Jesus the Adoptee

Of course I was taken to eat dim sum for the first time just minutes after learning how to use chopsticks. The ones for kids donned with cute figurines and plastic finger holes could have spared me public humiliation at the tender age of seventeen, as I broke all Asian American teenage girl stereotypes by not only dropping my food with every bite, but mistaking jellyfish for noodles.

Whoops.

These sorts of “normal” social interactions made me excessively aware of the ways I did not fit into Asian American culture. I was different: instead of SAT prep classes, bok choy, and Chinese School on Saturdays, I grew up with white parents, excellent tuna casseroles, organ accompanied hymns, and a regular dose of NFL football every Sunday.

After becoming a Christian in college, I began to realize how unreconciled, unexplored and unredeemed my identity as an adoptee was. It shook me to discover that the Bible contained prominent adoptee leaders like Moses and Esther. Could God could use my sovereign foundations as a Korean American Transracial Adoptee for actual Kingdom work?

“It shook me to discover that the Bible contained prominent adoptee leaders like Moses and Esther.”

Only a couple of years ago, I had a profound realization. Not only is Jesus a miracle worker, healer, preacher, prophet and King. He is a refugee, an immigrant and an adoptee. Jesus’ miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit and virgin birth by Mary is well documented in Scripture (Matt. 1:18-20) as is the significant intervention by which the angel persuades Joseph to remain with Mary and become the adoptive father of Jesus (Matt. 1:18-24). Ironically, it is through Jesus’ adoptive father, Joseph, that His lineage is traced back to Abraham (Matt. 1:16). It is for that very reason that Jesus is born in the hometown of Bethlehem.

As it turns out, Jesus, too could have joined the Facebook group for Adoptees, those who have been torn away from their homeland and experienced the primal wound of parental loss. He knows what it is to be joined to a new family on foreign soil and have brothers and sisters that challenge the notion that “blood is thicker than water” (Matt. 12:46-50).

Jesus’ adoption becomes prophetic for anyone who follows Him as we are also adopted through the Spirit into a new global family of God (Rom. 8:15). And as we are adopted, like Himself, God seeks to redeem all of who we are for the redemption of everything around us.