Yesterday
Chain of Lakes Church devoted worship to the theme of the church’s response to
the #MeToo movement. I chose this theme
after reading an editorial by Jim Wallis in the July issue of Sojourners magazine.
Wallis issued a call for a hundred sermons against domestic and sexual
violence. At the time of the editorial
he had received 60 sermons, but only ten sermons from men. The full editorial
is here:
The
manuscript of the sermon is below. The link to the video for the sermon is here:
https://vimeo.com/290185314
Later this week I will post the link to the
video of the sermon.
This
was one of the toughest sermons I’ve given.
It was very uncomfortable standing up in front of others in worship and talking
about rape, sexual harassment, & sex was not easy. I certainly felt “out there.”
However
I’m not asking for sympathy as my level of being uncomfortable was not even
close to the horrible experiences of sexual violence that woman have experienced. Statistics about sexual violence need to be
shared. According to the National Sexual
Violence Resource Center one in five women will be raped in their lifetime. One in three women will experience some form
of inappropriate sexual contact in their lifetime. Twenty to twenty-five percent of women are
victims of forced sex while in college.
The
highlight of worship was Kathy Brevig sharing her own #MeToo story. Kathy
experienced sexual violence a number of years ago. She hadn’t told anyone about
this incident.
The
fact that she even shared her story is a testimony to the work of the Holy
Spirit. Kathy attended a retreat at Presbyterian Clearwater Forest in August called
Chrysalis. At the retreat she encountered the story of Susanna. The story is in
the book of Susanna which is in the Apocrypha. Susanna rebuffed the unwanted sexual
advances of two men. To punish Susanna the men falsely accused her of having
sex with another man.
Shortly
after this I shared at a staff meeting of Chain of Lakes that I wanted to have
a woman speak at the service yesterday.
I didn’t think it would be appropriate for only a man to speak at this
service. At the staff meeting Kathy shared that she had a #MeToo story. After
the staff meeting she shared it with me. It seemed to be a God thing for her to
share her story during worship yesterday.
During the service the
music focused on healing; in the sermon I focused on the history of the #MeToo
movement, statistics on sexual violence including statistics of sexual violence
in the church, and shared three specific ways the church can respond to the
#MeToo movement. They are:
1. Give space for women to share their stories
2. Teach a healthy sexuality
3. Help men come to terms about what it means to
be a male
After
the sermon Kathy Brevig shared her story. I then said a prayer. Jonathan Smith,
Music Director of Chain of Lakes, then shared some music.
The
response in worship was overwhelmingly positive. Almost everyone shared their
appreciation that Chain of Lakes was willing to confront such a hard topic.
Kathy Brevig was appropriately lauded with praise. She shared that four women
came up to her and shared that they had a #MeToo experience.
I
want to challenge every church in Anoka County and the churches in the
Presbytery of Twin Cities Area to focus a service on the #MeToo movement. As I
shared in the opening to the sermon I have no doubt that if Jesus was alive
today he would be encouraging churches to face this topic. And as he was doing
this, he would comfort the survivors; he would listen carefully and with
respect to their stories.
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The following is the manuscript for the sermon I shared yesterday. If anyone would like to have a copy of the power
point slides send an email to pastor@colpres.org
The
Scripture reading was Genesis 34:1-7, the rape of Dinah
SLIDE
For such a thing ought not to happen
here. This is how the writer of Genesis described
what happened to Dinah. And if the
writer of Genesis was alive today and describing how people—mainly women—are
raped and sexually harassed he would say the same thing.
This IS also what you and I would
say. Such a thing ought not to
happen. And not only that you and I
dream of the day when no person is raped or sexually harassed. This is certainly a blue sky dream—and our dream
is fully rooted in God’s dream. For God
dreams of the day when no one is raped or sexually harassed.
Most of the time God’s dreams or
intentions happen through the work of humans—you & I. This is one reason we come to worship and
participate in church. We place our
faith in a God who has great dreams for the world, and we ask “what can we do
to make them happen.”
The hope for today is a group of
people who gathered for worship at a location called Chain of Lakes will take
steps towards living out God’s dream—where no one is raped or sexually
harassed. For such a thing ought not to
happen.
Today we are looking at the church’s
response to the #MeToo movement. In this sermon I’m going to do two
things. I’m going to describe the
history of the #MeToo movement and then I’m going to share three ways the
church can respond.
SLIDE
The
theme of this service came to be when I read an article by Jim Wallis, editor
of Sojourners magazine. He encouraged
every church to have a worship service that focused on the church’s response to
the #MeToo movement. So here we
are.
SLIDE
None of you have asked me this, but
I can imagine the question might have gone through someone’s mind if this is an
appropriate topic for a church to address in worship. To the best of my knowledge no other church
in Anoka County has had a worship service that focuses on the church’s response
to the #MeToo movement. Chain of Lakes
is distinct in focusing on this topic.
This topic is appropriate because I
believe if Jesus was alive today he would ask churches to do this. How do we think Jesus would respond to a
person who was raped or sexually harassed?
He would sooth the wounds of the victim, he would be talk about what was
happening with his disciples, and he would speaking prophetically to the world
with the intention of creating a world where no person is raped or sexually
harassed. The church is the body of
Christ, so we follow Jesus. We’re always
asking the question, “what would Jesus do?”
So here we are.
I want to put out a challenge to
every church in Anoka County to have a worship service that focuses on the
church’s response to rape and sexual harassment.
Harassment happens to men also and
in homosexual relationships. For the
purpose of this sermon I’ll talk about harassment conducted by men to women.
I wrote a devotion for you and I
encourage you to get it out. I shared
stories about important women in the Bible.
I encourage you to use it every day this week. In the middle is a place to take notes. I believe something might be said that you
want to write down. On the back is a
listing of prayer requests.
SLIDE
Tarana Burke was born in the Bronx
in 1973. She grew up in a low-income,
working-class family in a housing project.
She was raped and sexually assaulted as a child and a teenager. She committed herself to improving the lives
of young girls. One time she sat across
from a 13-year-old girl. The girl shared
that her mother’s boyfriend had been sexually abusing her. She was searching for the right words to help
empathize with this young girl. She
coined the phrase #MeToo. That was in
2006.
Last fall, the New York Times
published articles that contained allegations of sexual assault and rape
against Harvey Weinstein, an American film producer. Over eighty women made allegations of sexual
harassment against Weinstein.
SLIDE
Shortly after that Alyssa Milano
shared a tweet on the Social Media platform Twitter around noon on October 15 that
said this, “If all the women who had been sexually assaulted or harassed wrote
the hashtag “me too” … we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the
problem.
SLIDE
By
the end of the day the hashtag #Metoo had been shared over 200,000 times. Within 24 hours it had been tweeted 500,000
times. On Facebook the hashtag was used by more than 4.7 million people in 12
million posts during the first 24 hours.
Facebook reported that 45 percent of users in the United States had a
friend who posted the hashtag.
Tens of thousands of people replied
with #MeToo stories.
Something changed.
Over 200 men in the arts and
entertainment industry, media, business & tech and politics were accused of
sexual harassment. The web site vox.com
has a listing. Some prominent names who
have been accused are Kevin Spacey, Oliver Stone, Ben Affleck, Sylvester
Stallone, David Copperfield, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly,
Charlie Rose, Garrison Keillor, Tom Brokaw, Al Franken, Roy Moore, & John
Conyers.
President Clinton was impeached for
lying to a grand jury about sexual harassment.
President
Trump was caught on tape saying things that indicated he had engaged in sexual
harassment.
The statistics are hard to hard to
hear and hard to share.
SLIDE
According to the National Sexual
Violence Resource Center one in five women will be raped in their lifetime.
One in three women will experience
some form of inappropriate sexual contact in their lifetime.
Ninety-one percent of rape victims
are women
20% - 25% of women are victims of
forced sex while in college.
Rape is the most under-reported
crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police
In this place we’re interested in
what happens in a church. In the
Catholic tradition the news of sexual misconduct is often of priests acting
inappropriately with underage boys.
Sexual misconduct in Protestant churches is not often mentioned. That leads to the question, “how often does sexual
misconduct happen in Protestant churches?”
I wish I had better news to
share.
SLIDE
A study by PC(USA) Research Services
in 2016 revealed that 84 percent of female teaching elders, pastors, had
experienced discrimination, prejudice or harassment.
The Office of General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church (USA) estimates that there are about 50 clergy sexual
misconduct cases every year.
Then there are anecdotal stories
SLIDE
This past week Val Owens and I were
at a meeting at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington. Oak Grove is a sister-church to Chain of
Lakes. I shared with the group that the
focus of worship this Sunday is on the church’s response to the #MeToo
movement. The pastor of Oak Grove, Bill
Chadwick shared that seven pastors in Oak Grove’s history had done something
inappropriate. Seven pastors. Bill went on to say that all of their staff
offices have windows and all of the doors of staff have windows because of
their history of sexual misconduct.
Many years ago Westminster
Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis was in the midst of an important renovation
of their sanctuary. Just as the campaign
was getting going, the pastor announced to the congregation that he was
divorcing his wife and getting married to the associate pastor and resigning
from his position. This is a hard story
for me to share as the pastor is still a friend of mine. Having an affair with a staff person is
misconduct.
The Presbytery recognized this and
temporarily removed this man from being a pastor for a length of time.
I’ve been told many stories of
pastors preying on women in a “counseling” situation. When I was growing up at Westminster
Presbyterian Church I heard stories of a pastor who acted inappropriately with
women in a “counseling” situation. That
pastor stayed less than five years at the church. In growing up in that church, I never heard
much about this pastor’s actions. And
perhaps it was appropriate that I was a youth didn’t know what had happened. However
keeping secrets is not healthy and hurts the mission of the church. Sure it would have been unpleasant to bring
out into the open what had happened. But
it’s hard to heal when the truth isn’t shared.
At Chain of Lakes we say right in
our Purpose Statement that we are called to be an authentic, Christian
community. Being authentic means that we don’t keep secrets and we freely share
information. We are willing to discuss
uncomfortable topics. We seek the truth and then share the truth in love.
That’s a brief history of the #MeToo
movement and some statistics.
The important question is “How do we
respond?”
We look to Jesus. I want to read a story for you that informs
my understanding of how to respond. It’s
the story of Jesus and the women at the well.
It’s in John 4. Let me set it
up. Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to
each other. Men had power over women. In the time of Jesus women didn’t even have
legal rights. A women was the property
of her husband. If a woman wasn’t
married she was in worse shape. And
I’ll let the story speak for itself.
SLIDE
So
[Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that
Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out
by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. (John 4:5-6)
SLIDE
A
Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to
him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? (Jews
do not share things in common with Samaritans.) (John 4:7-9)
Jesus went on to have a conversation
with the woman. The fact that a Jew
would talk to a Samaritan was remarkable; the fact that a man would talk to a
woman was also remarkable. Jesus carried all
of the power in this conversation.
Jesus asked the woman to bring her
husband to the well. The narrator went
on to say that the woman had been married and divorced five times. We don’t know this, but it’s not hard to
imagine that this woman had been forced to engage in sex that was against her
own will. It’s not a huge leap to come
to the conclusion that she had experienced sexual harassment.
Jesus was willing to talk to the
woman. Jesus gave her space to share her
story. In listening to her, Jesus communicated that what she had to say was
important. She didn’t need to hide any
longer. She didn’t need to keep the burden of her story to herself
anymore. She had someone who would
listen and even more importantly she had someone who respected her. Jesus valued her.
At the end of the story the
disciples came upon the woman. The story
shares that
SLIDE
They
were astonished that he was speaking with a woman (John 4:27)
The reaction of the disciples
revealed how significant it was for Jesus to talk to this woman. He was breaking a cultural norm of his day because
Jews didn’t talk to Samaritans. And
Jesus was talking to a woman who had been divorced five times.
If you ever wonder why Jesus is so
important, come back to his actions in this story.
SLIDE
One way the church can respond to
the #MeToo movement is by giving space to women to share their stories. By sharing a story the unhealthy power of a
secret is lifted. I wouldn’t be
surprised if 50 percent of the woman who participate at Chain of Lakes have
experienced sexual harassment or even rape.
I want to encourage you to share your stories with someone. The role for the rest of us is to listen with
compassion.
When Jonathan Smith and I planned
this service I shared with him that I wanted to have a female. I didn’t feel
comfortable having a service on the #MeToo movement where only a man
spoke. I shared this wish at our staff
meeting. After the staff meeting Kathy
Brevig said that she wanted to talk with me.
Kathy had just been to a retreat of women called Chrysalis at
Presbyterian Clearwater Forest. During Chrysalis
the story of Susanna was shared. Susanna
is part of the Apocrypha, that’s a collection of 14 books that at one time was
part of the Old Testament.
Susanna was a woman who rebuffed the
sexual advances of two men. When the two men were rebuffed they punished
Susanna by saying she had sex with a young man.
That story was a lie. After hearing the story of Susanna
at Chrysalis and then hearing my wish at a staff meeting to have a female share
a #MeToo story, Kathy told me that she had a #MeToo story. She had never shared it with anyone. When I heard her story there was no doubt
that it was important for her story to be heard at this service.
That is the work of the Holy
Spirit.
A first way for the church to
respond is to create a space where people can share their stories.
SLIDE
The second way the church can
respond to the #MeToo movement is to teach that Sex is a good gift that is
given by God to humanity. Sexuality is
good and healthy and reflects love. Sex
is intended to take place in committed relationships.
Where are people going to learn
about sex? Hopefully in families;
hopefully in schools; and hopefully in churches.
Our conversations about sex in the
church have to be more than wait until you’re married. We’re called to create safe spaces where
people of all ages can talk about sexuality.
We have a safe space where we can talk about our bodies, or our desires,
or we can ask questions of others.
I’m not at all deluded into thinking
that conversations about sex are easy.
I’ve lived in Minnesota almost my entire life. Minnesotans have a hard time talking about our
bodies and our desires and our feelings.
There is a lot at stake in creating
safe spaces where we can have conversations about a healthy sexuality in
church. If we don’t have conversations
about sex in church where will these conversations take place? On the Internet. There is a lot of unhealthy conversation
about sex on the Internet. Or these
conversations won’t happen. Is there
something wrong in not talking about sex?
Sexual desire does not go away. We
can try to repress sexual desire. But
like any emotion that repressed desire will find a way to come out. Often it will come out in unhealthy ways.
SLIDE
A final response I want to share today
about the church’s response to the #MeToo movement is to teach and lift up
different images of what it means to be a male.
What is the ideal image of a man?
Is the ideal image of a male someone who is strong and athletic, someone
who will play football at US Bank Stadium today? Not all males are athletic. Where does that leave them? We need to teach and communicate important
responses to questions like, What qualities of being a male are important? What does it mean to be a male? Who are role models for being a male? What are the images of a male?
This
could be an entire ministry.
The church must communicate to men
that sexual harassment is never okay; sexual conquests are not okay. No means no even in a married relationship.
These are three ways the church can
respond to the #MeToo movement
1. Give space for women to share their stories
2. Teach a healthy sexuality
3. Help men come to terms about what it means to
be a male
Tarana Bruke and Alyssa Milano
unleashed something important. Today
we’ve gathered to say that no person should experience rape or sexual
harassment. May all of us commit to
creating this world.
