A sermon for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
This year, we begin this focus month for awareness and advocacy about Domestic and Family Violence having just celebrated Easter Day and all the joy of new beginnings and resurrection. Indeed, we continue now in the season of Easter, and we may well wonder, in the face of the kinds of family violence statistics being published, where resurrection hope may be found.
Jess Hill, in her extensive research into domestic abuse in Australia noted back in 2019;
It (domestic abuse) has been experienced by one in four Australian women. It accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the women hospitalised for assault. It drives up to one in five female suicide attempts. Of the escalating numbers of Indigenous women in prison, 70 to 90 per cent have been a victim of family violence.[1]
While the prevalence is much lower, men also suffer from all forms of domestic abuse, with one in 14 men experiencing physical or sexual violence according to the Australian Government Institute of Health and Welfare. In the years since 2019, police have responded to record numbers of family violence callouts. Domestic violence-related sexual assaults increased 78 per cent between 2014 and 2023, with sexual violence crime reaching the highest rate ever recorded.[2]
While some groups are overrepresented in these statistics, such as Indigenous women, the disabled and those in rural areas, the reality of the nature of domestic abuse in Australia is that it is an issue that crosses all boundaries because it is about power and socially constructed expectation of dominance and control. It is often suffered in silence by same-sex couples because power abuses are not limited to heterosexual relationships. A report published in 2021 shocked Australian Anglican communities in its findings that intimate partner violence was the same or higher amongst Anglicans than in the wider Australian community.[3] In addition, most victims did not feel they could seek help from their church and pointed to instances where religion itself was part of, or used to justify the abuse, including through a misuse of scripture and/or a theology of male headship.[4] Such embrace of assumed hierarchical and gendered roles is found across the breadth of denominational difference in the Australian church and finds its way into doctrines about atonement and views about the nature of God’s power even as it shapes everyday social aspirations of possession, control and mastery.[5]
Of course we are not being helped by some models on the world stage now. Where famous figures or political leaders berate, verbally abuse and seek to humiliate their opponents, perpetrators of violence feel empowered to continue such patterns. After all, if those in respected public positions of power behave that way, why should they not exercise relations of dominance in the privacy of their own homes? After that notorious meeting where President Zelenskyy of Ukraine was berated and belittled by the US president and vice-president, Donald Trump remarked, “This is going to be great television”. Washington journalist David Smith wrote in response to this the day after saying, “As they slipped into the icy depths, the captain of the Titanic probably assured his passengers that this would make a great movie some day.”
What we are projecting on to our screens and news and media feeds are examples of ways of relating to one another, navigating conflict and dealing with power that are death-dealing to our social fabric and to all the relationships that matter most. Abusive patterns have become so normalised that it cannot be recognised for the disaster that it is to human flourishing.
Maybe we have lost faith in what makes for true life and have been drawn instead by the allure of certainty and control. In this season of Easter where we recognise that love wins and life cannot be contained, we might ask whether we really believe that enough to put our faith in a God who would go to the cross. If we struggle for faith in the cruciform pattern, perhaps the reason might be found in the way the most sacred stories of all have been co-opted and colonised by such patterns of dominance.
Sometimes the scriptural claim that Jesus ‘emptied himself’ of power on the cross in an act of sacrificial love is one which stands accused of being at the heart of abuses of power. Kenosis, this act of self-emptying, is so often the reason for Christianity being considered a site of self-harm for those already subjugated, because it is viewed as ‘glorifying victimisation in the glorification of its central victim.’[6] Some of our Christian rhetoric can easily be co-opted to end up demanding that the abused and all those already disempowered and diminished relinquish all agency in dynamics where pious language serves more to mask power than to bestow it.[7] I am sure we can all think of examples where pious sounding people were really disguising self-serving motivations.
In instances of domestic abuse in Australia the glorification of sacrificial suffering in the church has been a ready tool to the hand of the abuser. Sometimes it is hard for Christians continuing to suffer violence to see that this is not what is meant by sacrificial love. Anna Mercedes notes, ‘Teaching us to be submissive does make it hard for us to distinguish strong acts of faith from sheer self-demolition.’[8]
Yet the power of self-giving, like the power of the cross itself, is such that it cannot be dismissed because of such problematic readings and applications. The task for us is to see what kind of power is being wielded and who is wielding it. The cruciform lens enables such dynamics to be revealed. The cross itself lights up the darkness of domination with truth whenever atonement becomes not a formula for private salvation but a way of death and resurrection in the life of every disciple. Garry Worete Deverell defines the call of this path of kenosis as;
A dying to self-aggrandisement and a rising to a more other-centre mode of being. A dying to all that is power-over, power-acquisitive, power-for-self-alone, and a rising to power-with, power-giving, power for the well-being of others.[9]
We walk these days of Easter, as resurrection people. As our Gospel reading last Sunday reminded us, Jesus still bears the scars, showing that the past is not hidden or covered over, but redeemed by great love and the relentless birthing of new life. It is easy to lose faith in the way of self-giving and vulnerable love when power continues to be abused in full public view and the dignity of so many suffering women, men and children is defaced privately in the daily hell of domestic violence. The triumph of love on Easter morning is a shining reminder that our lives are honoured, and that dignity cannot be taken from us by those who will not give up habits of domination. So many who suffer abuse absorb the message that they are useless, defective, or shameful, whether this is communicated with words, or physical blows, or sexual abuse or through the debilitation that happens to your sense of self when your every movement is controlled, or your finances managed, or relationships monitored.
But here is the truth.
No matter what you may have endured at the hands of another, you are of great worth. No one can take away your dignity and the beauty of your humanity.
So may we celebrate the healing power of Easter this season by living as resurrection people, witnessing through our lives to a path different to the abusive examples around us in the media and perhaps closer to home.
May we put our faith in the Christ who shows us how to be human, honouring one another and persevering in the way of self-giving love.
And may we always -steadfastly and courageously – resist the evil of all who would twist such beauty and vulnerability to their own self-serving ends.
+Amen
[1] Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse (Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd. Kindle Edition: 2019) 11
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-17/jess-hill-losing-it-plan-preventing-gendered-violence/105031374
[3] R. Powell. & , M. Pepper, National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: for the Anglican Church of Australia. NCLS Research Report. (NCLS Research: 2021) 9
[4] R. Powell. & , M. Pepper, National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: for the Anglican Church of Australia. 39-43
[5] Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness, 185.
[6] Catherine Keller, as quoted in, Anna Mercedes, Power For:Feminism and Christ’s Self-Giving, (T&T Clark: 2011), 1.
[7] Cambria Kaltwasser, Kenosis and the Mutuality of God, Ch. 13 in Kenosis: The Self-Emptying of Christ in Scripture and Tehology, Paul T. Nimmo and Keith L. Johnson eds, (William B. Eerdmans: 2022) 236.
[8] Anna Mercedes, Power For:Feminism and Christ’s Self-Giving, 2.
[9] Garry Worete Deverell, Contemplating Country: More Gondwana Theology, (WIPF & Stock: 2023), 123.