Ps 22:1-15

15 October 2000

 

"From Jamestown to Jerusalem"

 

“When Kimberly was 20 she met ‘M’ while they were both in college.  In the beginning the relationship seemed good.  He was attentive and charming.  But very soon he started controlling her.  ‘I had my own insecurities and I took it as though he loved me.’”  So she says at the website which contains her story.^[1]  “At first he controlled what she wore, but the behavior steadily escalated until he regularly displayed jealousy, possessiveness, volatile behavior, cornering her or holding her on the floor and calling her names, stalking her.  By the second year he had punched out the window in her car and put holes in the wall of her apartment with his fist.

“Particularly bad outbursts would be followed by a period of promises, charm and gifts, but by the time she realized they were empty manipulations he was threatening to ruin her life if she left him.  They had never lived together but he seemed to spend every free minute at her house or following her.  Once, toward the end of their second year, she returned home unexpectedly during the middle of the day and found him going through her belongings.”

The story goes on, describing how the abuse became physical.  In fact, the website is quite graphic in its depiction of the violence.  I won’t go into all the gory details!  These are ugly images, and I don’t want to dwell on them.

So after the descriptions of the abuse, we read, “She has been attending battered women's groups for support and seeing a counselor.  Kimberly says, ‘I have become distrustful, unable to like most men, I avoid relationships, and have a lot of regrets¼but I now know it was not my fault.’  Although she is very personable she avoids making male friends.  ‘I can't trust them¼everybody is sweet in the beginning and then it turns to hell.’”  Fortunately, that isn’t the last word on Kimberly.  This story does have a happy ending—sort of!  So keep that in mind, because I’ll come back to this later!

Usually when I start working on a sermon, I begin with the Biblical passage.  I try to let the scripture speak, so that I don't impose my own message on it.  Of course, like any mere mortal, it's inevitable that I will do so, to one extent or another.  The point is, I usually don't start with the message and then look for a scripture text to go along with it.

Today is different.  For quite some time, I've planned to speak about domestic violence—partly due to the importance of the subject itself, and partly due to the fact that October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  In addition, today has been proclaimed "A Day of Remembrance" by the national YWCA, in memory of all victims of violence.  We'll observe that with a moment of silence later on.

So, having started with a message, I decided that the psalm reading provides the best fit.  But, as the scriptures will do when given the chance to speak, they're not so easily controlled.  The 22nd psalm is no different.  It insists on being heard for what it has to say.

This psalm's message is a powerful one, one that has voiced both the pain and joy of people for thousands of years.  Certainly the best-known of those people is our Lord Jesus Christ.  The line from the first verse, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is his cry of desperation from the cross (Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34).  The gospel of John quotes verse 18 in describing how the soldiers divide up the clothing of the condemned Jesus (Jn 19:24).

Psalm 22 is one of the most anguished parts of the Hebrew scriptures.  The psalmist is suffering greatly:  maybe from sickness, maybe from abuse, maybe from both.  Our writer certainly suffers from hatred of the community.  "I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people.  All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 'Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—let him rescue the one in whom he delights!'" (vv. 6-8).  This is a scriptural case of adding insult to injury!  It's not enough that the psalmist is in agony; his neighbors feel the need to laugh and make faces.

This is a psalm of violence.  We're being addressed by a victim of violence.  It's no wonder our reading became attached to the crucifixion of  Christ.  As Christians, we worship someone who was a victim of violence.  We've already heard about Kimberly; Jesus understands her pain very well.  The human rights of Jesus were violated.  We worship someone who received the death penalty.  As those who are called to identify with Christ—and in baptism have been marked as Christ's—we have as our model one who has faced all manner of abuse.

That's a heavy dose of suffering!  In recent years, some people have wondered, how beneficial is it "for Christian women to find their identity in one who was violated?"  One person who's asked this is A. Katherine Grieb, from the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC.^[2]  She doesn't want to deny the aspect of suffering in Jesus' life, but she is concerned about overemphasis on it.  When you consider the epidemic of domestic violence in America, it seems to me to be a valid concern.

For victims of violence, especially domestic violence, there does seem to be a danger in excessive focus on the suffering of Jesus.  A lot of it has to do with the nature of the beast.  Domestic violence is an especially pernicious evil.  One thing I should say:  I realize that men can also be victims of domestic violence, but by an overwhelming majority, it's women who are on the receiving end of the abuse.

You have a bulletin insert from Project Crossroads, which is dedicated to domestic violence education and is co-sponsored by the Jamestown Police Department and the YWCA.  Please hold on to this and take it home.  In the flyer, you can see various statistics and characteristics of domestic violence.  I won't run through the stats, because I know that people's eyes start to glaze over when you hit them with a bunch of numbers!

But I do want to mention a couple of things that Officer Ken Sleight, who helps coordinate Project Crossroads, said to the ministerial association when he met with us.  He told us that there are about 1100 reports of domestic violence in Jamestown every year.  That works out to three every day.  Of course, some people will make more than one report, but that's still a huge number.  Officer Sleight also reported on a recent survey of girls in the junior class at Jamestown High School.  He said that 30% of the girls have experienced dating violence at least once.  That's not necessarily date rape, but it does reflect some level of coercion used on them.

Still, we can establish that domestic violence is a problem and not answer the concern of those like Ms. Grieb, those who fear an overemphasis on the suffering of Jesus as a model for women.  It still doesn’t explain why they feel that way.  It seems that we've already got plenty of violence, especially violence toward females.  One problem is that suffering and abuse can become too easily associated with salvation.  The salvation Jesus offers is more than a result of the persecution he endured.  We certainly need to include the way he lived as much as the way he suffered and died.

An unhealthy preoccupation with suffering can lead us to romanticize, to glorify, and ultimately, to excuse it.  One way we see this happen is through blaming the victim.  "I wonder what she did to make him beat her up?"  "She's so stupid; why doesn't she just leave him?"  (By the way, a woman who leaves an abusive husband or boyfriend is often in greater danger, because he may not like losing control over her.)  The burden is placed on the woman.

When we fail to see domestic violence, and indeed all violence, as the evil it is—as an injustice to be resisted—then we run the risk of being overwhelmed by it.  We become desensitized to violence, and we lose the ability to even care about its victims.  One place in which violence has been on display for the entire world the past couple of weeks is Jerusalem, as well as the surrounding region.

Last Tuesday on Nightline, Ted Koppel moderated a town hall meeting at the Jerusalem YMCA.^[3]  There were six panelists—three Israelis and three Palestinians, one of whom was an Arab Israeli.  The tension in the room was evident.  In fact, there was trouble even before the meeting started.  Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert showed up with armed bodyguards, who made everyone leave the building and then re-enter after passing through a metal detector.  This angered the Palestinian participants, not to mention the bishop who was hosting the event.  “I will not have guns in my building,” insisted Bishop Riah Abu Al-Assal, director of the YMCA in east Jerusalem, where the show was taped.  Ted Koppel came up with a compromise:  let the armed guards remain outside.

So finally, the meeting was able to take place.  But it was evident during the broadcast that the violence has taken a heavy toll on the people.  Aside from all the physical destruction—the deaths, the demolished homes, the ravaged farmland—aside from all that, there's the spiritual toll that's been taken.  Lack of trust, unwillingness to hear the other,…and fear—all of these pervade the region.

Jesus has broken the power of violence.  Jesus continues to break the power of violence.  How does he do this?  How does Jesus use his power, the power of God that raised him from the dead, to make a difference among us?  How does Jesus make a way where there seems to be no way?  He does it by working through us.

Banu has a criticism of many of my sermons.  She tells me that I don't make it clear what all of you are to do with what I've said.  I leave you hanging.  And it's true—I'm often resistant to saying "do this" or "do that"!  I want to let the scriptures and the Spirit speak to you in ways I could never foresee.  I don't want to put God in a box.  At the same time, if I really believe what I just said about Jesus working through us, then I need to let him do that through me!

Therefore, I will now give you some practical, specific examples of how to resist the violence that threatens us all, from Jamestown to Jerusalem.  This first one is just for the men!  There's a petition entitled, "Men Standing with Women against Domestic Violence" on the bulletin board.  By signing it, you pledge to make changes in your own life related to this issue.  But please don't sign the document if you haven't read it and aren’t serious about it!

Something all of us can do is to learn to listen.  Listen!  This may not sound like it has anything to do with violence, but we need to think about where violence originates.  The epistle of James has something to say about it:  "These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?  Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?" (4:1).  Violence begins inside of us.

At the interfaith dialogue I'm attending, one of the primary tasks for me is learning to listen carefully to others—to try to really understand what they're saying and respond to it, especially when their ideas differ from my own.  I have to avoid building my own arguments in my head while others are talking.  But that's true for life in general.

And it's not easy.  It's not easy to stay in dialogue with—to remain engaged with—someone whose opinions you disagree with, even bitterly so.  We see this at the large scale level, between Israelis and Palestinians, for example.  But it's also at the small scale, between family members, between church members.  When we refuse to deal with someone, when we avoid them, we kill them, in a sense.  Violence is giving up, being unwilling to stay with someone long enough to break through to mutual understanding.

Believe me, I know that this is difficult.  We really are strangers to each other.  But it is Jesus, the one who reconciles us with God, who enables us to be reconciled with each other.  When it seems like things can never be repaired between us, Jesus is there to say, "I know a way!"

Our Lord refuses to let suffering and violence have the last word, just as in the story of Kimberly, it doesn't have the last word.  It turns out that she's an artist and is planning to get a master's degree in fine arts and hopes to teach art.  She's already had her work displayed in galleries and museums, including the "Art without Borders - Women Against Domestic Violence" exhibit in San Jose, CA.  So she's moving beyond the abuse in her life in order to bring art into other lives.

Our psalm is similar.  It moves from the agony of violence to the joy of deliverance.  Our reading only covers the first part!  We wind up with the psalmist finding liberation in God:  "From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me" (v. 21).  Our writer then encourages others, "You who fear the Lord, praise him!  All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!" (v. 23).