#2628: Shame Off You

[Music] [Music] Just a few days ago, I turned 40. Yes, the big 40. And to be honest, I was not looking forward to it. It's such a landmark age. And I had turned into this really big thing in my mind, which is so easy to do. I think I was wrestling with the reality that there are many aspects of my life that aren't where I thought they'd be by the time I turned 40. But on the flip side, I knew that there are some other areas of my life that have never been better. And this was hard for me to reconcile. I was talking with my son about this one day and he asked me what a midlife crisis was. So I told him, and after some time away, he came back and he said, "Dadda, I don't think you should have a midlife crisis. I think you should have a midlife happiness." So that's what I'm aiming for. Midlife happiness. Every time I share with you, I usually give you an update involving my Lord of the Rings marathon. But since I finished that three year long marathon or deal last December, I haven't actually run again. And I might never run again, so I don't have an update. But I did take myself on a solo road trip to a Hobbit themed Airbnb 860 miles away from here. I woke up here on the morning I turned 40. Midlife happiness is off to a good start so far if I don't say so myself. And I did bring my own pillow because now that I'm 40, if I sleep on any other pillow than the one I'm used to, my neck is shot for about a week. Turning 40 made me notice not just what I'm grateful for, but also the quiet voice underneath, the voice that was measuring and comparing and saying, "You should be further along by now. You should be more than this by now." And the more I listened, the more I realized a lot of what I was wrestling with had a name. Shame. And so that's what we're going to explore today. I know super serious, super fun topic. And I tried to not talk about this, believe you me. I tried so hard to write sermons about other topics, but the Lord kept nudging me back here. And so here we are. Now the funny thing is shame has actually been part of my life for a very long time, but not in the way you might expect. As many of you know, I was born and raised in South Africa. And in South Africa, we use the word shame all the time, but not always in the way that you use it here in America. Here, shame usually means something negative like shame on you. But in South Africa, shame is almost a catch all word. We use it for things that are cute or things that are kind and thoughtful, things that are sad. So for example, if you see a cute puppy, you'd say shame, man, that puppy is so cute. If someone tells you that they're sick, you say shame, I'm so sorry. I hope you get better. If someone gives you a gift or does something very thoughtful for you that you weren't expecting, you say shame, that was so kind of you. So it took me a few years after moving to America to realize that I couldn't keep using the word shame in that way. I would say shame a lot and people would look at me like why are you condemning the older sudden? Eventually, someone sat me down and said, "Vincen, shame does not mean what you think it means here." So I'm not exaggerating when I say that shame has been a large part of my life from the very beginning. But shame is something we all experience. And it's something that I believe we need to combat. If we're going to cultivate lives that are fully free in Christ. So let's dive in, shall we? I'm going to explore today what shame is, what Jesus has to say about it, and how we can cultivate lives free of shame. So what is shame? Well, to answer this, I want to name a few voices that we often confuse. Sometimes what we feel is guilt, but guilt is not the same thing as shame. Guilt says I did something wrong. And sometimes guilt is good. Sometimes it's the warning light on the dashboard that powers us something needs attention, something needs to be confessed or made right. But guilt is only really a signal. Guilt doesn't always tell us what to do next. That's where conviction comes in. Conviction is a word you might have heard of and it's the loving work of the Holy Spirit. It's an invitation towards action, towards repentance, to repair and restoration. It may feel uncomfortable, but it doesn't come to crush us. It always comes to restore things. But shame is different from guilt and conviction. Shame doesn't just say I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong. I am too much. I am not enough. I am unwanted. I am unworthy. And then when we believe the lies of shame for too long, condemnation takes it even further. And condemnation says to us, there is no hope for you now. This is who you are. This is who you will always be. So in summary, guilt says I did something wrong. Conviction says let's make this right. Shame says I am wrong. And condemnation says there is no hope for you. I've been reading a book called The Soul of Shame by Kurt Thompson. And one of the ideas that he put forward in this book really stuck with me. And I want to share with you now. It's the idea that shame is not just an emotion. It is a weapon. So let me read this to you. Shame is a bit of a nebulous thing to try to pinpoint in terms of a description. And that's exactly part of its strategy. It likes to remain hidden as much as possible. Shame is a primary means to prevent us from using the gifts we have been given. Those gifts enable us to flourish as a light bearing community of Jesus followers who work to create space for others who wish to join it. Shame, therefore, is not simply an unfortunate random emotional event that came with us out of the primordial evolutionary soup. It is both the source and result of evil's active assault on God's creation. And a way for evil to try to hold out and so the new heaven and earth appear at the consummation of history. Shame is an active targeted assault from the devil to corrupt and distort what God created as good. If shame can convince us that we are too broken, too sinful, too far gone, it can keep us from stepping into the life that God is cultivating in us, which in turn prevents others from drawing near to God. The kingdom of God shrinks when shame is present. But don't just take my word for it. Let's look at a passage in the Bible that gives us the very first picture of shame. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die. You will certainly not die," the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the head from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid." Adam and Eve were naked and felt no shame. They were fully seen and fully safe, no hiding, no fear. Perfect communion with God. And then sin enters the story and immediately they realize that they're naked. They sew fig leaves together and they cover themselves. And then they hear God walking in the garden and they hide. They hide from the world. one who loves them. This is what shame does. Shame makes us afraid to be seen. Shame makes us hide from God, from others, even from ourselves. And sometimes I think we aren't even aware of the ways we hide. Some of us hide by withdrawing, pulling away from God, from people, from prayer, from church. Some of us hide by performing, staying busy, achieving, serving, making sure everyone always sees the capable version of ourselves. Some of us hide behind self-protection, pride, defensiveness, control, always needing the last word. Some of us hide behind humor, keeping things light so no one gets too close to our hurt. But however we hide, shame's goal is the same. Shame wants to keep us unseen. It convinces us that being seen is something dangerous. You see, we carry shame for so many things, for things we've done, sometimes for things that have been done to us, for the thoughts in our minds and the words from our lips, for what we hold in our heart, for what we long for. And underneath all this is the same fear. If you knew what I've done, you would reject me. If you saw who I really am, you would leave. If God knew what was actually in my heart, he would turn away. That's a problem. Because one of our deepest longings as human beings, as people who bear the image of God, is to be seen and known and loved. So shame keeps us behind the trees, sowing fig leaves and trying to manage an ache that was never meant to be healed in hiding. Which brings us to our next question. What does God do with hiding people? Well, if we go back to the Genesis passage, what do we notice about God's response? The first thing that God does after Adam and Eve hide is not what we might expect. Or maybe some of us are expecting that and his answer surprises us. But he doesn't thunder from heaven. How dare you? He doesn't begin with accusation. He doesn't yell, shame on you. He asks a question, where are you? In Hebrew, this is one word ayaka, where are you? And I don't think this is a location question. God is not confused, wondering where he put the humans. They are small. They were here yesterday. He knows where they are. This is a sole question. Where are you in relation to me? Where are you in relation to yourself? Where are you in relation to the truth? God calls. God questions. God moves towards the hiding ones. And all throughout scripture we see story after story of God doing this very thing. In John chapter 4, Jesus stops at a well in Samaria. And he meets a woman who has come alone in the heat of the day because she's carrying shame and she's avoiding the judgment of others. And even though Jews and Samaritans were divided at the time and even though men would not speak publicly with women in this way, Jesus starts a conversation with her anyway and asks her for water. And as they talk, Jesus gently reveals that he knows the most painful and complicated parts of her life. But he does not ever humiliate her. He does not ever shame her. Instead, he offers her living water, a picture of the deep life and satisfaction that only God can give. And then something amazing happens. She goes back to the village where she came from and she says, "Come and see a man who told me everything I did." And the Bible tells us that many in her town came to believe in Jesus because of her testimony. The things she spent years hiding became the doorway through which she found freedom and through which others met Jesus because he offered her grace. That is what Jesus does with shame. He doesn't ignore it. And he doesn't pretend the truth is not true. He heals shame by making the truth safe in the presence of love. He always leads with love. But Jesus does more than just meet us in our shame. He takes our shame head on and he breaks its authority over us. Hebrews 12 tells us that Jesus endured the cross scorning its shame. To scorn something is to treat it as unworthy of final authority. So in Jesus hung that cross, it was shameful. It was humiliating. It was meant to strip him of his dignity and defeat him. But Jesus took all of that, the full force of sin, accusation and shame, and he scorned it. He refused to let shame have the final word over him, over us, over the story that God is telling. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. Not less condemnation, not delayed condemnation, not condemnation once God finally gets tired of you. No condemnation. So when God enters our shame and he asks, where are you? It's not because he wants to drag us out of hiding to accuse us and judge us and condemn us. It's because he wants to heal us, to set us free. There is no hidden place in you that the love of Jesus cannot reach. There is no wound in you that makes him turn away and disgust. There is no sin in you more powerful than the cross. There is no brokenness in you more final than his resurrection. So if this is what Jesus does with shame, if he comes looking for us in our hiding, if he meets us there with truth and love, and if he takes our condemnation and shame and breaks its authority, then the next question becomes, how do we live like this is true? How do we cultivate a life where we live in the truth and freedom of Jesus rather than the lies of shame? Well, I have three practices today to help us in this, to help us combat shame. These are three imitations. I call them the three b's. Bring, believe, belong. We bring our shame into the light of Jesus. We believe the truth Jesus speaks over us and we belong to a community of God and become a place where others can belong to. So first, bring the first b. Bring your shame into the light of Jesus. We mentioned earlier that shame makes us hide, but actually does more. If we hide line of, and we get used to living in shame and in fear and in hiding, do you know what happens? Shame makes us believe that we are disqualified from grace. It tells us maybe Jesus loves people generally as a concept, but not me, not this wound, not this much mess. I have too much sin in me for him to save. But the story I shared earlier from John 4, where Jesus meets the woman at the well, is just one of many instances where Jesus meets people with tender loving grace. Read through the gospels, put yourself in the story every time Jesus meets someone. He is not careless with people's pain. He is not shocked by people's sin. He is not repulsed by people's need. He always responds with grace and mercy. Here's the thing. We need to bring all of ourselves to Jesus. Every part of us, the parts that we think are too hidden, too ugly, too broken, too undeserving. I remember sitting with my therapist recently and he said, "People will disappoint you. People will let you down." He was trying to get me to keep coming back to Jesus. He said, "So you have to keep returning to Jesus because God will never disappoint you." Before I could edit myself, before I could make it theologically polished, before I could judge if it was acceptable to say, "I just blurred it out." Yeah? Well, God has disappointed me. When I said those words I was shocked, I audibly gasped. There were words that had been stored in my heart and my body for a long time. It was the most honest thing I'd said in years. And please understand, I am not saying that that sentence is the whole truth about God or even my whole experience of Him. But it's what I felt in that moment. And it's something that I wasn't allowing myself to bring to God and that I finally did. And you know what didn't happen? The world didn't end. God didn't leave. He didn't see how dear you. He stayed. In fact, he lent closer and he whispered, "Tell me more." God is not threatened by our honesty. He is not fragile. He's not looking for the polished prayer or the curated presentation of ourselves. God can handle the truth of what is in us. So, if you're angry, bring him your anger. If you're disappointed, bring him your disappointment. If you're confused, bring him your questions. If you don't even want to talk to him, say that, say God. I don't want to talk to you right now. I've done that. It can be a start. Bringing our shame into the light of Jesus doesn't mean we bring him the version of ourselves. We think he wants. It means we bring him all of us. It's only when we allow ourselves to be fully seen and known. Can we fully receive the love that he has for us? The second B is believe. Believe the truth Jesus speaks over you. Shame often begins by making us doubt God's voice. This was the Seraphbens first move in Genesis. Did God really say he soes doubt about the goodness and trustworthiness of God? So part of freedom, part of cultivating a life that's lived in this freedom of Jesus is learning to believe the voice of Jesus over the voice of shame. And so I've got some thing practical here for us today. I've got a list of the things, not an exhaustive list, just a small-ish list of things that shame tells us. And next to them, the truth that Jesus is actually speaking over us. So we'll go over this now and we can read it together and claim it over our lives. Shame says I am not enough. God says my grace is sufficient for you. Shame says I am alone. Jesus says I am with you always. Shame says if people knew me they would reject me. Shame says while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Shame says my sin is too much. Scripture says where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Shame says I am unworthy of love. Scripture says see what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. This is just a starting list. Make a picture of it. Write some of them down. Make your own list. Add to it. Put it somewhere you will actually see it daily. On your mirror, in your wallet, in your car, on your phone, in your Bible, next to your bed, on your face, wherever it works for you. Because shame is not usually silenced by hearing the truth one time. We have to return to the truth again and again and again and again and again and do what we need to say again. We have to let the voice of Jesus become louder than the voice of fear, doubt and shame. We have to fill our minds and our hearts and even our bodies with what God says is true. Until the truth of Jesus begins to go deeper in us than the lies of shame. Amen. Amen. And third, belong. We belong to the community of Christ. And we become the kind of person where others can come out of hiding and belong to. Healing from shame was never meant to happen in isolation. There is a kind of healing that happens when we are not only known by God but also received by God's people. When someone looks us in the eye, here is the whole story and does not leave. When someone prays with us instead of judging us. And sometimes the love of God might feel too hard to grasp in the abstract. And so one of the ways he helps us receive his love is through embodied love, through people in our lives who become his hands and his feet, who become his mercy and presence in the flesh, who become his kindness in action. James tells us in the Bible, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. So maybe for some of us, the next step is one small wise risk. Find someone trustworthy. Let someone pray with you. Let someone know the real story, all of you. And then there is the other side of belonging. If someone gives us the gift of their vulnerability, we need to understand this is sacred ground. Because sometimes, and this has been true in my experience, the places where we should experience most belonging, our families and our church can actually become places where shame wounds us the most. So as people of Jesus, we have been given an enormous responsibility to act on his behalf. It's not rushed to correct. It's not assumed the worst. It's not right people off. It's not used shame as a shortcut for holiness. Let's be a people who can receive others who can say you are not beyond grace. You do not have to hide. This is not the end of your story. That is the kind of community where shame loses power. A community where we bring our shame into the light of Jesus, where we believe what Jesus says over what shame says, and where we belong to Christ so deeply that we become places of belonging for others. To end, I'd love to read something from my favorite stage musical, Dear Evan Hansen, at the end of this musical, our main character, Evan, sings a confession after he's been caught in all the lives he's been telling throughout the whole play. These words always strike a chord with me because I think they so accurately capture what we've been sharing today and the fear we all carry inside. He says, "No, I'd rather pretend I'm something better than these broken parts. I'd rather pretend I'm something other than this mess that I am." Because then I don't have to look at it, and no one gets to look at it. No, no one can really see. Because I've learned to slam on the break before I even turn the key, before I make the mistake, before I lead with the worst of me. I never let them see the worst of me. Because what if everyone saw? What if everyone knew what they liked, what they saw, or what they hated too? Will I just keep on running away from what's true? All I ever do is run. So how do I step into the sun? Friends, beloved ones, the invitation of Jesus is not to keep running. Running from what is true. It is to bring the truth into the presence of the one who already sees us fully and loves us completely. So come out of hiding. Step into the sun. You grow my chains of sin and shame, then you cover me with grace. You've been my life with your holy fire. You've covered me with grace. You are the hammer, it reaches out to save. I am said free. Oh, I am said free. It is for freedom that I am said free. I am sad ♪ Oh I am said ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ It is for freedom that I am said ♪ ♪ Free I am said ♪ ♪ Free oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ It is for freedom that I am said ♪ ♪ Free oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ It is for freedom that I am said ♪ ♪ Yes Lord we are grateful for your grace ♪ ♪ And for your love ♪ ♪ Yes Lord we are grateful for your grace and for your love ♪ Yes Lord, we are grateful for your grace and for your love. The Father and the Reaches out the same. I am San Frío. I am San Frío. It is for freedom that I am San Frío. I am San Frío. I am San Frío. [BLANK_AUDIO]