Two scenarios, all true, with details changed to protect identity.
My name is Shelly. I’ve been attending for a year. I’m 39, I have two teenage daughters. I’m a loan officer at City Bank. I like the work, and I can play with the big-boys, but by the end of the week, I feel like I’ve been in a battle, fighting for self-respect. I don’t win that battle as much as I’d like. But I can’t afford to lose this job. It’s been three years, but I’m still not over the divorce. It’s almost as if I’ve not had time to process it with the commute, work, and trying to stay involved with my girls who are growing up fast and giving me fits with their adolescent attitudes. I guess they’re like their dad. It seems they can’t stand to be around me. Sometimes I can’t stand to be around me either. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I can look in the mirror and see a well-put-together mom. But the loneliness is so sharp it takes my breath away. I’m such a mess and nobody here knows it. Knows me. There’s Beth in the choir. She seems so happy all the time. I almost asked Beth last Sunday if she’d have lunch with me, but I couldn’t open my mouth. I don’t want her pity. It’s my own stuff anyway. Who wants to have lunch with a ‘divorcee’?
My name is Miguel. My wife sings in the choir and those three loud kids – They’re mine. This year started out with a bang. Buying our new home was a stretch a few years ago, but with my promotion to VP – just what I’d been shooting for – our finances and investments are looking great. We replaced the old clunker with a new sports utility vehicle, and upped our pledge, too. The kids are doing great in school and sports, and my wife is happy as a clam being involved in all kinds of community and church activities. I was asked to serve as an Elder in the area of worship. That’s been great, though I’ve missed a few meetings. The year started off so well. So why am I feeling this way? I should be happy. But something’s amiss. I don’t know. I’m drinking more, I find that I’m restless and bored, and I keep thinking about Luanne at work. An affair would be stupid, but I find myself wanting to give in. Just when I thought it couldn’t get better, life has gone flat on me. Maybe I’m in a ‘mid-life’ crisis, but nobody else seems to show signs of being affected. What is wrong with me? “Hey George. Good to see you. Things couldn’t be better. No really, thanks for asking. After church let’s talk about our next committee meeting, okay? Good.” Yeah, right, things couldn’t be better. I’m such a hypocrite.
Paul writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” What are our burdens? You just heard three of them. Burdens are varied, but beneath the surface lies a common burden: the burden of our life. The Church tends to see this burden as guilt. But beneath guilt lies a greater burden, the burden of shame. Guilt comes from doing something wrong. Shame comes from being wrong. We can hear the shame in Shelly, Dave, and Miguel’s stories.
Donald Capps, former professor at PTS, says shame has three primary effects on the self. First shame causes a divided self. Shame comes from not living up to expectations and ideals: ours, others’, God’s. So our ideal self criticizes and punishes our real self. What we are ashamed of gets pushed away, ridiculed, buried in the unconscious. We are divided against our self. Secondly, shame causes a defended self.
To avoid shame we do one of two things. We attack others, blame them, and project our shame onto them. Or we become perfectionists, so that we never let ourselves down again. Either way, we avoid our shame, and keep it from others. Thirdly, shame causes a depleted self. Over time, shame eventually wears us out, and causes us to become apathetic, tired, and depleted. So we often come to church carrying the burden of ourselves, the burden of a divided, defended, and depleted self. In worship we might be inspired, sense God’s presence. But often, when we return home, we still carry a burden of shame. What are we to do with it?
Shame needs to be born, shared, seen. And it is! In Jesus, we are shown that God bears our shame. Incarnation is God-with-us, and on the cross Christ bears our shame. And even there, as Jesus experienced public shame, and the self-doubt of being abandoned by his disciples and even God, even there Jesus continued to trust and love. I’ve had trouble when theologians say that Jesus has experienced everything we have, and then say that Jesus was sinless: no guilt. But if Jesus was sinless, how can Jesus share my humanity? The answer is shame. Jesus knew the experience of shame, yet trusted God’s love.
Jesus also shows us how to bear the shame of one another. We see this in the story of the woman at the well in John 4. She comes to the well at noon. Why? To avoid the other women who came early, when it was cool. Jesus talks with her. This counteracts her shame. She’s a Samaritan and Jews don’t talk to Samaritans. She’s a woman, and a Jewish man, a rabbi no less, wouldn’t be caught dead talking to a woman all alone. Jesus could have shamed her.
But he spoke to her as an equal, as a person of value, as an I am. This helped her to be vulnerable, to say that she did not have a husband. Jesus does not condemn; he names what is true for her – she has had five husbands, and the one she is with is not her husband. Jesus sees that her search for love is like her search for water: it’s something she needs. She has longed for it, but it has ended in failure five times and maybe six. By accepting her, listening to her, Jesus demonstrates a love she craved in marriage. Jesus shares her burden, bears her shame. He didn’t condemn or shame her. He emotionally held her and mirrored her value and worth.
The woman runs to the city – Jesus told her everything she had done! This was not news – everyone already knew what she had done. But that she talked publicly about it is telling. She no longer feels ashamed.
Like Shelly and Miguel, sometimes we come to church like the Samaritan woman: carrying the burden of our longings; we want living water. Bearing one another’s burdens, listening to and accepting one another without trying to fix, frees us from shame, and taps into the deep well, God-with-us, the living water that flows in community.
After undergoing surgery, a man found that he had soiled himself in the hospital bed. He was humiliated. He rang for a nurse and dreaded the moment. The nurse said it happened all the time. You’re not the first and won’t be the last. But he was very upset, so ashamed. So she said, “You think this is bad? You should see it when it’s really bad. We have a special unit: air-tight suits, masks, umbrellas, hoses for spraying down the patient and the walls. It’s called a code brown.” The man began to laugh, and his shame disappeared.
Carl was playing in the final game of the little league playoffs, with his parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles in attendance. It was the bottom of the last inning, bases loaded, down by one run, and Carl was at the plate.
If he made an out, the game would be over and his team would lose. If he walked or hit the ball, he would be the hero of the game. He swung at the first pitch and missed. “Strike one!” the umpire yelled. The families from the other team cheered, but his family cheered even louder. “It’s okay, Carl. No problem. You almost hit the ball! Now, clobber the next pitch!” “Strike twooo!” Pandemonium broke out. Both teams and their families yelled back and forth at each other. Carl’s family and team encouraged him; the players and family of the defensive team taunted him. No one could hear themselves think.
Wrinkles appeared on the 9-year-old’s forehead as he waited for the next pitch. As the ball left the pitcher’s hand, it became very quiet. The ball sped toward Carl. It took forever to cross the plate, but cross the plate it did, and Carl swung with all his might. “Strike three! You’re out!” Not only was Carl out, the game was over. And he was the cause of the loss.
The winning team went crazy, their families swarmed the field, and everyone was dancing, laughing, cheering, celebrating. Except Carl’s team. As Carl’s team walked off the field dejected, they mingled with their families and headed back to their cars in silence. Except for Carl. Carl was standing at the plate, devastated, alone, his head down in disgrace.
Suddenly someone yelled, “Okay, Carl, play ball!” Startled, Carl looked up to see his family spread out over the field. Grandpa was pitching, Dad was catching, Mom was at first base, Uncle David was at second, and the rest of the family had covered the other positions. “C’mon, Carl, pick up the bat. Grandpa’s pitching.”
Bewildered, Carl picked up the bat and swung at Grandpa’s first pitch. He missed, and he missed the next six pitches as well. But on the 7th pitch, Carl smacked the ball to left field. His aunt ran, picked up the ball, and threw it to first base in plenty of time, but the first baseman, must have lost it in the sun, because it went right through her hands into the dugout. “Run!” everyone yelled. As Carl was running to second, the first baseman recovered the ball and threw it. Amazingly Uncle David was blinded by the sun as well. “Keep running!” yelled someone and Carl headed for third, where the throw went at least two feet over the head of the third baseman. “Keep running, Carl!” and Carl raced for home, running as hard as he had ever run. The ball was thrown with deadly accuracy as the catcher, blocking home plate, waited to tag him out, but just as Carl reached home plate, the ball bounced in and out of the catcher’s mitt, and Carl was safe!
Before he knew what happened, Carl found himself being carried around on Uncle David’s shoulders while the rest of the family crowded around cheering Carl’s name. One person who was watching this amazing event commented to a friend, “I watched a little boy fall victim to a conspiracy of grace!” (Messy Spirituality, p. 66-68, Mike Yaconelli)
The important part of this story is not that Carl hit the ball and scored. Success does not rid us of shame. But his family, by sharing his ineptitude through misplayed throws and errors, shared his shame. They mirrored his failure and value at the same time. He was not a loser left all alone. He was a loser amongst nincompoops and misfits who know how it feels to fail and still love him and value him. His shame does not define him, his beloved-ness does. Friends our sin does not and never has defined us. Our belovedness does.
Let us be that kind of community. It will take courage; to speak of our burdens, to name the shame we’ve experienced. And the courage to accept, love, and hold – not fix or condemn or avoid – the real experiences of our brothers and sisters. Richard Rohr: “I believe vulnerable intimacy is the entrance into and the linchpin between all human and divine love.” (Immortal Diamond, p. 173)
Ben Curtis and John Eldridge, in their book Sacred Romance write, “From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. God is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not God’s primary concern. What God is after – is us! Our laughter, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts.” When we bear one another’s laughter, dreams, fears, hurts, illusions, doubts, struggles – the reality of life as we experience it – we fulfill the law of Love. We bear the beams of Love. On Sundays, let us not just worship, but let us bear one another’s burdens, and in this way build a home for all of us to be in. My name and your name is Shelly, Dave, Miguel, my name and your name is Carl. Amen.
