidōmi in v. 8 are in the present, not the future tense. Instead of the NRSV’s rendering of “I will give” and “I will pay back,” Green proposes “I give” and “I pay back.” In this way, v. 8 does not narrate a conversion so much as an opportunity to make clear to his neighbors that he is not the “sinner” (v. 7) his neighbors assume he is. Instead, he is a person doing his job honorably and honestly. 8
If Green is correct in his reading, then the conclusion of the narrative takes on a different resonance. When Jesus declares, “Today, salvation has come to this house…,” the nature of that salvation includes a clarification of Zacchaeus’s identity and that of his neighbors with him. “Today” is as important here as it is in Jesus’s preaching in Nazareth (4:21). This salvation cannot be deferred or delayed; this salvation accompanies Jesus wherever he goes, wherever he speaks. Salvation for Zacchaeus is exemplified by Jesus’s (re)declaration that “he too is a son of Abraham” (19:9). He is not a “sinner.” He is not the despised and corrupt tax collector his neighbors thought he was. As in the story of the woman who was an erstwhile “sinner,” the resolution of Zacchaeus’s story remains in the reader’s imagination. Did his community embrace him as a fellow child of Abraham? We simply do not know. But it may be that moment of speculative wonder that can shape our theological and moral imaginations today.
Hospitality on the Road to Emmaus
Hospitality at meals embodies the welcoming spirit of the gospel. The road to Emmaus passage is a well-known and rich literary composition that offers even more clarity on the role of meals as occasions for hospitality, and as embodiment of the gospel (24:13–35). Here I just draw attention to a few key insights in the passage. First, we can notice that when the risen Jesus joins the two traveling companions, they “… were kept from recognizing him” (24:16). This is a sentence no English composition teacher would approve, as the passive voice hides why and how they were unable to recognize Jesus. Second, narrative ironies abound in a story where these two distraught followers are aghast that the unknown traveler who has joined them is wholly unaware of the latest breaking news (v. 18). Though they hear him teaching all day on the road, they do not recognize him (cf. v. 32). Third, they recognize Jesus at the very moment he does that which most characterizes his life and ministry: he breaks bread and shares it with his friends (vv. 30–31). Notice that it is not Jesus’s voice, his face, or even his teaching that sparks their memory and clarifies their vision. Instead, it is the quotidian activity of sharing bread. 9 This narrative conclusion suggests that this kind of eating activity is the very embodiment of everything Jesus did and taught in the Gospel. Eating is not just an activity of taking in nutrition; eating is an act of belonging that embodies a radical trust in God and one another.
The Emmaus narrative also clarifies the reciprocity of hospitality Jesus enacts. It is the two disciples who invite Jesus, a fellow traveler, to join them for a meal; these two are the purported hosts. And yet Jesus, the purported guest, takes over the duties of the host immediately. Jesus blurs the very lines between host and guest. Too often in Christian communities, hospitality is limited to how we welcome others. 10 That is, in too many churches, hospitality is something we offer others, not something we are willing to receive. In many churches, hospitality tends to be a practice more than an identity, a way of life. Jesus’s hospitality upends expectations, making hosts of guests and guests of hosts.
The table then is not just a place to eat but a symbolic center of belonging. Who is invited? Who is excluded? The table in Luke is a welcoming space where stranger and familiar alike seek sustenance from God, and sometimes recognize the Son of God in their midst. 11 At Jesus’s table, food is abundant; there is more than enough for everyone. At Jesus’s table, there is always one more spot for another guest. At Jesus’s table, salvation is something we can taste like a delicious meal. Such salvation feels like when we are gathered with family, friends, and sojourners, and relationships flourish. Such readings may not fit any specific political platform, but they do dare us to imagine the wide embrace of belonging that God’s grace entails.
Proclamation on the Move
The cartographical horizon of Acts is set a mere eight verses into the book: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). With this call, gospel proclamation becomes necessarily moveable. The gospel cannot stay in one place, for it is God’s uncontainable grace that propels witnesses to every corner of the world. It is important to remember what prompts this call. The disciples ask Jesus in v. 6 whether this “is the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel.” We may be tempted to chide the disciples for missing the point, for thinking that the kingdom Jesus promises is an empire rather than a gift. The kingdom Jesus promises is not like the kingdoms the disciples (or we) tend to anticipate. This kingdom is of a different order altogether. Beverly Gaventa notes that the concerns and questions of the disciples are not so misdirected but fit properly within the theological vistas Luke has cast thus far in the narrative. 12 After all, the question follows the promises evoked by Mary in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). Yet it is not for them or for us “to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). Lacking that knowledge, however, does not preclude a call to be witnesses, to testify to what they have seen and experienced. That they are to be witnesses is key. They are providing testimony of God’s deeds, not their own. The centerpiece of such witnessing is not the persuasiveness of the proclaimer but the stunning power (Acts 1:8) of the proclaimed. Moreover, that they are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth sets a theological vista for these disciples. The gospel is to be witnessed and witnessed to beyond the boundaries of what is familiar to the disciples. The gospel resides with all different types of people. The gospel is among those populating the edge of our cartographical imaginations. The gospel is to be found at the end of the long roads that lined the ancient world (Luke 25:47). What shape does such witnessing and proclamation take in Acts? Let’s focus on two examples of this proclamation on the move.
The Ethiopian Eunuch: An Unusual Convert in an Unexpected Place
First, in Acts 8:26–40, Luke records the story of an encounter between Philip and an unnamed Ethiopian eunuch. It is striking that the angel calls Philip into a potentially dangerous situation by exhorting him to wander towards a “wilderness road” (cf. Luke 10:25–37!). If Philip has concerns, he does not voice them as he heads out and encounters an Ethiopian eunuch returning from a visit to Jerusalem. These two unusual travelers meet at a most unexpected place, in the middle of nowhere. The Ethiopian eunuch’s identity is complex and well studied by scholars. His race and gender have produced a great deal of excellent exegetical reflection. 13 With the Ethiopian eunuch, we encounter a character full of ambiguities, yet none of those ambiguities prove to be an obstacle in this encounter. In fact, what if it is precisely the ambiguity and complexity of his identity that draws Luke’s attention?
Once Philip has joined the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot, they begin by reading a passage from Isaiah together, a passage that resonates with the Ethiopian eunuch and with the story of Jesus. The Ethiopian eunuch wonders to whom the passage refers. Philip begins by pointing to Jesus and eventually draws his companion into a story that began with a prophet’s cry. Notice that Philip’s exact words are not recorded. Verse 35 is annoyingly elliptical to the exegete; it tells us that he spoke but not what exactly he said. The next bit of dialogue is not Philip’s proclamation but another question from the Ethiopian eunuch. “‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’” What, indeed? Well, we might point to the Ethiopian eunuch’s unclear religious and ethnic identities. If he is a Jew, he joins the long line of other Jews who have embraced Jesus thus far in Acts.
But if he is a Gentile, then the story of the encounter between Peter and Cornelius (see below) becomes that much more complicated. We can imagine a whole litany of reasons that might preclude the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism. Indeed, the textual tradition adds yet another requirement before he is baptized. Verse 37 can be found in the footnotes of many Bibles, though not in the main text, because it seems to be a later addition to the manuscript tradition. 14 This manuscript tradition suggests that the eunuch must confess Jesus with his lips. He has not yet voiced words of confession. But the predominance of textual witnesses to Luke’s narrative suggests that there is nothing that would prevent him from being baptized. This is a story of proclamation and witness and embrace. And yet what was proclaimed, what was witnessed to, or even how precisely the Ethiopian eunuch embraces the good news is not specified. Perhaps it is not what Philip says that matters, so much as to whom and where and under what call. Perhaps it is not what the Ethiopian eunuch confesses that matters so much as the trust embodied in seeking baptism in the middle of the wilderness. This fascinating narrative suggests that proclamation on the move happens in unexpected places among unexpected witnesses and unexpected hearers of this good news. If Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch meet in the middle of “nowhere,” it may be precisely because God has made what we might call “nowhere” God’s home.
Cornelius: God Makes Clean What Was Profane
Second, the extended narrative in Acts 10 detailing how Peter and Cornelius meet and are transformed by this encounter suggests something about the shape of proclamation on the move. The chapter starts with twin visions. Cornelius the centurion sees a vision of angel who recounts that his “prayers and … alms have ascended as a serial before God” (v10:4). The angel also asks him to send for Peter, which he does immediately. The next day, Peter receives a vision far more confounding than Cornelius’s in which Peter, a devout Jew, receives a command to eat unclean food. The vision is so confounding that the narrative repeats it three times. The key refrain of the vision is that “what God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v. 15). Peter must now travel with Cornelius’s slaves and a soldier in a scene paralleling Jesus’s own encounter with a different centurion (Luke 7:1–10). Jesus did not enter the gentile centurion’s home, but here, Peter does enter the home of a gentile, who in the meantime has invited his family and friends and neighbors to join him.
Unlike the Ethiopian eunuch story, this narrative states specifically what Peter had to say; we hear Peter’s witness itself. He begins, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:34–35). The confounding vision is now clear. Peter’s vision was not about food; the vision was about people. And now that God has declared clean the household of Cornelius, Peter loses all trepidation (see v. 28). Yet Peter’s witness ends in a most curious way. He is interrupted (“While Peter was still speaking…”, v. 44) by the dawning of the Holy Spirit upon all who had gathered. Once again, this story imagines a witness that takes a back seat to God’s activity. It is not Peter’s persuasive and correct words but his presence as a witness that matters. Even more than his presence and witness, it is God’s activity that makes the difference, and this activity occurs “on the move,” in unexpected places and surprising ways.
Proclamation on the move rests on the power of God’s presence and activity among peoples and communities we may not anticipate as worthy recipients. Notice that Peter still follows the beckoning of the vision. He still invites Cornelius’s slaves and soldiers to stay with him (v. 23), lingers even after Cornelius’s attempts to worship him (v. 25), and stays when he is nearly certain he should not be in this house (v. 28). Perhaps then witness is characterized more by courageous presence and trust in God’s call, even when it seems strange, foolish, or inappropriate. We should also notice that this is not a simple story of Cornelius’s conversion. Yes, his encounter with the Holy Spirit must have transformed him, but perhaps it is Peter and his companions who leave this scene most changed. Proclamation on the move among strangers will not change only them; it will change us, too, for God has already moved ahead of us to be in their midst.
Place on the Move
An itinerant Jesus muses in Luke 9:58, “‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” At the very cusp of the travel narrative, Jesus speaks words that will be familiar to migrants, refugees, and all kinds of people on the move. Where is “home” when the road is more familiar? Where is home, the disciples might add, when we have been called to the very edges of our cartographical and cultural imaginations? As Luke Timothy Johnson has observed, “In sum, Luke clearly understands the ‘Jesus movement’ to be precisely that, a mode of God’s visitation that is constantly on the move. Prophecy does not find a single center or a secure home. It moves as the Holy Spirit directs….” 15
Acts, in particular, might help us imagine that home is wherever the gospel flourishes, and the gospel flourishes in all kinds of cultural locations. The gospel flourishes on a deserted road between Jerusalem and Gaza. The gospel flourishes in the Roman colony of Philippi. 16 The gospel flourishes even in the former jewel of philosophical contemplation in Athens. 17 And in every case, those whom God has sent to proclaim encounter the particularities of the place to which they have been called. In Athens, Paul does not speak the name of Jesus but points to Greek poets. In Philippi, Paul and Silas bear the brunt of colonial pride and insecurity; they then turn the tables by noting their Roman identities (16:37). In the wilderness, Philip shares the hopes of the gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch, whose complex identity continues to perplex interpreters. That is, the gospel finds a home wherever God has sent its witnesses.
In each case, the particularities of place and culture open up not only what the gospel is, but what the gospel might be. Willie James Jennings warns that it is the delocation of Christian theology, its removal from its context in a particular place and time, that created an opening for racialized thinking to infect and (re)shape Christian theology. 18 Counter to this racialized way of thinking, Acts can help us imagine that our differences are gifts from God, not problems to overcome or obstacles on the way to becoming God’s church. 19
In the end, we return to a critical interpretive question: How does narrative teach? How does narrative form believers and communities alike? Narrative is imagination, a way of seeing the world differently, a story that will hit us in an unexpected way not because it tells us precisely what to do but because it gives us new perspective. Narrative shows us a world full of the beautiful and the grotesque, the sublime and the mundane. Narrative is about giving us a God-tinged imagination that sees God’s face etched in the darkest corners of the world.
Luke contends that at the center of the gospel is a radical inclusivity, a profound hospitality for all, whether rich or poor, powerful or weak, whole or broken. Indeed, the gospel often subverts our expectations about who is rich or poor, powerful or weak, whole or broken. The gospel narrated in Luke-Acts does not simply seek to shape our behavior; rather, these narrations challenge our very assumptions about identity.
What does Luke-Acts imagine for people on the move today? Luke joins the large chorus of biblical texts that portray how faithfulness and migration are inextricably woven. Experiences of exile are part of the grammar of the stories of God’s faithfulness in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. There is a narrative coherence between the New Testament and Israel’s welcoming of strangers and others, for Israel too wandered the wilderness, Israel too was enslaved, Israel too tasted the bitter hope that sustains a people in exile (Exod 22:21, Deut 10:19).
Conclusion
Luke-Acts will not provide a simple answer to the complex questions about migration we face today. Yet it does provide an imaginative key: a welcoming God who embraces all kinds of people from all kinds of place. In these narratives, God does not merely tolerate the stranger but makes the stranger kin. In Lukan grammar, we might say that the reign of God is like the table fellowship Jesus joined and then transformed. These are tables of abundance and generosity and welcome. There is always more food. There is always one more chair. And the dinner guests? Well, they are a motley crew of sinner and righteous, stranger and kin. At that table, God’s embrace of both my neighbor and me is clear. If that’s the table God has set before us, then how should we welcome others to the tables God has given us? Even more challenging, what does it look like for people in dominant cultures to be included in the tables others have set? Again, Luke does not give simple instructions for such lives lived together. But the gospel does spark an imaginative idea of what could be, because in Jesus, God has already made it so.
There is also an imaginative key in noting how the gospel is on the move in Acts. From its opening verses, the narrative propels our protagonists into multi-cultural environs. From its opening verses, Acts calls disciples into spaces of diversity and difference. Who else could disciples find at the ends of the earth but Jews and gentiles of many and diverse kinds? From the first, the call to witness to the gospel is a call into multi-lingual spaces and the providence to understand and speak many languages, without expectation that everyone speak our language (Acts 2). Acts traces the gospel witness spreading into multi-cultural spaces where those diverse cultures are host to the good news in unexpected ways and into multi-ethnic spaces where difference is a gift rather than a curse.
As I have completed this essay, the fate of the children of undocumented immigrants (“dreamers”) and the program to keep them here (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA) is very much in doubt. Massive deportations are being threatened by certain members of Congress and the Trump administration. The biblical imagination outlined above is not just an academic exercise, an ethereal reading of ancient texts. Instead, such biblical imagination can energize a revolution of our thinking, our identities, even our politics. If the Bible is clear about anything, it is that we are called to welcome the exile, the refugee, and the stranger. Such a call draws us from the fear that our sins feed to a radical hospitality that is the very essence of the good news of Jesus. Unfortunately, our fear of the “other” is an easy political lever for our leaders to pull. Asking us to fear is easy; calling us to the welcome of the gospel is the work of God’s grace. Grace can reshape our communities. Luke-Acts does not provide legal prescriptions and judicial policies for dealing with our current and future crises around people on the move. But the theological imagination of welcome and abundance is a sure guide for us in these moments, a guide away from fear towards Jesus’s destabilizing hospitality, a hospitality that calls us all home.
Footnotes
1.
Luke Timothy Johnson, Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church: The Challenge of Luke-Acts to Contemporary Christians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 5.
2.
See e.g., Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1961), 18–94. For more recent work, see e.g., Matthew Sleeman, Geography and the Ascension Narrative in Acts, SNTSMS 146 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
3.
A number of the parables unique to the Third Gospel are found in the travel narrative; they also turn out be some of the most memorable parables too. Such include the parables of the Good Samaritan (10:30–37), the woman searching for a lost coin (15:8–10), the prodigal son (15:11–32), and Lazarus and the unnamed rich man (16:19–31).
4.
On meals in Luke-Acts, see inter alia Justo L. González, The Story Luke Tells: Luke’s Unique Witness to the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 77–91; Robert J. Karris, Eating Your Way through Luke’s Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006); Jerome H. Neyrey, “Ceremonies in Luke-Acts: The Case of Meals and Table Fellowship,” in The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, ed. Jerome H. Neyrey (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 361–87.
5.
See e.g., Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 106; Dennis E. Smith, “Greco-Roman Meal Customs,” ABD 4:650–3.
6.
On this point, I rely on the work of Greg Carey, Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). Too many readers have missed key aspects of this story and especially the significance of the term “sinner.” First, this story gets drawn into a discussion of long-mistaken assertions that this woman was a sinner because she was a prostitute. Of course, Luke never specifies the nature of her sin or the source of her community’s rejection. Apparently, it matters very little to Luke what she has done to deserve this opprobrium; it matters more who her neighbors assume her to be. That we are so interested and quick to fill in this seeming gap in Lukan storytelling says much more about us than it does about this pericope. Carey, 14 notes, “… her label [as a sinner] does not necessarily indicate a pattern of immoral behavior. Instead, it indicates that she does not conform to some expectations of her particular cultural environment. Even if she has such a pattern of behavior, we still may not assume—as much of church tradition has assumed—that she chose sin because of its intrinsic attraction. Perhaps her identity as a sinner results from factors far beyond her reasonable control.”
7.
Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 666–73.
8.
Cf. Luke 3:12–13, where John the Baptist exhorts tax collectors not to leave their profession but to fulfill their duties honestly.
9.
Here, I lean on the notion of lo cotidiano (best translated as “the quotidian,” “everyday experience,” or “daily life”) developed by Ada María Isasi-Díaz in Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), esp. 66–73. She writes, “From the very beginning of mujerista theology, we have insisted that the source of our theological enterprise is the lived-experience of Hispanic women. We have insisted on the capacity of Latinas to reflect on their everyday life and the struggle to survive against very difficult obstacles. When in mujerista theology we talk about liberative daily experience, about Hispanic women’s experience of struggling every day, we are referring to lo cotidiano” (66). That is, Isasi-Díaz locates the center of theological reflection on the everyday existence of those Latinas who experience so much suffering and oppression. For those of us not a part of these communities, we must heed carefully the testimony of such privileged theological spaces. But lo cotidiano takes us one step further: “As an epistemological category lo cotidiano goes well beyond adding another perspective and points to the need to change the social order by taking into consideration the way Latinas see and understand reality” (69). That is, lo cotidiano drives us to the everyday as a vital site of divine revelation but also asks us to claim the particularities of our own theological perspectives most seriously, noting especially when theology ought to drive us towards radical social change.
10.
For further and most helpful reflection along these lines, see Jessicah Krey Duckworth, Wide Welcome: How the Unsettling Presence of Newcomers Can Save the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013).
11.
Abraham is remembered for the hospitality he gave to three sojourning strangers who were emissaries of God: “The
12.
Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts, ANTC (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 65.
13.
E.g., see Sean D. Burke, Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013); Marianne B. Kartzow and Halvor Moxnes, “Complex Identities: Ethnicity, Gender and Religion in the Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26–40), Religion & Theology 17 (2010): 184–204; Clarice Martin, “A Chamberlain’s Journey and the Challenges of Interpretation for Liberation,” Semeia 47 (1989): 105–35; Scott Shauf, “Locating the Eunuch: Characterization and Narrative Context in Acts 8:26–40,” CBQ 71 (2009): 762–75; and Brittany E. Wilson, “‘Neither Male nor Female’: The Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26–40,” NTS 60 (2014): 403–22.
14.
See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/United Bible Societies, 1994), 315–16.
15.
Johnson, Prophetic Jesus, 102.
16.
See Eric D. Barreto, Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in Acts 16 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 119–37
17.
See Eric D. Barreto, Jacob D. Myers, and Nikki Young, In Tongues of Mortals and Angels (Minneapolis: Fortress, forthcoming).
18.
Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). For a reflection on how Jennings’s work might shape the study of Acts, see Joshua W. Jipp, “Hospitable Barbarians: Luke’s Ethnic Reasoning in Acts 28:1–10,” JTS 68 (2017): 23–45.
19.
See Eric D. Barreto, “Negotiating Difference: Theology and Ethnicity in the Acts of the Apostles,” WW 31 (2011): 129–37.