Wondering about the wandering sheep. Lost. Snatched. Scattered. A sin revealed, named, in the simplicity of a hashtag. The complexity of a movement.
Before I step too far into the reflection for today, I wanted to take a moment and remind you about those elusive hashtags that can be so unsettling. Just what are they? You have likely heard about hashtags, and seen them embedded in news reports and advertisements on T.V. and social media. For example, from the Super Bowl, do you remember Coke’s #AmericanIsBeautiful? Or Amazon’s ad, “#JustAsk Alexa”? No? How about the, “It’s a #TideAd”?
Hashtags are used on social media, Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, etc. to connect people. Connect conversations. The “hashtag” looks like what I grew up calling a “number’s sign,” or a “pound sign” on the telephone, or a tic-tac-toe game.
Last week, I alluded to the understanding I have that worship reflects life; and that life reflects worship. By that I mean that what we do in here with song, prayer, scripture, Word, confession, through our gathering, listening, prayer, and sending is reverberates beyond these walls in our ordinary… and sometimes not so ordinary… days.
And today we come to a simple hashtag, entrenched in a multi-layered movement. Silence broken. Sin named. Will we find…
Will we find – here… in worship—hope?
And if so… if HOPE is to be found HERE…
are you truly… deeply… ready for that hope?
For Rev. Dr. Ted Jennings says that, “Hope is not a sedative that tranquilizes us in the face of the world’s pain, brokenness, and bondage. It is instead that which for the first time genuinely awakens us to our situation.”[1]
An awakening. An awakening to the pain. Brokenness. Bondage. I need to say up front that the lens through which I speak to you today is my own. As a pastor, yes, but also as as an individual whose life experience is shaped through my lens as a heterosexual, white, female. A wife. A mother. A
grandmother. And I stand before you today and say “yes, #MeToo.”
In the wandering, it is easy to be lost. Snatched. Scattered.
Will we find—in these few moments of worship—hope? Transformation? A new seeing? Will we be, can we be, we must be… witnesses…?
This year—or what has actually in many ways been less than a year—has been a place of rapid transformation.
- It was just six months ago, October of 2017, that the hashtag #MeToo went viral on social media.
- It was just at the end of 2017 that Time Magazine named the Silence Breakers as Person of the Year. The “women who have “had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day,”[2]
And it is HERE, that a post on Twitter caught my attention this week. In response to this week’s bible readings, Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis tweeted: “Will we find others not of this fold? Will we find… those who lie outside our city gates, our country walls, desperate for our pastures, our refuge? Will we find those who sit in darkness and bring them into the presence of the light of the world? #GoodShepherdSunday”[3]
Will we find—hope?
Hope in the presence of a shepherd.
Who is it that needs to find… The pastures? The refuge? The light?
Can we see… them? Witness? Name? Will we… ?
I am going to add another layer onto our image of Jesus as the Good Shepard. For our call to give witness is not just in the seeing. The finding. As he writes about the intertwining of confession and sin, Jennings points to ather aspect of witnessing—the need to name. Drawing from the Gospel of Mark Jennings notes that, “In this seeing (witnessing) we also engage in naming. One of the features of the exorcisms Jesus performed in the Gospel of Mark was that he knew the demons by name. In naming them he exercised his dominion over them… Can we recognize the importance of this power in our lives? Do we not in our world have ample evidence of the power of naming? … So long as we use the wrong names for things, we cannot hope for freedom or justice.” Jennings continues with some examples, “I can call women ‘girls’ and can persuade myself they are really immature. I can call human beings ‘mankind’ and subconsciously assume that women are slightly less than… human. Names have power. They have the power to hold in bondage, to destroy and maim.”[4]
Yet naming can also give power. Silence kills. We need to name the sin. Identify the darkness. Proclaim the hope. Release God’s transformation. Name our need for refuge.
It is sooooo difficult to image green pastures and still waters in the continual bombardment of images and news stories depicting the violence that rages about us. Thus we lean into the UCC’s Break the Silence this Sunday, making “time for the church to learn together about the realities of rape and sexual violence; about ways to create a community where survivors (women, men, adults, children) can share their stories and receive support, hope, and love; and to prayerfully consider ways in which they can be advocates for change in their communities, and around the world.”[5] Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite writes that, “It is often said that violence against women is ‘hidden’ or ‘secret,’ but an unholy surprise is that it can be viewed daily, and that has been true for millennia… The culture of violence against women is so strong because this violence is normalized; violence against women is everywhere (and) what is sanctioned is calling it into question.”[6]
Thistlethwaite also identifies, “Violence against women (as) the largest and longest global war.”[7]
Will we find… “those who lie outside our city gates, our country walls, desperate for our pastures, our refuge? Will we find those who sit in darkness and bring them into the presence of the light of the world?”
Will we hear? Will we see? Will we name?
For we must.
Thistlethwaite encourages us by writing, “Becoming a witness helps create the conditions where what is right in front of us all the time can be known for what it is. Witnessing the global War on Women requires connection to, and participation in, the global movement to end violence against women. As a war fought primarily on the bodies of women, women themselves must primarily be the ones who ‘map’ the injuries and earth, and their voices will be privileged as sources. But as a movement, allies can provide important help and are necessary to achieve the political, social, economic, and religious changes required.”[8]
I want to share with you one example from my work with Worker Justice Wisconsin. Becky Schigiel, Executive Director, shares that Worker Justice “assists 200 workers per year, low wage workers, most make less then $10/hour, most are immigrants, (who) come to the Worker Center to resolve work place problems”[9]
“Exploitation related to immigration status. Wage theft, discrimination, and harassment. Unsafe, unhealthy working conditions. Poverty wages. These are just a few things that the Latino Workers Project’s (2016) report Struggling for a Better Life, the State of Working Latinos in Dane County found… Low pay, long hours, harassment and discrimination, unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, and a feeling of being trapped all contribute to high levels of stress, anxiety and mental health issues for Latino workers…”[10]
The #MeToo movement and Silence Breakers have often included women and men who are in the privileged position to speak up and out in regard to the harassment and abuse they have experienced. Yet so many other people continue to suffer ongoing abuse in silence, afraid of losing their jobs. Their homes. Being deported.
The silence has been normalized.
Can we… will we…
Awaken to the pain? Brokenness? Bondage?
Can we call out? Name? Shepherd? Provide refuge? Hope?
Not the “Hope (which) is a sedative. That tranquilizes us (from) the world’s pain..”
But that radical Hope, the Hope “…which… genuinely awakens us to our situation”?[11]
Will we?
For we must.
We must hear.
We must see.
We must name.
We must Break the Silence.
Can I get an Amen?
Amen.
~Pastor Kris
Reflection on 1 John 3:16-24 and John 10:11-18 offered on April 22, 2018.
[1] Jennings, Theodore W. The Liturgy of Liberation: The Confession and Forgiveness of Sins. Nashville: Abingdon, 1988. 68.
[2] “TIME Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers.” Time. Accessed April 19, 2018. http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/.
[3] Lewis, Karoline, Rev. Dr. Twitter. April 18, 2018.
[4] Jennings, Theodore W. The Liturgy of Liberation: The Confession and Forgiveness of Sins. Nashville: Abingdon, 1988. 68-69.
[5] Finley, Rev Moria, Break The Silence Sunday, October 2017. https://breakthesilencesunday.org/
[6] Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks. Women’s Bodies as Battlefield: Christian Theology and the Global War on Women. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. 32.
[7] Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks. Women’s Bodies as Battlefield: Christian Theology and the Global War on Women. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. 31.
[8] Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks. Women’s Bodies as Battlefield: Christian Theology and the Global War on Women. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. 33.
[9] Schigiel, Becky. “Buzz – 4-18 – 18 – Becky – Schigiel.” SoundCloud. April 18, 2018. Accessed April 20, 2018. https://soundcloud.com/wort-fm/buzz-4-18-18-becky-schigiel.
[10] Dahmer, David, Robert Chappell, and Tim Wohlers. “Dane County Latino Workers Still Facing Outrageous Working Conditions.” Madison365. March 10, 2016. Accessed April 20, 2018. http://madison365.com/dane-county-latino-workers-still-facing-outrageous-working-conditions/.
[11] Jennings, Theodore W. The Liturgy of Liberation: The Confession and Forgiveness of Sins. Nashville: Abingdon, 1988. 68.