Sun, Mar 07, 2021
Cross-checking privilege
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 by Craig de Vos
Series: Sermons

What a few weeks it’s been in this country!

 

First, there was the explosive allegation by Brittany Higgins––

a young staff member working for a Federal Minister in Canberra––

that she had been raped by a colleague in the Minister’s office in Parliament House.

She didn’t report the alleged incident at the time because…

she claims…

she was afraid of what the consequences would be for her career…

especially when she felt like she was being treated as a political problem… 

rather than an assault victim.

 

While many of us were still trying to process that…

there came the story of Chanel Contos…

a young woman who had attended a private girls’ school in Sydney…

who was, in part, prompted to act because of Brittany Higgins’ allegation;

but also she said…

because she was “sick of constantly hearing my friends’ experience of sexual abuse”…

and started an online petition pleading for earlier and better sex education in schools… 

especially covering issues of “consent”.

In setting up the petition… 

she left space for those signatories who wished to… 

to share their own stories.

More than five thousand have now signed it…

and many of them have left harrowing details of their own experience of sexual assault while at school…

at the hands of young men who were… 

almost exclusively…

students at elite boys’ schools.

Many of them commented that…

until all of this began to air in public…

they had not realised that what they had experienced was sexual assault.

Chanel Contos said… 

“I have lived in three different countries and I have never spoken to anyone who has experienced rape culture the way me and my friends had growing up in Sydney among private schools”.

 

Then came the allegation of an historical sexual assault by the current Attorney-General––

Christian Porter––

from a woman who, sadly, committed suicide.

A friend of hers sent materials about the allegation to prominent politicians.

What’s been pointed out by a number of commentators… 

is the vastly different way that Porter, and the women who made the allegation, have been treated.

His version of the story has been reported broadly and at length.

Most of us haven’t actually heard her side––

neither by way of the statement that was never formalised with police…

nor, apparently, through the detailed recollections that she left in contemporaneous diary entries.

He has been applauded for looking after his mental health in all of this…

and his emotional response has been taken by some as adding credibility to his denials.

Whereas her history of mental health struggles––

supposedly arising from the alleged assault––

have been used to cast doubt on her credibility.

 

And, if that wasn’t enough…

this week it was also reported that the head of the Australian Defence Forces––

General Angus Campbell––

warned a class of Defence Force cadets to avoid sexual assault by not being out after midnight…

consuming alcohol…

and appearing attractive.

As the sexual abuse survivor and current Australian of the Year––

Grace Tame––

pointed out…

that’s just victim-blaming and it’s not helpful.

Furthermore, she suggested that the way that the recent rape allegations have been handled… 

show how our society is set up to enable and excuse the actions of male perpetrators.

“Coverup culture, the abuse of power, is not unique to Parliament”, she said.

 

Indeed, what we have been seeing played out in recent days is what Kate Manne––

a philosophy professor from Cornell University––

has called, “himpathy”…

that is…

“the way powerful and privileged boys and men who commit acts of sexual violence or engage in other misogynistic behavior often receive sympathy and concern over their female victims”.

And while it has also been labelled as “rape culture”…

it goes deeper than that.

We live in a society in which there is an unspoken and…

indeed… 

an unconscious bias towards men…

and a systemic bias towards men.

We live in a society that has a structural inequality of gender…

where men are afforded certain rights and privileges just for being men…

which engenders a sense of entitlement.

We see it in the expectation that men have the right to exert authority and power.

We see it in the gender pay gap.

We see it in the expectation that men will be heard and believed.

It’s what social-scientists call “male privilege”.

 

Of course, that’s not the only form of privilege.

As we have become aware––

courtesy of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement…

and the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody––

there’s also white privilege.

We also see heterosexual privilege…

cisgender privilege…

and class privilege.

And, in a sense, that’s what’s at issue in our reading this morning…

from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians––

class privilege.

The church at Corinth comprised people from very different backgrounds.

Most were simple peasants––

uneducated, poor, and powerless.

There were a number of slaves––

regarded and treated as little better than livestock.

But there was also a small number who were well-educated, wealthy, and well-to-do…

who saw the world according to their particular enculturation––

out of their enormous sense of social privilege.

And, well-to-do Corinthian society greatly esteemed wisdom and logic…

and they were obsessed with oratory and rhetorical skill.

Gifted public speakers were the rock stars of their world.

And they used it…

themselves…

to battle one another for greater power, honour, and control within the Church.

And here…

in our reading…

Paul begins to tackle this sense of class privilege.

And he tackles it––

first and foremost––

as a theological issue.

He draws a clear contrast between the logic of God and the logic of the world;

between the wisdom of God…

and the wisdom of the world.

Indeed, he describes God’s ‘wisdom’ as foolishness to human wisdom.

 

And what is this foolish wisdom of God…

according to Paul?

 

Christ crucified.

The cross.

 

In a culture and a city where the well-to-do craved honour and power…

Paul held up a symbol of utter shame and powerlessness.

After all, as a method of execution that was reserved for slaves and foreigners…

for those with little status in society…

and especially for those guilty of treason…

crucifixion was designed––

both metaphorically and literally––

to strip its victim of every last shred of dignity…

decency…

humanity…

and agency.

More than that…

as Paul makes clear in his letter to the Philippians––

and alludes to here––

the cross was, for Christ, a renunciation of any status that he had because of who he was.

The cross of Christ is…

at its very heart

antithetical to social privilege––

in whatever form that social privilege might take.

 

As Christians…

then…

we are called to recognise…

to own… 

and to acknowledge…

the privilege in which we stand––

be it class privilege…

sexual privilege…

racial privilege…

or gender privilege;

and, then, to recognise that it was for this that Christ died; 

that Christ died to dismantle that sense of privilege…

in order that all of God’s children might live lives that are free and fair…

because, as Paul tells us later in the letter, in Christ…

there is neither “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free”.

And if we can’t or won’t recognise our sense of privilege––

and work to overturn it––

then, Paul suggests…

we really don’t understand the cross of Christ.

At all!