V-Week Euchy Message from 2012

This is the sermon/message I gave at last year's Wednesday night Eucharist service at Wartburg College.  In this season of Lent, One Billion Rising, Women's History Month coming up, V-Day and V-Week campaigns all across the world, I thought posting this would be fitting.

Mark 5:24-34

Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him.

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding.

She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better.  In fact, she had gotten worse.

She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe.

For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”

Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

But he kept on looking around to see who had done it.

Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done.

And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.  Your suffering is over.”

Why am I involved in V-Week?

I don’t have any huge, life-changing story behind why I’m involved in the V-Day campaign.  I’ve been so blessed to have never really been a victim of violence. 

I've lived a fairly sheltered life thus far. I have a loving family, went to a good school district, have had the opportunity to go to college, have never had to worry about not having enough food on the table or feeling like my life is in danger.

I guess I’d say I’m pretty oblivious to a lot of bad things that happen in the world.

If you stereotype me, you’d probably think that I wouldn’t really be the type to be involved in V-Week. 

“No, she’s too innocent and naïve to do something like that.  She doesn’t seem like one who’d even say the word ‘vagina’.  Laura? She doesn’t seem like the activist, super-feminist type.”

To some extent, I’d have to agree. And that’s one big reason why I decided to audition for the Vagina Monologues last year, to do something different and out of my “box”.

I also hadn’t done anything very theater related in a while, and I missed it—I was fairly active in the drama club at my high school and had been part of a musical theater studio for 10 years.  The monologues were also appealing because I didn’t have to memorize anything—something fantastic for your average busy college student.  And, I’m not really a fan of violence against anyone, so I wouldn’t mind being a part of something that promoted the stopping of such violence.

In being part of the Vagina Monologues last year, I read part of a piece called “The Memory of Her Face” about physically and sexually tortured women in Juarez, Mexico. 

This year, I’m reading some introductions that discuss sexual atrocities experienced by women in the Congo and the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo. 

When I read these things, it’s almost like I’m reading a news report.  It’s fairly impersonal, just reading some facts.

Then I remember.

While reading, I remember that the stories are of real people.

There really are around 200 thousand women in the U.S. who are raped each year.

To me, it just sounds like a number.

But it’s not just a number.

They are real people, just like me.

Just like you.

Galatians 3:26, 28 says “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus…There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Women in Juarez who are kidnapped, beaten, and tortured beyond recognition.

Students I may have worked with who live in fear because of a difficult home life.

Young women in Bosnia and Kosovo who have their dreams taken from them.

Mothers who cry in agony as soldiers mutilate their bodies and rape them, and their families watch in horror.

The girl sitting across the room from me in class who, because of the abusive relationship with her boyfriend, is a bit quieter today than usual.

These are my sisters.  Your sisters.

Our sisters in Christ.

It seems hopeless.

Rape.  Sexual assault.  Verbal abuse.  Battery.  Incest. 

Female genital mutilation.  Sexual slavery.

I don’t know how victims of violence can have any hope.

I don’t know how I, just a regular young woman from the Midwest with no political power or major financial capabilities, can make any sort of difference for any of these women who are hurting all over the world.

When you’re suffering, with whatever it may be that you’re struggling with, it feels like there’s no hope. You feel so alone.

When you’re just one person, what can you do?

One of V-Week’s core beliefs is this:

Lasting social and cultural change is spread by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

The woman in our scripture tonight was very ordinary.

She was alone, abandoned by her family, her doctors, and society. She had no more money.  She was labeled as unclean.  She had no hope left.

No hope, except Jesus.

All it took was her little bit of faith, of desperation. 

One chance to reach out and touch.

She knew that Jesus could help her.  She knew that God loved her, despite her hemorrhage, despite everything she had been through.

One touch, and she was healed. 

“Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.  Your suffering is over.”

It doesn’t take much.

In Matthew 17:20, Jesus reminds us that “With faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.”

I may feel overwhelmed with the prospect of all the violence, known and unknown, that is happening across the globe to women and girls. 

What can I do to stop any of it?

All it takes is a little bit of faith and a little bit of action for us to make a difference in someone’s life, or even in our own lives with our own struggles.

We don’t have to be superheroes; we just have to be ourselves. 

We don’t have to be popular; we can be outcasts or sideline observers that instead of staying safe and out of danger take the chance to speak out against violence.

It’s about making that effort.

It’s about sharing God’s love.

It’s about showing that we care about the well-being of others, women and men alike.

It’s about remembering that God loves us, exactly the way we are, no matter what we’ve experienced or what we’re going through.

Though the point of V-Week is to specifically stop violence against women and girls, in my mind, violence against anyone is simply unacceptable.

Let’s all remember that as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to LOVE, and it is through God’s amazing love and sacrifice for us that we can be who we are.

You are not alone. God is there.

You are loved with an everlasting love that can only come from our creator.

Let someone know that today, even if it’s just reminding yourself of this amazing truth.