LUKE 18:1-8 NRSV
1Then Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always
and not to lose heart. 2He said,
"In a
certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for
people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and
saying,
'Grant me
justice against my opponent.'
4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself,
'Though I have
no fear of God and no respect for anyone,
yet because
this widow keeps bothering me,
I will grant
her justice,
so that she
may not wear me out by continually coming.'"
6And the Lord said,
"Listen
to what the unjust judge says.
7And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day
and night? Will God delay long in helping them?
8I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them.
And yet, when
the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
***
There are two things I believe when
I believe nothing else. They are that God is present, and that God is continually
at work for good. I don’t say this because I read it in some book, nor do I say
it because I have done some drawn out theological proof. I say this because I
have been the widow. I have been the one who sought justice and was refused. I
have been the one, who continually came to the judge, and over, and over again
was denied. I have been the one, when all hope in human systems was lost, I saw
the idiosyncratic and synchronistic systems of God’s justice. I have been the
widow.
A long time ago, time long ago
enough that I can talk about it, and time long ago enough that I have healed
from it, and been through counseling galore because of it, I was sexually
assaulted.
It happened at seminary, of all
places, because it seems like, places of power and implicit trust, lure and
hide perpetrators. I think of the judge in the scripture. I think of his his
position of power. I wonder how he got it, was it an ol’ boys club of sorts
ruling Jewish law? Was he someone’s family and slid by because of his last
name? Was he charismatic, and confident, and convincing and had the
narcissistic ability to pull the wool over other’s eye’s? Did he have his
devout followers believing his every word, and opposers who had caught on and
were disgusted by his self entitlement? It was this way with the seminarian who
raped me. He was a local boy from an old family, from an old and powerful
church, the first Presbyterian church in Atlanta,
Georgia, whose
members sat on the boards of the seminary. His papa was a preacher and he was
and is a youth director in the church. I was pickin’ a big battle by coming
forward. I was just a widow.
I came from the black sheep of my
Presbytery, a small quirky church with no other ministers in its linage, I was
raised by laity, and schooled at a liberal arts college in the Northeast, and I
came alone thinking seminary would be an amazing time to grow closer to God,
and to do God’s work. This turned out to be true, but not in the ways I had
hoped. I grew closer to God because there were moments in my dorm room crying
on the cold hard tile floor where I was truly alone but for God. Those were my
widow moments. I was the widow.
I do not know the widow’s plight in
the scripture. I wonder, had someone ripped her off, or was she not receiving
the care and protection to which she was entitled under Jewish law. Had she
picked a battle with someone bigger and more powerful then she? Was law the
only way to solve her issue? I do not know, and I supposed she could have
sought justice for any number of things. What we know is that she sought
justice over and over again. As a first year seminarian I went to the school,
who told me not to speak of the assault. I asked the president of the seminary
why we had a prayer wall where students wrote down their joys and concerns. I
asked how I was supposed respond to the question, “How are you?” I wonder if
the judge told the widow not to speak. I wonder if she too felt the oppression
silence can be. I wonder how many times she had to go back. My case went to the
judicial court at the seminary. Beside me sat my preaching professor, and as
the seminary used the old tricks of victim blaming, Rev. Dr. Anna Carter
Florence spoke truth to power, and preached gospel. Ultimately, the perpetrator
and I were asked to go to counseling, to which I had already been attending,
and he had no recourse to go or not go, moreover sexual assault was never
mentioned. I, like the widow, came back again.
Over Christmas break, my dad and I
went to his college library. He and I researched, pouring through psychology
books, and statistics, and some really good feminist literature. And with that
research, I wrote one hell of a letter listing what the seminary did wrong and
threatening to sue they and the perpetrator both. My dad stood in the kitchen
holding up the twenty page document, and with tears in his eyes he said, “Kate,
this is how the world changes.” It was was the most proud of myself I have ever
been, but my dad was wrong. It was not how the world changed.
After break, board members, the
president of the seminary, and other power players hurried down seminary
hallways with big envelopes and met in wood-paneled board rooms. I went to a
lawyer, who was willing to take the case. He supported that seminary had been
grossly overstepping their bounds, and extremely detrimental to my health by
re-victimizing. After a few meetings the lawyer said to me, “I want you to
understand this will be the next year or two of your life.” At that point, I
was so tired. I had prayed and prayed, and been hopeless but for prayer,
prayers that figured the situation was in God’s hands, because I had seen the
wreckage of human hands. If there was any hope, it was in God, and God was at
work.
It was Spring now, and I had planted
a garden. I learned to be alone, and to find contentment in the soil, and the
earthworms, and after this long winter of my life, sprouts were beginning to
burst forth. It amazed me that in the depths of pain, there could be blossoms,
there could be life anew, and I saw God in whimsical cosmos and the bounty of
tomatoes. I saw God in the friends who stood up for me, in the professors that
stood by me, and in the classmates who preached fire and brimstone against the
injustice of rape. I saw God in those that took the courage to ask how I really
was. I saw God in those that heard my story. I saw God in the elderly seminary
couple who pulled me aside in the dining hall and told me they knew, and that
they were there, and that they believed me. I saw God in the work and the women
at the Rape Crisis Center. In the way I came in a
broken mess of confusion and pain, and I left with the strength and knowledge
of a survivor. I saw God in the cousin of friend who showed up on my last day
at the Rape Crisis Center, and putting two and two
together she said that I was the reason she had come seeking help. That her
cousin had shared my story, and it gave the the courage call. I saw God in
these things, and I saw God’s justice in these ways, and through God’s ___
justice I found healing, healing for myself and healing for the world.
It was not the normal ways of
justice, the court and judge ways, the crime and punishment ways. It was the
ways that God made many of us better pastors, better preachers, better people.
It was the ways that healed me, that friends said how nice it was to see me
outside again. It was good to see me smiling again. It was good to begin to
feel like myself again. I couldn’t give a year or two more of my life to seek
human justice. I had a lot in me, but I didn’t have that much. Somewhere in the
Greater Atlanta files is a crime report on a youth director written in my
penned out hand. That was where I had to stop, but I felt okay with that,
because I had seen the ways God brought justice. My prayers had been answered,
not in the way I wanted or expected, but with unfathomable grace and
creativity.
The scripture says, “God will grant
justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night. God will not delay
long in helping them. I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them.” I
believe this. I believe God is present, and God is continually seeking justice
for the widow among us, and the window that is us.
I believe those prayers prayed on
cold hard tile do not hit deaf ears, I believe they open our ears, and our
eyes, and our heart. Our prayers are not about making God do something. God is
already doing all God can. God is working quickly. God is working for justice
and healing. Our prayers are about our seeing God’s work in our midst. Out
prayers are the reminder to not loose heart, our prayers are for the widow to
have faith to see the justice of God on earth. I have been the widow, and I
have have seen the justice of God. In this I have faith.
