Posts Tagged ‘neglect’

Angry enough to do something?

March 6, 2021

Lent 3 – 2021

John 2:13-22

Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.

On Friday I attended the UN Women’s International Women’s Day lunch. It was an inspiring, if somewhat gruelling experience – especially in the light of recent events. Australian of the Year, Grace Tame was the key speaker. I imagine by now that most of you know at least the outline of her story. Grace is a powerful and direct speaker, and she doesn’t spare her audience the intimate details of her ordeal. Sadly, her story is not unique, but even if you have heard other stories of abuse, you cannot help but be shocked and brought to tears as she recounts the way in which a much older man, a teacher in a position of trust, targeted her at her most vulnerable and manipulated her to the point where she felt utterly unable to refuse his sexual advances. How, in this day and age, could this man’s behaviour – in his office, on school grounds – go unnoticed? Why, in a world sensitised to child sex abuse, did no one notice or think to question what was going on? 

Equally shocking and revelatory was the speech by Dr Kirstin Ferguson who, at the beginning of her presentation provided a dramatic, visual illustration of the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace.  Before she began, Dr Ferguson asked those in attendance (men and women) to stand if they had ever experienced sexual harassment at work. At least two thirds of the room rose to their feet – two thirds of a room filled with professional people. Dr Ferguson went on to tell us that 1,600 hundred women a week, experience some sort of sexual harassment at work. 

Listening to the two women was a salutary and sobering experience.

What does it say about our society that a fifteen-year-old girl can be raped every day at school – in the office of a 58-year-old teacher? Who are we that one woman dies every week at the hands of someone who professes to love her? How is it that our aged care system is so broken that vulnerable older people are over-medicated, mistreated and badly fed? Why is that we cannot assume that our workplaces and schools are safe and nurturing environments? Why can’t we keep our children safe from abuse? 

Something at the very heart of human nature is broken. Countless Royal Commissions and changes to legislation have been powerless to bring about the institutional change that is required so that all people can live and work with dignity. More importantly, no amount of legislation has been able to bring about the personal transformation that is required to build a society in which all the vulnerable are protected and nurtured – not abused or exploited.

In today’s gospel Jesus is angry, very angry. He is angry that the Temple (or at least its forecourt) has been turned into a marketplace. He is angry because he can see the way in which Temple practices exploit the poor, take advantage of the vulnerable and exclude those who cannot take part in the Jewish rituals. 

This event is the most explicit description of Jesus’ anger. It is the moment at which all his frustration and rage reaches boiling point – resulting in his fashioning a whip so that he can drive traders and animals from the Temple and overthrowing tables covered with money. It is the most explicit expression of Jesus’ anger, but it is not the only time that he gets angry.

We know that Jesus got angry at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, at the indifference of the rich towards the poor and at the apathy of the comfortable towards those who were suffering. Jesus got angry when he saw the religious leaders put the law before compassion while congratulating themselves on their own state of righteousness. Jesus got angry at the complacency, self-satisfaction and judgementalism of those who thought themselves better than sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus got angry with those who put burdens on the shoulders of others and who created barriers which prevented them from seeing how much God loved them.  Jesus got angry at the failure of the disciples to understand, at their desire for power and at their belief that they should be rewarded for joining his cause. 

Most importantly, Jesus got angry because the religious institution of his day was broken. Despite John’s call to repentance nothing had changed. Jesus’ contemporaries still believed that the outward practices of sacrifice and ritual were sufficient. Jesus could see that what was really needed was a change of heart, repentance and personal transformation – all of which are much more difficult to achieve than simply presenting a semblance of goodness, observing rituals or consoling oneself with the knowledge that at least one is not as bad as the next person.    

Jesus got angry at injustice and suffering, at pretention and arrogance, at self-serving behaviour and at the refusal to take responsibility for one’s behaviour. Jesus got angry at indifference and inaction. 

Jesus saw a broken world. His grief and angry at what he saw spurred him into action. 

We live in a broken and damaged world, but do we get angry? Do we get angry enough about the exploitation of the poor, the disenfranchised or the refugee? Do we voice our anger loudly enough with regard to people trafficking and slavery? Do we speak out loudly enough against violence towards women or the abuse of children? Do we protest strongly enough about the neglect and abuse of the elderly or the destruction of indigenous sacred sites? Do we rage against injustice, corporate greed and the destruction of the planet? Do we rail against indifference and carelessness? Do we care enough to do something about what we see?

Our world is broken and needs from each of us a change of heart. When will we be angry enough to take action? 

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In the name of God who calls us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.

Equally shocking and revelatory was the speech by Dr Kirstin Ferguson who, at the beginning of her presentation provided a dramatic, visual illustration of the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace.  Before she began, Dr Ferguson asked those in attendance (men and women) to stand if they had ever experienced sexual harassment at work. At least two thirds of the room rose to their feet – two thirds of a room filled with professionals. Dr Ferguson went on to tell us that 1,600 hundred women a week, experience some sort of sexual harassment at work. 

Listening to the two women was a salutary and sobering experience.

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Open to God’s abundant love

November 14, 2020

Pentecost 24-2020

Matthew 25:14-30 (notes from Stradbroke Island)

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generous love is poured out on all who would receive it. Amen.

Gallery owner, international art dealer and philanthropist Tim Olsen has this week released his memoir – Son of a Brush. Tim is the son of one of Australia’s most well-known and respected artists John Olsen. As he tells it, Tim had a chaotic and emotionally deprived childhood. The family spent Tim’s early years in Europe before moving to an artist’s commune to the north of Melbourne. Dunmoochin was, Tim writes, ‘a bacchanalian free love cult’. Sexual experimentation was encouraged. Tim witnessed scenes that no seven year old should be exposed to and he was very aware of the distress that his father’s sexual adventures caused his mother. But it was not just life at home that was unsettling. Tim was bullied and abused by the local children. On one occasion a group of eight children, including a young girl, knocked him to the ground and urinated on his face. Tim credits this heinous act as the reason why, throughout his life, he has struggled to trust friendships and intimacy.

His turmoil didn’t end when the family left Dumoochin for Sydney two years later. Tim was sent to boarding school. When he graduated at 18 his parent’s marriage had reached breaking point and his father left his mother for the woman with whom he’d been having an affair. (Tim heard about the subsequent marriage through a friend who had been invited to the wedding – though he had not. When John married his fourth wife, Tim and his sister were banned from visiting.) Tim went on to be a hugely successful art dealer, corporate advisor and consultant, but nothing could fill the deep void inside. His first marriage failed and despite a second marriage and the birth of his son, Tim’s private life spiraled into a self-destructive pattern of over-eating and alcohol abuse. At one point he even considered taking his life.

Tim is on the way onto recovery thanks to his wife and to friends who kept him strong, but his story is a reminder that abuse and neglect leave people traumatized and untrusting, unable to form intimate relationships and often trapped in negative and destructive behaviour which reinforces their belief that they are not good enough or that there is nothing about them that is loveable.

That rather long introduction is an attempt to answer the question as to why the third slave in today’s parable hides the money that is entrusted to him. His experience of life has left him fearful untrusting and lacking in any self-confidence. His primary concern on being given the vast amount of money is to keep it safe. He does what He does what most people did to keep valuables safe from thieves and invaders – he buries it. After all, he has been given no instructions, perhaps it’s a trick x yet another ruse to expose his inadequacies. (‘Better be safe’, he might have thought.)

As I have said before, Matthew’s version of this parable often gets conflated with Luke’s version and both no doubt have been changed in the retelling. At the heart of the parable is generosity. The amounts given to each servant are impossibly large – millions of dollars. Instead of focusing on the punishment of the third servant perhaps our focus should be on the generosity of the giver and our willingness (or inability) to be gracious recipients of that generosity.

If we have not known unconditional love and trust, it can be almost impossible to feel loved and trusted, impossible to love and trust others. Some people (presumably illustrated by the third servant) close in on themselves fearing that if they open themselves to ‘love’ they will only be hurt and abused. Unable to accept that they might be loveable, they cannot even see God as a God who loves without condition. They feel that they must constantly be on the alert for abuse and that they must try to please others (including God). They feel that love, if love is to be had at all, has to be earned and that others (including God) are always on the lookout to find reasons not to love them.

The parable is not so much a parable about a harsh and unforgiving God, but about a God who pours out abundant love, and it tries to explain why not everyone is able to receive that love. It is written for those of us who know God’s love, whose lives have not been barren and filled with disappointment and is a reminder to always trust God and to be open to God’s love. Those who through trauma and fear lock themselves out of God’ love will never know the rewards and blessings of same. I believe though, that the gospels as a whole (think the lost sheep, the prodigal son) tell us that God will leave no one behind and that those who have been traumatized and denigrated and unloved, will one day open their wounds to the ministrations of God’s love and will be made whole. Then they too will see that the gifts of God (the talents) will grow in ways that they can not begin to conceive.

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