Virtual Vestry ~ Diversions

Understand this...
You must all be quick to listen,
slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

James 1:19, NLT

Imagine living in the Jerusalem area around AD 50-60. Life is tough with dire economic conditions, poverty is rife, and there is particular concern about the circumstances of widowed mothers and orphaned children. Possibly the victims of violence and national conflict in the city at the time, somehow the 'left behind' people saw 'others' as the problem. But then there's a group of people in this city of despair who commit to living differently. Facing exactly the same conditions as those described, they face life with a radically different mindset, because of someone who walked the streets of Jerusalem 30 years earlier - the Messiah called Christ.

Before we see 'others' as the problem, says James the spiritual leader in Jerusalem, we need to do a check-up on our own condition. "So, get rid of all that is wrong in your life, both inside and outside, and humbly be glad for the wonderful message we have received, for it is able to save our souls as it takes hold of our hearts" (1:21 TLB). It's a universal message for all Jerusalem people – because, if adopted, city life would change for the better beyond anything they could imagine.

Real Christianity suggests James goes beyond 'listening' to the words of the Messiah. ' Doing what He says means being teachable, and that means listening.

The first activity of the Christian is to listen to the voice of God through His Word (the bible). The Gospels tell the story of how the "Word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood" (John 1:14 Msg). So He is not only our saviour but also our example for living. "In... relationships with one another," says Paul, "have the same mindset as Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:4 NIV)

So hope-filled people do double-listening because of their love for Christ. They turn to Him first for guidance, wisdom, and support from a person full of grace, understanding, care, and compassion. Then, they copy Him, particularly in how He treated other people.

Recorded in the Gospels are his many conversations with disciples and others who were rich and poor, happy and healthy, distressed and depressed, greedy and wicked, or weak and vulnerable. Every conversation gives a picture of Jesus, who encourages with kindness and compassion. All provide the clearest picture of God emptying himself to 'listen' to the cares and concerns of humanity. He listens to a thief, a prostitute, the clinically depressed, and the deliberately wicked. It was with a heartfelt, gentle word here, a word to the wise there, and able, when necessary to confront and challenge the individual's mindset in the most generous and gentle way possible. and as he 'listened' his body language said, "I understand."

Love is the highest value of the Christian, as Paul explains in the most widely read bible passage, 1 Corinthians 13. As someone once said – and not just about Paul, "Those who experience grace are changed by grace, but grace comes first!"

• In the story of the the prostituted woman, Luke tells how Jesus is present in her company and defends her action for washing his feet with expensive perfume – As he faces criticism from a disciple. He knew her story, and he knew because he listened to the daily challenges she faced – the abuse and ill-treatment she faced from men. (Luke 7:36-50)
• A woman is about to be stoned by religious people for adultery. John records Jesus' concern, for the woman's situation. He sees right through the hypocracy of her accusers, and with amazing insight and wisdom, makes it impossible for any of her accusers to throw a single stone. They walk away embarrassed, but the woman walks away with more hope than she'd ever dreamed of. He could only have acted as he did – because he listened. (John 8:1-11)
• A dodgy tax official – Zacchaeus is a social outcast through charging more taxes than he should, and pocketing the surplus. Because of his reputation, he was a social outcast, and nobody wanted anything to do with him. In contrast Jesus said, "Let's eat together – in your home." Who knows what they said together? But I reckon it was a great conversation and for sure, Zacchaeus did more of the talking than Jesus. (Luke 19:1-10)
• Luke records the parable of the lost son. A parable is about imaginary people, but is a story Jesus told to teach what God is like. What would our picture of God be like without this story? Is this not the story of God whose compassion extends far beyond what we can ever imagine, expect, or deserve? Isn't this story really more about the father than the son? About how unsettled and distressed he is longing for his son to return home.
  
  He keeps watch outside his home hoping for his son to return. Suddenly he sees someone in the distance who could resemble his son. He runs and runs as fast as he can towards him and embraces the dirty rotten scoundrel and gives him a rollocking? Not at all! Because the story of God is about his amazing compassion and love. It is as if Jesus is saying about God, "I love you more than you can ever imagine – and you can return home. It is yours!" (Luke 15)

"You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry." (James 1:19)

What if Jerusalem in AD 55 was filled with folk who lived like that – because of Jesus? What if folk in our time and place chose to live like that? My hunch is that we would live and thrive together better than we could ever imagine!

End...

1. Love is the highest value of the Christian explains Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. The number one value of the Trans-European Division reads: TO EXTEND LOVE – to the whole person. What does that mean? Llew Edwards says, "Christ loves indiscriminately and excessively." What does that mean?

2. No matter who we are, or what our background is, we all share some fundamental needs. At the very core of our being, each one of us has the universal need to accept and be accepted, to love and be loved, to trust and be trusted, to be free and be fulfilled.

   Psychological needs
   The need for safety
   Belonging and love
   Self-esteem
   Personal Growth
   

   In every society there are organisations that have boundaries which exclude. Call a fellow member of the Conservative Party 'comrade' and you will soon experience exclusion! Share with a fellow member of the Labour Party that 'Boris' is your hero, and you will lose friends quickly. What is your experience of the church and exclusion – formally or informally? Talk about the inclusion/exclusion tension that exists within our community of faith. How do these connect to 'being quick to listen and slow to speak' – and at the end of the day, the highest Christian value, love?

• PDF of these notes
• Audio recording of class discussion (password protected)

Mike very specifically asked me to do something that was not about the Bible. That agreement made; this is not a Bible study. But, I do think it is a spiritual one. Spirituality is about relationships of various ilk. All healthy relationships are safe ones. Therefore, healthy spirituality includes safety. Simple logic.

I can't remember a time in my life, past the age of 33 months, when I wasn't thinking about safety, in some form. I knew viscerally that this house and my aunt and uncle on Draper Lane, from which I type, were safe. I knew my grandmother's house was safe. I knew two of my five teachers at the Bakersfield SDA Junior Academy were safe. I didn't know the components of that safety, yet. I knew that the possibility of safety in every other environment at that time was a crap shoot.

I began to think about the components of safety while working in East Los Angeles with Project Amigos – a volunteer tutoring and family support program out of UCLA. I found myself wanting to conceptualize the legal and sociological components that would have my documented and undocumented immigrant families be safer in their community.

Building programs for the Turners Falls Youth Center in rural Massachusetts continued the journey of safe community building in a very different context. Here I began to think about ways creating physical and psychological safety would help the kids from those streets develop skills to build their lives in a pattern different from those of their peers and progenitors. It took a variety of forms: trips to Fenway Park, camping in the White Mountains where they collaboratively made budget decisions that allowed us all to have a final dinner at a very nice local restaurant, and having them teach me to play pool.

Later, staffing a shelter for battered women included looking at the need to understand levels of physical and psychological safety as we built a transitional community process that helped families build new skills.

The thirteen years I worked for People's Bridge Action in Athol, Massachusetts expanded my focus. I developed a 10-year project for mothers of children who had been sexually abused that included group conversations, developing collaborative training for our local police, protective services, and other therapeutic providers. We made a film and produced a newsletter. It was here that I began to present our work at trauma and family therapy conferences in the US and Europe and well as at training seminars for other clinicians and a local school of Social work. It was here that I began looking at the ways helping professionals such as prosecutors and therapy providers often unintentionally replicate the components of abuse and trauma inducing contexts. I presented those findings at trauma and systemic family therapy conferences.

At the same time, I was a Campmeeting presenter for three of the Unions that were close to where I lived. At one of those meetings, I began to learn the extent of sexual abuse that was taking place in Seventh-day Adventist communities. My local conference was very interested in developing ways to address the issue, provide services for those abused, train family members who were supporting those who had been abused, and develop systems to prevent further abuse. Because of that work I was asked to write a chapter about Seventh-day Adventists and Sexual abuse that was part of an academic book addressing the issue in other cultures. (see Reousrces, below). Here I also worked with conference church leaders to avoid unintentionally creating contexts that replicated abusive or traumatizing contexts.

In my community building, therapy, and work with Adventists I have addressed ways we can develop safe and nurturing structures that avoid replicating toxic systems and nourish their members. It is from all this previous learning that I have developed Nourishing Safe Communities: Healing Injured Ones. This presentation is part of that program.

• PDF of these notes
• Book chapter from Catherine: 'Seventh-day Adventists and Sexual Child Abuse'