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Societal Violence/ Domestic Violence Awareness Sunday

[unattributed citations taken from Turn Mourning into Dancing: A Policy Statement (PCUSA) on healing Domestic Violence, 2001]

I had gotten home pretty late from a session meeting one Wednesday night this summer. I sat down to watch the second half of the TV show Law and Order, the police/court drama that takes real life incidents and tells the story of the work of police detectives and the district attorney who investigate and prosecute horrific crimes. I started watching halfway through and was only halfway paying attention, when the investigating detective happened to notice, on the coffee table of a suspect’s home, a yearbook from Harvard University. A look inside the yearbook by the detective revealed the answer that he intuitively knew would solve the crime. To my astonishment, I realized, in that moment, that the Law and Order episode had dramatized a story in which I had played a real life part. I’d like to tell you that story.

Late on a rainy Halloween afternoon of 1999, a Sunday that year, I got a desperate call from a 20 year old woman. Her mother, May Greineder, had been brutally murdered that morning as she walked with her husband and dogs in a park in the upscale community of Wellsley, a large town in the greater Boston area. May was a member of a church I served as part-time parish associate, and so the distraught daughter called me. From the time of that phone call and the immediate pastoral visit with the family, a whirlwind blew through my life as I had never felt before. I had been to May’s house several months prior to pay a pastoral visit after her mother had died in New York City. There, I had listened to a great deal of her grief that had been churning inside of her for years. She was starting to come back to church some. Early in October, she called me at the church, bubbling with excitement, wanting to know if I would officiate at the wedding of her oldest daughter, anxious for me to set dates for pre-marital counseling sessions since the daughter and fiancee both lived in Michigan where she was doing her medical residency. May seemed to be beside herself with joy, and she reveled in her role as the intermediary arranging dates and details. She had been a stay-at-home Mom, and I sensed the excitement of direct involvement, once again, in the life of her daughter. And that was the last time I heard her voice. Her body discovered by a stranger in that public park.

I’d like to use my involvement in that story to frame this sermon. It is a sermon on domestic violence awareness, in keeping with our denomination’s recommended emphasis for today. I have chosen the title, “Breaking the Silence,” first of all, because domestic violence and abuse is largely a taboo topic in our society; second, I have never chosen to preach on the topic, so I both wanted to break a personal silence and to remember a victim whom I knew personally; and third, survivors of domestic violence and abuse retain a social stigma, and I believe it is part of the church’s prophetic witness, as we will declare a little later in our Affirmation of Faith, to “hear the voices of people’s long silenced.” I believe that silent and silenced victims need advocates and companions to birth into being the truth for all to see.

Dirk Greineder, May’s husband, did not fit the stereotype of domestic violence, let alone murder. If you had asked me when I started in ministry 20 years ago to describe the typical perpetrator of such crimes or even less tragic forms of abuse, I might have been polite and not said what I was thinking, but what I was thinking was that domestic violence translates into people who are poor and on food stamps, people of color, with one or both spouses or live-in partners being alcoholics or drug addicts and a low level of education -- they are people who take from society and give nothing back, people who don’t take responsibility for their own lives.

But none of that was true in this case. Dirk was Yale educated, a world-renowned allergist with a thriving medical practice, wealthy enough so that their home was decorated with wonderful works of art from around the world, with children who were high school valedictorians and championship swimmers.

I knew he was under suspicion by the police when a couple of detectives came to the church within days of her death to interview me, and asked me if there was any marital discord. I thought, “no way, not someone of his status, with children like his children, a home like his home.” At the memorial service he seemed genuinely sad; the following Sunday, even though he was not a church person, he even came to our early, informal worship time and stood and tearfully spoke his appreciation for all the church had done.

A week later, however, after the coroner had released her body and we gathered in the chapel at the crematorium, I began to feel a bit uneasy myself, wondering why didn’t he go forward to view the body as did his three children and the small group of close friends there for the service? And I began to doubt his innocence even more, after he was arrested, and I went to the prison to visit with him, and he hardly cared that I had come, even though he was of sound mind. As it turns out, he had been leading a double life to hide his indulgence of various vices, having assumed the identity of a college classmate (thus, the scene in the Law and Order episode that revealed the identity of the offender and that rekindled the memory for me), and it must have been that May discovered his deception and duplicity and confronted him.

Thus, it was that the problem of domestic violence became personal for me and achieved a new reality in my eyes. I don’t want to sensationalize this problem with my story. The reality is that domestic violence and abuse hardly ever make the headlines and often not even the back pages, yet from the youngest child to the elder adult, physical, sexual, and psychological attacks and economic coercion become ways in which perpetrators inflict harm on others to gratify the need for power and control.

The policy statement on healing domestic violence passed several years ago by our denomination’s General Assembly states: “domestic violence is of epidemic proportions. Its victims include children, youth, adults, and the elderly of every race, class, or religious affiliation. Domestic violence occurs in all types of family configurations and in every region of the United States, whether urban, suburban, or rural . . . estimates are that 50 % of all women will be victims of battering at some time in their life . . . in 1998 there were over 3 million reports of child abuse in America . . . about 28 percent of high school and college students will experience dating violence at some time . . .in 1996 there were over 1 million reported cases of elder abuse, anything from physical harm to outright neglect. . . domestic violence is the leading cause of women being killed in the workplace.”

The church’s stance against this rampant, yet often hidden, form of violence begins with our affirmation that all human beings have been created in the image of God; each has received the promise of peace and wholeness in Jesus Christ. Each person has been created to live in a relationship of love, respect, mutuality, dignity, and joy with others; each has been created to be in covenant relationship with God. The Christian’s calling is to promote healing and to provide sanctuary for those who are among society’s most vulnerable and fragile and weak.

The church is called, first of all, to be a place of sanctuary. In the Old Testament, God provides shelter from danger in the poetry of the Psalmist; God parts the waters so that the Israelites can flee to safety in the Exodus experience. God calls for the establishment of cities of refuge in the books of the Law. Providing sanctuary to victims of domestic violence means offering a place, sometimes a physical space, sometimes an emotional space, to feel safe from the abuser, safe to cry out and speak the truth.

I know that Bethel gives financial support to shelters for battered women in our area. And that is commendable. But could we do more . . . especially since we profile ourselves as a church that is very involved in our local community? I am thinking of ways to alert ourselves and the many visitors who pass through our buildings each week -- Scouts, Headstart, Body Recall – why do we not post domestic violence hotline numbers or provide information prominently displayed on how to access help? Is there anyone here who would feel led to explore turning the biblical concept of sanctuary into a real life small support group for those who have been victimized in this way? Has anyone ever explored any kind of partnership with the shelters in our community? Do we ourselves practice peacemaking and non-violent strategies of conflict resolution in our own relationships? I, for one, am determined now to broach this topic of domestic violence in my pre-marital counseling sessions, to describe the warning signs and to do my best to determine if hints of abuse are already present.

A Bethel committee is currently putting together a personnel manual which will have a section that lays out a “Sexual Misconduct Policy,” modeled on that of our Presbytery, a policy that applies not only to staff but to all of us in our relationships with others. We all know how the scandal of pedophilia and its cover-up have ripped the Catholic Church apart. No denomination, no church, including our own, is immune from the possibility of such tragedy and such heartache inflicted on another. We had best face that reality and prepare accordingly.

It is a difficult topic, I know. There are issues of confidentiality and law enforcement and we may rightly cringe at the thought of the many tragic forms of domestic abuse and hesitate to get involved. Yet, are we a sanctuary, in all the various nuances of that word, or are we not?

Second, the church is called to be an empathetic community. Let me talk about that word empathy. Its not the same as sympathy or the feeling of pity for someone else. Empathy is the ability to identify one’s self mentally with someone else and so understand their feelings. As God spoke in the passage from Exodus today, “I have observed the misery of my people . . . I have heard their cry . . . I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them.” It’s all about hospitality, welcoming the presence of abused persons. Too often, even when we know about abusive relationships, we shy away from acknowledging it. Some of us feel awkward about approaching the topic or we assume that the victim will only feel shame and we think that saying nothing is the more sensitive approach. But being empathetic means listening and being fully present in our listening. Like the Hebrew prophets and the neighbor in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are to have eyes to see the misery and ears to hear the cries of the wounded left for dead by the side of the road.

Here are the words of one abuse survivor: “I would leave my husband and take the children with me but I have no money. How would I feed the children if I leave? He controls the finances. If I leave without the children, I would never see them again. I could go to a shelter with the children but that is only temporary. I am sure people say ‘Why do you stay with that man the way he treats you?’ But what can I do? Who will help me?” Here are the words of another: “My husband searches my purse and watches me every minute. He drives me to work and picks me up. If I go anywhere without calling him at work and telling him I am leaving the house, he immediately suspects I am having an affair. If I disobey any of the rules he has set under which I must operate, I am in danger of being beaten. It has happened often.”

If nothing else, the church can and should be a safe place where people can break the silence of their pain, of their fear, and of their anger over abuse experienced.

Survivors too often end up blaming themselves for their pain, apologize for the fear they feel, and remain unable to get in touch with the real anger that gets bottled up inside. As one writer has said, “anger is an emotion arising from refusal to suffer or to permit violation” (Keizer, The Enigma of Anger, 23). In the church, of all places, it should be ok to raise a clenched fist, that is to be honest with anger, for without the authenticity of anger, whatever healing might occur, I believe, will be shallow and impermanent.

Third, the church is called to be a healing community for survivors and their children. This morning’s call to worship, from Psalm 30, speaks of turning mourning into dancing and taking off sackcloth and being clothed with joy. “Violence within the family betrays our most basic relationships. It is a violation of the integrity of body and spirit; it destroys trust, well-being, connection, joy. It isolates as it desecrates.”

The church is one of the dwindling number of places that can offer the possibility of genuine healing for victims and survivors of abuse. That is because we know the danger of a false theology of forgiveness.

Too often, survivors of domestic violence say words of forgiveness to the offender without going through the lengthy and difficult healing process that involves finding a safe space, really dealing with their anger, grieving enormous loss, and reorganizing their life. At the end of an intentional process such as this, then, and only then, can forgiveness legitimately be entertained. As our denomination’s policy statement puts it: “In situations of domestic violence the doctrine of forgiveness has often become a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution because forgiveness is automatically and unconditionally given to everyone without the work of repentance and restitution. For example, abusers have developed a reputation for going to their pastors after disclosure of their violence and asking for prayers and forgiveness. In too many cases, pastors are willing to engage in this empty ritual and send the abuser back to the family to continue his terror. . . Survivors who are angry are frequently told to stay of out the church until they are willing to forgive.”

Cheap grace can be quite damaging, and it can become part of a generational cycle of repeated abuse and denial, of false forgiveness and emotional despair. One child writes: “I have holes in my shoes and pants. The kids at school say I’m stupid. My Dad drinks up all the money. He beats me and my brother when he drinks. The fights are so loud in our house between my Mom and Dad that I never get my homework finished. I feel scared to be at home. Why can’t I have a normal family like other kids?”

“After a long silence, the voices of victims and survivors of domestic violence are calling us. They call out for hope – that the violence will end, that they will find a safe space. They call out for justice – that those who have tried to usurp God’s sovereignty will be brought to accountability. They call out for healing – that the Jesus who gave wholeness to the blind, the lame, and the outcast will transform their lives as well.”

Let us pray.

“We are the church. We offer ourselves to you, O God, our Creator. We offer our hands. May we use them to extend a healing touch to comfort brothers and sisters and children, youth, and elderly who are afraid. We offer our eyes and ears. May we see and hear the signs and stories of violence so that all may have someone with them in their pain and confusion. We offer our hearts and our tears. May the hurt and sorrow of the abused echo within us. We offer our own stories of violence. May we be healed as we embrace each other. We offer our anger. Make it a passion for justice. We offer all our skills. Use our gifts to end violence. We offer our faith, our hope, our love. May our encounters with violence bring us closer to you and to each other. All this we ask through Jesus Christ who knows the pain of violence. Amen.”

Copyright © 2003 - 2007 Stanley Marc Sherrod All Rights Reserved