Jesus as Guest, Host, and Meal

This article develops a threefold Christology—Jesus as guest, host, and meal—as a response to the Christological problem in Africa, where Jesus is often perceived as a foreign, alien figure incompatible with African monotheistic and hierarchical cosmologies. Building on Enyi Ben Udoh's "guest Christology," which uses African rites of hospitality such as the Nigerian kola-nut ceremony to move Jesus from stranger to kin, the author extends the metaphor: Jesus is also host, embodying African ubuntu as the "first host" and proto-ancestor who welcomes and liberates the poor, and finally meal, definitively enacted in the Eucharist, presented as the climactic form of African hospitality binding God and God's people in communion. The threefold image aims to make Jesus fully at home within African cultural categories.