Scripture: Luke 6:27-38
I don’t know whether at Sojourners you have to explain or justify the lifting up of domestic violence or sexual assault as a central theme in worship. Since Sojourners are pretty open-minded and good natured, cooperative at least about some things, and used to dealing with lots of different things in worship, maybe the predominant attitude here would be, “Oh, that’s what we’re doing today.” But I thought I would begin by addressing the question of why we’re doing this, because whether you’re asking it or not, it’s a legitimate question, and answering it may lead us in to what needs to be said today.
There are several straightforward things I can say. Over a period of time, several people in the congregation have said that they would like to see us focus on domestic violence in worship sometime—not any particular time and not necessarily right away, but sometime. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It seems like this would be an appropriate “sometime”. Furthermore, I have said that the kind of overarching thought in my mind as I thought about worship themes for this fall, was the idea of building a culture of non-violence in the midst of a culture of violence. It was in my mind at the time that October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and that the culture of violence that we live in is not just a matter of wars or violence in the media, large public expressions of violence, but that it extends into the home, the most private areas of our lives, the very places we would like to think would be a sanctuary, but that so often are not. If we are concerned about violence in our world, domestic violence and sexual assault are as much a part of the picture as terrorism and war. Some folks from VIVA, who you will hear from in just a few moments, agreed to be with us. We have long supported SARA, the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, which VIVA is a part of. So a number of things came together to bring about this service.
But I need to say just a word more. It is not that I or anyone just picked this as a kind of arbitrary theme for the day—“Oh, how about domestic violence and sexual assault? Those are good topics.” It’s not even that it fits in to some broad theme that we have chosen. For me, it’s also because the church is implicated, is deeply implicated, in this topic. It’s not as though this is something that just doesn’t have much to do with us. Sexual assault has taken place, and has been much more than a rare occurrence, inside the church. Some voices, not all voices but way too many, in the church have counseled the submission of women and have found Biblical passages to support them. Some voices in the church, in counseling relationships and in public pronouncements, have counseled women to stay in abusive and physically dangerous relationships because “divorce is wrong” or maybe “for the sake of the children”. The church has failed pretty much across the board to nurture a way of life in which women and men are accorded equal opportunity and treated with equal dignity and mutual respect. Theological ideas have been thrown around in careless and hurtful ways. I’ll have more to say about that later. I am suggesting that for us in the church not to turn our attention to these topics would be unacceptable. And for me that is the more compelling reason why we are doing this service and why I hope it will not be the last.
Reading: Luke 6:27-38
It’s not that I just have to preach some more this morning, except that in a way I feel like I do. Besides the fact that I think it’s important for men’s voices to be heard on these issues, it’s also important for ministers’ voices to be heard, if they have something different to say than what has often been said. I hope what I have to say will be more constructive than the kinds of things I mentioned earlier that have come from the church, which often means from ministers. Although I have a lot more to say than what I will have time for this morning, I wanted to at least say something, and that something has to do with forgiveness.
This is a theological concept with very practical implications. In the early 1990’s I accepted an appointment to a UCC Association committee called Church and Ministry, which dealt among other things with clergy misconduct. I didn’t think I would have to deal very much with misconduct cases because they had been up to that point relatively infrequent and usually were about some kind of financial misconduct or maybe a severe case of breaking confidentiality—things like that.
Almost immediately on becoming a member of the committee, however, we were presented with a complaint from a woman, who felt she had been sexually abused by her pastor. In trying to determine how we were going to respond, the members of the committee decided that we collectively needed to educate ourselves, and we began reading material about abuse in general and clergy abuse in particular that was just then coming out. We spoke with people who worked with people who had been abused, including people who had been abused by clergy. And we began to get clear about some things. Such as:
…that the tales of sexual shenanigans involving clergy, which could be found in a great many congregations if you scratched the surface a little, were not matters for winks and giggles but often involved a great deal of pain to more than a few people.
…that the main concern when a complaint is presented should not be how to do damage control or how to avoid embarrassment or in any way how to “handle” the situation
…that the sexual shenanigans of clergy were not shenanigans but were sometimes nothing less than sexual assault and always an abuse of their position and power that directly harmed a few human beings, and indirectly harmed the human beings who made up the congregation
…that the committee needed to demonstrate through its actions that the voices of women would be heard and taken seriously, and that clergy who had engaged in abuse would be held meaningfully accountable, not reprimanded and forgiven.
That last part was a bit of a sticking point, because in church circles forgiveness is a good word. In enlightened understandings of faith, God is presumed to be forgiving as opposed to punishing, and people are urged to forgive rather than stand in judgment or be vengeful. Everybody assumes forgiveness is a good thing, and most people think they know what forgiveness is.
I quickly began to realize that I wasn’t so sure that I knew all about forgiveness, that in real life when there was deep hurt and where there is a lot of stake, forgiveness is not easy to understand and even less easy to accomplish.
Very often people defending a pastor who was a perpetrator appealed for him to be forgiven. He’s basically a good person. He just had this moment of weakness. He’s done so many good things, how can we just treat him like a criminal. Everyone should be given a second chance. Don’t we believe in forgiveness? Especially in the church, people would say, don’t we believe in forgiveness?
The answer, of course, had to be yes. We do believe in forgiveness. But it is also the case that in matters of abuse, one of the great offenses of the church has been an understanding and a practice of forgiveness that pats an abuser on the back and shows compassion for a more powerful person, treats the abuse as a matter of no great importance, treats the person abused as a person of no great importance, and puts unknown other people at risk for likely further abuse.
Forgiveness, I came to believe, is a good thing—maybe—but not necessarily. Not if it means not really listening to someone who has the courage to tell the story of abuse. Not if it means failing to address a situation that almost certainly will be repeated if it is not addressed. Not if forgiveness is offered by someone who has not been abused on behalf of someone else who doesn’t get to go through her own process of forgiveness. Not if it is not a part of a process of healing. Not if it is not part of some process of change in how things are done and what is deemed acceptable.
There are texts in the Bible that we at Sojourners would all easily recognize as being dangerous and not to be taken simplistically and literally. There are texts that seem to condemn homosexuality. There are texts that are anti-woman. Some people call texts like that texts of terror, and some of those texts are easy to recognize.
But some are not—like Jesus telling people to turn the other cheek or that it is good to forgive. Those sound like good ideas, the kinds of ideas we identify with Jesus and with the best parts of the Christian message. But even there we cannot use those words, those ideas thoughtlessly or simplistically. Even turning the other cheek and words about forgiveness can be texts of terror for some people. Forgiveness can be something that is life-denying, not life-affirming. When abuse occurs, forgiveness is not the first thing that needs to happen, but often lies at the end of a long and difficult process. It is only real if a lot of other things have happened too, and have happened first. Far from being an obvious good, preaching forgiveness has sometimes done great harm. Even the best parts of our theology can be dangerous and need to be used with great care and with great prayer. Those are things I have learned in part from listening to women who had been abused tell their stories. They made my faith more complicated, more real, and therefore more true. I am grateful to them, and I hope I am still learning. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 26, 2003