When we look at Scripture through a nomadic lens, we see that God has been fulfilling his purposes through nomadic culture since the first chapters of the Bible. Almost all the positive role models in the Old Testament were nomads. God has always blessed and used nomadic ethos to build his kingdom. And we see that commands for believers today are in line with standard nomadic practice. Let’s look at what God is doing with and through nomads and join him!

The positive role models in biblical history start at the very beginning. Can you name one from the Old Testament who was NOT a nomad?

God created Adam and Eve and set them in the garden as hunter-gatherers who were priest and priestess and vice-regents before God, but with no building for themselves or for God. The entire garden, somewhere east of Eden, was an open-air temple to meet with God.

Their own children, starting with Cain and Abel, naturally inherited nomadic identity. Then Cain began farming. Did that make him stop being a nomad? Not necessarily. Many nomads throughout history have some family members who tend crops. Cain was producing food that everyone else in the clan would need.

Abel was also producing things that everyone needed, but not food! What were the people wearing when they came out of the garden? Leather robes, according to Genesis 3:21. The Hebrew term is only used in reference to the kind of long sleeved, decorated robes worn by priests and royalty, like the robe Jacob gave his favored son Joseph. Noah’s sacrifices after his little clan of eight came out of the ark, were continuing the system that God had initiated in the garden at which he had covered the shame of humanity with the skin of an animal. After all that, God gave authority to eat meat. So, Abel’s work of shepherding provided for ongoing sacrifices for atonement and leather clothing for shame. God had warned Cain that he also would be accepted if he did what Abel did, which was… offer a high quality, unblemished lamb. Cain could easily have gotten one from his brother. Instead, Cain had broken a cardinal law from the nomad code of ethics. As the first born, the safety and care of his younger brother should have been his primary duty.

In a Discovery Bible Study on that passage, when we got to the part where God confronts Cain about his brother, and Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” a Pashtun Muslim jumped up and shouted, “OF COURSE! OF COURSE, he was his brother’s keeper!” I have never seen a settled person understand that passage so deeply. Try it yourself: Study the scriptures with nomads, listen to what they see happening in the Scriptures, and you will learn a whole new perspective on what God is doing!

God blesses and uses nomadic ethos to build his kingdom. Here are some examples of God’s work in relation to our five points (N.O.M.A.D.) of nomadic identity.

Abraham is constantly Networking relationships. When his nephew’s part of the clan is captured with the people of Sodom, Abraham’s alliance with two other nomadic clans comes to rescue the settled folks from the invaders (maybe also nomads).

When Organized by clan, loyalty is required, and the punishment for breaking this rule is excommunication or “social boycott.” This is what Cain experienced as his punishment for the murder of his brother, the brother he should have been protecting. Nomads often refer to this as a removal of the social covering. It is considered a fate worse than death.

Throughout Abraham’s life, along with the other patriarchs, nearly every episode involves Mobility as Resource.

Abraham demonstrated his Autonomy, his freedom to choose his loyalties, by accepting the feast and blessing of Melchizedek and rejecting payment from the corrupt Sodom alliance.

Jacob and his sons were clearly Distinct from those sedentary Egyptians. But the Egyptians also needed meat and leather, so nomads could live in Goshen. As is typical, settled people think nomads are dirty, impoverished, and uncivilized. On the other hand, nomads think city people are arrogant, selfish, and… uncivilized. Knowing this, Joseph wisely asked for his tribe to be allowed to occupy Goshen, to keep the two opposite civilizations separate and distinct.

God has been the Good Shepherd, king of nomads, from Genesis through Revelation and to today. But, as one nomadic prophet declared, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and YHWH—‘He IS’—has laid upon him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). This verse speaks deeply to nomads. Of course, nomadic pastoralists know all about the difficulties of keeping track of the animals in their herd. The mobility mentioned in this verse is about going the wrong way! We all like sheep have wandered away: nomads as well as settled people. Sheep have moved AWAY from their shepherd, but there is more. It is not just about sinful waywardness. Nomads understand that going the wrong way and doing your own thing is also a departure from the community… a betrayal of the loyal love of the Good Shepherd and his community of faith. But the Good Shepherd has placed the iniquities of us all on his Servant.

NOMAD identity made a difference for the shepherds outside Bethlehem who were not the only nomads, just the most obvious ones. Tents were common dwellings throughout both Testaments. Priscilla, Aquila, and Paul had a market for their tents. Mobility was still a common resource for herding animals or for services and trades by Hebrews, Arabs, and others. Four or five thousand people easily assembled on hillsides for teaching and miraculous feasts. The groups of 50 mentioned by Luke, could form quite naturally around kinship groups. Later, when Paul was converted, he went out to “Arabia.” That could be a good place to meet shepherds from as far away as Bethlehem who were still multiplying the good news for all people.

The Good Shepherd’s message continued to be spread by nomads, Hebrew and Arab Bedouin. Amazigh (Berber, Tuareg) nomads took it across North Africa and down across the Sahara while others took it along the east to Egypt and Ethiopia. Persian nomads took it north into Central Asia meeting Turkic nomads who took it all the way to China. Other Hebrew nomads, like Thomas, took it all the way to South India where there were already Jewish trading posts. When nomads from northwest Europe came south and sacked Rome, they took the Christian message back with them.

But by 300 AD, Christianity had begun to fossilize into the shape of Greco-Roman buildings and social structures, leaving nomads feeling abandoned. In the vacuum, a merchant nomad arose with a message of subservience. Nomads of the Persian Gulf took up the new religion of Islam with a vengeance. Once again, Amazigh nomads joined the Bedouin to take it west across North Africa and the Sahara. Soon, Fulani nomads took it farther south across the African Sahel. Somali and other nomads took it across Eastern Africa where now only settled urban pockets and Ethiopian Highlanders remain Christian. Eventually, Arab slave traders took it down to Malawi in southeastern Africa.

Challenges

Nomads, like other tribal peoples, typically don’t trust outsiders. If you hear and obey Jesus’ call to nomads, this will be your first challenge. In the beginning, you only have two options: Either you are an enemy to be protected against, or you are a cow to be milked. It is vitally important to recognize why! And why if you do win a few converts, there is little room for rejoicing.

Do you know this song: “I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see”? Well, what if I told you that converted nomads often feel more lost than before they were found, and blind, unable to see value in this strange individualistic, building-centric, Christian life. Why should they have to abandon their own unique heritage? I didn’t have to abandon mine. Did you have to abandon yours? If so, in what way?

But that’s what happens when you try to take your nomad friend off his/her camel and put them in a building- centric church.

But what if you focus on putting the church on their camel? Or, leaving that metaphor, what if we bring the Good Shepherd into nomadic communities?

We know that…
    * Jesus heals broken relational networks!
    * The Good Shepherd gathers and restores dysfunctional clans and tribes! He is constantly on the move leading his flocks!
    * He wants us to be autonomous from worldliness and any world system that goes against his divine code of conduct!
    * We share a distinctive heritage in the nomadic patriarchs through Jesus, our shepherd king!

Many early Christ-followers recognized Jesus as the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, Jeremiah 23, and Zechariah 10. In John 10, Jesus said, “I have other sheep.”

Will you join him in calling them? Will you teach them to follow the good shepherd king?

Recognizing that God is the good and true shepherd king of all nomads, I now have two missions in life. One is to teach settled people the biblical lessons I have learned from nomads. The other is to help nomads remember their first love; to leave off following a nomad merchant and return to their true and good shepherd king. Will you join me? Let’s keep talking and walking with nomads following Jesus!