Whitenessing the Gospel?

The story of Christianity’s arrival among the Karens is well known in missionary accounts. In the mid-1800s, Judson, a Baptist missionary from America, came to Burma. He had no or so little success in converting or building ekklesia (churches) in Rangoon. Burmese were not too receptive to believing in the Christian God. However, one day, a Karen servant (to a Burmese) wandered under Judson’s Rangoon home, where the servant found a Bible tract. He struggled to interpret it, then realized he had the lottery-winning-ticket-revelation in the tract: The holy book that the Karen people had long lost, had returned! The legend goes that God had two sons. The older son was the Karen nation. The younger son was the white brother. God gave the Karen a book of law long ago. But because the Karen were careless, the book was lost, sending the Karen into a state of guilt and a great hope that one day God would redeem them by returning the lost book of God’s law through the messenger of the white people (younger brother) who would return from the sea. From the time of this tract’s discovery, the Christian message was spread, welcomed, and embraced by the Karen, fully empowering their own sense of mission. Missionaries from America were not needed. Only the book – the Bible, the lee saw see. And the Spirit that continues to flow through and empower people. In the refugee camp last week, I met four American visitors who had come to the camp's Baptist Church to “share Jesus”. The guests stayed for four days, and while they didn’t speak Karen language, they carefully taught the Bible, sang hymns, and brought supplies where children could make crafts based on the story of Jonah. Perhaps those who came to ‘teach the Gospel’ came to help educate others back in America about the plight of the Karen. Perhaps they wanted to learn from the Karen about the political situation in Burma. And, perhaps their goal was to missionize or strengthen the Christian believers who are already here. The missionary impulse is understandable, particularly rooted in the external words of Matthew 28, the Great Commission and placed within us – as all of us were created for a priesthood, a holy purpose, to be apostles – ones sent out on a mission to bring about His kingdom into the world. But, on can only hope that these four American visitors recognize that the choir already exists here, that they were teaching or preaching to it, in the Karen who already know and live the Christian message. There is a mission spirit here - a training school for those willing to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, albeit through the perfect holy disguise of “resettled refugees with I-94 forms”. So many Karen faithful may go, carrying their experience of political exile, their knowledge of a transformative self-determination, their experience of the Holy Spirit’s sense of resiliency, welcome and community. That is, they may go to America, Canada, Australia as Christ’s missionaries, and share the Gospel – and if they must use words – with those of other nationalities and tongues and perhaps help Americans, Canadians, Australians among so many others - rediscover that they had lost a divinely-given book that would one day be brought back to them – by a brother with a “well-founded fear”, disembarking a plane at JFK, who asks to restart life, find a job if even cleaning rooms in a hotel, washing dishes in a restaurant; find a school to connect their children to their dreams, someone looking to understand the food choices at Wal-Mart and all the while help the world learn a common holy call to be free, to be one, to be love in this world.