Tired of All the Silence and there was no Good News in this Gospel of Mark to Address this Mess: #MeToo, #ChurchToo and refusing to be SILENT-A Sermon
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
(pause)
Last weekend,
While I was prepping for the upcoming orientation
And this shift
Into a season
Of preparing
And discerning
And building
Community,
A dear friend
Voice texted me
Sharing her prayers of comfort during this time
When old, ignored wounds
That have been inflicted on many women,
And those who identify as women
Wounds of violence,
Of assault
Against their sacred bodies
Now become public knowledge.
We’ve heard the whispers
And the stories
And the gossip.
We know someone,
Whose personhood was largely invisible
Until their bodies
Were forcibly misused
For someone else’s amusement
Self-gratification.
She was checking in with me,
Especially with the #Metoo
And #Churchtoo
That I was practicing self-care
That all of this was bringing up probably
A fresh wave of grief,
Since my cousin Osciara,
Too
Had been a victim
Of sexual violence.
(pause)
And yes,
For a moment,
With all these stories of pain,
And doubt
And shame
I’d forgotten for a nanosecond,
That what robbed our family of her life and light
Was not the suicide
But the sexual assault
At the hands
Of someone,
Who decided
Her fresh faced
And innocent nature
Being in college for her education
And for continuing this path
Continuing to live into what her Ancestors worked so hard for
And what the Creator breathed and brought her into life for
Was inconsequential
Unimportant
And was last
To the animalistic desire and control,
That they had been taught
That was their right,
To her
Body.
(pause)
And that they knew,
Like so many other victims,
She wouldn’t report it
Like so many other victims
She would experience self-doubt
That she was still worthy
In the eyes of those who loved her;
Like so many other victims,
She would experience shame
And second guessing herself
About why did she even go to that college party,
Just going to hang with friends
And have a good time,
And badger herself over and again,
About why she accepted that drink,
From someone she may have not know
As well as she thought she did.
And why did she allow herself,
To get caught up
In that situation,
What would her mother say?
Her aunts?
Her Elders?
(pause)
And those predators knew,
Nothing would happen to them
Because just like all victims know
That the institution of the
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
Would do nothing.
There would be no recourse
No restitution
No investigation
No assistance
No rescue.
Because higher education institutions
Are more worried about
Their reputation
Their access to economic wealth and accessibility
Their prestige
Their influence in attracting
The best
And brightest.
That they were counting on her doing
What all other victims of sexual violence ultimately do
Suffer
In
Silence.
(pause)
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
(pause)
Because,
Somewhere in religious dogmas
And doctrines
And a twisting of holy words
The more you suffer,
the more it increases one’s worthiness
The more you bear your burdens alone,
The more you will be revered and honored among the people
As an example of holiness
Watching you limp down the street
Holding back your silent tears
Or using your body once more
As they memorialized you
At an untimely death
Because somehow all this suffering,
Fast tracks you to the afterlife,
Into heaven
And seated so close to God.
(pause)
“Be like Job!”
How many times have we heard that?
Because suffering somehow makes us good and faithful servants
And see,
God rewarded Job ten times over!
See what suffering brings you!
(pause)
One of my dear friends,
Tuhina
A victim of sexual violence
Rewrote Psalm 10,
And these verses read:
“Those mediocre men brag about their conquests;
they are hungry for power, and they’ve turned you into an
idol.
In their fits of yelling and grandstanding,
they’re not looking for God:
There is no God — that’s what they are always thinking.
Their ways are messed up.
They twist, manipulate, and break your teachings.
They think they can violate us again and again.
They think to themselves,
We have the “power”, and
“It will always be this way.”
Their faces are twisted
with rage, self-pity, and hate.
They scream and shout about
how they’re the victim and how they’ve been destroyed.
(pause)
And when someone
Who has heard the Gospel
From the person
Of Jesus Christ,
And what they are called to do
And when they watch that person,
Call them out
About their demonic behavior
Against those oppressed,
Marginalized
About the fact that they are just perpetrating
This idea of being good, upstanding citizens
All the while clinging to a false god of greed,
When they encounter pastors, clergy, faith leaders
Who remind them
That our responsibility
Is to stand with
Mend the broken
Amplify the voices
Demand that the laws change
To protect
Suddenly they point and scream to Jesus
“Teacher,
we saw someone casting out demons in your name,
and we tried to stop them,
because they were not following us.”
(pause)
That we refuse,
To follow the status quo
And the rules
That they have established
That we,
Are to absorb the violence
Because it’s probably our fault
And suffer
In
Silence.
(pause)
Even these verses before us,
In the Gospel
Have been misread
And misused
To shame people
Into silence
Because of their sin.
(pause)
That our flesh is so sinful-
That because of what we wear,
We bring this violence upon ourselves
Because our people were heathens,
And need to be civilized
We bring this violence upon ourselves
Because we refuse to be subservient
And assimilate
And don’t follow orders,
We bring this violence
Upon ourselves
(pause)
And that we should just cut it off
So that we can be holy,
In their eyes.
But let’s say,
That Jesus was teaching and directing this,
Not towards those who were poor,
Oppressed
Abandoned
But for those who thought
They were above the law
That thought they had the power
What if,
Jesus was speaking to those aligned
With the Empire
That those things,
Material
Tangible
Those habits that separated us from one another
That broke those communal bonds
Of love, and of mercy
What if
We cut off those things
That separated us
From the Creator
And from one another?
(pause)
How radical that love would be!
(pause)
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
(pause)
That is the Good News,
Because Jesus empowers us
Encourages us
Calls us
To name the demonic
To confront the hatred in this world,
By reminding us
That He,
The One whose Presence alone
Calms the storm
Envelopes the hurting
That Jesus Christ,
Who is the WORD MADE FLESH
Is with us.
So we can stand with our siblings,
When they are speaking out
About the violence that has been done to them,
When they feel embolden to speak to the trauma
That they have carried for so long
That because of our love that we give to them
Which came from the One,
Who loves us regardless,
They can be whole once more.
(pause)
Note from from where I stand-The rest of my sermon echoed our Ancestor Aretha’s words: That sometimes we need to be in a healing community; that we need to offer the space and the openness to lay hands, and oil and prayers and weep with one another about the trauma and the pain that we carry or has been done to us.
Know that I am with you, always.
Ache’
Amen.
