Here is one response from a sermon auditor this morning: “Good afternoon, Alan. I can’t let the day go by without telling you how very much I appreciate your sermon today. Your subtly veiled theme, opened by the account of an election of a bishop, would have been comfort enough. But then when you removed the veil and line by line drew us through the parallels between Judas and bullies, without naming the standard bearer of 2016 bullydom, I felt energized: finally, someone was saying The Emperor wears no clothes! And not just someone! It was Jesus, of course, but also you, who deliver such well crafted and dramatic sermons!
Gratefully…”
Here is the sermon audio; the text is below.
Trinity Church, Newport RI
Sunday March 13th
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Bullies Divested and Bested”
The election took place yesterday; I was present virtually though not physically. It took four ballots during which two candidates withdrew. I feel despair that a candidate of comfort ordained in 2008 was elected. But… the process was saturated with hope, calm and light. And when I tell you it was saturated with silence, hymnody and prayer you know it was not a secular election. Yesterday the Diocese of Pennsylvania, in which I am canonically resident, elected a new bishop.
Thank God it was in beautiful and stark contrast to Presidential debates and rallies; no questionable need to postpone the process, no sickening abuse hurled by front-runners to other candidates, no vilification in order to secure justification. The elected candidate was not one I owned, but the process itself I own with pride and delight. It was saturated in quiet, hymnody and prayer; a potent trinity creating an environment unified not divided, creative not destructive, inclusive not exclusive.
The horrible phenomenon of rixatorism was absent; oh rixator is the Latin for brawler or bully! I thought you knew.
Elegant and magisterial silence, commitment to the process of a whole community and surrender to a Higher Being – in this atmosphere bullies cannot survive for long, though surface occasionally they will.
And talking of bullies… Judas. I have compassion for Judas; without him the whole plan of salvation apparently would have remained a plan… without him there would be no primal example of regret… without him no model of the frailty of doing the wrong thing for the right reason. But here in John 12 he bullies Mary and later even Jesus.
Judas is an archetypal bully; contained within the holy band for as long as possible but then alienated though not, I believe, forever.
The Bully’s Focus on the dispossessed minority. John12:3 “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.” Mary was the perfect foil for Judas the Bully. She was already a figure of offence in the eyes of her sister Martha and doubtless others who did not interpret adoration as action, nor submission as service. She was a woman. So the bully attacks as only bullies do – they seek the minority, the dispossessed and the disowned… the more vulnerable the better.
The Bully’s Assumption of Community Silence. John 12:4 “But Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, said…” I hope in vain to read that one or more of the disciples challenge Judas but no; I wait in futility for a disciple of the master to defy Judas, but no. And this is always an explicit or implicit hope of the bully… that comrades and compatriots will play the card of the coward, silence. There is no such thing as a silent majority for by its silence it speaks eloquently of acquiescent approval.
The Bully’s Embrace of Generalities and Repudiation of Specifics. John 12:5 ““Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Oh yes, Judas embraced the specificity of the cost but not the specificity of the recipient. Perhaps Oscar Wilde had Judas in mind when he wrote of the man who “knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing”? Incarnation teaches us that God embraces the particular and the specific; speaks of them, encounters them and welcome. The Bully sees his/her victim as the symbol of the weak, the frail, the vulnerable; it is important for the bully never to identify the individual for such targets are offensive even to the bully. So the bully rarely uses a name but sees the victim as “one of them”.
The Bully has an internal agenda of pathetic need and addictive cravings. John 12:6 “Judas said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” The bully has unsatisfied desires and covert agenda. The bully is wounded at some deep psychic level and “hurt people hurt people”.
Judas tried to bully, manipulate, cajole, precipitate Jesus into owning his role as Messiah, political and military and social liberator. The means Judas chose were unacceptable but a bully is a bully is a bully unless, unless and until sympathetic confrontation takes place.
John 12:8 Jesus says, “Let her alone, let her be…” It is required of the liberated to liberate, it is essential for the beloved to love, it is an obligation of the embraced to embrace. The disciples kept a shameful silence, their Lord spoke up and defied the bully.
Friends, bullies surround us on many levels, in many scenarios, in many types. The bully at home, at school, at work needs be named; in political as psychic arenas the bully must be identified. We carry within us the bullies of self-deprecation, addiction and unreasonable expectations. We are buffeted by bullies that threaten our physical, emotional health.
On our behalf Jesus speaks these words of liberating command, “Let her, let him, let them be free; leave them alone. And as a compassionate, prophetic church we are called to advance His ministry. AMEN.