First Sunday of Lent
February 17, 2013
Of Shame and Grace
by Aldred H. Neufeldt
Texts: Luke 4:1-13; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Let me begin with a confession. It’s about my initial reaction to this year’s Lenten theme – Ashamed no more. I was positive on the idea that we explore our experience with feelings of shame and how that influences our relationship with God. What I wasn’t so happy about was the way in which the words ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ were used in resource material. I get cranky when generalizations are proposed as truth with little attention to research showing a more complex picture. And so, at our preaching team meeting when we discussed the material, I expressed my view. Truth be told, it was a rant.
We have had a generation of pop psychologists, I said, and counsellors, who seek publicity on television and in books and workshops by arguing that ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ are terrible emotions – that a life without feelings of guilt and shame is best – and many of us have come to believe them. Yes, feelings of guilt and shame can be painful and unhealthy, but they ignore the evidence that both kinds of feeling are also healthy and important. There is the good not just the bad. Guilt is a response of healthy people who realize they’ve done something wrong. It helps us act more responsibly. Who do we know of that seems to have banished guilt? The Mafia, that’s who. They supposedly don’t feel guilt in shaking people down or murdering them. They’re said to have a ‘shame-based’ culture. But, what does research tell us about shame-based cultures? Cultural anthropologists report many folk in such societies feel shame only when caught doing something wrong. If you’re not caught, there’s no shame. So, who benefits from telling people guilt and shame should be banished? Those selling the argument, that’s who. It’s like they’re saying – ‘get rid of pain receptors in fingers so that children don’t feel pain when they touch a hot stove’. Is that what we want?
That was the essence of my rant.
As it happens, I know the people who prepared the resource material. They’re good folk and, I’m sure, would agree there is ‘good shame’ as well as ‘bad’ – they just didn’t say it.
Good shame is learned early in life. It’s important to a healthy home and a healthy society. Every child needs to learn appropriate social behaviour so she or he can express passion in a way that is respectful of both self and others. Healthy shame works to restrain behaviour not appropriate to a social setting. It’s about the person’s behaviour, not the person, and such shame quickly passes. But, if shame becomes personalized, and someone comes to feel he or she is unworthy and terrible, that’s unhealthy and bad and needs to be addressed. It’s likely to continue on unless forgiveness of self and other is sought and given. Those seem universal findings.
To be fair, the resource material is a bit more nuanced than my rant suggests. It recognizes that ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ are seen differently in the Middle Eastern society than in contemporary North America, though not much is made of such cultural differences when it could have been useful. Not recognized at all is that these cultural differences also affect how we read and understand the scriptures. This is important, and I’ll return to it later.
With that out of the way, let’s turn to the positives of the theme. It’s essential importance is to say that it matters how we feel about ourselves – it matters because if we live with uhealthy feelings of guilt and shame that, in turn, affects how we relate to God. And what better time than Lent, the six weeks when we orient ourselves to the most important event in the church year – Easter – to reflect on this relationship? Lent is a time when we can think on strengthening our relationship with God – and are reminded all over again of God’s awsome capacity for extending grace to a troubled people.
Today’s scripture texts all speak to this.
In Deuteronomy 26 we read a story full of joy. It’s a story that celebrates God’s grace shown in the past. After 40 years in the wilderness God gave the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey. In remembrance of that care, the people of Israel offer the first fruits of each harvest to God as a reminder that they owe their life and allegiance to Him. The Lenten question of us is: To what or whom do I owe my ultimate loyalty and allegiance? Who or what receives my ‘first fruits’, the first or best part of my time, my skills, my material goods?
Psalm 91 too is a joyful expression of God’s grace – of the trust we can have in Him. The psalmist speaks of dwelling in the shelter of the Most High – what a beautiful image. We are held fast by love, no matter what the circumstance. It’s a Psalm that many people in old age love. I’ve heard countless stories of our people who lived through the Russian revolution or who survived other wars and chaos. They’ve immigrated to Canada with the clothes on their back and little else – and, towards the end of life, remembering the difficulties endured, they are deeply aware of God’s presence in past and present. Without God, how could they have survived, they wonder. The Lenten question to us is: In whom do I put my trust? What provides solid ground to stand on without which I would not feel safe or whole?
Then there is the reading from Luke. It’s particularly striking. It portrays Jesus confessing his faith as a response to temptation. Just before coming to the wilderness Jesus was baptized by John in that momentous scene in the Jordan River. Led by the Spirit he arrives in the wilderness with the words of God still ringing in his ears: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:22b). The tempter picks up on this immediately. “If you are the Son of God,” he suggests, “command these stones to become loaves of bread and feed yourself … worship me and receive all the kingdoms of the world … throw yourself down from here and see if the angels catch you.”
These temptations are interesting in themselves. On the one hand, they are quite dramatic. On the other, they see
m very human – one about serving oneself, one about wealth and power, one about being at the centre of a dramatic spectacle.
m very human – one about serving oneself, one about wealth and power, one about being at the centre of a dramatic spectacle.
Would it have been so wrong if Jesus just turned a few stones to bread? Certainly there’s no sin in that, is there? What is Luke really telling us? Perhaps, that we might be tempted to want to manipulate the world to our liking. Something like that can grow into serious sin – for example, of not caring where our food comes from, or the environment from which it grew. Do we care enough about those who grow the food we eventually buy in our stores to make deliberate choices about where we shop?
What about making a pact with Satan in return for the wealth and power of the world? Think of all the good one might do with wealth and power at our disposal. Again, Jesus rejects this because it places wealth before God. The question for us is similar. What in our lifestyles comes before our consideration of God? If we’re honest, many things can draw our eyes away from God – things that in and of themselves are not bad, but might fester until we see nothing else.
Jesus rejects each temptation in turn, in each instant drawing on the scriptures to show how wrong headed the tempter is – and speaking to the grace that God makes available.
It’s curious, isn’t it, that this episode on Jesus temptations occurs at the beginning of Lent? Why reference the beginning of Jesus’ ministry just before the passion – the end? It’s a question addressed by John Milton in his epic poem, Paradise Regained. In Paradise Lost Milton explores with deep poetic insight the Fall of humankind, beginning in the Garden of Eden, and how a strong minded people keep distorting God’s vision. In Paradise Regained Milton speaks to ultimate grace – he explores not the birth, crucifixtion or resurrection of Jesus, but his temptation. What Milton saw is that in resisting Satan’s temptations Jesus initiated the possibility for humanity to regain the paradise lost in Eden’s fall. These temptations at the very beginning of Jesus ministry inevitably led to the events at Easter and the final test between essential goodness and evil that bridged the gap between a perfect God and a fatally flawed humanity – paradise regained – ultimate grace.
Milton puts into perspective the question of why our experience with shame and guilt could be a feature of a Lenten series. Emotions of shame and guilt have been with us since the fall – remember how Adam and Eve covered themselves after having disobeyed God. Lent invites us to think about becoming reconciled with God. More than that, Lent reminds us that others before us have also had reason to feel guilt and shame, and needed to be reconciled with God. Think on the disciple Peter who three times said he didn’t know Jesus, but later became the ‘rock’ on which the church was built. Consider the Apostle Paul who severely persecuted early Christians, only to become one of it’s best advocates. These and others model how the importance of forgiveness and regeneration in our relationship with God.
But, what’s interesting, it wasn’t as if they did it on their own. Earlier I mentioned that the way in which scripture is understood is different in Asia Minor than in North America. We read the scriptures from our individualistic mindsets. In the Middle East, it’s from a collective more communal perspective. From an individual perspective, addressing issues of shame and guilt seems daunting, as does keeping our relationships with God healthy. But, if we can view our experiences with shame and guilt – many arising from the kinds of temptations mentioned – if we can view these from a communal perspective – as inviting us to bear up one another – then the challenges become lighter. Viewing today’s readings, and the questions they raise for us, as directed to us as a church community rather than as individual people suggests that God’s love is for the people and God wants us as a community of believers to be involved in rescuing, protecting, honoring & celebrating those who love God. There is a relationship at stake here. It isn’t simply a matter of me being right with God. It is a matter of us together being right with God.
Then there are the bigger questions that come to mind particularly during Lent – at least for me – questions that are even sharper when one carries unhealthy shame. One is on the nature of God. Just what is this God in which we have faith and who extends grace? Philip Yancy struggled with that question in his book The Jesus I Never Knew. His observations are helpful. Yancy notes that descriptions of God almost always focus on what he is not: God is immortal, invisible, infinite – all framed in the negative. But what is God like, positively? The more he questioned himself on positive features God might have, the more he came to the conclusion that the characteristics he was looking for were represented in the image of Jesus gained from reading the Gospels. Jesus presents a God with skin on, whom we can take or leave, love or ignore. In this visible, scaled-down model we can discern God’s features more clearly – brilliant, untamed, tender, creative, slippery, irreducible, paradoxically humble.
These are the kinds of characteristics that draw one. They reflect a God offering ‘radical grace’ even when we do something that we may be deeply ashamed of. Jesus’ primary interest never was with sin. Instead his starting point was with human suffering at the place where unexpected and undeserved grace was given and received. Jesus was not stuck in systems of ‘sin management’, as the priests of his time were, as were circuit evangelists of some years ago or TV evangelists today, maybe even the pop psychologists who have their own lists of sins they propose to help us manage.
Finally, and perhaps the biggest question that raises its head for me during Lent is, how can I believe there is a Creator bigger than ourselves? The whole Lenten season is premised on this – the crucifiction on the cross where Jesus took the sins of humanity on himself, the risen Christ on Easter, the ascension. That’s an awsome God; but it’s a view difficult for many to embrace. Henri Nouwen tells a story speaking to this, on which I’ll close. It’s a story of a conversation between twins in their mother’s womb.
The sister said to the brother, “I believe there is life after birth.”
Her brother protested vehemently, “No, no this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but cling to the cord that feeds us.”
The little girl insisted, “There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move.” Still she could not convince her twin brother. After some silenc
e, the sister said hesitantly, “I have something else to say, and I’m afraid you won’t believe that either, but I think there is a mother.”
e, the sister said hesitantly, “I have something else to say, and I’m afraid you won’t believe that either, but I think there is a mother.”
Her brother became furious, “A mother,” he shouted. What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have.”
“Don’t you feel the squeezes every once in a while? They’re quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful. I think these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother’s face. Don’t you think that’s exciting?”
Nouwen concludes that we can live as though this life is all we have and the thought of life after death is absurd, and we shouldn’t take time to even think about it. Or, we can agree with the sister in the story that there must be a Creator, greater than ourselves.
To that I’d add, if we accept the latter, then we have an awsome reason to pay attention to the disharmonies in our lives, the things that contribute to our feelings of unhealthy guilt and shame, and to seek the warm embrace of God in the context of our community of believers – if we can do that, we open ourselves to one of the most powerful expressions of God’s grace one can experience.
Amen