LET ME NEVER BE PUT TO SHAME

Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery.

Delivered at St. Johns Charlestown, MA on Sunday August 21 on the texts Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; and Luke 13:10-17.

“In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be ashamed.”
(Psalm 71:1)

Shame tends to sear things into your memory. I can tell you about the time I hugged the wrong dad’s hairy legs at a barbecue with family friends when I was maybe three or four years old, and how embarrassed I was to be pointed to the right one. I can tell you about the time I couldn’t figure out how to flush the toilet in the middle of the night at a sleepover and let my friend’s parents blame it on his little brother in the morning, while I said nothing. I could tell you about the time the same friend’s snoring kept me up all night, and I was so exhausted in the morning that I threw up at the breakfast table. You may have some similar stories of your own. Shame is a powerful emotion, and it creates powerful memories, because our mind is desperate to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

So you can probably understand the Psalmist’s prayer. “In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be put to shame” (Psalm 71:1). Nobody wants to be ashamed. And in fact, the world might be a better place if nobody ever felt any shame.

That doesn’t mean we should all act “shamelessly.” When we call someone “shameless,” we mean that they go around acting badly without feeling any kind of remorse. And that’s certainly not a good thing. But what a “shameless” person should feel isn’t quite “shame.” It’s more like “guilt.”

If you’ve studied psychology, or if you—like me—have the good fortune to be married to a therapist, you might have heard someone make this distinction before. To put it simply: guilt is about what you’ve done; shame is about who you are. Guilt is saying, “Wow, I really messed that up.” Shame is saying, “Wow, I’m really messed up.” Guilt is important when you’ve done something wrong. It can be very productive. While it’s not easy to own up to our own misdeeds, guilt has the potential to draw us out of ourselves: we feel bad, we want to make amends for what we’ve done, and so we go to someone we’ve harmed, and apologize, and are forgiven. But shame is unforgivable. If it’s about who we are, then there’s no way to make amends, nobody to whom we can apologize, nobody who can forgive us. And so instead of drawing us out of ourselves, shame drives us into ourselves. We hide, because we think that surely—if others could see us for who we really are—they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with us. If you’ve done something wrong, and someone shames you for it, it drives you further into yourself. It makes you less likely to reach out and apologize. That’s exactly what we see at the end of our Gospel reading: while the crowd rejoices at Jesus’ teaching, those who had criticized him were not just proven wrong, they were “put to shame” (Luke 13:16). And that shame, I’m sure, only hardened their resolve to see him put in his place.

That feeling of shame is a little like the prophet Jeremiah’s response when God first calls him. “Ah, Lord God!” Jeremiah says. “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy!” (Jer. 1:7) Jeremiah’s anxiety isn’t about his ability. It’s about his identity. It’s not just that he doesn’t know what to say. It’s that he doesn’t think he can say it. Now, God and does respond on the level of ability: the Lord reaches out and touches Jeremiah’s mouth, and says, “Now I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:10). But even more than that, God had already preempted Jeremiah’s shame about his own youth with those powerful words: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jer. 1:5). Before you were even in the womb, God says to Jeremiah, I knew you. And I loved you. And I chose you.

That combination of intimacy, vulnerability, and love is the antidote to shame. If shame is, in a sense, the fear of being “found out” (or having been found out), then to be told that you are truly known for who you are, and nevertheless loved, is a powerful thing. When Jeremiah says, “You can’t be calling me; I’m only a boy,” the most reassuring thing God could possibly say is, “I know you’re a child; I’ve known you since before you were even born; and even so I am calling you.”

It’s that same closeness that you see in the psalm:

In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; *
let me never be ashamed.

In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; *
incline your ear to me and save me.

Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; *
you are my crag and my stronghold.

I have been sustained by you ever since I was born;
from my mother’s womb you have been my strength; *

my praise shall be always of you. (Psalm 71)

It’s as though the psalmist is wrapped in God as in a cloak, nestled and nurtured within every fold of God’s being. He’s protected by God, as if he were in a castle, behind a fortress that is sturdy enough to withstand any assault, and yet has sustained him from the days when he was in the womb. The psalmist is known and loved. Jeremiah is known and loved. You are known and loved.

These words are for you, too, after all. God has sustained you ever since you were born. God was your strength even in your mother’s womb. God is your strong rock, a castle to keep you safe. Before God formed you, God knew you; before you were born, God consecrated you.

That’s not to say that you’ll never again feel the icy-hot spread of shame as it oozes through your chest. It’s a natural enough emotion to feel. And it’s not to say that you’ll never again feel guilt—and in fact, there will probably be times in your life when guilt is the healthiest emotion for you to feel.  But God knows you. And God delights in you. And when you’ve done something wrong, you can shamelessly apologize, because you are not someone wrong. You are not the sum of the things you have done, or the sum of the things done to you. You are the beloved and fiercely-defended child of a God who loves you so much he would lay down his own life for you, and he is calling to you, with the most important message you could ever hear: “Woman”—Man, child— “You are set free.” (Luke 13:12)