Episodes
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
Finding yourself in a hopeless place of shame
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder John 8:1-11
The most popular song around the world these past couple of years was a song by a singer named Rhianna. It sold about seven million copies. Globally it may be the best selling single of all time so far. It is entitled “We found love.”
The lyrics of the song are:
We found love in a hopeless place.
We found love in a hopeless place.
We found love in a hopeless place.
We found love in a hopeless place.
This is pretty much the lyric. But something about this repetitive theme has touched the hearts of millions upon millions of people around the world.
We decided that this Lent we want to talk about hopeless places where we can find ourselves in life … hopeless places where we can feel stuck and imprisoned.
The places we’ve identified are shame, addiction, depression, grief, powerlessness, and death.
During Lent we want to talk about these examples of places that can feel hopeless and we want to turn to Scripture and to one another to discover how we might find hope and liberation in these hopeless places.
Our affirmation this Lent is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord –not shame, not addiction, not depression, not grief, not powerlessness, not death. Nothing can separate us from God. No matter how burdened we feel, no matter how imprisoned we feel, no matter how hopeless we feel, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It gets better.
We want to start this morning with shame. Shame can be a hopeless place.
Before we look at Scripture Pastor Dawn will talk with Amy Tatsumi for a few minutes. Amy is a licensed professional counselor here in the District certified through the Art Therapy Credentials Board. Amy is leading a group for single women from all walks of life, for the next eight weeks on the topic “The Hustle for Worthiness.” We asked her to share for a few minutes about how shame can be a hopeless place.
[Interview]
Our thanks to Dawn and Amy for that conversation.
I want us to spend the rest of our sermon time this morning looking at the biblical story traditionally entitled: “The Women Caught in Adultery,” but which could just as likely be entitled “The Men Caught in Hypocrisy.”
Let’s begin by recognizing that this story is not an endorsement of adultery. The story assumes that adultery is wrong. It assumes adultery is sin.
Sexual ethics are complicated and we could discuss why this story assumes adultery is sin. But why this story considers adultery to be sin is not really the point the story wants to make.
By the assumptions of the story, the woman who was caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus and the crowd by a group of men … she was engaging in sin. The story assumes she had done something wrong.
However, however, notice this -- she probably did not commit adultery by herself. She alone was humiliated. I am not an expert but, if I understand how it works at all, adultery normally involves two people.
We could talk for a long time about the prejudice behind the assumption that when adultery happens the woman is the guilty party. The woman is shamed and humiliated and punished while the man gets a thumbs up at the gym and a sit-com. It is a prejudice that is not dead yet. But this injustice, wrong as it is, is not what I believe this story most wants to tell us.
This is what I want I think the story wants us to notice first. The men – the religious leaders in this story—the men caught in hypocrisy : their primary purpose was not to shame and humiliate the woman caught in adultery. They did not mind shaming her. They may have enjoyed it. It may even have titillated them. But it was not their main purpose for doing what they did.
Their main purpose was to get Jesus in trouble.
Jesus’ popularity threatened the religious leaders. People listened to him gladly and believed and trusted him more than they did the scribes and priests and Pharisee. He threatened their authority; he threatened their position; he threatened their power.
They knew Jesus well enough to know he would side with the woman.
So they shamed her to implicate him … to get him to seem to be soft on adultery ... to seem soft on the authority of Scripture … to undermine his credibility.
This is what I think the story is first of all trying to tell us. When someone tries to lay shame on you, ask what is in it for them.
Because shaming you can be a way of exercising power over you. It can be a way of keeping you in your place.
When you experience the warm flush and inner ache of shame, ask who benefits from your shame.
If the people you work for can convince you that you are not really all that smart or all that competent or all that dedicated or all that winsome or all that worthy, they may not have to pay you as much. Just saying ….
If society can make you ashamed of your gender, maybe it only needs to pay you 70 percent of what another gender makes.
If somebody puts shame on you, ask what’s in it for them.
If you feel as if you need to work twice as hard as everybody else to prove you are good enough, because there is something wrong with you -- your personality or background or origin or status or identity, ask yourself what shame you might be carrying within yourself and who is exploiting it.
Shame is a political strategy. Put shame onto immigrants, put shame onto women who want access to birth control, put shame onto the unemployed, put shame people on to people who belong to unions, put shame onto people who work for the government … shame is a means of maintaining injustice.
The reason the religious leaders shamed the woman caught in adultery was because they wanted to disempower Jesus. Shame is a political weapon.
Every time we find ourselves burdened down by feelings of shame, we should ask ourselves whether shame is being used to preserve injustice.
So that is one big thing I think this story wants to tell us. I think there is another big learning in this story.
There are lots of fascinating details in the story. Jesus writing on the ground with his finger. Jesus saying, “Let anyone without sin throw the first stone at her.” Brilliant strategy.
I’d love to have enough time this morning to talk my way through all of the details of the story.
But I think there is one other really big thing that this story is trying to tell us about shame.
In the story, after everybody had left and Jesus was alone with the woman caught in sin, Jesus says to her, “Where are your accusers. Is anyone here to condemn you?”
She answered, “No.” And then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. “
He says: No condemnation. Go and sin no more.
Here I think is the point of this exchange: there is a difference between sinning and being sinful.
I sin. Jane will tell you. Or ask Al and Dawn and Stanley and Kirsten. I sin, but I am not sinful. I Dean J. Snyder am created in God’s image. I am a child of God. I am baptized. I am redeemed. I am not full of sin. I sin but I am not sinful.
In fact, sin is a distortion of who I really am.
You sin, each and every one of you, but you are not sinful. No one here is sinful.
Thinking of ourselves as sinful actually gets in the way of us dealing with our sin.
If I tell a lie and I say to myself “I told a lie. I must just be a liar,” then I never ask myself why I lied. If I say to myself, “I am not a liar. I wonder why I just lied? Let me figure out what was going on with me so I can figure why I lied like that when I am not a liar.”
Shame is when you say I sinned because I am sinful. Shame is when you say I lied because I am a liar. I cheated because I am a cheater. I had a one-night stand because I am a slut. I failed because I am a failure. My relationship ended because I am unlovable. I can’t get a job because I am good for nothing.
Shame never lets us get better because it keeps us from asking the question of why we are doing things we really don’t in our true self want to do.
So Jesus says to the woman … no condemnation…no shame. Now go and figure out why you had sex with a married man because you deserve better. You deserve to be somebody’s one and only. You deserve someone who will commit his life and all of his love to just you.
This is why the forgiveness thing Jesus talked about so much is so important. When you sin, repent and get over it. Your sin is not you. Do not let your sin define you.
Let me pause here for a footnote but an important footnote. Some of the things some of us feel guilty about are not sins. Some of us who were sexually abused as children or teenagers. We feel sinful and guilty about it. If an adult used you for sex when you were a child or teenager, even if you enjoyed it, that is not your sin. Do not own it. Do not give it power in your life. You should not feel guilty about that.
If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and/or queer, that is not a sin. Do not feel guilty about that. Do not be ashamed of that. Now, I suspect it is just as possible for gay folk to sin as straight folk, but being gay is not a sin. Do not feel guilty about it.
Lot’s of us suffer from false feelings of sin and guilt and shame. So examine every feeling. Don’t feel guilty about what is not really wrong.
And do not feel shameful about the things that you do that are wrong. Your sin does not define you. My sin does not define me. No condemnation.
You and I are created in the image of God. No shame. No shame. No shame.
And when we do sin, figure out what in the circumstance and within us caused us to sin, accept forgiveness and let it go. Move on. When we sin, there is always a reason and the reason is not because we are sinful.
I want to have a prayer with you. Please bow your heads.
This is a prayer you can do at home. Feel in your body wherever it is you carry your shame. For me, it is in my shoulders. It may take some time for you to feel where you carry your shame. I found mine in my shoulders. Imagine a warm light shining on wherever it is you carry your shame. It is the light of grace. It is the light of the image of God in which you are made. Sit in the light as long as you can. And say to yourself something like this. I am made in the image of God. I am baptized. I am a child of God. I am not sinful. I am redeemed. Amen.
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