Robert Berra
St. Matthew’s, Chandler
Yr A Proper 28
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, *
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the
indolent rich, *
and of the derision of the proud.
and of the derision of the proud.
For the past seven weeks or so, histories of men’s serial
predation of other men, women, and children have been exposed and the exposures
show no sign of slowing down. The entertainment world is being rocked by this; as
is the political world; the academic; the church world. The columnist Rebecca Traister writes of this
moment that:
“There is suddenly space, air,
for women to talk. To yell, in fact. To make
dangerous lists and call
reporters and text with their friends about everything that’s
been suppressed. This is organic, mass, radical rage, exploding in
unpredictable directions. It is loud, thanks to the human megaphone that is
social media and the “whisper networks” that are now less about speaking sotto
voce than about frantically typed texts and all-caps group chats. Really
powerful white men are losing jobs — that never happens.
Women (and some men) are breaking their silence and telling painful and
intimate stories to reporters, who in turn are putting them on the front pages
of major newspapers.”[1]
The exposures show that issues of sexual impropriety are
not the sole purview of either the ideological Right or Left. Instead the exposures show that more
fundamental than our political ideologies is the entitlement men thought they
have had to using the bodies of other men women and children. And not even the perpetrator’s strict
adherence to their political ideologies or their service as a mouthpiece to their
parties may be enough to save them anymore.
I—and others—been watching this moment build for a
while. This moment in which harassment
and assault may be finally taken seriously.
I’ve devoted my most recent academic work to these subjects. Between being at Yale and ASU, I’ve been
involved at institutions under investigations for not taking such things
seriously. In 2009, the Daily Show
referred to ASU as the Harvard of date rape, and I’ve witnessed the
institutions try to reverse that reputation. And just last week, an ASU
professor—a former Roman Catholic Priest who also taught at Yale—was forced to
resign when it became known that he was defrocked for abusing children. I’ve sat with students and faculty processing
their own assaults by loved ones, by significant others, by colleagues, by
mentors, and heard the anguish that comes with their decision-making as to
whether it would be worthwhile to come forward in a world in which is likely
they will not be believed—or, the likelihood that they would be believed, but
nothing would change because the reputation of the academic unit is at
stake.
But still, victims and survivors come forward.
they have had more than enough
of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the rich
and powerful,
and of the derision of the proud.
and of the derision of the proud.
But now we are in a scary time in a few different
ways. In one case, as happy as I am that
there is attention being paid to harassment and abuse, I and others are
concerned that lasting change may be fleeting.
One demonstrably false accusation could trigger a backlash that stalls
lasting change. Every movement that
brings accountability to those with power faces a countercurrent—and we may
find the truth-telling about how men with power and privilege act stalled by
one mistake.
It is also a scary moment because men are not necessarily
ready for this. Abusers may find the
shadows they operate within getting smaller as their victims are empowered to
talk. Thanks be to God for that. Meanwhile other men have to wonder about
their interactions with women and how they are perceived. They have to comb their memories and
interrogate their own past actions. Did
I make her feel uncomfortable? Did I
actually have consent? Why did I need to
touch her that way? How do I avoid an
accusation?
The words that are used to talk about this cultural
moment are telling: They are called
revelations, exposures, events brought to light. This is an apocalyptic moment for men. I mean that quite literally. The word apocalypse is Greek word meaning “an
uncovering.” It is a word used to mean a disclosure of
knowledge or revelation. Christians
are very familiar with apocalyptic thought:
we understand the apocalyptic as the time when all will be revealed and
judgment rendered. St. John in the
prologue to his gospel talks about our time after Christ’s appearance in our
midst as a time of judgment:
“And this is the verdict: The
Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness more than light, because
their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does
not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed (Jn 3:19-20).”
We are now at a time of disclosure. Evil is being brought to light. Actions that were secret are being exposed.
Or in the case of institutions that protected abusers, actions that were
considered open secrets are being revealed, and people asking questions like, “If
you all knew what was going on, why didn’t you stop it?”
Now, this will obviously be scary to those who use their
power to take advantage of others, but it’s also scary for others, because we
may know the abusers. We may even love
them. And even giving them the benefit
of a doubt may be protecting them. And
so we may be conflicted.
Apocalypses are scary.
Apocalypses involve the overthrow of every power structure that opposes
God’s reign. Think of the Magnificat,
the song Mary sang while carrying Jesus, in which she prophesies of the time in
which God pulls the mighty from their thrones and lifts the lowly, the hungry eat
while the rich are sent away empty-handed.
The idea is that God’s decisive work in the world means that the every
rebellious power gets overthrown—including power structures that enable abusers
to thrive. All of those power structures
are thrown upside down and in the all-consuming light of God’s loving judgment
we can see where we’ve served the powers that abuse at the expense of the
vulnerable. Those are difficult moments, in which we are confronted with our
complicities in unjust systems.
And for men, even when we do not feel powerful, an
apocalyptic moment like this is scary precisely because our power and our
culture’s way of holding us up has now been kicked out from under us—even when
we’ve never noticed it before. That’s
why, for some of us this moment feels like an attack or that this is unfair. There is good news; this is not The End. Apocalypse does not always have to end in
damnation, but we need to remember that it is perilous to ignore those who make
their cry to God in the midst of seeking justice:
we have had more
than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the
rich and powerful,
and of the derision of the proud.
and of the derision of the proud.
Apocalypse
is often the entry to a better world—it is the promise that after all has been
brought to light and judged, we move to something better. We Christians live for these moments of
imagining a better world; we pray so often that things would be on earth as
they are in Heaven. What do we have to
offer this cultural moment?
Wait.
Before
we imagine a better world, let’s first acknowledge that unscrupulous folks have
used our faith to protect bad actors.
The history is long of churches protecting abusers and discrediting
victims, or blaming young women for the fall of beloved men, and using
scripture to keep the abused in relationship to their abuser. One more recent poor use of scripture was
when the state auditor of Alabama argued that senate candidate Roy Moore’s
attempt to pick up a 14 year old girl is okay because of the presumed age
discrepancy in the relationship between Mary and Joseph. Please note that this
state auditor didn’t question the story of then-32yo Moore trying to take an
eighth grader home; he just tried to make it okay using the Holy Family. Our job in imagining a better world is to
leave no place for abusers to hide through using our sacred story. We have to engage in the same brave
truth-telling here. We also have to
recognize places where our faith makes it difficult for the abused to receive
justice.
There
is a quite famous passage from Paul, Philippians 2:5-11, which is known as a
hymn to Christ’s humility. You’ve
probably heard it in worship here:
In your
relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in
very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God
exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In
the Christian tradition, we call this kenosis.
Kenosis. Literally, it means “to
empty oneself.” It means that Christ
emptied himself of any claim to power, and made himself nothing by taking our
weak form. It is an expression of
humility, and this is given to all Christians as an example—we are to humble
ourselves and in so doing we understand Christ better; we enact no undue power
over another. It is a powerful practice
of understanding what it means when we say the eternally begotten Christ dwelt
in human flesh.
Entering into the Christian life and following this process
of kenosis requires us to ask a question: who has something of which they can
be emptied? Where our society has traditionally put front and center the importance
of men’s concerns, desires, and agency, kenosis
for men requires setting aside such corrupting power. This setting aside of the
power which makes men the top of the social ladder would be helpful for
addressing the conditioning of our society by which women are made responsible
for the actions and feelings of men. Within our social systems women are often
directed to consider how their actions might affect the goals and projects of
men, with the implication that they must sacrifice of themselves (experience kenosis, in Christian settings) to
further these goals and projects.
So,
now, the brunt of kenosis falls
differently upon women and children than men—or rather, the abused than the
abusers. Think of how often those who
have been raped, harassed, or abused are told to forego justice: “It was so long ago.” “Do you really want to
ruin his life?” “It was just a small bad decision.”
As
the father of the convicted Stanford rapist Brock Turner—if you don’t remember,
Brock Turner was caught by two eye-witnesses raping an unconscious woman—in
defense of a lighter sentencing, his father wrote— “My son’s life will never be
the one he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep
price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.” The judge apparently agreed. Turner was sentenced to six months. He served three months.
Our
society constantly, in ways large and small, asks victims to humble themselves
for the sake of their abuser for the sake of a too-fast forgiveness. This shifts the practice of kenosis of men or abusers to their victims. Victims instead are put into situations in
which they risk being re-victimized, or they forgo justice for an ideal of
Christ’s suffering example, while their abusers are spared from the same
practice of kenosis.
We
have to be willing to name this shifting of kenotic self-emptying from the
abuser to the abused as a perversion of our faith. We have to allow abusers to come fact-to-face
with what they have done, not only because our moral communal life demands it
but because doing so opens up for the abuser a redemptive possibility by being
confronted with the full weight of the wrong he or she has done. We owe it to abusers and harassers to bring
them to repentance without attempting to pre-emptively defend them or tiptoe
around their fragile egos.
It
is only at that point—when repentance is our primary goal in the moment—that we
can entertain a conversation about what a reconciled life of the harasser and
the abuser might look like. In the
meantime, rushing to forgiveness for the sake of comfort will close off our
possibilities to address why men have historically felt entitled to the bodies
of other men, women, and children. The
risk we run at this moment in our life together is that a few bad men will be
sacrificed and justice may come for them, but the power structures that entitle
abusers remain in place. We now have a
prime opportunity to talk about a different world and how we create that in the
churches.
St. Paul
reminds the Christian community is his letter to the Thessalonians that we “are
all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of
darkness.” Could your life and your
example shine in the shadowy corners in which harassers and abusers
operate? Can you be a light in a
shadowed world that prefers that the violated remain silent instead of question
the way we let harassers work?
God
has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ, who died for us. Let us lift up our eyes, and seek God’s courage
and mercy in this moment of hard truth-telling.
