Rev’d Peter Balabanski
World Day of Prayer – Ps 139: The Cook Islands ‘I made you wonderful’ / DV.
In 2019 I attended a gathering in Fiji involving the Pacific Conference of Churches. The Cook Islands Christian Church and the RC Diocese of Rarotonga are PCC members. The very issues we’ve been called to pray about today – the climate and pollution emergency, and the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children – were the main focus back then too. At that gathering, just like today, the focus was on the islanders’ suffering because of rich countries’ inaction on climate change and sea-level rise, and because of the various forces at work driving the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children across the Pacific.
The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service have called us to draw strength with them from three teachings in today’s focus Psalm. Ps 139 tells us with infinite tenderness that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. But, today, these women also call the world churches – call us – to pray with them against forces which defile these glorious blessings.
Greedy, malignant forces are ruining life for innocent and vulnerable people; cutting them off from experiencing God’s gifts to them. This is a theme that runs right through scripture. It may surprise you to know it’s also present in today’s beautiful Psalm. There are four verses in today’s Psalm, 139, which in the Australian Anglican Church are almost never read in public worship. Our lectionary makes it optional to read them out. And we haven’t read them today.
Near the end of this Psalm’s beautiful meditation on the intimacy of God’s love for us and our delight in that security, these verses stand in shocking contrast to the rest. Here are two of them. 19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God: if only the bloodthirsty would depart from me! 20 For they affront you by their evil: and your enemies exalt themselves against you. Where’s that come from?! This Psalmist is so sure of God’s love, of a life lived under God’s careful eye. Yet even so, the Psalmist records a personal experience of violence, and calls out its perpetrators.
This sudden contrast comes as a shock to us – security and delight on the one hand, yet fear and loathing on the other. It could well describe the emotions of a people who experience violence against the very Islands they call home. – or of a person subjected to domestic violence. Let’s consider the violence against the Islands.
At the conference we attended, we learned how the Pacific family feels a very deep and personal grief because of the double catastrophe of rising sea levels, and the pollution ravaging ocean, air, land and living creatures in the Pacific region. They are all casualties of our greedy culture of more is better – our relentless generation of plastic waste; our relentless plundering of their children’s future.
I want to tell you about Josefa, a minister from a Pacific Island nation. Josefa told us his family’s story of the rising water that we all know threatens them right now. We know of it but not personally. Josefa gave us permission to share his story.
Josefa’s ancestors raised a large mound on their farm. On that mound, they built their family home. Just before he addressed us, he’d spoken on the phone with his brother who told him the water had now come up to the mound. The unthinkable is staring them in the face. The terrible sadness Josefa feels came home to me when he told us of a traditional family custom on his island. Every year at Christmas time, families go to the cemetery together to visit their ancestors’ graves. He said, ‘We show our love and respect for our parents, grandparents and ancestors by carefully tending their graves, but especially at this time. Then we all return to our family home together and share a wonderful feast of thanksgiving for our family.’
At this point, Josefa fell silent. Then, almost gasping with the effort to speak, he asked, ‘How can we do that any more? They’re saying we’ll have to leave our island soon and find somewhere else to live. But who would we be then? Who would we be without our island? We could no longer be the people of this island. If there is no island, then we are no more.’ The depth of Josefa’s grief was overwhelming; I can’t imagine losing my connection with everything my families have ever been; never able to go back to the place my story happened. That’s death.
And domestic violence? That’s the other evil – here, around the world, and in a particularly shocking way in the islands. We’ve heard and read today how women are significant custodians of islander culture. They are the ones who pass it down to the next generations. And yet the export industry of misogyny and sexual degradation of women and children from outside societies is corroding all that; undermining their dignity and their humanity. We export it through tourism, through the internet, and tragically, through some distortions of Christian teaching.
It has to stop! Some church leaders compound the abuse suffered by survivors of domestic violence when they wrongly counsel these people to stay in their abusive marriages – telling them to go back and forgive; try to prevent the violence.
Forgiveness should never mean accepting the continuation of violence. And nor is it anyone’s duty to manage how another adult expresses their anger. Everybody feels anger: but to express that anger through violence is a choice. So domestic violence is emphatically not the responsibility of its survivor; it is the choice, the action and the responsibility of its perpetrator. No ifs or buts!
Some church leaders will give wrong advice to stay in an abusive marriage because they read, in a simplistic, literal ways, four or five passages from the New Testament. Eph 5:22-23, 1 Tim 2:11-12, 1 Pet 2:18-3:7, 1 Cor 14:34-35, Matt 19:3-12 On the basis of these first-century Mediterranean cultural teachings, some church leaders teach that even where there’s domestic violence, wives should submit to their husbands; forgive, obey. This is often lethal advice. Recent Australian statistics show that domestic violence is worse in some church contexts than in the wider community. If this bad advice has been given to you or anyone you know, please hear my apology on behalf of a very fallible Church. Jesus would never have done this to you.
The patterns of domestic violence tell us that it is not a one-off matter of the perpetrator losing it or snapping – doing something out of character. No, it is a pattern of controlling, belittling, abusive behaviour which is the choice of the perpetrator; a reflection of the perpetrator’s true character.
Domestic Violence is an evil thing and it has no place in any family or any church – ever! And it should stop being exported by influencers, tourists, cultural colonisers and indeed churches.
The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service remind us that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. Today, we affirm that God has made the Cook Islands and the People of the Cook Islands wonderful: that they bear the image of God. And we affirm that we will pray against – and work with them against – forces that would mar that beautiful image.
So to end, let’s return to the Psalm. The Psalmist knows violence and abuse, but as its final word, this Psalm tells us that loving care is the birthright of all people from the strongest to the most vulnerable. God has made the islands and the islanders beautiful and wonderful.
So let’s hear with them the Psalmist’s declaration of God’s care.
Ps 139.9 Lord, if I spread out my wings towards the morning: or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me: and your right hand shall hold me.
God knows us, God is with us, and God made us wonderful. Amen.