Eventide Reflection – March 20, 2019

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Eventide Reflection – March 20, 2019

Good eventide.

Today’s reading is from Jeremiah 18:1-

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. “

We have probably all heard the metaphor of being clay, sculpted and perfected and changed by God. When my daughter was a student at Westmont college, they had the mission called Potter’s Clay, where they partner with Ensenada…changing both the lives of the people they serve, as well as the students.

I have been thinking lately about the changes we still need to make in regards to the gender and power gaps, that the Me Too movement is shedding some light on today. From Harvey Weinstein to Les Moonves to the Catholic church to campus sexual assault, to politicians, accounts of sexual misconduct have made violence against primarily women and children one of the most pressing moral issues confronting us. Unfortunately, these are not just random cases in farflung media, but in our own community as well, including complicit bystanders who do not speak up. One privilege of patriarchy is that it is invisible to those who are privileged by it—invisible benefits, a priceless thing. It would never occur to most men to worry about walking down the street, for fear of comments that strangers might make about their bodies. A man on the street never, ever has to worry about being assaulted if he takes off his shirt. And the racial counterpart is, a white person doesn’t have to worry about police when they have done nothing wrong. The main problem is an abuse of power that leads someone to use another for human being for self gratification and silence them. In patriarchy, being female is considered deficient, which is why infanticide of girl babies continues in the 21st century on this planet. A considerable amount of men choose to use their power to abuse and exploit women. Lurking in this patriarchal framework, Misogyny goes even further, where women are hated, silenced and punished.

Do you think sexual harassment is a women’s issue? Funny how those who dominate the public discourse (men) have managed to erase themselves from this story. A real man is not the one with the most notches on his belt; but rather, the one who treats women as equals, who stands up for them with their dignity and humanity are under assault or disrespect. Men are often judged and portrayed in our media as a marketed machismo of ballfields, bedrooms and billfolds (athletic prowess, sexual conquest and financial success). It is our time to teach our boys as well as girls to defend anyone on the receiving end of power’s unholy play, so the next generation of boys/men will be proud of their ability to form honest and respectful relationships, and defend the bodily integrity of women, men, girls, and those of gender differences as well. We could just call them all children of God. Even in Christian tradition, we don’t have a lot of tales about the power of women; and many religions still put women as just support for the male positions of ministry. Compare that to the old testament, wherein Exodus and Numbers, we see that Moses’s sister and wife have more influence on Moses then Aasron does; they were respected consultants, not vocational appendages.

Much of this problem comes to an imbalance of power. The wife who knows her husband is abusing their daughters, but has no financial or emotional power to leave…the supervisor who cannot leave her job, even though her boss threatens her loss of position if she reports sexual blackmail. The patriarchy of our society is the main problem we need to address. Even conservative Christians who preach that the man runs the home and controls the wife as an unequal…seemingly forgetting both men and women were created in God’s own image.
Within our Christian tradition, the moral value of “no sex until marriage” is even a sexual ethic that I believe needs to be questioned; first of all because it has been proven to be ineffective; and primarily, it focuses on one sexual behavior, with no guidance on relationship or the power to make your own decisions; someone else’s rule is not empowering. Yes we ascribe to the values of the 10 commandments; but girls need to have the power to make their own rules about their bodies.

So what can we do? We can enable the conversations of those whose minds have not been fully shaped and imprisoned by 20th century notions of gender differences. We can demand respect for all. Going further, we need to honor diverse ways of being; and though we don’t need to amend every psalm to include all 31 genders recognized by the city of New York, we do need to honor diverse ways of gender identification and live the words of Marty Haugen’s hymn “All are welcome.” The inclusivity and elasticity of the “All” welcomes a transgender person, (one of the most bullied societal sectors today), an immigrant, a homeless person, someone transitioning gender and truly All. I think AS does a fabulous job of walking the talk of welcoming all; sadly, not all churches do this. We need to speak up as Christians, as this is not only a legal issue, it is a moral issue; it is not only a women’s issue, it is a human issue, and affects us all. And if the use of the voice in praise of God is one of the continuities that bind us all, then the practice of worship might actually be inclusive beyond gender, and beyond the imbalance of power many women live with. I believe this would form and sculpt us more into the clay God would be proud of…vessels of love… which would be good news indeed.