The Other Six Days: To Dwell in Safety
A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
March 13, 2005
Genesis 2:18-25; 1 Corinthians 14:33-37; John 8:2-11

Genesis 18 ¶ Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

1 Corinthians 14 :33 for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.
¶(As in all the churches of the saints, 34 women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 36 Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?)
37 ¶ Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord.

John 8 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

I. TEXTS
If you are a woman, you might be excused for thinking the Church had something against you—or at the very least, did not have your interests close to heart. Often that idea comes about after reading scriptures like we read tonight. First, women get created second. Secondly, women are told to be quiet in church and ask their husbands if they have any questions. Third, when caught in the act of adultery, only the woman is brought forward to be stoned to death. The guy who slept with her is let go.

Beyond that, you might point to the 1800+ years of Christian history before women were ordained to the ministry. You might point to the second class status of women in many churches—of how women never get the best pulpits. For example, there is a Methodist church not far from this campus—I won’t give its name; let’s just say it’s a “metropolitan” Methodist Church—that has never had a female senior pastor, in spite of its prominence and The United Methodist Church’s commitment to gender equality.
And most damning of all, you could point to the church’s deafening silence when it comes to the issues of violence against women.

II. THE CRISIS

The church has not been very vocal about this issue, unfortunately. And in my experience it has not received nearly the attention of issues of race or sexuality. And yet, it is happening all around the church and within the church. There is not a single parish where someone is not suffering from domestic violence. And yet, I cannot recall ever even having heard a single sermon about it.

A. The Statistics

• In 1999, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services received 55,558 police reports of family offenses involving adult intimate partners. An adult female was identified as the victim in 84% of these reported family offenses. NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1999 Crime & Justice Annual Report.

• Of all adult domestic violence cases reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 1998, approximately 85% were victimizations of women by their current or former partners. Compared to males, females experienced 5 times as many incidents of violence by an intimate. Women were the victims in about 876,340 of the violent crimes committed by an intimate, compared to approximately 157,330 incidents committed against men. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence, May 2000, NCJ 178247.

• Fifty-two percent of all violent crimes committed by a relative involve spouses and ex-spouses. One in four spousal attacks involve persons who are divorced. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1995, May 2000, NCJ 171129.

• Of 57 domestic homicides occurring in NYS between 1990 and 1997, 75% of the victims had ended the relationship or stated an intention to end it at the time of their death. NYS Commission on Domestic Violence Fatalities, Report to the Governor, (Albany, NY: 1997), 8.

• According to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports 1976-1999, 59% of the murder victims known to have been killed by an intimate in 1999 were shot to death. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Trends in the United States, Intimate Homicide, 2001.

• According to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports 1976-1999, 30% of women murdered in the United States in 1999 were murdered by a husband, former husband or boyfriend. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Trends in the United States, Intimate Homicide, 2001.

• In 1996, nearly 75% of those murdered by an intimate partner in the US were women. Greenfield, L.A., and others, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of data on crimes by current or former spouses, boyfriends, and girlfriends. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998. NCJ-167237.

• Between 1993 and 1999, an intimate was responsible for 32% of homicides of women age 20-24 and almost 40% of homicides of women age 35-49. Rennison, C.M., PhD., Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-99, 2001, NCJ-187635.

• Most (78%) stalking victims are female and most (87 %) stalking perpetrators are male. (Tjaden, P. and Thoennes, N., Stalking in America: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, 1998, NCJ 169592. • Women are significantly more likely than men (59% and 30%, respectively) to be stalked by intimate partners. (Tjaden, P. and Thoennes, N., Stalking in America: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, 1998, NCJ 169592. • Eighty-one percent of the women who were stalked by a current or former husband or cohabiting partner were also physically assaulted by the same partner, and 31% of the women who were stalked by a current or former husband or cohabiting partner were also sexually assaulted by the same partner. (Tjaden, P. and Thoennes, N., Stalking in America: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, 1998, NCJ 169592.

• In a national study of more than 6,000 American families, 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. Murray A Strauss, Richard J. Gelles, and Christine Smith. Physical Violence in American Families; Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 407-409. • Studies show that children are being physically abused in approximately half the families where the mother is a known victim of domestic assault. Similarly, studies show that mothers are being battered in approximately half the families where her child is a known victim of physical abuse. Jeffrey L. Edleson, PhD, The Overlap Between Child Maltreatment and Woman Abuse (VAWnet, revised April 1999, Violence Against Women Online Resources), available at http://www.vaw.umn.edu/Vawnet/overlap.htm, Internet accessed 24 December 2001. • Slightly more than half of female victims of intimate violence live in households with children under the age of 12. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics Factbook: Violence by Intimates, March 1998, v.

• Female victims of intimate partner violence are more likely than victims of strangers to experience injuries and to require medical treatment. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Female Victims of Violent Crime, 1996, NCJ 162602. • In a 1992 study of 691 black, Hispanic, and white pregnant women in public health clinics in Houston, TX, and Baltimore, MD, one in six women reported physical abuse. Participants were invited into the study at the first prenatal visit and were followed up until delivery. McFarlane, Parker, Soeken, & Bullock, "Assessing for abuse during pregnancy," Journal of the American Medical Association 267, no. 23 (1992): 3176-3178.

• In a study of one Florida domestic violence agency, 63% of women in shelter suffered from major depression and 40% from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while of those who were receiving services but living in their own homes, 81% suffered from depression and 31% from PTSD. (Rates of major depression and PTSD in a large random sample of US women were 7% and 1% respectively.) Walter J. Gleason, "Mental disorders in battered women: An empirical study," Violence & Victims 8, no. 1 (1993): 53-68.

• In a survey of over four thousand 9th through 12th-graders, approximately 1 in 5 female students (20.2% in 1997 and 18.0% in 1999) reported being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. Silverman, Jay G.; Raj, Anita; Mucci, Lorelei A.; Hathaway, Jeanne E., "Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Use, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality." Journal of the American Medical Association 286, no.5, (2001): 572-579.

(Statistics excerpted from the NY State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, http://www.opdv.state.ny.us/about_dv/dataweb2003.html)

The problem of domestic violence is widespread and is all around us. Why does it seem the church is not doing enough?

B. The Church’s Attitude

One of the more fascinating things that happens to an organization over time is that it tends toward conservatism and hierarchy. Let’s say you and I start and organization right now. We’ll call it The Association of People Who Mean Well. It will be great.
In the early stages it will run on the enthusiasm of its members. When leadership issues arise, those with gifts for leadership will rise naturally to the top and we’ll follow that “charismatic” authority. It will be a really dynamic time and we’ll all be really enthusiastic.

What will happen, of course, is that after a while, the enthusiasm will wane, not because it’s no longer fun to mean well, but because the long work of the Association will be seen to be a much longer process then perhaps we first thought. At this point, it would be helpful to have rules—rules that determine who is in charge, who has what responsibilities, etc. Because as fun as that initial stage was, we can’t keep relying on the right person just arising out of the group to handle particular tasks. Plus, people who we would like to donate money to fund our Association seem a little put off by this whole ‘no one is in charge’ thing. They like stability and the rest of the community is kind of making fun of us.

So, that free for all time will be over. We’ll have to draw up a list of qualifications for leader: probably a college degree (that excludes most of you). We’ll probably want some other qualifications that will restrict such an important position to a qualified few. That’s just how things work. Play time is over.

That cycle happens a lot. It happened in ancient Israel. At first, after the Exodus, Israel was ruled by “judges” who rose to leadership based on their natural gifts and abilities and were affirmed by the community to defend them in times of dire need. It was a very flat society. Not a lot of hierarchy. And the judges could be anyone: old, young, male, female: Samson, Gideon, Deborah.
But then Israel had to get serious about protecting its interests against hostile neighbors and a major change happened: the institution of the Monarchy. King Saul, King David, King Solomon, King Jeroboam, King… Are you starting to see a pattern here? No Queen Deborahs. Power is in the hands of the men.

The same thing happened in the early Church. In the founding generation women occupied roles of great importance, often leading the early congregations. Certainly, among the earliest disciples of Jesus were women. We know about Mary Magdalene, and there were others as well.

But by the Second Century, we already begin to witness a conservatizing trend as the Second Coming is delayed and the church settles down for the long haul. Structure and hierarchy begin to take shape. The offices of deacon, elder, and bishop, originally functional distinctions quickly become hierarchical. And guess who gets left out of those positions?

The church, it seems, is not immune from the same biases that the broader society shares. Women were relegated to second class status. Many scholars are of the opinion that the passage that we read earlier from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians was not, in fact, written by Paul. Paul was writing in the 50’s and 60’s of the first century, a time of great charismatic leadership in the early church and when women occupied places of great distinction in the church. Paul also wrote things like “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female” but that we are all one in Christ Jesus. So, it had always seemed strange to hear Paul say that

“women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

In fact, this very passage is located inconsistently in the various ancient manuscripts, suggesting that it was added in by someone else later. Try reading the passage without it—you’ll see that it flows much better.

C. The Legacy

But so what? Does it matter whether Paul wrote this or not? It still got into the Bible and isn’t likely to be removed any time soon.
What it has done is contribute to a tendency to place women in subordinate places in society. Once that is done, it becomes easier to overlook the rights of women, easier to look the other way when women are abused and their dignity assaulted. It becomes easier to sweep violence against women under the carpet. This is especially insidious in societies that diminish the rights of women in the guise of “protecting” those women.

These steps are never taken with the individual end in mind. That is, no one in the church set out to create a system that ignored the abuse of women, but large institutions can be put on trajectories. The progress from weaker sex, to subordinate, to property is too easy. Once women are relegated to the status of property in someone’s mind, it becomes easier to convince yourself that you have the right to do whatever you want to do to that person. Thus, whether intentional or not, the Church’s seeming compliance with the second-class status of women can help to create and reinforce a culture in which women are not seen as individuals with rights, but as property, things to be controlled, by any necessary means.

III. SOLUTIONS?

What then are the solutions? How do we combat this vicious evil in our midst?

A. Force

This past week, seventeen of us spent a week in North Carolina with the people of the Cherokee Nation. There is much to tell about such a trip and much that we learned over the few days that we were there. One of the bits of Cherokee wisdom that we took was in regard to domestic violence. We saw a number of signs that said “Domestic Violence is not the Cherokee Way.” We learned why it was not the Cherokee way. In the old days, when a couple were married, they moved in with the woman’s family. It made it a lot harder to abuse your wife when her brothers were in the same house, and you were the new guy.

B. Law

That’s a tempting solution. Though one imagines that it would be a little difficult to recommend such a large change in our societal practice. It would be pretty hard to enact a law that required that.

But there are plenty of laws on the books that Christians can support. The Violence Against Women Act provides full faith and credit to civil protection orders. That is, when a woman gets a restraining order against her abuser, under the old law, it was not a final order, but an interim step, and therefore, other states did not have to recognize it under the constitution. The VAWA provides such protection even for temporary orders, such that an abuser cannot get around the order’s restrictions by following his wife or girlfriend to another state. Laws like this one are important ones that Christians should support.

C. Challenging Perceptions

Ultimately, however, the example of the Cherokee that I gave earlier is not really about law or even about force—no matter how big the woman’s brothers might be.

Most men would be appalled to hear that their sister or daughter had been mistreated by her boyfriend or daughter. And yet, many of these same men would mistreat the woman they’re with. The beauty of the Cherokee idea is that it forces the husband to see his wife as someone’s sister.

It is a change in perspective, and changing perspectives is what the Gospel is all about. The Gospel challenges the powers of this world and the presumptions with an alternative vision of humanity as a common family, protecting one another rather than abusing and harming one another. The Christian has no choice but to speak out against domestic violence and the conspiracy of silence that allows it to continue.

IV. RESPONSE

And there is much that the Christians have informing them when speaking out.

A. Scripture

The writings of Paul (authentic or otherwise) are not, of course, the only writings in the Bible. There is much more that our tradition has to say. The first and foremost example is that found in Genesis.

The reading we heard from Genesis earlier is the second Creation story in Genesis, the first being when God creates everything by speaking in the first chapter. In this story, a human being is created and then the Lord sets about helping the human to find a “helper”. All the animals are brought by but none is a suitable “helper as a partner”. So, God causes the human to fall asleep and out of one of his ribs, he creates a woman, who is to be a “helper as a partner” or a “helper as a counterpart.”

People have interpreted the creation of women as subordinate to the creation of men. It’s really missing the point of this text, though, isn’t it? Woman isn’t made to be a subordinate to the man, but a “helper as partner/counterpart”. That implies a certain equality, it seems to me. This is reinforced by the fact that in the first creation story in Chapter 1, human beings are made in the image of God “male and female” together, in the image of God, God made them.

Quite simply—it is un-Christian to treat men and women differently. It is un-Christian of men to treat women as subordinate, instead of as ‘helpers and counterparts’.

B. The Example of Christ

And finally, there is the example of Christ for us. It is not simply that Jesus lets a woman off the hook, it’s that he undermines the legitimacy of the use of violence to atone for grievances. The woman had been caught in the act of adultery. She had betrayed her husband. Under the strictures of Leviticus 20:10, which states “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death”—her stoning is lawful, and expected. But Jesus places a higher standard on the Christian—a Christian cannot use violence to punish another because the Christian must know how guilty he is before God himself and lacks the moral right to exact such punishment on another.

If this was Jesus’ attitude toward violence when it was lawful to use such violence, what must his attitude be toward violence that is exacted not in the interests of justice, but in the interests of power and control over women? There can be no offense, either real or imagined, by a woman against her husband or boyfriend that could ever warrant a violent response. Not cold dinner. Not talking back. Not forgetfulness. Not even adultery, in Christ’s eyes.

C. The Gospel

Christ’s Gospel is a countercultural one. It invites us to challenge the preconceptions of the world. It invites us the challenge the gender roles. To speak out where there is silence about abuse. To speak out against a culture of violence that all too often takes women and children into its snare.

Christ calls us into relationship with one another. A relationship akin to that of a family. Where we see one another not as the other, but as brothers and sisters. Where we realize that we are in relationship with one another because Christ has called us into relationship with God. A God who wants us to love each other and who, in the words of the Psalmist, “makes us to dwell in safety.”