Sharing our stories in times of trouble

Papke-Larson is Program Coordinator for Lutheran Campus Ministries/Canterbury Episcopal Campus Ministries at Northern Arizona University and Youth Director at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Flagstaff.

When I was in college I studied abroad in Northern Ireland. I was studying under a Northern Irish professor leading me through a semester of study of what some in his country call The Troubles. One of the first things I learned was that if you thought you had it sorted out, you were wrong. Over a 30 year period this tiny country (it takes about 1.5 hours to get across the entirety of it) was fighting over too whom they belonged: The United Kingdom or The Republic of Ireland. Yet, as war tends to do things become murky and convoluted, and at times is was a war about nephews avenging uncles, and fathers avenging sons. 

In our own country we have our own troubles, this year alone, at least 22 Transgender and Gender-expansive individuals have been murdered, most of them women of color. The Human Rights Campaign used the phrase “at least” when talking about those who have been lost to transphobia because often people are mis-gendered in police reports and media and possibly never recorded at all. 

In Luke Chpt. 2:5-19, in which Jesus talks to his disciples about the time to come when their magnificent temple will come crumbling down. “Not one stone will be left upon another,” he says. Jesus is telling us about troubled times, and is telling us what we can do in the midst of troubles. We are given the opportunity to testify, he says. We are called to testify God’s Good News in the midsts of destruction and tearing down. He is encouraging us to keep from being weary, from taking the gift of our embodied God, and doing the opposite of being weary: testifying God’s love. 

We are now in the season of Advent. The gift of God’s embodiment in our world, through Jesus, seems to be the profound example of how to testify the love of God. Through the incarnation we are shown that God embodies to love us, and that we too, can do this. To testify God’s Good News, as Jesus tells us to do in Luke, is for us embody our testaments, our statements of faith, meaning we are called to do more than speak, but to act, just as God acted in Jesus. 

I saw such a testimony in the work of Gwendolyn Ann Smith. She created the Transgender Day of Rememberance in 1999 to honor the life of Rita Hester, a Trans* woman murdered the year before. Now, every year on November 20th, people around the world gather together to read the names of those murdered by transphobia and to testify who these people were and that they are important. 

I saw such a testimony as a student studying abroad in Northern Ireland. I was given an internship at The Playhouse. It is a theatre where folks from all backgrounds could practice the difficult work of peace. I was working with an American woman, Teya Sepinuck, who had created a form of testimonial theatre called Theatre of Witness. She would have conversations with people who had experienced trauma, and using their words would create a dialogue that they memorized and perform on stage with others whose stories were similar. 

What Jesus is telling us is the way we endure the troubles, the suffering, is by holding each other’s stories, sharing our own, and seeing ourselves in kinship with those around us. This is where God enters our lives, in our relationships with each other and in our bravery in helping endure the burdens of others and letting others help us endure. So this Advent, may we hold each other’s stories, and share our own, as a testimony to God gift to us.