Text: Matthew 15:1-28
14 August 2011
I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
--Ani Difranco, from “Not a Pretty Girl”
When I first heard Ani Difranco sing these lyrics, about ten years ago I guess, I thought she had summed up my entire academic and professional career. Because, the men who taught feminist theology honored women with their speeches and lectures, but, rarely did the radical reassessment of culture actually cause a change in the institutions of the seminary or the church.
For example, when I went to Eden Seminary, the ladies’ room still had urinals. Because there didn’t used to be a ladies’ room, it was a seminary, a school for men; and though there had been a steady stream of women students since at least the 1950’s, it apparently never occurred to anyone to adjust the restroom fixtures accordingly. Someone did, however, put some plastic ferns in the ladies’ room urinals to disguise them, but it was not a very good disguise. When we complained, the administration responded with, “What’s the big deal? Why are you so angry?”
We weren’t angry. We were just doing what they taught us to do. We were applying a feminist hermeneutic of suspicion to the institution. We were pointing out the disconnect between what the institution said, “We welcome all students,” and what they did, or failed to do, which gave a distinctly different message, that message being “but in case this doesn’t work out we’ll still be able to use this as a men’s room.” Every day, every time we walked into the ladies’ toilet, we were reminded, “You really don’t belong here.”
And since that time whenever I’ve pointed out the dissonance between mission and action, the response is always something sounding of irritation masked as concern: “Do you have a problem with authority?” I remember when the Iowa Conference, after declaring a conference-wide priority to encourage young families to be more involved at the conference level, then announced that they would no longer provide childcare at the annual meeting because it was not profitable. More recently, we read that our Conference Board of Directors imagines that in the future we will “grow younger” as a conference. This is the same Board that announced the plan to close our church camp, a significant place for ministry to children, youth and families. Remember how hard we had to work to make our voices heard? And remember how the board of directors responded with a patronizing attitude, saying something to the effect of, “If you only understood what we understand about our Conference finances you would make the same decision.” This is another way of saying, “Do you have a problem with authority? Don’t you trust the process?”
No. I don’t trust the process. And yes, I have a problem with authority, like my Lord Jesus.
When Jesus criticized the Pharisees, they probably thought something like this: “Well he would say that being as he’s from Galilee. It’s a reflection on his class and his race (he’s practically a Samaritan!); it’s not a reflection on us. He’s got a problem with authority. Probably relates to some childhood or adolescent trauma.”
“Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear.”
Interesting thing about this gospel lesson, even though Jesus could recognize hypocrisy in others, he couldn’t see it in himself, not right away, anyway. He criticized the Pharisees with one breath and in the next he cursed a woman who came to him for help, calling her a dog, and calling her child a dog. But she stood up for herself and she challenged him, and taught Jesus a lesson.
Thank God Jesus didn’t turn on her and say, “Girl, you have a problem with authority. Get back where you belong!”
Jesus realized truth when he heard it. Jesus was not too full of himself to learn something from that woman, something about the righteous use of his own authority. Not to Lord it over her, but to serve and to heal. And that is what he taught his disciples, that the greatest of all must be the servant of all. Wonder where he learned that.
So here is the challenge: Not just to apply the hermeneutic of suspicion to those we perceive as being above us, but to listen to those we think below us, and to apply the hermeneutic of suspicion to ourselves. When somebody says something we find hard to hear, why do we chalk it up to their anger, and never our own fear?
I just returned from the Pine Ridge reservation, with the faith formation class. All week, we heard things that were hard to hear; things they never told us in high school history class. Not only about the massacre at Wounded Knee, not only about the small pox blankets and the decimation of the buffalo herds and the forced relocation and short rations. We also learned a lot about the consequences of doing what we think is right, without asking the people for whom we are ostensibly doing it-- the missions, the boarding schools, the housing clusters, the FEMA trailers. It seems like every time we try to intervene for good, we do bad, because we don’t know what we’re doing and we don’t bother to ask the people.
I hope we are beginning to learn from our mistakes. I hope we are beginning to have a problem with our own authority. I hope we are learning to listen to those who we thought had nothing to teach us.
We just returned from Pine Ridge. I believe we caught a glimpse of a new world, while we were there, working side by side with Lakota people. I hope we can share some idea of what the next world might look like, if we learn to listen to each other. Watch this.
