Ph 3:17-4:1

7 March 2004

2nd Sunday in Lent

“Some Stuff I Know Nothing About”

            My sermon today has two intersecting themes.  The first is drawn from our epistle reading in the letter to the Philippians.  I’m especially drawn to the last verse of the reading, 4:1, in which the apostle Paul advises them to “stand firm in the Lord in this way.”  The Revised English Bible renders the last half of that verse, “this is what it means to stand firm in the Lord.”  What he means by that will be a matter of ongoing consideration as we continue.

            The other theme comes from the fact that tomorrow, 8 March, is International Women’s Day.  For some reason that eludes me, the Presbyterian Church (USA) decided to move its Celebration of the Gifts of Women to the second Sunday in June, though churches (like ours) are free to observe it today or some other time.

            In any event, part of my sermon will deal with the experiences of women.  Thus my sermon title!  Still, just because this is some stuff I know nothing about, it won’t stop me from talking about it!  Besides, I’ve done some research…and that includes consulting with actual women!

            As I said earlier, my main scriptural focus is the text in Philippians.  But there’s something in our gospel reading that lends itself well to the matter at hand.  In Luke 13:34, Jesus says of Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”  He compares himself to a mother hen.  Friends, we’re listening to a man who is very secure in his masculinity!

            In case the numerous other examples from scripture haven’t clued you in to this yet—Jesus sees no need for the foolish macho games that downgrade women.  Our world today has a great deal to learn from him.  It’s a lesson that needs to be learned at all levels of human society:  from interpersonal relationships (such as domestic violence and date rape) to international relationships (such as the failure of governments to recognize women’s rights as human rights).

            On Friday, just in time for International Women’s Day, Amnesty International launched a two-year campaign to “Stop Violence Against Women.”  There are a staggering number of ways in which women are mistreated, but I’ll just mention two statistics in one of their reports that I found rather appalling.  In the US, a woman is raped every 6 minutes; a woman is battered every 15 seconds.[1]

            Jennifer Goodson, who works at Shared Hope, a non-profit organization which helps women and children in crisis, tells the story of Anita, who is from a rural village in Nepal.  (For those of you shaky in your geography, that’s a country in the Himalayas, located between India and Tibet.)

            Anita’s “father was addicted to opium and her younger brother was sent away to school,” she explains, “leaving Anita to be the breadwinner for a severely impoverished family.  One day a neighbor who had moved away returned, appearing relatively wealthy and successful.  He proposed to Anita's father that he take Anita to the city where she could get a job in a market.  He would make sure that part of her wages was sent to the family.  Without hesitation the father agreed.  But Anita's destination was not the city of Katmandu, it was Mumbai, and the market where she was to work traded in human beings.

“On her journey by train and bus from Nepal to Mumbai, Anita was drugged and beaten.  When she arrived at Victoria Station in Mumbai she was abandoned.  Eventually, an Indian woman approached her and took her home.  The woman bathed and fed her, clothed her, and sold her to a pimp for 20,000 rupees (US$408).  The pimp told Anita that she owed him 40,000 rupees (US$816) to cover his expenses.  He was, however [fine example of a human being that he was], willing to provide her with a job, having sex with ten men a day.  The cost of her living expenses would be added to her debt, and she could be grateful if the brothel owner insisted that customers use condoms.  When Anita refused, the brothel owner locked her in a room and sent a series of men to rape and beat her until she gave in.  Anita was 14.”[2]

The UN estimates that between 2 and 4 million children are trafficked each year in a fashion similar to Anita’s case.  The number of women is probably even more.  For comparison, imagine the entire population of the state of Iowa, at just under 3 million, or the state of Connecticut, with 3 and a half million.  And the CIA believes that fifty thousand women and children are being trafficked into the United States annually.  There’s a lot of money to be made from slavery.  It’s a matter of simple arithmetic.  Drugs, for example, can only be used once, and that’s the end of that.  But criminals can sell women and children over and over again.

There are a lot of factors involved, but certainly our nation’s increasing appetite for pornography fuels much of the demand.  The so-called “adult entertainment” industry is overwhelmingly run by men (no surprise there!), but more and more women are beginning to produce the stuff themselves.  I suppose that’s progress of some kind—a sad kind of progress.  It reminds me of Native Americans who find themselves relying on gambling and cigarettes for their livelihood.

Actually, none of this is really new.  For thousands of years, men have degraded women, and all of the vices of today were practiced by those of ancient times.  That, in part, is what the apostle Paul’s talking about in our epistle reading.  When he speaks of those “who live as enemies of the cross of Christ,” he uses a curious phrase:  Paul says that “their god is the belly” (vv. 18, 19).  Their god is the belly.

Of course, that would include gluttony—the desire to pig out, especially while others go hungry.  But there’s a lot more involved with it, and it’s related to being (or living as, as Paul puts it) an enemy of the cross.  “The belly” represents overindulgence of many kinds—filling ourselves and our lives with all kinds of stuff, thus drowning out the voice of the Spirit.

Despite all this physical imagery (and “the belly” is definitely a physical image!), being an enemy of the cross is more a spiritual reality.  It represents a whole…orientation to life.  It speaks of a deep self-centeredness, one that puts the desires and cravings of the self at front and center.  The result is destruction, as Paul says in verse 19.

But remember, Paul is talking to the church, to whom he pleads “even with tears” (v. 18).  Christians can lapse and fall back into these ways, rendering them indistinguishable from those without faith.  I mentioned during last week’s Lenten luncheon that the original meaning of virtue is “power.”  When we live as enemies of the cross (and we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking we never do), we abandon the power of the cross.  We live like slaves.

We’re getting back to this business of “what it means to stand firm in the Lord.”  The season of Lent especially reminds us of the need to embrace the cross, to crucify our unruly desires.  What that means is learning to say “no” to the things that inhibit our growth, the things that retard our development.

Left to our own devices, we are hopeless failures in this enterprise.  But we have the promise of Jesus Christ, who “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (v. 21).  Interesting phrase:  the body of our humiliation.  That doesn’t mean that our bodies are evil, as some philosophies and religions teach.  No, they are the good gift and creation of God.  Still, we won’t always have to struggle in these bodies that do fail us in many ways.

We’ll soon receive the body and blood of Christ as we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  In doing so, a foretaste of the kingdom is granted to us.  Remembering that we take communion in solidarity with Christians all over the world, we also get a hint of that promised glorified body.

Elizabeth Wirth, a contributing editor for Godspy.com, provides another way of looking at the sacrament.[3]  (And here’s more of that stuff I know nothing about!)  She admits that the experience of being pregnant was far from what she had anticipated.  (I’ll admit, I’ve never been pregnant either, so I can’t describe the experience!)  Instead of the blissful nine months she had expected, weeks would go by, filled with sickness, nausea, and exhaustion.  Wirth speaks of beginning the day by eating Cheerios at the side of her bed before having the strength to raise her head from the pillow.  She confesses that feeling her baby’s first kick didn’t excite her the way it did her friends during their pregnancies—instead, she found it kind of creepy.

Following the labor during which her son was born, she says, “With my body at the weakest point it had ever been, I embarked on the trial of actually raising my newborn.  I wanted to spend the first night with him, to have him near me, to welcome him with love.  But my body had reached its physical and emotional limits.

“All I could do was cry.  The nurses finally asked gently if I wanted them to take my baby out of the room so I could sleep.  Sobbing, I agreed.  It was my first night and already I felt that I had failed.

“A few weeks later, as I cried along with Christopher one sleepless night, I remembered the words of my Lord the night before he sacrificed himself for me:  ‘This is my body, broken for you.’

“He, too, spent a grueling, sleepless night of agony before the most difficult experience of his life.  He, too, prayed before his suffering, asking his father for relief, wondering if there were any other way.  He, too, lost his modesty, splayed naked before onlookers, laid bare while suffering and in pain.  Jesus, God made flesh, was physically torn.  He endured torment and exhaustion.  His body had been broken, too.  He understood what was happening to me.”

Jesus understood the brokenness of Elizabeth Wirth.  What about us?  Are we willing to acknowledge our brokenness—to be one of those clay pots that were the subject of last week’s Lenten luncheon?  Or are we too strong for that?  May we learn the wisdom of Lent:  to pray for the gift of repentance, to be broken—so that the Lord can put us back together the right way.

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