“Exhaustion” based on 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25

Content Warning: in this sermon I’m going to talk about abuse of power, including abuse of power by clergy, including clergy sexual misconduct. This is a tender topic, particularly here, and you may wish to disengage from it, which is fine.

When I read this passage from 1 Samuel, my first response is to be exhausted. I was recently reminded that exhaustion is often a trauma response. Under the exhaustion are anger and sadness, I can’t differentiate them. Under that is more exhaustion.

I’ve now completed 17 years of full-time ministry and within them approximately 10 rounds of required clergy sexual misconduct training. In my 17 years these have been the only required trainings that clergy have been told to take, other than New York State who mandates sexual harassment training for every boss and employee. I’ve long been aware that the actions of clergy people before me, and the lawsuits that resulted from their actions, were creating the environment I minister in. I’m all for clergy sexual misconduct training, my only concern is the idea that it is the ONLY thing that matters. Particularly because I don’t believe the trainings themselves are necessarily the most effective way to bring the change they attempt to make.

So, that’s tiring, and makes me question a lot of things.

Also, I’m in leadership in the Annual Conference while we are trying to figure out how to pay for legal fees and settlements for a multitude of lawsuits related to the Child Victim’s Act, which opened a window for people who had been abused as children to bring lawsuits about it as adults. Everything about this is terrible, starting with the harm done to God’s children and including with the means by which we figure out how to find the money we need in order to respond.

Which is draining, and I hate it.

And finally I am serving this beloved church which has itself experienced clergy sexual misconduct, by a beloved clergy person, who is now deceased, whose life after his death still intersected with lives within this community. This fact is tender.

So are the impacts within the community of his actions, even though they are more than 40 years old and many of you don’t know anything about them. But it is now within this community’s DNA and I firmly believe that if this church had not been as strong, loving, loyal, and faithful as it is -it would not have survived it.

That’s actually a thing I want to make sure you hear: I believe this church is EXTRAORDINARY to have survived what happened to it. I fear some of you may think you are weak because it happened or because you couldn’t stop it, or because there were long-ranging impacts from it. Instead, I think it is pretty much a miracle you survived. Most churches don’t.

Here is what I know: an already beloved pastor was appointed here as senior pastor in the 1970s. He was charming and charismatic, brilliant and well-regarded. It was not known to this church that he had abused his power as pastor in his prior appointments. He abused it again, with married adult women who came to him for pastoral counseling, with whom he had affairs. At the same time that it became known he also was found to have a debilitating medical condition.

It had been thought he’d become a Bishop. Instead he was reappointed to Vermont. The church members split into two camps: one of those who were horrified by what had been done and one of those who defended their pastor at all costs and shifted the blame either to the women he’d harmed or to those who named the actions. Those two camps were stuck in a power battle, enmeshed in conflict, and not talking to each other.

When the next pastor came, he declared it “over” and said it wasn’t going to be talked about anymore. I believe that held for about 30 years until I arrived. Once, maybe 8 years ago, I named in a sermon that this church had survived clergy sexual misconduct. I was told afterwards that I’d made the FIRST public acknowledgement of that fact. Ever.

Over the course of the next decade or so, this church experienced significant decline. Now, I want to put that in context for you. It was the 1980s. The 1980s were a time when church attendance declined all across the USA. Also the 1980s were a horrible time for Schenectady, when many people left. Also the 1980s were the time when those who didn’t leave immediately after the clergy sexual misconduct slowly drifted off the next time they got hurt by the church.

Yet, I believe, for those of you who were here, the decline in attendance and membership in the 1980s felt like failure. Which breaks my heart. I wish someone had made space for you all to talk about your experiences, to name what it had been like to have your spiritual leader do harm, or maybe what it had been like to think that people accused your spiritual leader of doing something he’d “never do.” I wish you were afforded the opportunity to talk about the ways that trust was destroyed as two camps maneuvered around each other. I wish you could have talked about the ways that led to mistrust in clergy, and in clergy authority, and the quiet ways you tried to create some safeguards. I wish someone had named that the women who trusted their pastor to give them pastoral care were vulnerable women were not to be blamed for being vulnerable nor for being seduced by someone with power – not even if they were pretty.

That is, I wish this church had received after care. I wish the Annual Conference had known to give it.

I wish the story that was taken from the time was something other than “we’re too brittle to deal with conflict, so we better not talk about it.” I wish fewer people lost faith in God because the pastor did harm – particularly the teenagers who talked about it all with each other but no adult knew to make space to help them make sense of it.

The church itself lost respect, authority, and credibility. I think rightfully so. I think the church and its clergy should never have had such power as to make abuse like that possible. I think there always should have been checks and balances and clergy people should always have been seen as fallible people and safeguards should have been in place.

Far too many faith communities have had faith leaders abuse their power. This isn’t as uncommon as I wish it was. I guess this comes back to that old wisdom that where there is power there can be abuse of power. 🙁

Today, I still see the echoes of the harm done to this community. It isn’t a linear thing where I can tell that “because x happened, y followed.” Humans and human organizations are more complicated than that. Here is what I see that I think is reflective of that era of harm: 1. This church is more afraid of conflict that most. 2. This church is more afraid of pastoral authority than most. 3. While I know you all to be profoundly thoughtful, careful, intentional people of faith whose lives reflect your values – there is significant fear of talking directly about God and the impact of God on your lives – which I think goes back to things about authority and power and abuse of power. 4. While there is discomfort about pastoral authority, there are also many places where the pastor is rather oddly deferred to. I think this is also about pastoral authority and ways it is not understood and not wanting to be touched. 5. Power itself is concerning around here, and there is fear and distrust around using power and figuring out who is supposed to have power.

And finally, 6. I think there is still an undercurrent of fear, guilt, and shame that this happened here… which knocks out some of the self-confidence you might otherwise have as a church.

So, when I read about Eli’s sons abusing their power by taking too much food, and taking the wrong food, and using their power to force women to sleep with them – it actually sounds like the age old story of my ministry. The realities of the harms done in the past, the ways they impact the present, the horror I have at what was done and how God’s love was abused in the world, and the challenges I face in attempting to share God’s love in the world while occupying the status, role and even pulpit of one(s) who did such harm.

Which I think has now sufficiently explained to you why the scripture exhausts me.

Now I want to tell you why I’m glad it is there, despite it all. I am so incredibly grateful that the Bible itself tells stories of abuse by those entrusted to do God’s work, and gives it to us as honest story that helps us make sense of our lives. If this story and ones like it weren’t in the Bible, we wouldn’t have anything to work with. We wouldn’t have precedent for knowing that those entrusted with God’s work often fail. We wouldn’t have evidence that God hates it. We wouldn’t be able to compare and contrast the experience of the people 3000 years ago to the ones of our own lifetimes.

I mean, I’d prefer if those entrusted with holy work simply didn’t abuse people. 100% my preference. But since that isn’t how it has been, how it is, nor how it is going to be, I’d rather have that truth in the Bible for us to work with and reflect upon. I’d rather have a lectionary text that pushes me to tell you – the church – your own story as I’ve had it told to me than continue the cone of silence.

I’d rather break the power of shame by bringing the past into full view than let it keep on beating us up.

I’d rather deal with this now, in the ways we can, than let it harm more generations in the future.

I’d rather be able to tell you that I think you are amazing for surviving than have you continue to feel guilt for abuse happening in your midst.

I’d rather deal with the past until it lets go of its grip on the present than try to force it away and have it come back to bite us.

I’d rather make space for truth and reconciliation. I’d rather have hope and rebuild trust and assure you that you can survive being in conflict than have you live in fear.

I’d rather talk about it. I think it is time. And I believe, with God, we can handle it. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 9, 2023