What do you say on days like these? When black people continue to be murdered and oppressed. When voices from the margins continue to be silenced by efforts to maintain power and wield violence to do so. What do you say after restless nights when the words chanted days before - no justice, no peace - ring through your heart and mind? That still, small voice of God continues to work in your soul, urging you to respond.
Sometimes I have no words and the Spirit intercedes through wordless groans. Tuesday was that day...and then some. Struggling to find the balance between contemplation and action, joining the company of those who are grieving, and talking with a friend, I shared with them that I felt like screaming (not into a pillow, but outside!). They encouraged me to do so. Oof. You know, I’d rather ignore said advice. I mean, how silly?!
A few minutes later, I found myself outside taking a mental break. While picking up dog poop (yes, I am human and therapeutically clean up crap), I felt the nudge to let...it...out. I could not bring myself to do it! (Insert profanity and an eye roll here.)
Silence.
I couldn’t even scream! With every ounce of my being I wanted to. The Spirit groaning within me had reached a new level. My own reserved nature held me back. At that moment I could not help but laugh at myself. But truthfully, all alone, I was privileged to not allow the Spirit to burst out of me like a mighty wind.
Gasp.
Then, while watering the garden my nine-year-old son showed up. “You want to scream with me, buddy?” I asked. Looking at me quite strangely with the response, “what?!”, I repeated myself. Honestly, and with conviction, his next response to the invitation was, “if you go first.” Together we paused and belted out the loudest scream I’ve allowed in my adult years (outside of natural childbirths).
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Screaming was quite cathartic. We then carried on with our business. Three young neighbor children came outside and poking their heads from behind the trees, they asked, “who was screaming?” My response, “oh, just us.”
About ten minutes later the four-year-old neighbor walks from his house to the neighbor’s and upon seeing me….he screams, “Ahhhhh!”
Instantly, I felt solidarity. Community. What I imagine might be a tiny fraction of what my black brothers and sisters feel when allies join in standing up to the systems of power that continue to oppress. All is not lost.
The good news is that we belong to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. Innately, even my four-year-old neighbor knows deep in his being what many of us have forgotten...or ignored.
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This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, which marks the beginning of what is considered ordinary time in the Church year. But, this day is far from ordinary. Today, we celebrate the Holy Trinity and are reminded that we are made in the image of God who is in community - Holy, Three in One.
We are bound with God and one another in extraordinary ways. We do NOT exist in Christ all by ourselves, in isolation. This is the good news! And the good news is always good for those who are poor, oppressed, and marginalized.
This first Sunday after Pentecost, we take time to proclaim this good news through the reaffirmation of our baptisms*. This is significant. Baptism is considered a sacrament - an outward sign of an inward and invisible grace.
A word about sacraments and water. Sacrament is a term used to render the Greek word mysterion, which describes something that touched the center of one’s life and raised one into an experience of the divine. In Latin, sacramentum is a military matter - an act of allegiance and sign of willingness to be humble before judgement. It also refers to being outfitted in garments appropriate for the new society of the sovereign realm. As described in Galatians 3.28, the realm of Christ reinforces equal worth of all persons and abolishes destructive forces of slavery, ethnic discrimination, and gender devaulation. Water was significant in the Old Testament and connected to life, deliverance from chaos, destruction of sin, cleansing and ritual activity. In the New Testament, Jesus declares in his baptism identification with humanity and participation in our sin and guilt, through kinship.
Baptism continues to be a matter of covenant-making. Whether sprinkled or immersed, infant or believer, baptism is a recognition of divine initiative (totally shaped by God) and our response. It is a hearing of the word of God which speaks in the depths of our being, attuned to the Spirit moving among us, revealed in Creation (the “first Bible”), and recounted in the stories of Scripture and the ongoing story God is re-narrating in the world. It is repenting - turning from our old ways - and believing the truth that is revealed in community, just as it is in the Trinity.
Reaffirmation of our baptism - a seemingly individual only matter - is significant in a world that aims to pit us against one another, to devalue who we are as human beings made in the image of God. In our baptism we affirm belonging to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. Beautiful. Messy. Kinship. Bound in Oppression. Freed in the Spirit. United as we walk in newness of life.
Romans 6.3-5 says,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Baptism is used as a metaphor for being incorporated into the body of Christ, born together - the kindred of God. In baptism, we are summed to live a new kind of life by virtue of participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (which is symbolized in baptism).
Over the next several weeks we journey together, paying attention to the good news - the mystery of God - which touches the center of our lives and brings us into an experience of the divine. We participate with God re-narrating the world, living the Kingdom into existence through faithful presence in everyday spaces, with simplicity, authenticity, and creativity. We allow our own resistances to the Spirit at work to surface and be confronted.
We don’t need to be experts in the Enneagram, but we will be taking a look at how we engage our “repressed centers” for spiritual transformation. Those centers are: thinking, feeling, doing. We’ll hear from people through shared stories of how they engage one of the centers, and be challenged to respond through contemplative activism as we experience God in the ordinary and the extraordinary of our days. We’ll also experiment with Gathering outside and in-person in very unconventional ways as we remain attentive to the Spirit at work among us, calling us to embody the love of Jesus in the world.
May what is repressed in us, be enlivened by the Spirit as we are bound with God and one another, in a work that is never done. Trinity family, may we allow the Spirit to well up inside us, overflowing and standing in true solidarity, united with those whose voices are squashed by oppressive silence.
Yes, the Spirit intercedes with groans...and sometimes moves us to scream. We are a people listening and learning to follow Jesus...on the way...recognizing that we belong to God and one another, intricately woven into the complexities of life in Christ, together. What good news!
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*If you were baptized as an infant, we affirm your baptism. If you were baptized as an adult, we affirm your baptism. God is and has been at work in your life. You belong to God and to the community of faith (in all its beauty and messiness). If you have never been baptized and would like to be baptized, please let us know. For children, we often encourage commitment to raising children in the ways of Jesus and incorporation into the community of faith through Family Covenants, but will also baptize infants, if that is your preference.
(by Melissa Millis)