Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church

by Barbara A. Holmes

There is a point in each choral or congregational song that allows for the pause and repetition of a particular verse. The repetition allows individuals to fill in their own story, silently or through the cries of recognition and affirmation. This is the contemplative moment, the recognition that each and every member of the congregation shares the same angst over the troubles of the world and the need for reunion.

On Russian Hill in San Francisco, in the midst of a densely populated neighborhood, is the building that was the site of a great ecumenical experiment, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (or Fellowship Church). There, the mystic and contemplative Howard Thurman and his wife, Sue Bailey, began an interfaith worship experience.

It suddenly occurs to me that I have been resisting the guiding. In a society of radically individual individuals, we instinctively reject leading, even as we yearn for leadership.

One of the most prominent aspects of worship at Fellowship Church was the shift in emphasis from the “star” preacher to the guided and empowered congregation. The difference between this model of worship and the prevailing model of prophetic charismatic leadership in the black church is stunning. In my opinion, the black church cannot sustain itself if it continues to rely on the cult of preaching personalities.

I have no quarrel with the “call” of specific leaders; however, I am perplexed when a calling morphs into a specialized professionalism that treats spiritual power as rapaciously as the global market and capitalism treat natural resources.

The shift to a new model may not be possible in denominational life. Instead, a fresh wind of the Spirit may require the reemergence of house churches and small committed groups whose worship styles evolve as they gather and pray together.

In small churches, control is sometimes vested in the hands of a powerful group of people who can thwart the leading of the Spirit and control the direction of spiritual growth through the giving and withholding of tithes.

The historical black church is the blessed legacy of the ancestors. It carries with it the seeds of contemplative hope and empowerment.

This community developed faith practices that combined the cultural significations of African cosmologies and traditions with “white Christianity” taught during slavery.

Midrash emerges from Jewish culture and can be defined as “the creative style of textual interpretation developed by the rabbis of Palestine and Babylonia in the third to sixth centuries CE.”[1]

Dennis Fischman makes it clear that midrash is not “a method of exegesis”; rather, it is a way of interrogating the silences and omissions in the text. The intent is to determine which practices please God.

This chapter uses griosh just as one would use midrash, to interrogate the silences and omissions in the text. Like lectio divina, griosh is a contemplative reading of Holy Scripture, a method of interpreting the incomprehensible situation of slavery.

When Genesis begins, the earth is a pulsating womb that shelters deep waters and undifferentiated powers of light and dark. Then the Spirit broods and blows, and in accordance with divine purpose expressed as “Let there be,” goodness is declared.

Despite human failings the plan continues to unfold. If it were not so, the story would end with the human exiles peering back at the angels with flaming swords who are guarding Eden. Instead, the narrative continues.

“See, then, that I, I am God; there is no god beside me. I deal death and give life; I wounded and I will heal: none can deliver from my hand” (Deut 32:39 NJPS). Walter Brueggemann describes this declaration as an assertion of Yahweh’s sovereignty.

To make the biblical narrative fit the story of African diasporic displacement, several contextual elements must be ignored. The Hebrew people make a pilgrimage from the bondage of Africa to liberation. Africans make a pilgrimage from freedom in the motherland to bondage in the Americas. The Israelites regard Egypt as the house of bondage; Africana people regard Egypt as a center of higher learning and the locus of spiritual refuge for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Egypt is all of this and more.

The Jewish and African communities experienced an event that defied their sense of order in the universe.

As the Egyptians pursue them, Moses and the enslaved Hebrew people begin an exodus, which is the bodily enactment of a faith covenant.

The exodus is an interesting choice for contemplative analysis. One would think that the very act of displacement would make the centering reunion with God and consistent contemplative practices more difficult to identify and practice. To the contrary, God’s presence is evident in the fire and the cloud.

Of one thing we are certain, exodus signifies the crossing of a community from a world of linear historical progress and objective time into a metaphysical reality that requires reliance on a Spirit God. Africana adaptations of this story reflect this understanding.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15).

Deciding what is good and evil is the foolish pursuit of humankind. In this life, you will have trouble and some of the trouble will come because we can’t discern the source of our healing.

There is power in the ordinary, enlightenment in obscurity, and healing at the very center of the pain. Here, the text offers contemplation and obedience as sources of healing. The serpent is only the point of focus: it is the faithful contemplative gaze that becomes the conduit for God’s grace.

This may be one of the favorite biblical stories of the black church. The focus is on the relinquishment of control to a higher power, the willingness to be committed to fire rather than disobey God.

The scripture says that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were “bound, still wearing their tunics, their trousers, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire” (Dan 3:21).

One wonders why the system requires this binding with clothes. Griosh supplies the missing reason: the system must bind so that it can see the ineffectiveness of its feeble shackles.

The binding is the important contemplative element in this passage. For even when bound in prison like Paul, the Hebrews, or men and women of color today, one like the Son of God can come and abide with us. This is the quintessential contemplative moment. Jesus comes and abides but does not release.

It is the system that releases. The system must undo what it has done, but until it does, one can sojourn with Jesus. When the system bids you to leave the fire, it will be as if you have never been in the heat.

Hagar is a popular figure among womanist and ethnic theologians. She completely embodies marginalized women who have been exploited by religious and secular systems.

The other fascinating element of the narrative is that Hagar’s contemplative moment moves her to boldly name God. Phyllis Trible and Delores Williams note that instead of referring to God using the names of the patriarchs, she names God herself.[10] “So she named the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi [the God who sees]’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’” (Gen 16:13a).

Out of her contemplation comes the ultimate inculturation of God’s presence. She is Egyptian and also knows the creation stories that attribute human life to the tears of the god Ra. Ra creates with his eye; Yahweh also creates hope and a future for Ishmael by seeing her plight.

After Hagar’s encounter with God, she is changed. No person can experience God’s presence and remain the same. A change in her spirit would ultimately change her relational circumstances. So although she goes back into ostensible bondage, her time of contemplation with God under the tree has freed her spirit forever.

Savior who has a mother is something to contemplate. A mother who ponders is someone to emulate. Pondering is a heavy and introspective word.

The Marian tradition that can inform black church spirituality is ensconced in her prayerful acceptance of God’s plan, even when only a small element of that plan was revealed to her. “Prayer that waits, that is persistent, and that is practiced in common is the prerequisite of the effectual ministry of the church.”[13]

The church of the twenty-first century is not called to be a model of corporate organization but rather an organic and responsive body of Christ.

A trio of Marys witness the sacrifice of the Messiah, whose divine accessibility and vulnerability are the unexpected gift to humankind. Thereby, the pondering is multiplied by three, a feminine trinitarian symbol that has been overlooked in biblical interpretation.

As mother, its first call is not to church growth but to the birthing and nurturing of the Christ imaged in the least of us. As witness of God-with-us, the church is called to stand silently at the places where the national powers are crucifying the innocent and waging war against the poor.

“Jesus is dealing with the most difficult thing in religious commitment: To be able to give up the initiative over your own life; to yield at the core of one’s self, the nerve center of one’s consent to God; and to trust the act itself.”[16] When

As the language of Christian grace is co-opted to serve the needs of nationalism and consumerism, the church is warned to awaken from its lethargy. Only the discipline of contemplative practice will prepare us for the time of crisis when Jesus calls for the community of God to arise.

In a very real sense, this narrative reminds us that contemplation and prayer are attitudes of watchfulness.

The powers of institutional depravity are never so dangerous as when they believe that they are crushing innocence to protect the status quo. Under such circumstances, no one is safe.

At this crucial moment, it is the African who silently accompanies Jesus to Golgotha and the women who silently stand at his feet. The societal “least” are his closest contemplative companions.

Communities form when ego focused concerns recede in favor of shared agendas and a more universal identity.

am suggesting that the genesis of the great justice movements of the twentieth century emerged from the consistent contemplative practices of those seeking liberation.

To be certain, the desire to prove self-worth and wipe out a history of oppression in one generation has taken its spiritual toll. Something is needed in the spiritual lives of Africana people. I am proposing that this “something” must include a healing reclamation of a unique Africana contemplative heritage, its communal rituals and practices both silent and oral.

From a Christian perspective, the quest for justice begins with participation in the claim that we are redeemed by a suffering Savior.

In the words of Simone Weil, the person whose “soul remains orientated towards God while a nail is driven through it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe; the true center, which is not in the middle, which is not in space and time, which is God.”

When killers kill with the state as a silent partner, when “the killed” see no end to the progressive annihilation of spirit and soul, both succumb to a spiritual disorder.

The only spiritual recompense seems to be that eventually societies that sanction violence against the poor and oppressed inevitably ingest the bile they spew and reap the violence they commit.

The civil rights marches of the 1960s were contemplative—sometimes silent, sometimes drenched with song, but always contemplative.