Increasingly these days, I hear people talking about their desire to ‘welcome the stranger.’ It is a phrase that has caught on in church circles – for good reason – and one that is used often in relation to the 300,000 Hong Kong citizens with British National Overseas (BNO) status who have begun settling in the UK.
I t is one thing to provide an initial and enthusiastic welcome. It is another to embrace a stranger fully. I say this as a fourth generation British-born, Chinese person who has discovered first hand what it is like to be welcomed into a church and yet remain a ‘perpetual foreigner.’1
At the beginning of each year, we celebrate Epiphany – Jesus’ manifestation to the Gentiles – an account of three strangers from the East bearing gifts. Growing up as a child of East-Asian heritage in the UK, I inevitably found myself typecast as one of the three wise men – never an angel, shepherd, or heaven forbid, Joseph – always as an exotic stranger from the East. As a little boy, this passage didn’t feel like good news to me. It was an annual reminder that I was an outsider, a ‘perpetual foreigner’.
But as I have grown to embrace both sides of my British and Chinese identity, my reading of Matthew 2:1-12 has changed. My hope is that some of these observations will help us embrace strangers more fully and avoid shallow gestures of welcome that can result in feelings of frustration and alienation.
Matthew presents this passage as a three-act drama: Search, Disillusionment, and Discovery. This scheme is packed with pithy theological statements that have contemporary relevance for us, particularly as we prepare to welcome those from Hong Kong – and indeed other places – into our communities.
Act I Search
