Lunch and the Passion: Reflections on an Evangelical Reception Center for Refugees in Greece

A Prelude: The Context

As families fled in terror from internal war and religious extremists in Syria and Iraq in 2015 and 2016, Christians in Greece responded to meet their physical needs and to help people on their way (see Markoviti 2018). International organizations and ministries at the forefront of the response to refugees were careful to put policies in place that show how to respect the people with whom they worked. One of these policies was (and still is) to focus on meeting the physical needs for safety, food, and shelter without an explicit evangelism because of context. Many, though not all, volunteers respond out of deeply held convictions of their Christian faith while respecting the faith of those they encounter. This diakonia issues a “common call to witness and serve” across areas of difference with an understanding of mutuality and reciprocity between all those involved (Nordstokke 2014, 58). The demonstration of the Gospel is accomplished by reaffirming the humanity of people fleeing from war and the horrible conditions they encounter in transit countries by meeting basic needs.

Yet there remains another perspective: Rather than considering migrants as people in themselves, hosts may consider migrants as recipients of care. This expression of care reflects an earlier understanding of diakonia shaped by a 20^th-century understanding of service (Nordstokke 2014, 56). This can put migrants on the defensive in the struggle to be recognized as human beings and to be treated with dignity throughout the process of migration, which rather than softening often increases when they have resettled in a new place (Sander 2015, 36). In yet another response, some Christians take the view that the most significant way to demonstrate care is to tell people who are suffering about the hope they have themselves found in the Gospel of Christ. Is it possible to both share the hope of the Gospel and to meet the immediate needs of war-weary migrants without reducing them to mere recipients of care?

This question grew out of the context of one particular city in northern Greece in March 2019. While engaged in an ongoing study on lived religion among migrants in order to better understand how people practice their faith and their daily habits in a new context after migration, I spent some weeks in Greece. Having previously worked in various care capacities with adolescents who have migrated internationally, I also faced the challenges of resettlement with teens and families. Discovering specific ways to embody the love of Christ in order to help newcomers thrive motivates my research. However, the tension created between meeting physical needs and sharing the Gospel became crystalized in the eyes of the 8-year-old girl.

My research uses the methods of interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the lived religious experiences of migrant adolescents. During the course of the month I spent in Greece, I also interviewed several people involved in direct care with migrants. Although these adults were not the focus of my research, they provided context as they were involved in antitrafficking measures, in direct services, in church entities, or in government entities either as employees in formal capacities or as volunteers in informal ones. Because of the size of the city and the relatively few organizations involved, the city shall remain unnamed in this article. This group of people who were already engaged in work with refugees, expressed compassion for the situation of those fleeing war and violence. The people with whom I interacted expressed an intense desire to help.

Of course, these attitudes toward newcomers and the challenges they represented were nuanced and not uniformly positive. Some expressed frustration with the steady stream of new arrivals and the waning financial support coming from outside of Greece – both private and political. Fewer volunteers were arriving with fewer tangible goods and less money. One ministry closed their doors during my stay because of a lack of financial resources. Another struggled to provide clothing from a dwindling supply. These local ministries sought to follow a well-worn path in evangelical circles: meet physical needs (a temporal need) in the hope that people may be open to spiritual things (an eternal need) as well. Based in part on Maslow’s concept of the hierarchy of human needs (see the article “A Theory of Human Motivation,” 1943), this concept prioritizes meeting physical needs so that people have sufficient space to think of their existential needs. While Maslow’s theory has been contested, it continues to be operationalized in ministry practice, as does the perspective that Christian social work is separated into givers and receivers. This, then, is paired with a perspective of the eschatological importance of the recipient accepting Christ as their Savior. Interlacing the attempt to meet physical needs along with spiritual needs can create unintended consequences. When the strong melody of giving physical aid is interwoven with a countermelody of meeting the eternal need for salvation, the hope is that, together, they become a composition of compassion for the whole person. The reality in evangelical ministry is that, in various times and places, the one or the other melody is emphasized, but rarely is one present without the other.

This model creates several problems if it is employed only to earn the right to share the Gospel. First, it ultimately treats the Gospel as a transaction. People “pay” for the goods they receive by listening to your story. Second, it reinforces oppression and power dynamics rather than expressing compassion, an issue highlighted both in postcolonial theology and in ecumenical and prophetic diakonia (Nordstokke 2014, 59). Crowds with needs must be controlled by the ones with resources, and since it is important to have order, it is much easier and more efficient to divide the volunteers and the clients. So the thinking goes. This keeps the emphasis on the goods received and does not engender relationship. Third, it does not recognize that, for refugees, these needs are met in a context of continuing uncertainty. It insists that having “reached safety” refugees are free to get on with the business of rebuilding their lives. This approach is enmeshed in cultural assumptions and preferences without significant reflection on the culture(s) of those they attempt to serve.

Background – A Brief History of Violence in Mission

The habit of marching ahead with the Good News without regard for local culture dates back many centuries. It is recognizable during the expansion of European Christendom, which combined Christianity with colonialism. It is a familiar tune. There was pressure as part of Spain’s project toward “achieving the greatest possible effectiveness in the transcendent process of evangelizing the natives” (Rivera 1992, 222). In other words, in addition to amassing gold, the conquest of the New World was expected to amass converts as well. And to achieve the expected volume, efficiency came to take precedence. Luis Rivera writes that this led to two points of view on “conversion”: “evangelizing conquest” by force or “missionary action” by attraction (ibid., 226). While both points of view were engaged, the more efficient means of force became preferred. One of the glaring problems with the whole scheme, Rivera points out, is that forced conversion as an act of Christian evangelization “became, ironically, the main barrier to the redemption of the natives” (ibid., 254).

Although it may be easy to reproach the Spanish Conquistador, postcolonial theologian Nestor Medina points out that Protestant actions in the New World often relied on similar reasoning to convert the indigenous peoples they encountered (Medina 2018, 153). Later, as North America became dominant in sending missionaries to the “uncivilized” areas of the world, there was a “blending of cultural theologies and Christianity into the work of evangelization” (ibid., 155–156). This unacknowledged mixture of culture and the Gospel became “an effective mechanism for imperial and Western expansion” (Medina 2018, 156). Missionaries, well into the 19th century, willingly and explicitly converted cultures as part of bringing the message of the Gospel. Here, “mission” is understood as expanding the Kingdom of God through religious conversion. This is reflected in popular hymns that use the language of force and are often still used today as themes of missionary efforts, e.g., “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus2 (Duffield 1858) or “Onward Christian Soldiers” (Baring-Gould 1865).

Much has been done to demonstrate that this intermixing of mission, evangelism, and colonization resulted in a complex exchange with both positive and negative outcomes. Michael Jennings (2008) writes of the benefits of rural healthcare; Tomila Lankina and Lullit Getachew write about mission schools providing education for girls (2013). There are many other developmental and justice issues which mission efforts, intertwined with diaconal care, addressed. Diakonia, in its theoretical position incorporates both witness and service. Like mission, expanding the Kingdom of God, is often expressed in both words and acts. If mission is understood as expanding or embodying the Kingdom of God in the present, then it experienced and expressed through acts of justice and care.

As we continue to explore the angles of the encounter with the 8-year-old girl, that experience was also complex, engaging her in both positive and negative ways. What makes the sensitivity to postcolonial theology applicable here is that cultural destruction was, at the time, not recognized as violence. However, during the late 20^th century a shift began in American Protestant mission organizations to demonstrate respect for local cultures and to empower local leaders rather than sending Western missionaries. This shift has been working its way through American-based missionary organizations. A similar shift has occurred in diakonia, where reciprocity and advocacy became more common (Nordstokke 2014, 58–59).

Even throughout the 20th century, violence committed within Western cultures in the name of Christianity was denied, excused, or, worse, justified. To focus on just one example, in The Cross and The Lynching Tree James Cone writes of the painful reality of the suffering perpetuated by white American Christian theology over the centuries. He notes in the Introduction that for many the cross, “the symbol of salvation has been detached from any reference to the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings” (Cone 2011, xiv). Cone explains that in the mid-20th century white American theologians did express the need for social justice as an outcome of theology, but at the same time they advocated that blacks in America needed patience so that justice could be worked out naturally in history. This need for justice was detached from the personal experience of the theologians. Cone writes specifically about the destructive force of white supremacy in the American church both in the lynching tree of the past and in various current manifestations. Without diminishing the intensity and importance of seeing this force at work within America, this same destructive force also has implications in missions.

The ideology of white supremacy often runs through America in the guise of cultural supremacy. This is then expressed in missions as the need to “civilize” or to “develop” a culture (Medina 2018, 188). But rather than being curtailed through efforts of social justice, it is enabled by a comfortable Western theology that waits patiently for a future justice (Cone 2011, 30–63). In this view, perfect justice is unachievable; those under oppression or experiencing suffering just need more patience until God changes culture at some point in the future (Cone 2011, 70–73). During the 20th century this led to missionary endeavors supporting justice issues that enhanced a Western civilizational model (hospitals, education). Despite the good done, this stance is also open to critique: Christian missionary efforts often upheld power structures that oppressed their fellow humans. Today, practical and postcolonial theologians listen for the strains of supremacy or complacency in order to make them plain in theology. Hyeran Kim-Cragg (2018, 118) points out that those “who represent and the ones who are represented is a distinction often made in the contact zone according to who has power.” Awareness of who is arranging the notes matters. The power to define the newcomer as “other” in the context of local ministry often goes unacknowledged.

Western colonial expansion, missionary endeavors, and white supremacy in the American church may not seem to fit the context of a Greek ministry to refugees. This is certainly a valid criticism. However, the distribution ministry in Greece where I encountered this 8-year-old was not being directed by locals, and often not even the day-to-day activities were being led by Greek nationals.

Back to Greece, 2019

Of the six organizations I met with, three were run by Greek nationals and three were run by immigrants. However, only one Greek-run organization relied on local funding. Of the remaining five organizations, two relied on funding from a government entity, the other three relied on donations from Western Christians outside of Greece (primarily from Germany and North America). Each of the six organizations was different in structure from the others. Two were specifically churches reaching out to migrants: One held a separate evangelistic service for migrants and the other invited migrants to join their Sunday morning service. Both churches worked toward helping meet physical needs for shelter, food, and clothing as they could. One organization worked with migrants to learn microenterprise skills; one worked to help families integrate and find employment; one worked on creating interaction and dialogue between various ethnic groups; and one was a needs-distribution ministry. Each organization, of course, had both strengths and weaknesses. It was one of those places that focused on meeting physical needs that will be the focus of the rest of the article.

Meeting the Needs

The distribution ministry relied not only on international donations, but also on international volunteers. The three staff members were Greek. Most jobs were filled by volunteers who were locally living internationals – students, expats, missionaries. Some positions were staffed by volunteers staying for 30 to 90 days. This may be a reflection of the lack of volunteerism throughout Greece (Markoviti 2018, 123). During my volunteer training, it was clear that the priority was on the orderly distribution of goods, and only if there was time could I try to talk to the “clients.” I worked as a volunteer in order to enter one of the spaces where migrant and host cultures mingle and interact, to observe and then interview participants. The ministry offered food, clothing, laundry, showers, sewing, sporadic childcare, and free wi-fi access during specific hours – all needed things and important resources for families. The work began in 2015 with the initial surge of refugees from Syria. Now, 4 years later, the number of arriving newcomers was considerably lower, as were reportedly the donations. Clothing, bed linens, towels, other household goods, even maintenance for the washing machines and showers, were very difficult to come by. While bread was donated locally, the main source of money for rent and salaries came from a single source in the United States.

This meant that the ministry was accountable to an outside organization. Accountability can be very good, but in this case they were responsible for efficiency, which stands in contrast to the often informal “official” structures (Markoviti 2018, 123). Even with little used clothing or household goods to give, they had to show a steady number of people helped in order to maintain the budget they had. Doors were opened only at a certain time and closed promptly. People were welcomed and then called by their number rather than their names, in the interest of efficiency. All of this combined to form a clear demarcation between the volunteers and those being served. These policies were implemented at the behest of the American sponsor.

Clearly, not all sponsor situations come with such heavy constraints, nor do all ministries to migrants in the United States behave this way. To put this in perspective, I have been involved with two different government-funded resettlement agencies and several locally run church projects for refugees in the United States, where there was great concern with treating people with dignity. Volunteers were trained to speak to people using their names; deep, reflective listening was prioritized over other goals of service. These small differences established a sense of dignity and made room for warmth even when not every need could be met.

At this ministry in Greece, the American funding source demanded one very strict condition: The Jesus film must be played on loop every time the doors are opened. There are screens mounted to the walls in every space – the dining area, the clothing area, the childcare area, and so on. Every screen is networked to the same DVD. I spoke with one of the staff members about the video, asking why from time to time they don’t just play children’s music in the children’s area. He explained that they have no choice. If they stop playing the movie, they won’t receive the funding they need. Of all the issues involved with this situation, I want to concentrate here on this one issue: The visual violence of the torture and crucifixion of Christ in the film. Does the film communicate hope or love to people who have been traumatized by religious violence and are not already Christians?

Most of the time I spent at the distribution ministry was spent talking with children and mothers in different areas. I rarely spent time in the main hall. But on my final shift there, I was trying to communicate in the main hall over the sound of the video. About an hour before closing, a new family arrived. The father was very proud about having rescued and cared for his three children, finding them a new home. As we sat discussing the challenges of being in a new culture, I realized the 8-year-old had frozen with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. A look of terror was fixed at a spot over my shoulder. I turned and saw on the screen behind me the scene at Golgotha: a bloodied and bruised Jesus-figure lay with blood pouring down his face from the crown of thorns digging into his head. The sound of agony accompanied the sound of the nails pounding into the cross. I put my body between the young girl and the screen.

Recovering after a full minute, her gaze focused on me. I gently asked her if she knew the story in the movie. She didn’t. I asked her if she thought the man had done good things or bad things to be treated that way. She mumbled he must be bad. I nodded and then told her that, yes, it looked like he had done bad things, but the whole point of the story is that he hadn’t. Rather, the point of the story was that he was in fact very, very good. After a pause, the conversation turned to other things. But the vacant look of terror on her young face still haunts and accuses me: How could people invite her family, who had suffered religious violence, to witness this graphic religious violence and call it good?

The Centrality of the Cross; The Reality of Violence

The most difficult and obvious problem is the very centrality of the cross to the Gospel. You cannot just leave it out of the story. The cross – the wooden beams to which the bruised and bloodied body of Jesus of Nazareth was nailed – is clearly central to the understanding of Christ, salvation, and redemption. As a physical artifact, the cross communicates the injustice and the violence of the mob as well as the political and the religious systems as recounted in the crucifixion story. James Cone does not shy away from the brutality of the crucifixion of Christ, despite the brutality of lynching. He explains that it is impossible to understand Jesus as Savior apart from Jesus’ experience of mob justice. It is that experience of the mob which can begin to touch the depth of fear and oppression in the experience of those who themselves have been subjected to mob justice. And yet, he also states that it requires a “powerful imagination to see both tragedy and beauty, futility and redemption in the cross …” (2011, 37). This is the struggle. How does a survivor of trauma – “the suffering that remains” (Rambo 2016, 4) – engage in such powerful imagination?

In many of the trauma-filled stories James Cone relates about lynchings in America, there was no time or permission to speak of oppression and violence – neither in a general nor in a specific way. Violent oppression was not merely the context, it was the very air many blacks breathed. And yet, black American Christian faith provided a shelter, an outlet, a sense of hope, dignity, and future. In the preaching there was no shying away from the cross – it was central to the message, along with the acts of brutality around it. It captured the imagination.

Studies on trauma reveal that a lack of imagination is one of the responses humans can have to stressful, traumatic events. For survivors, “(t)rauma reconfigures the imagination in such a way as to disable a person’s ability to form life giving and coherent narratives that lead to greater openness and vitality” (Howard 2019, 233). Howard points to the need for a safe place where trauma can be acknowledged, met with imagination and processed into meaning: “… a core dimension of the therapeutic process is the creation of a safe emotional home, in which shame can be recognized and detoxified, and previously dissociated aspects of the self and self-experience can safely reside and be known” (ibid., 235).

Perhaps one of the strengths of the black American churches James Cone describes is that many were/are just such a place. Churches continue to provide a sense of safety outside of the ordinariness that oppression has become for black Americans. In this way, the violence of the crucifixion is the means through which is it possible to engage the imagination to create coherent narratives. Cone remarks that the good news of the Christian Gospel “is a transcendent reality that lifts our spirits to a world far removed from the suffering of this one” (Cone 2011, 155). This is possible because God personally “must know in a special way what poor blacks are suffering in America because God’s son was lynched in Jerusalem” (ibid., 158). The power of the cross is that it offers not only a spiritual balm but also “a powerful liberating presence” in the “struggle for justice” (ibid., 155). Since God understands suffering in a personal way as well, churches offer space for a community to find understanding, where it is possible to recover from trauma and then do something about it. Shelly Rambo (2016, 4), whose theological work focuses on trauma and religion, advocates for a posttraumatic public theology that seeks to accompany people as they “orient,” “integrate,” make, or “restore connections,” and then incorporate the experience into “one’s life.” For a person living in an oppressive social system, this process is difficult, although they are navigating within a familiar culture.

By applying the interpretation of the violence of the cross to the situation of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, there emerges some similarity shared with situation of black Americans described by James Cone, in that both experienced violence at the hands of others. These acts of violence were rationalized as necessary to contain or convince the population. Those in power were permitted to act violently because of their position with God. The intensity of violence carried out with religious rationalization among the populations in Syria and Iraq happened from an outside group, the Islamic State. There have also been acts of brutality from the government and their allies. So, there is a similarity in structural violence, but there is also a distinction between violence condoned by that structure and violence that occurs as a result of war. This is not an attempt to reconcile or minimize these differences. Instead, it is an attempt to understand whether one experience which relates violent oppression with the cross may help to show the way to relate violent oppression with the cross for another context.

In response to the questions in the eyes of the 8-year-old child, two matters still need to be explored in greater detail: How does one communicate the love of the Gospel and the brutality of the cross to people who are not Christians but who have been traumatized by religious violence? Is it appropriate to present the visual representation of the passion to children and families traumatized by violence?

The idea of traumatic memory, which is intimately connected with the Gospel message and its proclamation, is not only found in race relations in America. The connection is also found in the memoria passionis of the German political theologian Johann Baptist Metz. He contends that “the memory of the crucified Lord stands at the heart of this faith, a specific memoria passionis, which forms the basis of the promise of a freedom that will come for everyone. In the memory of his suffering it is the future of freedom that is being remembered” (Metz/Ashley 2011, 107). This centrality of the cross and the active memory of suffering reverberate in the position of James Cone above. Both theologians caution that the cross and the suffering of humanity are vitally linked together – so much so that Metz is quite insistent that “Christianity does not introduce God into the struggle for the future after the fact, as a sort of ‘God of the gaps.’ Rather, it tries to make the memory of the crucified Lord, this particular memoria passionis, present as a dangerous memory with the social systems …” (ibid., 105). This dangerous memory of the cross inspires action against the violence and oppression in a specific context. The suffering of Christ is the embodiment of both the history of suffering and the hope of active resistance. People who have power in social systems can be inspired to action by the dangerous memory of the cross.

In Metz’s work, Christians engage the memoria passionis explicitly for the purpose of freedom. In Cone’s work, the mob violence of the cross and lynching are linked in redemption, where further action works to redeem the context – not just the individual. Both approaches to suffering and violence could be applied in the context of work among people who have fled war. The cross as the memoria passionis offers legitimate space for meaning making for those who have experienced trauma.

When considered for its liberative action, the bold willingness to remember and be moved viscerally by the pain of others “tries to keep the Christian idea of redemption as a dangerous-liberating idea of a redeemed freedom alive narratively, and to protect it argumentatively within the systems of our so-called emancipatory world” (Metz/Ashley, 2011, 127). This stance introduces the possibility that Christians can hold social systems accountable, “that social power and political dominion ought not be simply accepted, but rather they have to continually justify themselves anew in the face of concrete suffering” (ibid., 110). Standing alongside those who have suffered at the hands of others forces one to consider the power structures that enabled such large-scale destruction. There is a grandness to the scheme where Christianity must “struggle” so that “all persons” can stand as whole persons “in solidarity before God” and refuse to “pass off” those “already socially empowered as the religious subject” (ibid., 213). Christianity is called to address the issue of the redemption of persons and society in large ways and to do so in a way that is not again oppressive.

But what about the personal aspects of trauma? There are places where “dangerous memories, memories that challenge” are present in exceedingly personal ways (Metz/Ashley 2011, 105). And, yes, there are ways in which practical theology needs to engage these matters theoretically. But what of the times when the dangerous memory of Christianity “sharpens a social and political conscience in the interest of the suffering of others” in a personal context like diaconal care (ibid., 110)?

Clearly, the motivation to address personal suffering by the American funder shows a “sharpened” conscience as they directed substantial resources toward relieving suffering. Still, what is a good practice of communicating the reality of the memoria passionis and the violence of the cross when the listener is not Christian? The theologian Jonathan Tan (2012, 60) writes that in 2012 the Asian Bishops Conferences decided to make “a clear and unequivocal repudiation of the temptation to proselyte among non-Christian migrants in their most vulnerable state.” In this view, suffering is addressed and both physical and spiritual needs are met. The Gospel is shared when there is a direct question. Otherwise, the care provided demonstrates the Gospel by reaffirming the dignity of all persons. It seems the two options (aid earns the right to tell – respectful service earns the chance to be heard) are at odds. Both seek to meet physical needs, both long to meet spiritual needs, and yet neither response explicitly takes the experience of trauma into account.

Survivors of traumatic experiences have physical needs; safety is fundamental to them. They also need to “incorporate that experience into a framework of meaning – to make sense of it …” (Rambo 2016, 4). The lack of permission and space to incorporate traumatic experiences does further violence to identity (Metz/Ashley 2011, 75). There is an opportunity for providing a space for meaning making, but this comes with a caution. Deborah van Deusen Hussinger (2015, 13) observes that “… the cross becomes Gospel for the traumatized only if they are able to see there (in the cross) a divine love willing to bear what is unbearable …” It is possible for a trauma-informed, liberative Gospel to communicate divine love in the clear proclamation and enactment of interrelatedness in the suffering of the cross.

This then begs the question: Does a film help people who have experienced trauma see divine love and meaning in the cross?

“Seeing” Jesus on Film

Since the earliest silent movies, film has been a powerful medium. It suspends our disbelief; it captures our imagination; it has the power to transform our thinking through empathetic mirror neurons that react as though the story were happening to us. It is no wonder that film is a used as a tool in communicating the story of Jesus. Reimund Bieringer, a New Testament theologian, and Didier Pollefeyt, a theologian of interreligious dialogue and religious education, analyzed several film adaptations of Christ for their usefulness in communicating the Gospel in religious education (Bieringer/Pollefeyt 2006, 32). They recognize that using film engages various areas of the mind: logic, linguistic, visual, musical, relational, kinesthetic, psychological, and spiritual (ibid., 32).

However, this power is not without risk. Bieringer/Pollefeyt caution that we must not lose sight of the difference between the genre of the Gospel writers and modern film scriptwriters. The very details which engage the various aspects of the senses, and even the concept of “witnessing Jesus,” are not present in the texts. The result is that film reflects the view, the “ideology,” of the filmmaker in their own present context (Bieringer/Pollefeyt 2006, 34). This ideology becomes apparent in the selection of stories and parables, the camera angles, the roles of Jesus as “teacher, priest, and prophet,” and whether these roles are expressed more or less fully than Jesus as “miracleworker” (ibid., 37).

In addition to the ideology of the filmmaker, the Bible knowledge of the audience must be taken into account. Bieringer/Pollefeyt (2006, 45) caution against introducing people with little to no Bible knowledge to Jesus through a film. One danger is that people will automatically interpret Jesus in the Bible through the lens of the film. Another danger is that the Jesus film-character, who seems to seek out violence, can distort the message of salvation, prioritizing the violence over the resurrection. In the end, the theological premises in films are presented to the audience members who, consciously or not, accept or reject them along with the movie (ibid., 63).

This is precisely the problem for the way the film is used in the distribution ministry. It is played endlessly with no direct correlation to the lives of the people witnessing the movie the way one watches advertisements: It occasionally catches the eye, but it is more of an accepted annoyance. One wonders whether, as with previous attempts at efficient evangelism, this condition of endlessly streaming a film adaptation of the life of Jesus will actually prove to be a barrier?

In this article, I have wrestled with the question of how to communicate the Gospel and the cross to those who have been traumatized by religious violence. I have briefly looked at the history of violence in communicating the Gospel in ways that shaped an American understanding of evangelism. This attitude toward efficient evangelism has impacted the care expressed by one Christian distribution ministry in northern Greece, requiring the ministry to play the Jesus film on loop. The focus then shifted to the Gospel as traumatic memory in memoria passionis, followed by the above reflection on the use of film to portray Christ. Each of these perspectives offers arguments for and against focusing on the violence of the cross in this particular context among people who have suffered trauma and also have a limited familiarity with the Bible. There is one more area to consider before answering the question of whether it is appropriate to present a visual representation of the passion to children and families traumatized by violence: post-traumatic public theology.

Post-traumatic Care and Stages of Disclosure

Posttraumatic public theology considers “human fragility” (Rambo 2016, 18), which is manifested in the “inability to integrate” traumatic into the “aftermath” (3); the “rupture” of narrative memory as trauma is stored in somatic memory instead (6); as well as the “temporal distortion” that subverts a linear concept of time and makes orienting toward a future so challenging (7–8). Taking these aspects of fragility into account, Rambo suggests that rather than “securing certain answers,” posttraumatic public theology positions “persons in a certain way in relationship to suffering” (ibid., 12). Posttraumatic public theology refocuses the resources of the Christian faith on a way of being that practices “healing that withstands the force of trauma” (ibid., 13).

Although the focus of Cone, Metz, and most films reviewed by Bieringer/Pollefeyt lay firmly on the passion of Christ, trauma theologians such as Sally Howard and Lynn Bridgers suggest that the focus should instead be on the resurrection of Christ. The idea of shifting the focus to the resurrection rather than dwelling on the violence of the cross offers hope. Lynn Bridgers (2011, 39) lays out how the life of Christ (Gospel), corresponds with Judith Lewis Herman’s stages of trauma recovery and Richard Osmer’s tasks of practical theology. In laying out this scheme, Bridgers (ibid., 42) suggests that the resurrection of Christ at Easter provides a powerful image for “recovery” and “reconstruction” after a psychological trauma.

By considering the life of Christ in three stages, Bridgers (2011, 46) connected the public ministry of Christ, or “witness,” with relationships. Following trauma, safety is established within the physical body, then in the living environment, then in relationships with others. She connects this process with Osmer’s “descriptive/empirical” task, where theologians interact with consideration for the living person before them. According to Bridger (2011, 50), some resources already practiced within the Catholic Church can be brought into this process. She suggests that the blessing of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick given within a supportive parish community can offer healing for “body, soul, or spirit.”

When applying this paradigm to refugees who are being resettled, it is easy to imagine that all is well once they are away from the war zone. Although their bodies are intact or are receiving medical care, the living situation can still be uncertain. Among the refugees I met in northern Greece, many who were in housing had recently been notified that they would be evicted by the government in order to make room for other refugees. So those who had settled in housing with furniture and Greek neighbors learned that their position was no longer secure. For people who are still negotiating their needs, their energy tends to be focused on those relationships that might secure a better situation. Relationships with volunteers at the distribution ministry were loose, and the focus was on the procurement of food and clothing.

The second stage of traumatic recovery Bridger (2011, 48) describes as the cross and resurrection in the life of Christ. This is connected with remembering and mourning, where survivors of trauma grieve over losses as they make meaning of the experience by building a “trauma narrative.” She connects this with the practical theology task of interpreting, which leads to a (re)shaping of values. Here, Bridger suggests ongoing pastoral counseling as well as a Sacrament of Reconciliation, which is sensitive to self-criticism. Because this is a long process, Bridger (ibid., 53) also recommends that studying the lives of the saints can offer stories of survival. These stories may serve as encouragement or an interpretive lens.

In migration experiences, this interpretive task takes place over time, often in bits and pieces rather than along a linear progression. It relies on a certain amount of safety and predictability in daily function. Ideally, reframing the narrative would offer the opportunity to discuss beliefs and values. Relationships can be built in which listening and discussing can lead to interpreting the experience through engagement with religious beliefs. This can be done within a Christian context. It is also possible to journey together respectfully in an interreligious context. But in neither case is this achieved with efficiency. Some individuals at the ministry found ways to meet newcomers in other contexts where this was more likely to occur. However, the condition of constantly playing the film was an obstacle to overcome rather than an aid.

Bridger’s third phase correlates with the mission of Christ after resurrection with Osmer’s “pragmatic” task. By a process of meaning-making and serving others, Bridgers (2011, 48–49) suggests that acting in concrete ways to help others is an important part of healing. Acting together with others in service corresponds to a shared responsibility and reciprocal encounter reflected a present understanding of diakonia.

This seems to provide the clearest connection to immigration. And, in many places across the world, the Church is helping Christians and followers of other faiths to implement this strategy. Encouraging and supporting the work of refugees in serving others in community helps to combat isolation, provides skills training for employability, and satisfies the need to make the interpretation of trauma meaningful for oneself and others. Unfortunately, in the space of this particular distribution ministry, some refugees had offered their skills (translation, painting) as a way to engage in meaningful work, and their offers were declined: The ministry did not see the value in this connection. Perhaps this relates to the underlying assumption in the model that service means imparting value to the refugee, failing to see ways the refugee could bring value to the ministry.

This child, together with her father and siblings, had managed to flee religious violence, navigate a war zone, cross dry land and mountains, then face crossing the Mediterranean Sea. She had the distinct blessing of being human to her father. To him she was not invisible. Perhaps the words of Daniel Groody (2016, 230) can put the look of terror on the face of the child into context: “… no wound cuts more deeply than the feeling that you are not even a human being, that you are no one to anyone.” Confronted with the visual image of the brutality of the crucifixion, she froze. No one from the ministry noticed. The American funding organization did not see her face. Did not hear her voice.

In the work of James Cone, the violence of the cross is central to the Gospel. Yet this violence is explained in the context of relationships in the home and in the church. The memoria passionis of Johann Baptiste Metz describes a community through which suffering is both experienced and interpreted. Post-traumatic public theology advocates for accompaniment, both individually and collectively, understanding that there is a need for personal interaction and community belongingness. The cross of Christ may be interpreted alongside a personal trauma in order to make meaning in the context of a lived demonstration of the Gospel. These three approaches treat the violence in the Gospel in the context of community, reflecting the reciprocal interaction of mission and diakonia. Bieringer/Pollefeyt express grave misgivings about showing a movie about Jesus to an audience that has limited Biblical knowledge and therefore no interpretive context. To show a violent film with no context means treating the people who have survived trauma as not-people who do not have to be “respected for themselves” (Sander 2015, 36). It betrays a violent approach to the very Gospel it pretends to advocate.

The intentional interaction between people of different religions who suffered different traumas and have different relationships to the Gospel means creating in each space a new, vibrant song. The Belgian band Jaune Toujours plays a mixture of ska, Balkan, jazz, and rock music; it is difficult to assign a genre. They play from their own heritage while borrowing from others. In a very real sense, communities that engage migrants can become just as varied and lively as such music. Where there is room for developing relationships to allow meaning-making about trauma to occur, there is room for the cross and the resurrection of Christ. Creating a new melody to express pain and the meaning of suffering in light of the cross and the resurrection with strength and creativity. Together.