When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were overcome by such a deep sense of shame that all they could do was hide themselves from one another and from God. The real tragedy is that they—and all of their unborn children, that is, we—no longer experienced God's presence as a blessing, but as a curse.
From that moment, God has worked to restore humanity, to set it free from its original shame and all of the sin, violence, and death that have resulted. This work climaxes on Good Friday where God cures like with like, where God cures our shame by enduring shame.
An audio file can be found here.
Stories of
Shame
On Tuesday, I was in Topeka at the annual Chrism Mass,
where the priests and deacons and the Bishop gather together to renew our
ordination vows. After the service, we had lunch. And I sat down next to one of
my colleagues who was talking about his Holy Week sermons. He said, “This year,
I am not going to be talking about shame and guilt.” That made may me a bit
nervous because that’s all I had been planning to talk about. My friend said he
wasn’t going to heap shame and guilt upon his congregation by preaching
about how they were the cause of Jesus’ death. Well, I am not planning to do
that either. But we’ve got to talk about guilt and shame, for without them we simply
can’t make sense of Jesus’ death.
So, tonight, I want to talk about shame. More
specifically, I want to talk about “original shame,” which is related to the
idea of “original sin,” but which is far more fundamental to our human
situation and far more relevant to our daily lives. But I must warn you, tonight’s
sermon is only the first part of the story, you will have to come back on Easter Sunday to get the Rest of the Story. Tonight,
we will look at three stories of shame.
Story Of Shame
#1: Adam and Eve
The first story of
shame is an old story, a very older story. It’s the story of the first
man and the first woman, the story of Adam and Eve. You know this story. In the
beginning, God plants a garden in Eden, and it needs tending. So God creates
Adam from the dust of the ground, and places him in the garden to till it and
keep it. Later God creates Eve to be Adam’s partner in this work. They are the
perfect couple, ideally suited for one another. And so, life in the Garden of
Eden is idyllic. There is plenty of food, there
is meaningful work, and “they are naked and not ashamed.”
But turn the page, and things fall apart rather
quickly. The crafty serpent convinces our first parents to eat from the one tree
in the entire garden that is off limits to them, the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. And when they partake of the forbidden tree, everything changes.
In an instant, their eyes are opened, and they now know that they are naked.
Shame washes over them to such a degree that they can no longer bear to be in
one another’s presence. They try hiding themselves from one another, but the
best they can do is fashion some makeshift clothing out of fig leaves.
That’s what shame does. Shame causes us to hide
ourselves from other people, and so cuts us off from one another. And when we
are disconnected from others, we are prone to all manner of sin and violence. Even
brothers will kill one another when they are disconnected and operating from a
place of shame. In short, shame brings about a kind of death, wherein we are
separated from ourselves, from others, and especially
from God. That’s the next part of the story.
So after this incident, Adam and Eve hear the Lord on his evening stroll through the garden, and they hide themselves. The Lord calls out, “Where are you?,” (curious tone of voice), and Adam replies, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself” (3:10). The Lord puts two and two together, and realizes that his children have eaten from the tree he had warned them about. And look what has become of them. They are so overcome, so awash with shame, that they cannot bear to be in God’s presence.
And let’s be really clear about this. Shame is the
culprit. Shame did this, not God. Adam and Eve aren’t hiding from God because God
punished them. They aren’t hiding from God because God is angry with them.
After all, notice how this story plays out. When God arrives on the scene, he doesn’t
even know anything has happened. It’s not until Adam explains why they are in
hiding that God learns of their disobedience. In other words, God didn’t
discover their disobedience and then come storming through the garden
bellowing, “Where are you? Show yourselves! Didn’t I tell you not to eat from
that tree!” Nor did God catch them in act of disobedience. We all know what
that feels like—the sudden shock, shame, and fear that washes over us when we
are caught doing something we know we shouldn’t be doing. No, the shame that
Adam and Eve felt was of a different sort; it was deeper than embarrassment, more
profound than a guilty conscience.
I don’t know what it was about the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil that did this to them, but whatever was in the meat
of that fruit, it overwhelmed our first parents. They were made so acutely aware
of their nakedness that all they could to do was hide in order to preserve
their dignity and sense of self-worth. Human companionship was no longer a source
of comfort. And God’s presence was no longer a blessing, but a curse. This is original
shame. This is the state of affairs that gets passed down from generation to
generation. We all experience it; we all are subject to it, even when we ourselves
haven’t done anything wrong to warrant shame.
Story Of Shame
#2: Two Boys
Take, for example, this story. During my junior year at
Friends University, I lived just off campus in a small, one-room apartment,
located above a detached garage. The garage belonged to a family who went to my
church. Their son was in the middle-school youth group, where I served as one
of the adult sponsors. There was another boy in the youth group who lived a few
blocks away. One evening, my doorbell rang. And when I opened the door, I saw
these two boys standing there, on the verge of tears. I invited them upstairs
where they told me this story.
They had just been walking around the
neighborhood, when they were suddenly surrounded by a group of rough-looking
boys who lived in a boys’ home in our neighborhood. They were older, stronger,
and more numerous, so there was nothing that these two boys could have done.
They were taunted, made fun of, and punched a few times. I don’t think they
sustained any bodily injuries. Nevertheless, it was a traumatic experience for
both of them. They were scared and ashamed.
That’s what struck me the most. They
hadn’t done anything wrong, wrong had
been done to them. They were the
victims, yet it was they who felt
ashamed. So ashamed that they couldn’t even look at each other as they were
telling me their story. This shared experience didn’t draw them closer
together, it pushed them apart. The presence of the other wasn’t a source of
comfort, only a reminder of what had been done to them, a reminder of how weak,
powerless, and afraid they had been. They might as well have been naked,
because that is how they felt. That’s what shame does.
Shame vs.
guilt
Brené Brown is a researcher professor who studies vulnerability,
worthiness, and shame, and she makes a helpful distinction between guilt—which
is healthy—and shame—which is toxic. Guilt says, “I did something bad,” while
shame says, “I am bad.” Guilt says, “I made a mistake,” while shame says, “I am
a mistake.” A guilty conscience says, “Look what you did.” But the gremlins of
shame whisper, “You are never going to be good enough. Who do you think you
are?”
Shame causes us to question our worth and our
identity. Shame makes us feel exposed. Shame makes us feel vulnerable to
ridicule and rejection. And so shame teaches us to hide ourselves from others
and from God. So when we are operating out of shame, we construct a false
identity, we project a false self, one that we hope will make us worthy of love
and acceptance. But it never works because we know—or at least we believe—that
any love we receive has been built on a lie. And so, we keep up the game as
long as we can, but it is a game that we can never win because it has no
winners.
Story Of Shame
#3: God
So what was God to do? You see the dilemma, don’t you. We are
broken, we are sick, and we are in need of God’s healing touch. But when God
gets close enough to heal us we feel too exposed. Our shame is triggered, and
we go into hiding. Yet, God is not content to wait until his children make it
back home; indeed they cannot. Instead God leaves behind his respect and his dignity,
and he goes into the far country seeking out his prodigal sons and daughters.
But he can’t be seen less we run away.
So what does God do? God comes to us disguised in
weakness, in human weakness. In the incarnation of his beloved Son, God strips
himself of his radiant glory and puts on the cloak of our fallen humanity. God comes
into the world naked and exposed, crying like a baby and placed in a wooden
manger, the infant son of Mary. He exits the world in the same fashion, nailed
to the hard wood of a Roman cross, naked and exposed with a cry of
God-forsakenness on his lips. God cured like with like; he healed shame with
shame.
In his life and in his death, Jesus bore the cross
of our shame. He didn’t just take our sins upon himself, he took our death, and
he took our shame—our shame for what we have done, and our shame for what we
have left undone, our shame for what has been done to us, and our shame for
what hasn’t been done to us, our shame at not having been loved, accepted, and valued
unconditionally.
How does all of this it all work? Only God knows. Why
did God do all of this? Because it was necessary and because we are worth it to
God, because God loves us and desperately wants to be with us. By healing us of
our shame, God can draw near to us, and his presence will no longer be a curse,
but a blessing once more.
And so, tonight, as we venerate the cross of Christ,
let us remember that this is God’s story of shame and our story of our salvation.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Delivered on Good Friday, April 3, a.d. 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment