An Apocalyptic Moment for Men

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,

Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, *
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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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[1] Traister, R. (2017). We Are All Implicated in the Post-Weinstein Reckoning. The Cut. Retrieved 18 November 2017, from https://www.thecut.com/2017/11/rebecca-traister-on-the-post-weinstein-reckoning.html