“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”: Towards a Christian Celebration of the Ga People of Southeastern Ghana’s Homowo Feast as a Mission of Jesus Christ

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to present a Christian mission of hunger and poverty alleviation through a life in communion with the trinity and in the context of the Ga celebration of homowo in Ghana. It is in the hope of the renewal of all things at the end of the world. It is to appreciate the essence of homowo in order to appropriate it for a Christian mission. The paper seeks to achieve this goal of mission by connecting the hunger and poverty alleviation and life-giving essence as well as the sense of unity embedded in the homowo feast to the mission of the triune God in the cosmos and with the “give us this day our daily bread” statement of Jesus Christ. Although the Kpelelogical method seems to be easily understood because it is mutually critical and connects seamlessly with the praxis of Christianity among Ga Christians, it has previously not been adopted as a theological method, as it is in this article. It is the paradoxical Ga Christian articulation of the Christian faith whereby the Christian faith is enlightened by the Kpele homowo and yet transforms the Kpele homowo after rejecting it. At the end of the engagement, Jesus in the homowo celebration is seen as the Okpelejen Wulormor Homoyiwolor ker Naanowalahalor (the cosmic priest, king, prophet who jeers at hunger, and giver of eternal life).