“Waking Up”

Sermon Notes forSunday 30th November on Matthew 24:36-44

by Desiree Snyman

Gender based violence GBV

We support the 16 days of activism to end gender-based violence (GBV) including domestic violence and intimate partner violence. While physical violence is the most obvious form of domestic violence there are several types of GBV including:

Intimidation: Using fear to control a victim survivor by forcing changes in their behaviour. This can involve yelling, threatening gestures, destroying property, displaying weapons, reckless driving with the victim in the car, stalking, or making unwanted contact.

Verbal Abuse: Using words or tone to degrade, insult, ridicule, or shame. This includes name-calling, derogatory comments about appearance, beliefs, spirituality, friendships, or achievements, and silencing the victim survivor.

Emotional Abuse: Behaviours that damage a person’s self-worth and emotional wellbeing. Examples include the silent treatment, minimising or denying the victim’s concerns, gaslighting, shaming, using jealousy as justification, guilt-tripping, or manipulating love and goodwill.

Isolation: Intentionally cutting a victim survivor off from their support networks. This may involve controlling where they go, who they see, their clothing or media, tracking money, limiting access to transport, or dictating when they should be home.

Financial Abuse: Restricting or controlling access to economic resources. This includes controlling family money, making all financial decisions, preventing employment, taking their money, or incurring debt without consent.

Minimising, Denying or Blaming: Refusing to take responsibility for abusive behaviour. This includes ridiculing concerns, downplaying harm, covering up abuse, rewriting events to protect the perpetrator’s image, or blaming the victim for the abuse or for the perpetrator’s substance or gambling issues.

Using Children: Using children as a tool of control. This can involve using children to send messages or threats, manipulating contact times, turning children against the victim survivor, blaming the victim to the children, or threatening to take them away.

Coercion and Threats: A pattern of controlling tactics designed to force compliance. Examples include threats of self-harm, blocking cultural or religious practices, threats about calling police or child protection, forcing the victim to drop charges, threatening loved ones, or coercing them into illegal activity. Coercive control became a criminal offence in NSW on 1 July 2024 when used against a current or former intimate partner.  

Coercive control is sometimes hard to define; it may be helpful to give explicit examples. Here are some of the stories from people who have survived GBV

(from https://shadowsofcontrol.com/articles/what-coercive-control-looks-like/) 

Constantly Changing the Rules: “Every time I started to feel in control of my life, he’d change the rules. It felt like I was always back at square one, questioning everything I did.”

Discouraging My Independence: “He discouraged me from applying for jobs, claiming he didn’t want me working with other men. He even controlled my finances, even though I paid most of the bills.”

Explosive Reactions: “I was nursing my baby on the couch when my partner got up and started screaming at me because I hadn’t cleared my cereal bowl from the table. He didn’t seem to understand that my baby was the priority at that moment, not tidying up.”

Invasion of Privacy: “I wasn’t allowed to lock the bathroom door or take time to myself without him barging in, questioning why I needed privacy. If I ever locked the door, he’d make a big scene, saying it was strange or suspicious. He would even find tools to unlock it from the outside, claiming he had to use the bathroom, even though there were other toilets in the house. I wasn’t allowed any peace, and he always found a way to disrupt even my quiet moments.”

Anger at violence

Stories about violence against vulnerable people provoke anger and sadness in me. Beneath the anger and sadness is a theological conviction that people are bearers of the Divine, created in the image of God, and worthy of utmost respect. When I look at another person, I want to remember that I am looking at a precious diamond formed in the image of God, holy and worthy of deep reverence. Abuse is the utter absence of respect. What I long for is respect, deep respect. How dare anyone harm a child or a vulnerable person. How dare anyone destroy the beauty of a human soul.

And when I see even a trace of violence or harshness within myself, I am horrified. The line between good and evil does not run between people but within each of us. This is why I need God’s judgment. If we imagine God as judge and jailer, judgment becomes something to fear. But if we imagine God as healer, judgment becomes something we long for. When we struggle with an unknown illness, we long for a diagnosis. Diagnosis is judgment, and it is the beginning of healing. God’s judgment names what is broken so that restoration can begin.

I have holy envy for the Hindu practice of bowing before another person, acknowledging the divine in them. Advent invites us to recover that same instinct of reverence and that embodied awareness of the sacredness of the other. It is the season in which we prepare to be ambushed by the beauty of God shining through every face; a bible study on Matthew 24 can help us realise this.

Wake-up: Matt 24

This Gospel passage has often been read in a spirit of fear. Many have imagined a sudden vanishing or a divine interruption that sweeps some away and leaves others behind. But when we listen slowly, as Advent invites us to do, we discover something far more life giving. Jesus is not warning us about a violent divine ambush. He is calling us into wakefulness. The invitation is simple. Stay awake. Be ready. Keep alert. Wakefulness is not fear but awareness. It is the ability to see God in the present moment. It is the practice of noticing the divine in the ordinary. It is an inner awakening that recognises Christ in all things and all things in Christ.

Jesus recalls the days of Noah, not because the people were particularly sinful, but because they were sleepwalking. They were eating, drinking, working, marrying, doing ordinary things, yet unaware of the deeper reality unfolding all around them. They did not perceive the divine invitation into a new way of seeing. They were physically awake yet spiritually drowsy. This is the condition Advent seeks to heal. Spiritual sleep is the dullness that forgets God is present. It is the heaviness that settles into routine and misses the sacred in the everyday. It is the fog that forgets that God is being born in every moment.

Jesus calls us to wake up. Waking up is recognising that God is always already here. It is knowing that Christ is the light within the heart of matter. It is the inner shift where the mind of Christ begins to shape our way of being in the world. Two are in the field. Two women grind grain. They stand side by side doing the same work. One sees only the ordinary. The other perceives the presence of God. The difference is consciousness.

To be ready for the coming of the Son of Man is not to fear a cosmic interruption. It is to awaken to the truth that the Son of Man, the fully human one, is being born within us now. Christ comes wherever there is compassion, justice, tenderness, courage, and presence. Christ comes whenever we recognise the sacredness of what is before us. The unexpected hour is every hour. The thief in the night is not an enemy but the Beloved who quietly removes whatever keeps us asleep. Christ comes not to frighten us but to awaken us to our identity as theotokia, God bearers.

Advent invites us to stay awake. To awaken our senses. To notice the present moment. To choose consciousness. Christ consciousness is not something we achieve. It is something we awaken to. It is a gift already given, waiting to be welcomed. Waking up to Christ present at the heart of matter is ultimately acknowledging with reverence the divine within each person which means that respect is our default way of relating to others. 

Respect

The final word will be from Greg Ezzy, staff chaplain at EAC. For those who have lived in loving and respectful families, it can be difficult to imagine the fear, sadness, shame, and hostility that many experience in domestic violence situations. Greg says that “We Australians pride ourselves on mateship and fairness. Yet alongside our highest ideals there is a profound failure of respect. A woman dies every eight days in Australia at the hands of a partner or former partner. Twenty-five more are in intensive care. Countless others live in fear. One in four women and one in fourteen men experience physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from an intimate partner. These are not statistics. They are people created in the image of God. And still, respect shows itself daily in our multicultural democracy. It appears in our legal system, community service, and our commitment to reconciliation with First Nations peoples. But respect is not an idea. Respect is the quiet, daily act of listening. It is sharing responsibility, honouring autonomy, and creating safety. Respect is love in action, helping others flourish.

This is the heart of Emmanuel. God with us. God in us. When we nurture this presence, respect becomes instinctive. When we see Christ in one another, reverence becomes our natural response.

Alleluia for every person who chooses respect. Alleluia for those who interrupt violence and create safety. Alleluia for every home, workplace, community, and parish where dignity is honoured and the divine image is cherished.”

Reflection Questions

1. Waking Up

• Where in my life am I spiritually asleep or distracted?
• What helps me become more aware of God in the present moment?

2. Seeing the Divine in Others

• Who do I struggle to see as carrying the image of God?
• What daily practices might help me treat others with deeper reverence?
• When was the last time I felt “ambushed by the divine beauty” in another person?

3. Facing Violence and Its Impact

• What forms of violence, disrespect, or injustice stir righteous anger in me?
• How does naming my own shadows or harmful patterns open space for healing?
• What does imagining God as healer, rather than judge, change in my understanding of divine judgment?

4. Respect and Human Dignity

• Where do I see respect flourishing in my relationships and community?
• Where is respect failing, and how might I respond with courage and compassion?
• How can I make safety, dignity, and kindness more visible in my home, parish, or workplace?