Well, I'm excited to I'm excited to talk about this passage of
scripture this morning. I'm excited to talk about shame.
Anybody else? Woo woo, super fun.
This is such a powerful text of Scripture, and I think there's
something that can incredibly meaningfully unlock places of
stuckness for us that I want to look at together.
This morning, when I was about 12 years old, I remember
spilling a pitcher of water in my family kitchen in a way that
scarred me deeply and I don't think I will ever forget.
It was me, my dad and his business associate, Greg.
Greg was visiting from out of town.
He lived a long way away and we didn't see him very often,
didn't know him well, but it was clear to me that this was a man
that my dad deeply respected. There was a lot of like honor
and deference to Greg, who was doing really important work.
And so Greg was in town, He was staying at our house.
And I remember 1 evening kind of after dinner, dad and Greg were
in the kitchen and they were having a conversation.
I think they were talking about work.
I don't honestly remember at this point, but I was, I was a
curious kid and, and I was like, you know, this is interesting to
me. I wonder what it would be like
to, to, to sit at the grown-ups table.
So I snuck in and, and slid into the booth across from them and
just started listening. And I remember feeling kind of
proud, like they were mostly just talking to each other, but
I felt included in this moment of, you know, meaningful
conversation. And that's when Greg, who was
sitting across to me to my left, said, Hey Josh, can you pass me
that pitcher of water that's sitting in front of you?
Greg was a little bit too far away to like actually hand the
pitcher of water too. So in my 12 year old brain, I
decided that it would be a great idea to slide the pitcher across
the table to him. Some of you can already tell
where this is going, but sure enough, the pitcher started to
slide and then hit that seam right in the middle of the
table, caught tipped and just gushed water all over Greg's
lap. I remember just this wave of
anxiety and embarrassment just surging through my body and I, I
blurted out like I didn't see the crack.
I know it was there. Where did that come from?
And in that moment, Greg, I, I remember he looked at me and,
and with like this kind of attitude of scorn, repeated my
words back to me. You, you didn't see the crack, I
guess it just magically appeared in the table when you started to
slide a, a completely full pitcher of water towards me.
And Greg, thinking this was hysterically funny, started to
laugh, dumbled over what a ridiculous thing to say.
And I remember the feeling in my body as as he laughed, like I
just, I felt smaller and smaller.
My embarrassment was compounded. I just wanted to to shrink, to
somehow disappear into my seat. I was completely overtaken by a
feeling of shame. Shame is at the center of this
story that we read here in John chapter 8.
And in fact, it's such an intense story, it feels like it
should come with a trigger warning.
Here we find a woman, sexually exposed, standing in in front of
a group of religious men who glower over her with
condemnation and contempt. And this is a supercharged
situation. Of course, we read in the text
here in John 8 that the main point wasn't the woman for these
men. They were here weaponizing shame
in order to to catch Jesus in a trap.
And man, they had really thought this through.
This was a, a, a brilliant dilemma.
See on on one hand, Jesus might kind of pardon the the woman,
say, hey, we should extend grace and mercy, in which case the the
Pharisees that the teachers of the law could point that that
this was not what the the Mosaic law of the Torah actually
prescribed. In instances such as this, he
would be weak on sin. If Jesus went in this direction,
they could kind of dismiss him and accuse him and say, you're
not a a real Bible scholar. You're just, you know, some kind
of liberal who doesn't actually care about the truth of God's
word. On the other hand, Jesus could,
could, could enforce the provisions of the Torah,
provisions that kind of like nobody actually followed in 1st
century Judea. The woman could be stoned, but
but this would paint Jesus as some kind of of of cruel monster
who didn't care or have compassion.
Surely he would lose his audience and his following.
The Pharisees had it all figured out.
Jesus was caught. There was no way out, they were
sure. And it's beautiful and
instructive how Jesus navigates this dilemma.
I think there's a huge amount for us to learn here.
But before we turn to consider how Jesus responds to this
moment, I first want to take a a beat to to consider the emotion
that's right at the center of this whole encounter.
Shame. Shame is one of the core human
emotions, one of one of the very few central emotions that all of
us experience at times, as Brené Brown, the shame researcher,
defines it, shame is the intensely painful, fearing
feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and
therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
We are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
It's what we feel when we have these moments, like I I did in
that kitchen, where we just get this crushing sense that
something's wrong with me, I'm broken or a defective.
But unlike guilt, shame is a social emotion.
It happens specifically in relationship with other people.
Evolutionary psychologists would tell us that shame developed as
a way of reinforcing and policing communal norms.
This is the social punishment that gets meted out, that keeps
people from cheating or, or, or cutting in line, right?
It, it's what we do to that guy who takes all the credit for the
group project, even though he was a a minor player, right?
We, we mete out, we employ shame to to punish bad behaviour
without resorting to, to violence.
Shame at its best guards boundaries and reinforces group
identity. Shame has a place.
In fact, this is familiar to us when we when we talk about the
idea of we say somebody is shameless.
That's not a good thing, right? It means that they, they flout
conventions and norms, other people's boundaries or concerns.
They're not attentive to the needs and preferences of other
people. They're selfish.
They do what they want. So we ascribe the level
shameless. They don't feel the requisite
shame that they should. But shame, for whatever its
virtues, is a lousy fuel for transformation.
Shame does not help us to change.
In the series, we've been exploring how we change, how we
actually transform in the way of Jesus from the inside out.
What is true and lasting transformation look like in a
way that changes not only what we know, but how we live our our
explicit knowledge as well as our implicit, our reflexes and
defaults. And for this, shame is an
obstacle. I can tell you this from
personal experience. I'm just telling myself today,
but I know deeply well what it means to try and change oneself
by way of shame. One area where I I've engaged in
a lot of shame filled striving over the course of my life has
been in the area of managing my weight.
When I put my height and weight into a ABMI calculator, I get
that the painful declaration obese feels way too strong, but
there it is right in front of me.
Now, most of the time, I don't feel that kind of way about my
body. I'm not angry at myself or, or
beating myself up. I sleep well.
I can do everything that I want to.
I'm I don't don't have any, any limitations.
I'm active and, and in most days I feel fine with where I'm at
with my health and weight. But then there are those times,
maybe, you know, these times, the times when I'm, you know, in
the dressing room trying to find a new pair of clothes and I'll,
I'll put a shirt on and I really like it.
It looks great on the rack. But then the way it hugs my
body, it, it accentuates all the parts that I don't want to be
seen. I feel gross or, or I'll try
another shirt on or, or something that, that I really
like. And it, it, it fits me in one
place, but then it's just incredibly baggy everywhere
else. I feel stuck.
And in these moments, there's, there's a part of me, a voice in
my head that that comes out and in just this contemptuous and
cruel way passes verdict over me.
You're disgusting, It'll say. And, and, and that that word,
that condemnation, that judgement, it, it, you know, it
lands right here in my chest. Like I feel it deeply.
I start to almost like cowering and try and protect myself in
some way. And this, this shame fueled part
of me is, is in a, in a bizarre way, it's trying to serve me.
It's trying to protect me. It thinks that if my body looks
this way, then other people will judge me, other people will
reject me. And so it it rushes to do the
judging first. And I think the logic is
something like, well, if I can be mean enough, if I can be
cruel enough to myself, then, then, then I'll recognize how
urgent it is, how, how big of a deal it is that I fix this
problem. And sometimes for a brief period
of time that kind of works, like I'll have this wave of
adrenaline and energy and willpower because I'm
embarrassed and, and I want to fix this thing about myself.
And so I'll dive into whatever the latest thing is,
intermittent fasting or calorie counting, exercising more times
per week, right? There's, there's this surge of
willpower and energy that comes from this place of condemnation
and shame. And I'm a pretty intentional
guy. I'm a pretty, you know, I have
some willpower reserves. And so for a while that'll work.
Like for a bit, I'll, I'll drop 1020, maybe even 30 lbs.
But then the reserve of willpower starts to go dry,
right? Other things begin to, to pull
at my attention. The shame isn't quite so
piercing because maybe I look a little bit better in my clothes.
I, I, I feel a little bit better about it.
The intensity isn't there. And so everything slides right
back to baseline. Now, I share this with you
today, not because I'm hoping that you come up and tell me
immediately after the gathering how beautiful I am in my body,
not because I'm desperately searching out here for for three
simple steps that are going to help me solve this problem.
I get it. This is not a knowledge issue
for me. But I name this dynamic, which
is vulnerable for me, which is painful for me because I make up
that although you may have an entirely healthier relationship
with your body than I do, but there's somewhere in your life
that you can notice a similar pattern, a similar dynamic.
See, because this isn't just limited to me.
Maybe your relationship with your body is healthy.
Shame doesn't have its claws. And you in the in, in the areas
of diet and weight. But you notice this showing up
in your life and you're dating, You haven't found a partner yet
and you're just embarrassed about it.
Like what? What if something's wrong with
me? Like what if I'm unworthy of
love and connection? What if I I, I don't find that
person and so they're striving that comes out.
Maybe you find yourself trying to fill some kind of hole in
your soul by way of educational or vocational attainment.
There's this this gnawing sense of like, I'm not good enough.
I haven't lived up to the expectations of my parents.
I'm not like where my siblings are, where my peers are.
And so you're you're hustling, you're striving, you're trying
to get ahead. You're trying to get that next
performance review or that next degree, that next certification.
You keep chasing. Maybe for you, the place of
stackness shows up in in a place that you're pretty embarrassed
about. Like over and over and over you,
you say, like, I'm going to quit looking at porn.
Over and over and over you say, I'm going to, I'm going to stop
doom scrolling on my phone. Over and over and over you say,
man, I'm going to stop at the second beer tonight.
And over and over and over again, you find yourself going
through the same pattern. For many of us, this even shows
up in our spirituality. We want to pray more, read our
Bibles more, show up in community better, and maybe if
we were just more disciplined, maybe if we were just better
than everything would work out. God would be pleased with us and
he would bless us. Or so the story goes.
The problem is, is that this is something of a treadmill.
A dynamic that I like to describe.
Is that the treadmill of self improvement?
We're we're trying to fuel change by way of shame.
And just like a treadmill, huge amounts of effort, sweat, blood
and tears can be expended, but we don't end up getting
anywhere. The the shame slinging parts of
us believe that if we just work harder, if we strive more than
maybe we'll fix that which is broken inside of us and and then
we'll be worthy of belonging, worthy of acceptance.
But it's just a treadmill. Shame begets striving.
Striving begets exhaustion. Exhaustion begets relapse.
Relapse begets resignation. Resignation begets shame.
Shame begets striving. And here we go again and again,
through the same patterns that have become so familiar and yet
in which we find ourselves so stuck.
I'd go so far as to make this bet with you.
I would suggest to you the risk of maybe generalizing a bit too
much that wherever you feel an acute sense of shame is probably
a place in your life where you're stuck.
Shame and stuckness are such close companions because as long
as shame is calling the shots, we end up compulsively doubling
down on resources that get us nowhere.
We just keep cycling along the treadmill, or just as likely, we
end up numbing out and avoiding altogether.
I mean, I don't know about you, but when my shame cycle is at
the worst, when I'm feeling the worst about my body, there's
nothing that feels like it could relieve that ache like salty,
crunchy Doritos, right? Sometimes that the patterns that
we find ourselves stuck in, like we reach for these numbing
mechanisms precisely at the time when we're covered in shame.
Shame is not a motivator for growth.
It's actually a mechanism of paralysis.
It doesn't fuel transformation. It just pushes our bad behavior
into the shadows. And look for a lot of
communities, that's OK. Like I want to, I want to tell
the truth about this dynamic here because this is important.
See, we get a lot of payouts for pushing our bad behavior into
the shadows, don't we? Like, we can perform, we can
pretend. And, and we think that maybe
even if people don't really see what's true, maybe that'll be
good enough. So many communities, so many
families, so many churches operate in this way.
It's like we don't really talk beyond a surface level.
We don't name the places where we're really struggling, the
places where we're really stuck, because that would be an
embarrassment. We might even baptize it and
say, well, we wouldn't want to spoil our witness.
And so instead we, we pretend. We, we talk only about the the
sin, only about the problems of those people over there that we
can hold at arm's length. And then we, as a community of
shiny, happy people with these smiles on our face, live in the
plastic land of pretense where we keep showing up pretending as
though things are not actually wrong, as though we're not
actually stuck, as though shame doesn't have its claws in US.
And see, it's a paradoxical thing, but the only way to
interrupt this cycle is actually through it.
We see such a beautiful response in the way that Jesus navigates
this. I love how he shows up, how he
responds to this moment of crisis, this dilemma.
Jesus diffuses the power of shame.
His his response is profound. I want you to look at it here in
John chapter 8. The first thing he does is
actually to not respond. Somebody who's like a teacher
likes to talk about things like this is hard for me to fathom.
Somebody asking a question and not like being like, well,
here's what I think about that. Like Jesus has an answer to this
question, but he doesn't respond to the Pharisees.
Jesus recognizes that this is is not some honest and sincere
seeking of truth. They're not trying to figure out
how to interpret Scripture rightly.
This is a trap and they're abusing this woman in order to
set it for him. And so first thing that Jesus
does here is he just slows everything down.
Man, I don't know about you, but this is one of the most
resourceful tools that I have learned when I'm feeling these
moments. Awash and shame.
Just slow down. Like actually take a beat.
Actually take a breath. Instead of just reaching for
whatever numbing mechanism of choice is available to you.
To to to ignore it or avoid it, or to to push the feelings down.
Just just take a breath. Jesus pauses.
He doesn't jump immediately to response.
Maybe you've heard the advice to count to 10 before responding
when you're angry. This is this is kind of what he
does here. Everybody is locked into this
high stakes encounter, this anxious system in which there
can be no curiosity, no learning, no awareness, just
reactivity. The Pharisees are, are feeling
good about themselves. They're trying to control the
situation and, and, and, and, and they're convinced and, and,
and looking to, to be right and to be proven right.
The woman is cowering, frozen in shame, and Jesus just steps out
of the cycle. He doesn't react.
He pauses. He does something confusing and
curious that makes everybody be like, like they're, they're,
he's drawn in the ground like a kid.
Like what is what is going on here?
I think the confusion is not accidental.
It's intentional. We see in verse 6 that Jesus
bends down and starts to write on the ground with his finger.
But the second thing that Jesus does here that I think is so
interesting is that Jesus actually shames the shameless we
talked earlier about. Like shame is a lousy motivator
for growth, but it's it's not always out of bounds.
Like Jesus actually turns the trap right back on the religious
leaders who are not actually in touch with their own sin.
He says to them in response to their questions.
Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to
throw a stone. And in a single sentence, Jesus
turns the trap back on its architects.
They were using shame to condemn the woman, and now they're being
interrogated. What's true in your life?
What log is in your own eye? The spectacle of her shame
becomes a crisis of their conscience.
Jesus actually uses shame to shame the shameless, but not
with a woman. With a woman, Jesus is tender.
He Stoops down and writes in the dirt.
This is so interesting. Now I don't sometimes things are
really clear from the text and other times I'm not sure.
So this is one of those I'm not sure moments, but I think it's
so interesting that Jesus gets low.
Like when you're looking down on someone, if you're looking up at
someone, right, it's very easy to feel the power dynamic right?
Sometimes, like parenting experts say that when your, when
your kid is really dysregulated, one of the things that you can
do to help the situation is actually to like get down on
their level, right? You get down low eye to eye to
help attune to them, to connect with them.
So maybe it's incidental, I don't know.
But also Jesus made our nervous systems and he knows what's up.
Jesus slows the situation down. And then this woman who I, I
imagine is, is cowering in the dust, Jesus gets on her level.
He attunes to her, he connects with her like we talked about
last couple weeks ago. Now Jesus becomes the safe haven
for her. He he both dismantles the
accusations of her accusers with his question.
And then after one by one, their accusation, their condemnation
has been disarmed. Jesus turns to her in verse 10
and says, where are they? Has no one condemned you?
Neither do I condemn you. Jesus says.
He also refuses to pass judgement on her, to, to, to pin
her into the dust, to double down outlook.
This woman does not need more shame.
She is already aware of the brokenness.
And I think it's so beautiful how Jesus responds to her.
It's so powerful because he defuses the shame.
He drives away the accusers. He declares no condemnation.
But then he also in verse 11 says, Hey, go now and leave your
life of sin. There's an opportunity now for
change. And, and I think this is worth
noting because I think in our culture, sometimes we, we get
this wrong, like sometimes we go too far to an extreme.
Like we are rightly worried about the damaging and
destructive power of shame, the way it can harm people and
dehumanize people and, and, and, and push people down and crush
them. And so we've swung at times to
the other side where we say everything about you is
terrific. You are amazing, you are
perfect, you are beautiful, Everything is great.
And that's not a gift either, right?
It is a beauty. It, it is true to recognize our
belovedness, our goodness, the fact that we are created in the
imago day. But sometimes leaving people
stuck in real problems is not generous.
Like that too is a trap. This lady's life was not working
right. There were other dynamics like
that guy should have been here too, like she's not doing
adultery by herself. Like what's going on here,
right? But also her life was not
working. She was stuck in a trap, not
just of their making, but of hers as well.
And Jesus doesn't do one or the other.
He doesn't say fix your life up, get everything squared away
because then once you've done everything correctly, then you
can be accepted. He says no condemnation right
here, right now. You are beloved.
But then he also says go and sin no more like you have an
opportunity now to be free, not from the place of shame, but
from the place of belovedness, from the place of being seen and
known. Friends, we don't have to choose
a false binary between no shame or or motivation by way of
shame. Shame is a trap.
It will not help us become the people that we have been
designed to be. And far too often in
communities, in families, in churches, in our own internal
conversations, we're still playing on the same treadmill.
We want to fix that thing about us that we're embarrassed about.
So we just beat ourselves up. We punish ourselves in the hopes
that maybe it will spark the willpower to strive so that we
can change, so that we can be accepted.
And this is absolutely backwards for those of us who follow Jesus
because Jesus does not start with clean your life up, get it
together, fix your problems. He starts with belovedness.
You are loved, you are welcome, you are accepted.
There is now no condemnation for you.
And this all happens because Jesus from the beginning is one
who who actually takes our shame.
You guys know the story at the beginning of creation, the first
story in Scripture here in the book of Genesis, we see man and
woman created and and Genesis 2 says that they were together,
they were naked and they were not ashamed.
I think he's obviously talking about physical nudity, but he's
also talking about emotional, spiritual exposure.
Like in everything that they were, they were seen and they
didn't feel any condemnation. They felt welcomed, they felt
accepted. And of course, sin enters the
picture and fouls it all up. Sin and the shame that it brings
with it forges disconnection. So as the story progresses,
they're they're separated from each other and from God.
And what do the people do in the story?
Well, they dive into the bushes and try and sew themselves some
fig leaves, like some fig leaf aprons, the Bible says some
garments to cover up, to cover up their shame.
That doesn't work friends. So many of us are there.
We're in this space of cover ups.
We're trying to fix ourselves by, by covering up the shame, by
pretending, by performing, by over functioning, by freezing up
and numbing to avoid the feelings.
We're running on autopilot. And this, this fast track of our
brain, this, this implicit knowledge is, is striving in all
of these ways to, to, to access worthiness, to access belonging
and, and we're just trying to beat ourselves up to get there.
The fig leaves never work. They can't cover the shame.
Our cover ups always end up leaving us right where we
started. But instead, what happens in the
garden? God comes, he meets them, God
himself makes them a covering. And this is what a beautiful
picture of the gospel like this is what Jesus does for us.
He comes near to us. He takes our shame himself in
his body so that we can be covered, so that we can walk
free, so that we can walk blameless, so that we can enter
boldly into the presence of God, so that we can live out of our
identity as one who is beloved, so that we can know the story
that God loves us. Friends, what a beautiful
picture of the gospel. There's a practice that God has
given us to support us in piercing through this dynamic of
shame. It's called confession.
Confession very simply is, is a practice in which we name
reality. We say what is so, particularly
the, the ways in which we are not who we long to be, where
we're out of integrity, where we're stuck.
And I think many of us, especially in like low church
Protestant world, many people are kind of allergic to the idea
of confession because confession too has been weaponized, right?
Often times people confess and then are used in that space to,
to, to bring more shame. Our shame is intensified by way
of the confession. Kurt Thompson talks about it.
This, he says. Like this, he says when we
experience shame, we tend to turn away from others because
the prospect of being seen or known by another carries the
anticipation of shame being intensified or reactivated.
Like, we don't want to be seen because it feels like as other
people witness that, as other people judge us for that, that
the shame will be further intensified, that we'll just be
completely lost. We feel like we're going to die.
But here's the paradoxical truth.
It's that shame actually can't stand up to being witnessed in
love. Brené Brown says it this way.
She says shame cannot survive being spoken.
It cannot survive empathy. See, God invites us into a space
where we're those parts of us that are broken, that are
dysfunctional, that are distorted, can be named and can
be healed because we're not rejected.
Instead, even in those places where things are off, we're not
who we want to be. We can be seen and held.
And this is the practice of confession at its core.
It's the practice of of naming what is not so in a trustworthy
space where then we can be held. God, of course, paradoxically,
for all the hiding we do. He already knows, right.
He's not surprised, as it turns out, even if we feel that way
sometimes. But confession, I'll say in my
own experience, I've learned and, and I think this is true
throughout Christian tradition. We see this example.
Confession was actually designed in Scripture and and by the
church not to be something that we do just privately and
individually with God. We're actually designed to
experience this. We're going to talk more about
this next week in relationship with other people, Not
everybody, not people who will layer on more judgement, but
those who can hold it, those who can extend empathy and
compassion, recognizing the duality of like, there's an
opportunity to go and sin no more, but but not because you
need to do that in order to be loved because because of the
blood of Jesus, because of what Jesus has already done.
Right now, you're already welcomed.
You're already accepted. So friends, as we move into a
time of reflection, into a time of response, don't panic.
I'm not going to ask you to turn to your neighbor and, like,
divulge your deepest, darkest secret, OK?
We're going to make the invitation lightweight because I
know for some of us, like, this is a regular practice.
And for others, you're looking at this and you're like, Oh my
gosh, this sounds like the worst thing ever.
I'm convinced that if I were to name something that I am
embarrassed by, I would just, I would die.
That would be the end. Right now, I want to invite you
to just notice and touch that place of stuckness, that place
where shame is operative in your life.
Maybe as you reflect this morning, you could say, Josh,
man, I relate to your story. There's some place where I see
the treadmill is operative for me.
I am on it. I'm spinning.
I've been spinning for a while. I keep telling myself that I'm
going to be more disciplined, that I'm going to try harder,
but here I am. Maybe that's what you need to
name. Maybe there's something else,
but I want to invite you to consider naming at least to
yourself and then to God, this place in your life where you
feel the claws of shame digging into your soul.
And then if you'd like to, you could take it a step further and
identify one person to talk to about that, to share that.
And maybe that's somebody right now right here in the room.
Maybe it's your therapist. Maybe it's a parent or a
grandparent. Maybe it's a close friend.
Maybe it's your romantic partner.
Maybe it's somebody from our pastoral team.
There's no pressure to do this perfectly.
It's not about just being out there, letting everybody know.
It's about the shame emerging from the secret place, from the
dark place where it's power grows, beginning to be exposed
and dispersed by the empathy and compassion that we see Jesus
extend here in this story. Friends, what if we were a
community of the kind of freedom, of the kind of power
that really believed that we could name what was not so with
us because we have a God who loves us so much that we didn't
believe that we would be crushed if we did?
What if we believed in God's love so much that we were
willing to be actually honest about what was true for us, the
places of our stuckness and shame?
What if we were the kind of people like Jesus is in this
story who are willing to hold space for others, Not with
judgement, not with score, not getting the payouts that these
religious leaders here are by feeling better about myself
because I can look down on you. But in our common humanity,
being willing to look at one another and say, I see you.
This thing that you've done this way in which you've shown up
isn't great. It might be harmful, it might be
damaging, it might be devastating.
And Even so, you are loved. Friends, this is the good news
that although we are far from who we are designed to be, we
are loved into transformation.