Perilous presencing: How the church’s sacraments re-symbolize trauma

Abstract

This article examines the church’s sacramental life – baptism and the Eucharist – as enactments of trauma that mirror Christ’s suffering and death, shaping its vocation of self-giving for a broken world. Drawing on a psychoanalytical lens inspired by Lacan and Žižek, it
explores how these sacraments resymbolise trauma as redemptive, plunging the church into the realm of Christ’s cross – a traumatic rupture that shatters sacrificial systems and redefines divine being (Lau 2016). Baptism, a drowning into Christ’s death (Rm. 6:3-4), initiates believers into a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), historically defiant – from early martyrs to modern persecuted churches – and politically potent, confronting domination with resurrection hope (Wright 2013; Jinkins 1999). The Eucharist, a shocking presencing of the eternal in bread and wine, counters alienation with brokenness, uniting the church in Christ’s suffering to heal societal divides
(Pound 2007; Lewis 2006). Integrating a theology of Holy Saturday, where God embraces death to end worldly violence, the article argues that these sacraments are not private rituals but public acts of resistance and renewal (Cavanaugh 1998). They compel the church to embody Christ’s trauma – dying to self, serving the marginalised – transforming suffering into a political witness of grace and
reconciliation in a violent world.