(TW: sexual assault, sexual abuse)
Just a few minutes ago, we asked you, “What’s one of the first times when you were young you remember being aware of injustice?” Let me tell you mine. When I was a kid, I lived in a house with a small patch of woods behind it, and this was one of the places the kids of the neighborhood would congregate. Like every neighborhood, ours had its cast of characters, and the scariest of them all were these three siblings from the Dodge family. The two oldest were big and tough, and the youngest was little and scrappy, but they all seemed mean and hard. And one day, the oldest Dodge kid got into an argument with another guy in the neighborhood a year or two younger than him. I remember that kid had a new black jacket on, it might have been a leather jacket, and it was really cool looking. And what the Dodge boy did was he took that black jacket from the other guy, and he pushed him hard down this grassy hill, where the guy – without his jacket – tumbled over a few times, rolled to a stop, and ran all the way home. We all scattered – this was the closest thing to a brawl we’d seen in our neighborhood. And I wondered what would happen.
And here’s what I heard. That kid went home, and his parents took care of him, he said they were really nice about it and everything. And his dad even tried to talk to the Dodge boy’s father about what his son had done. But I know that kid never got his jacket back. I don’t know why, or what happened to that really cool, new black jacket, but I know that this kids’ property was never restored to him. And that made me so angry.
I watched what it did to this kid I knew too. How that experience kind of put him in his place, taught him something about himself – that no one was going to stand up for him, that he wasn’t protectable, or worthy of protection. And it taught the rest of us something about the world too: that violent people are often not restrained and they are not subject to justice.
The scriptures affirm this, that we live in a world full of violence and injustice.
Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 (NRSV)
4 Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed—with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power—with no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; 3 but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.
People who have power often use their advantage to oppress people who don’t. People who have take from those who had less in the first place. Neighbors bully their neighbors. People with opportunity hoard yet more opportunity to themselves. Systems protect privilege.
And we see or experience this, and sometimes, we shut down a little. We feel weak, helpless, powerless, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, who wonders if life is so unjust that we’d be better off if we’d never been born into this evil world.
And there will be evil and injustice that we name today, and that can make us feel small and sad.
But sometimes, we hear of injustice, and our minds or our bodies tense up a bit, ready to fight, to take action. We get angry. I’m not always comfortable with anger, but a wise therapist once told me that when it comes to things as they shouldn’t be, don’t be afraid of anger. Angry in this case is much better than sad.
Because with anger, we can feel power and agency. We can take action. And that’s good. Along with connection, humility, freedom, and everyone, action is one of our core values at Reservoir. And I don’t know if you’ll get angry or not today, but I will encourage us to action.
Today, we’re participating in Freedom Sunday, where hundreds of churches are talking about injustice, and particularly the injustice of modern day slavery,
