Loading...Sermon January 28, 2018
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s, Newport, PA
Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year B
//lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. Mark 1:27
Please be seated.
I understand why Jesus went to Capernaum. I think it must have been a quieter place than Jerusalem. It was at least 118 miles away…a couple of days walk, I’m sure. It’s at the North end of the Sea of Galilee. There are breezes from the beautiful blue lake, which is visible throughout the town.
I guess I liked Capernaum so much because parts of the town had been preserved. Most of the town was built with the local stones, which are black. The ruins of the Synagogue are a more recent Synagogue than the one where Jesus taught, but they are on the same site. We know it is not the same Synagogue, because the stone for it is White instead of the black stone.
The outline of the homes and businesses of the town remain. It looks like a well-populated town for the time… 1,500 inhabitants from what I read online.
In our Gospel today, Jesus goes to the Synagogue in Capernaum and begins to teach. Now, it sounds like that was unusual and I’m sure we can imagine it. Jesus was a stranger and just walked in and started teaching. It’d be like someone just walking in the door and coming to lead the service, right?
And what he taught was astounding and amazing. What he taught and what he did was different, startling, even. He transformed the man with the unclean spirit…in essence performing an exorcism. That would get your attention, wouldn’t it?
The response from those who witnessed Jesus’ teaching and exorcism is surprise and maybe even confusion. Who is this person? Why does he teach with such power, like he has authority? He is not one of the scribes and he doesn’t teach like them either. He is telling us something new.
Jesus’ notoriety spread quickly and eventually the word reached Jerusalem and a variety of troubles came. It wasn’t easy to hear new teachings.
Yesterday I was listening to the social worker, researcher and Episcopalian Brene’ Brown. She was the guest preacher and Forum guest at The Washington National Cathedral last Sunday. The place was packed. She and the Bishop of Washington, Bishop Mariann Budde, were talking about how you talk to each other about difficult topics and Dr. Brown said we need to ask the question, “Are you choosing comfort over God?” She spoke about how Jesus provoked people out of their comfortability. I don’t think it is ever easy to hear new teachings, but that’s the reality of following Jesus.
This week, I feel like I’ve been pushed to move out of comfortability and discussing an uncomfortable topic from the pulpit…one where I believe we need to hear a new teaching. I’m talking about the continuing public acknowledgement of something that’s been happening probably since nearly the beginning of time – sexual misconduct and sexual abuse.
Earlier in the week, Dr. Larry Nassar sat in a courtroom in Michigan and heard 150 women detail how he had sexually abused them and affected their entire lives. It is estimated that at least 200 young women and girls were abused by him. The President of Michigan State University resigned since Dr. Nassar had been a doctor there. The Athletic Director resigned. The entire board of U.S.A. Gymnastics has resigned.
Then at a lunch with colleagues, I heard the harrowing story of a priest who reported another priest for sexual misconduct with parishioners and about how this reported priest ended up being transferred and transferred to do the same thing over and over again.
Finally I received an email from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the President of the House of Deputies, The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, about using Lent as a time to reflect upon and repent. It is titled “Standing with Tamar.”
January 22, 2018
Dear People of God in the Episcopal Church:
In recent weeks, compelling testimony from women who have been sexually harassed and assaulted by powerful men has turned our minds to a particularly difficult passage of holy scripture: the story of the rape of King David’s daughter Tamar by her half-brother Amnon (2 Samuel 13: 1-22). It is a passage in which a conspiracy of men plots the exploitation and rape of a young woman. She is stripped of the power to speak or act, her father ignores the crime, and the fate of the rapist, not the victim, is mourned. It is a Bible story devoid of justice.
For more than two decades, African women from marginalized communities have studied this passage of scripture using a method called contextual Bible study to explore and speak about the trauma of sexual assault in their own lives. Using a manual published by the Tamar Campaign they ask, “What can the Church do to break the silence against gender-based violence?”
It is, as the old-time preachers say, a convicting question. As our societies have been forced into fresh recognition that women in all walks of life have suffered unspoken trauma at the hands of male aggressors and harassers, we have become convinced that the Episcopal Church must work even harder to create a church that is not simply safe, but holy, humane and decent. We must commit to treating every person as a child of God, deserving of dignity and respect. We must also commit to ending the systemic sexism, misogyny and misuse of power that plague the church just as they corrupt our culture, institutions and governments.
Like our African siblings in faith, we must create contexts in which women can speak of their unspoken trauma, whether suffered within the church or elsewhere. And we must do more.
Our church must examine its history and come to a fuller understanding of how it has handled or mishandled cases of sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse through the years. When facts dictate, we must confess and repent of those times when the church, its ministers or its members have been antagonistic or unresponsive to people—women, children and men—who have been sexually exploited or abused. And we must acknowledge that in our church and in our culture, the sexual exploitation of women is part of the same unjust system that also causes gender gaps in pay, promotion, health and empowerment.
We believe that each of us has a role to play in our collective repentance. And so, today, we invite you to join us in an Ash Wednesday Day of Prayer on February 14 devoted to meditating on the ways in which we in the church have failed to stand with women and other victims of abuse and harassment and to consider, as part of our Lenten disciplines, how we can redouble our work to be communities of safety that stand against the spiritual and physical violence of sexual exploitation and abuse.
Neither of us professes to have all of the wisdom necessary to change the culture of our church and the society in which it ministers, and at this summer’s General Convention, we want to hear the voice of the wider church as we determine how to proceed in both atoning for the church’s past and shaping a more just future. May we find in our deliberations opportunities to listen to one another, to be honest about our own failings and brokenness, and to discern prayerfully the ways that God is calling us to stand with Tamar in all of the places we find her—both inside the church and beyond our doors, which we have too often used to shut her out.
Faithfully,
The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry
Presiding Bishop
The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings
President of the House of Deputies
Now, my first job in social work in 1985 was with the YWCA of Harrisburg, Rape Crisis Center. That was nearly 33 years ago. I know about rape and sexual assault and sexual misconduct and sexual harassment first hand, not only as a professional social worker, but also as a woman.
We have a culture in this country and throughout our institutions that somehow allows these horrible crimes to occur and that somehow allows them to be covered up or minimized as nothing to be reported to authorities or to be stopped. And the abusers just abuse more and more. And there is very little treatment that we know works for the offenders. More and more people are victimized and must deal with this their whole lives. And the ones who first report go through a double victimization as they are harassed and questioned over and over again and made to feel like what happened to them was not real.
We have a new teaching we must understand. So what can we do? We do have the Safeguarding God’s Children classes, which help. We do have rules in place about adults and children being together and interacting with each other. We can keep doing that work in making our church a safe space.
I also found an organization called, Men Can Stop Rape, which has trainings and information available on what men can do to change the culture. The YWCA of Greater Harrisburg provides services and is always in need of volunteers and donors. Talk to Julie Johnson about what she does.
We can become educated about sexual abuse – what it is, who it affects and how it affects people. We must listen to the stories with compassion and support.
We must work to exorcise this demon. We must hear the new teaching that our culture needs to change to prevent sexual abuse.
Jesus comes into the world and it is not always comfortable and it is always transformational.
Amen
Capernaum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capernaum
Forum with Brene’ Brown – 49 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzwcrNDi4Wo
Sermon by Brene’ Brown – 18 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndP1XDskXHY&t=35s
Men Can Stop Rape: //www.mencanstoprape.org/
YWCA of Greater Harrisburg: //www.ywcahbg.org/programs/violence-intervention-and-prevention-services#.Wm0SFKinGM8
Signs of Abuse: //www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/learn/sexual-assault-rape/effects-sexual-assault-and-rape
Helping a Survivor: //www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/6-steps-to-support-a-survivor
Contextual Bible Study on Gender Violence: //ujamaa.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/manuals/Tamar_Campaign_Contextual_Bible_Study_Manual_-_English_Version.sflb.ashx
Tamar Campaign Website: //www.fecclaha.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=57&Itemid=202
