Fred
Vergara.03.16.2014. Ashville Airport (North Carolina)
Contextualization is
a term that refers to application of the biblical scriptures into the context
in which people find themselves. And it is amazing how people who read the
Bible against the background of their particular contexts have found answers to
their basic questions.
A case in point in
the story of Exodus. For a long time, we have been accustomed to looking at
this biblical account as a story of liberation. Many Christian writers and
theologians present exodus as a model of how God favors the oppressed against
the oppressors. The famous movie The Ten Commandments present Exodus as a
fascinating drama of how God called Moses to set God’s people free. The
remaining biblical account tells of Joshua, Moses’ successor, who finally
crossed the river Jordan and entered Canaan, the promise Land, a land flowing
with milk and honey.
Much of our
understanding of Exodus are gleaned from the context of the Israelites but what about that from
the context of the Canaanites?
In modern Israel, the Palestinians are those who
identify with the Canaanites and they look at the Exodus story, not as a
liberation story but as a story of terror. In his book, Towards a Palestinian Liberation Theology, Naim Ateek who happens
to be a Palestinian Christian (in fact an Anglican priest), cursorily examines
how from his own personal experience and from the experience of his people, it
is the Palestinians who need liberation from the very same people who claim a
holy heritage as God’s chosen people. I
was in Palestine in 2008 and have seen the oppressive situation of the
Palestinians in contrast to the power structure of the Jewish state.
Close to our yard,
the Native Americans are also reinterpreting Exodus from their own context. An
indigenous writer, Roland Allen Warrior,
in an article, “Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians” also affirmed that like
the biblical Canaanites, Native Americans also suffered conquest and genocide
from those who escaped from the Old World and laid claim to the promised land
of the New World. While the English and European Pilgrims ended up with the taking possession of the
“land of the free and the home of the brave”; the Native Americans ended up in
losing their lands.
And there is still
one interesting contextualization from my own racial-ethnic context. Filipino
Americans are finding resonance to the views articulated by Palestinian and
Native American theologians but with a twist. A Filipino theologian, Eleazar
Fernandez, is developing a narrative which interprets the immigration of the
Filipinos to the United States not an exodus to Canaan but an exodus to Egypt. Filipinos
were once colonials of the United States. For fifty years from 1898 to 1946,
America took over from Spain as a colonial master of the Philippine Islands.
The first wave of
Filipinos in America in early 1900’s
were young males from Luzon (particularly Ilocanos) who were recruited to work
in the farms of California and Hawaii and the canneries of Alaska. Like most
people of color, they also suffered under “the sweltering heat of racism” and
were treated like second-class citizens. Due to the anti-miscegenation law,
they were not allowed to marry Caucasians and most of them ended up bachelors
until they died.
The second wave of
Filipino-American immigrants in post World War II, were U.S. navy men and War
Brides of United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). The U.S. War in
the Pacific against Japanese Imperial forces endeared Filipinos to the
Americans for their gallantry and valor. The succeeding Filipino Immigration
following the 1965 Immigration reform brought Filipino professionals to the
United States and increased their number through family reunification. It is
estimated that there are around four (4) million Filipinos in the United
States, majority of them have become American citizens.
The four million
Filipinos in America is part of the 11million Filipinos in global diaspora who
together send around $34 billion annually to their native land, an amount
constituting some 14% of the Philippines Gross National Product (GNP). Given
the fact that Filipinos abroad (America, Asia and Europe) send not only money
but also goods delivered through hundreds of thousands of Balikbayan (“back to country”) boxes, it is no wonder that the
Philippine government would often call Pinoys
(other name for Filipinos outside the Philippines) as their modern heroes.
The situation of the
overseas Filipinos is both a garden of roses and a bed of nails. Suffering and
hope intersect in the lives of overseas Pinoys
especially those who work as health care providers, domestic helpers,
construction workers, factory assembly line workers. Many are victims of human
trafficking and all kinds of human exploitation. Tremendous pastoral care is
needed especially to families who are separated due to global migration and
resettlements.
In the context of
Filipino American liberation theology, the narrative that fits, according
to Eleazar Fernandez, is not Moses
leading the oppressed Israelites from Egypt but Jacob bringing his family to
Egypt. In this case, the promised land of Canaan is the Philippines (Lupang Hinirang) which has fallen on
hard times due to centuries of colonization and exploitation from various
empires.
As Israel had been colonized by Syrian, Assyrian and Babylonian
Empires in the past; Philippines too was colonized by Spain, America and Japan
empires. For Filipino Americans struggling in the United States, North America
is Egyptian empire where Jacob and his family were reunited by their son,
Joseph, who successfully interpreted the American Dream. While some of them
share in the prosperity of their adopted empire, many Filipino Americans are struggling and hoping
to one day return to the promised land of their birth, hoping that by that
time, it would already be a land flowing with milk and honey. Does it sound like wishful thinking?
I guess the point of
biblical contextualization is not necessarily to negate the narrative from one
context, such as the Hebrew narrative of God as a liberator God, but to discover and bring out other peoples’
narratives, because the progressive
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, ultimately points out that the God of
liberation is not just the God of liberation of one elect people. As a matter
of fact, Jesus as the Son of God also became the Son of Man so that we will all
become sons and daughters of the one true God.
The God incarnate in Jesus
Christ is therefore not a tribal God but a universal God who loves all the
tribes. He came not to liberate one tribe and condemn the others but that He
came so that that all tribes may have life abundantly shared by all (John
10:10).
The Rev. Dr. Winfred Vergara is
missioner for Asiamerica Ministries of the Episcopal Church based in New York
City. He also serves as Priest-in-Charge of St. James Episcopal Church in
Elmhurst (Queens), New York. He can be contacted at wvergara@episcopalchurch.org and
Facebook “Fred Vergara.” Any village theological thinker is invited.
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