The Rev. Laura Everett delivers her sermon “A God Who Repairs” during the morning worship service Sunday in the Amphitheater.
“O Church, there is so very much in this text. Pay attention to the textiles, Church,” said the Rev. Laura Everett. She preached at the 9:15 a.m. Monday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “Visible Mending,” and the scripture reading was 2 Samuel 13: 1-22, the rape of Tamar.
Both the scripture reader, Fr. Jim Daprile, and Everett offered a pause before the reading, allowing members of the congregation time to leave the service if, given the nature of the scripture, they wanted or needed to.
Following this, Everett said that “we need to talk frankly about how much is torn apart when there is sexual assault within a family and a community.”
She continued, “Our God never, ever, supports the violation of your beautiful, God-kissed body. If the control of your own body and space is taken away, you have the blessing of God to push back, yell, kick, scream, cry or anything else necessary to regain control, dignity and peace.”
What happened to Tamar, rape by her half-brother, has happened more than we realize, she said. Everett cited a study of DNA tests that shows how much more common incest is than many people know. Tamar knew, her brother Absolom knew, Amnon knew and King David knew — David, who is held up and lauded as a leader.
David knew what had happened to his daughter and chose not to act. Too often, church leaders have not followed through when something did not smell right; too often they’ve protected their sons with the excuses of “locker room talk,” and “boys will be boys.” They have belittled the situation as “he said, she said,” or “I did not see it, so I can’t judge here.”
“I am pretty tired of a church and a society that continues to hear the cries of victims of sexual assault and turn aside,” Everett said. “Some of you are tired, too. ‘Me too’ will mean nothing if the King Davids (of the world) do not make meaningful policy changes. We have been crying out since Tamar wept.”
As our hearts break with and for Tamar, God’s heart breaks too. Everett said there was no good news in this text, but that by pulling the threads of the textiles, the congregation would find something worth holding on to.
Clothing does not prevent sexual assault. Tamar had on a long white robe with sleeves, a robe that came to the floor. It did not stop the rape. And Amnon, who had lusted after Tamar, looked at her with disgust and loathing after raping her and had her thrown out of his house.
“Tamar used her words (to try to stop the rape). Amnon used his force,” Everett said. But Tamar regained her power, put ashes on her head, tore her robe and cried aloud as she went. “She does not go quietly. She does not pretend all is right with the world.”
Everett continued, “So what does she do? She tears her robe. What does she do? She tears her robe. What does she do? She tears her robe.” Then Everett took a piece of cloth and tore it in half, with just the tiniest thread still holding the cloth together.
Tamar “loudly, aggressively, visibly, tears (the cloth). She makes visible what has been done in private for others to see,” Everett said. “Nobody can miss this. You can make believe he is still a good boy, heir to the throne, but you can’t hide me in a tower. You will see my suffering, even if you will not give her justice.”
The robe, however, is not just a simple garment. Women’s lives in the ancient world, until the Industrial Revolution, were structured around the tasks of making textiles.
Everett showed a slide of a disposable coffee cup, beloved and ever-present in New York City. On the paper cup is a picture of an urn with a woman spinning fiber into thread. She noted that 15 million of these cups are used every month.
Her second slide was of a Greek oil jug from the mid-500s BCE. On it, women are spinning, weighing and weaving wool. Spinning was the ideal occupation for a virtuous woman, like Penelope in The Odyssey.
Spinning was ubiquitous in the ancient world. “To have textiles for tents, or uniforms, or sails, or robes for temple worship, women — and it was almost always women — had to spin fiber into thread,” she said.
Apart from silk, she said, most fibers are about two-and-a-half inches long, so they have to be twisted together to create threads of any longer length. By spinning, thread can stretch for miles, which must be done before weaving can begin.
Of textiles, Virginia Postrel has written that “most preindustrial women spent their lives spinning. Unlike weaving, dyeing or raising sheep, it was less a specific occupation than a universal life skill like cooking and cleaning.”
Everett said Postrel calculated that a pair of jeans requires more than 6 miles of cotton yarn. A Roman toga would need 25 miles of yarn, and the hand spinning would take 909 hours, for eight hours a day, for 114 days. Just to spin the thread.
“Until the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving was the constant rhythm of ancient women’s lives, and the unspoken background of every Biblical text you read. So for Tamar to tear her virginal robe, to tear that fabric, she is declaring what is torn — all the time, labor, hours. All her relationships,” Everett said.
She continued, “Tamar is exerting agency, declaring she is more than her labor. Even if others are quiet, she will not be.”
Sometimes in order to repair something, you have to make it bigger. Textile artist and Amherst College professor Sonya Clark took something that was covered up and forgotten and made it bigger. Everett noted that the flag most closely associated with the Civil War is the Confederate Battle Flag, commonly called the “Stars and Bars.” It is a flag of a defeated, treasonous enemy. Clark, in an exhibit at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, had a piece titled “The Flag We Should Know.”
That flag was a dish towel, a replica of the Confederate Flag of Truce, carried by the emissary from Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant. It was a hand-woven dish towel, just 18 by 18.5 inches. It is now in the Smithsonian at the National Museum of American History.
Grant accepted the Confederacy’s surrender and tore the flag in half so the emissary could have safe passage back across Union lines. The other half was given to Elizabeth Custer, wife of George Armstrong Custer, who gave it to the Smithsonian.
Everett showed slides of a replica of the original dish towel and the artwork created by Clark.
Clark saw the flag in the Smithsonian and said, “This is the flag that brought the nation back together, but somehow we still know the Confederate Battle Flag better than the Truce Flag.” Clark made a large dish towel, measuring 15 by 30 feet, or 10 times the size of the original.
Everett said, “Sometimes to make it better, you have to make it bigger. To make it better, you have to tell the whole truth about everything that has been torn. That is really hard for those of us formed by white supremacy. When we make a mistake, we try to hide quickly, to cover up, as if nothing had happened. Like Adam and Eve.”
What Tamar and Clark offer is visible mending, that it is OK to say what happened, to be honest about the tear. “When horrible things happen, do not pretend,” Everett said.
Let yourself cry, she told the congregation. “Tear that robe and use it as a handkerchief. Refuse to be quieted. Refuse to bow under a battle flag when there is a truer story.”
Everett told the congregation, “The promise of our God is not that we will not be harmed, torn or hurt, but we need not pretend that harm does not happen. We need not pretend. We need not pretend. We can be visibly mended and proudly display our scars. In the end, we belong to the God who repairs.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua Institution, presided. Fr. Jim Daprile, president of the Chautauqua Catholic Community, read the scripture. The prelude was “Andantino,” by César Franck, played by Owen Reyda, 2024 organ scholar, on the Massey Memorial Organ. For the anthem, the Motet Choir sang “Servants of Peace,” music by K. Lee Scott and text by James Quinn after a Prayer of St. Francis. The choir was under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and accompanied by Reyda on the Massey Organ. Stafford played “Elegy,” by C. Hubert H. Perry, for the postlude on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and services is provided by the Randell-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the J. Everett Hall Memorial Chaplaincy.
