No Shame
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Reading
Series I, Cycle A
I am very taken by what Paul says. He claims, "I am not ashamed...." Most of us have known people, maybe a lot, maybe a few, and they are ashamed of something.
I struck up a conversation with a woman I had known for a couple of years. I thought I knew her fairly well. One day she blurted out that she had been married four times. I said, "You never mentioned it."
She said, "I guess I'm ashamed."
A man lost his job. That was hard enough. What made it more difficult is that he lost the job because he was caught taking a box of envelopes out of the office for personal use. He never mentioned it to anybody. He couldn't tell his family the real reason. He was ashamed.
There's a newlywed whose marriage is not going well. When he was a little boy some things happened that he never told anybody about. He shoved it down inside. Now he has a hard time getting close to his new wife. He wants to, but he can't. She said, "Let's go talk to a counselor about it," but he is afraid to go. He's ashamed.
There seems to be some shame around the church. Sometimes it keeps people out of church.
An older couple stopped going to church after their son committed suicide. The people in the congregation were very understanding when it happened, but there's no way they will go back there when so many people know their secret. They are ashamed.
A nominating committee asked a woman to serve as an elder in a church I used to serve. At first she said, "Yes," but then she dropped by for coffee to voice some second thoughts. "What if people find out about my daughter?" she asked. Her daughter is an exotic dancer who also had a problem with cocaine. "I've never been able to reach her since she was fifteen," her mom says. "I'm not sure the church would want a parent like me to serve," she said. I can hear the tremor in her voice.
Once in a while, one of our members may get in trouble with the law. It's right there, splashed across the paper, before they can defend themselves. It's embarrassing. Even if he is exonerated, he is afraid that everybody has an opinion about it. So he stays away on Sunday morning.
Other times, somebody may come down too hard and it bruises somebody's spirit. I have a friend in the ministry whose teenage daughter was attending a youth group meeting. They were talking about faith and doubt, and the girl got up the courage to tell the others about some of her doubts. The youth group advisor slammed down on her. "You're the minister's daughter," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." My friend said it took ten years before his daughter would even consider going back to a church.
It is painful to have shame rubbed in your face. But Paul says, "I'm not ashamed."
What a remarkable thing for him to say! The Apostle Paul grew up in a culture where shame was a way of creating order. It still happens in many corners of the Middle East. Woe to you, if you bring shame to your family! One of the members of our men's Bible study brought in a news clipping. It told of a woman in another culture who returned home after being abused by another man. What did her brothers do? Go after the abuser? Press charges against him? No, her brothers put her to death, announcing that her abuse had brought shame to her family.
All throughout the Jewish scriptures, the notion of shame is a very powerful force. I did a word search on my computer. The word "shame" shows up 174 times in the Old Testament. You can hear it repeated in passages like Psalm 25: "O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame" (v. 2). "Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame" (v. 3). "Let the treacherous be put to shame" (v. 3).
This was one of the ways that people worked out a theology of works. They believed that you had to be good. You had to maintain a good reputation. Your family needed to keep a good family name. And if there was ever a mistake, if there was a moral miscue, if there was an obvious and public sin, then the whole community descended on you and put you to shame.
As a Presbyterian, I admit there is some Puritan starch in my veins. Some of this shame business is in our background. In the early settlements of our country, you were mocked if you were a Sabbath--breaker. If you took a loaf of bread without paying for it, they put you in stocks for public display. Good Christians wagged their tongues and said, "For shame! For shame!"
Yet Paul says, "But I am not ashamed."
Paul, of all people. If anybody had anything to be ashamed about, it was the Apostle Paul. We know about his former life. He was the commander of the Jerusalem secret police. He is the man who dragged Christians out of their homes and demanded their death by stoning. I'm talking about Paul, or as we used to call him, Saul. He was no honey: pushy, arrogant, and always insisting on his own way. And that's how he acted after his conversion.
He says at one point in one of his letters, "I think all of you ought to stay single, just like me."
We were in a Bible study when somebody read those words. A woman spoke up and said, "Listen, Paul, you're going to have to stay single because I don't know anybody who could live with you."
Sometimes he says things that are an embarrassment to the church. Ever read his letter to the Galatians? He is furious with those Christians up in Turkey. They are up there in Asia Minor, debating the virtues of circumcision. Paul is furious with them. He calls them stupid and says, "You're bewitched." At one point, he gets so worked up that he says, "I wish those people who are upsetting you about circumcision would castrate themselves!" (Galatians 5:12). Now his angry outburst is a verse in our Bible.
When an apostle talks like that, he is an embarrassment. Paul ought to be ashamed of himself. Yet he says, "I am not ashamed."
Do you suppose he is one of these people who just puts it out there, and doesn't care what people think? You know the type. They shoot off their mouths, say whatever they want, and justify themselves by saying, "I'm only telling the truth." Certainly Paul has that capacity, just like the rest of us. You never know what he's going to say.
Sometimes he is able to be quite tender. He could be kind and gracious. He wrote to the Philippians, to a church he loved, and he said, "I have great affection for you from all the way down in my gut."
Paul could be crass. He could be tender. And he certainly could be honest.
He told the truth about his former life. "I used to hunt down Christians to destroy them," he confesses, "and now I am a Christian." How can anybody explain this - except by the power of God? Paul thought he knew what he was supposed to do with his life. Then he discovered he was wrong. That experience lies behind all of the theological language in the Roman letter.
"The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes," he says. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it can take a wretched man like me and turn me in another direction. I am not ashamed of God's redemptive power."
The gospel has the authority to change our lives. It has the power to wipe away our shame. That is the essence of what the church has to say, and it's good news.
One of the problems, however, is that the news has been around so long that we have let it get rusty. We have turned the kingdom of God from a movement into an institution. For most of American history, the church has been a privileged institution in our culture. We have not had to fight for anything. We haven't felt the need to speak our message in compelling words. I'm afraid we have gotten a little flabby about our witness.
Not long ago we had two funerals in our sanctuary during the same week. Both were funerals for church members. At the first funeral, the funeral director pointed out three people who have never been in our church sanctuary. All three of them have lived in this community all their lives. All three asked the funeral director for directions to our church. Lifelong residents of our community, they didn't know where our building was located. Meanwhile here we sit, Sunday after Sunday, assuming people are going to drop in.
At the second funeral that week, we had at least fifteen people who used to attend our church but don't come anymore. In fact, most of them don't go to any church anymore. Some of them are still on our membership rolls. Most of them slipped out the side window and never came back. One man said he hadn't been here since the manse next door was torn down in 1992. He said, "I've thought about coming back a number of times, but I got into the habit of not coming, and now I feel ashamed."
I think we should respond to both of those situations with an honest look at our congregation and its message. First, we can never expect to have much of an impact if nobody knows where we are. Second, we can never expect to help people in the depths of their being if we don't help them counter the shame they carry with a dose of good news. It is really that simple, and it is really that difficult.
Years ago, something happened in one of the first churches I ever served. We had a nice little church. Every year, they put together a vacation Bible school. It was a great program, but nobody outside the church knew about it. The committee refused to advertise the program. They kept to the same teachers who taught the same things, and they did it really well. I said, "I'm only the pastor, but maybe we could let some people know about this."
"Oh, no," they said. "That's not necessary."
I tried to change their minds, but didn't get anywhere. One year, I took a big piece of orange poster board and wrote "Vacation Bible School." Adding the dates, times, and the church phone number, I put the sign out on the street corner. A couple of days later, the sign was gone.
The Sunday school superintendent took it down. "You don't get it," he said to me. "If we invite everybody, there's no telling who might come."
I said, "I thought that was the point."
He said, "We don't want just anybody to come. We want to keep it manageable. If anybody shows up, it could get out of hand."
I don't know why he was worried. In my kind of church, hardly anything ever gets out of hand. It sounded to me as if he was ashamed of what we were doing.
Here is something I want you to do. Think of the people with whom you spend the most time. Take a piece of paper and write down their names. With whom do you spend your time? List your friends, family members, co--workers, and neighbors. Then ask the question: Have you ever told them we're here? Do they have any idea how you're spending this hour? Would you ever invite them to come along with you next Sunday?
One year, our church sponsored a special day. We called it "Invite a Friend Sunday." The only people who brought a friend were the associate pastor and her husband, who invited their next--door neighbor. She belongs to a Lutheran church near her home, but she was here. Even I was ashamed that I didn't invite any of my neighbors. In fact, I am ashamed I don't even know most of my neighbors. Maybe I ought to cut back on the church work and do a little more of the Lord's work.
Paul reminds us that God has the power to transform every life. One way to say it is that God has the power to take away our shame. You know what the New Testament says?
The Father of Jesus is our Father, and Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
- Hebrews 2:11
God has prepared a city for us, and God is not ashamed to be called their God.
- Hebrews 11:16
The Bible says Jesus is not ashamed of us. God is not ashamed of us. Where do church people get the crazy idea of wagging their fingers at the world and saying, "You ought to be ashamed"?
The good news of the gospel is that God deals with our shame. God sees those secrets that we don't want anybody to find out about us. God knows all those behaviors that we try to hide from other church people. God brings our dark secrets right out into the light where they can be seen, and then God cancels every one of them, and says, "No more damage!"
As it is written, "We look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross and disregarded its shame" (Hebrews 12:2). The old law was clear: It is a shame to be sentenced to death and hung on a tree. But that is the shame Jesus endured ... and he did it to take away our shame.
Despite whatever messages that parents or preachers told you, the gospel is not about shame. There is no shame in the gospel. It is not the church's job to reinforce the shame that has been dumped on us. What we do is point to the Christ who died a shameful death in order to take away all shame. Now we live in freedom. We belong to the daylight. Our mission is to invite others to share that freedom and join us in the daylight. We can do it because we're not ashamed.
Not long ago, I was talking with a man who sees the world in ways quite different from me. That's not a bad idea once in a while. All of us can get stuck in our little enclaves and rarely venture out of our comfortable circles. This was a person who has done great things to advance the gospel. He has his flaws. He has his troubles. But he keeps going. And he is effective.
I asked him, "What's your secret? How do you keep doing what you do?" He smiled. He took out a piece of paper from his wallet, unfolded it a few times, and gave it to me. This is what it said:
´ I am a member of the fellowship of the unashamed.
´ I have Holy Spirit power.
´ I have stepped over the line.
´ The decision has been made.
´ I am his disciple.
´ I won't look back, slow down, back away, or be still.
´ My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure.
´ I am finished and done with low living, side walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, same visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and puny goals.
´ I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, promotions, positions, plaudits, or popularity.
´ I don't have to be right, recognized, regarded, rewarded, or praised.
´ I now live by grace, lean by faith, walk by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power.
´ My face is set, my gate is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear.
´ I cannot be bought, compromised, lured, manipulated, enticed, or bribed.
´ I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
´ I won't give up, shut up, or let up until I've stayed up, prayed up, and preached up for the cause for Christ.
´ I am his disciple.
´ I must go until he comes, give until I drop, preach until all know, work until he stops me.
´ When he comes back, I want him to recognize my face.
´ For I have forgotten all that is in the past, I'm pressing on for the prize, the high calling of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
´ My colors are clear.
´ I am his disciple.
´ And I am not ashamed.1
That, my friends, is the great open secret of our salvation: "I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith" (Romans 1:16).
____________
1. Original source unknown.
I struck up a conversation with a woman I had known for a couple of years. I thought I knew her fairly well. One day she blurted out that she had been married four times. I said, "You never mentioned it."
She said, "I guess I'm ashamed."
A man lost his job. That was hard enough. What made it more difficult is that he lost the job because he was caught taking a box of envelopes out of the office for personal use. He never mentioned it to anybody. He couldn't tell his family the real reason. He was ashamed.
There's a newlywed whose marriage is not going well. When he was a little boy some things happened that he never told anybody about. He shoved it down inside. Now he has a hard time getting close to his new wife. He wants to, but he can't. She said, "Let's go talk to a counselor about it," but he is afraid to go. He's ashamed.
There seems to be some shame around the church. Sometimes it keeps people out of church.
An older couple stopped going to church after their son committed suicide. The people in the congregation were very understanding when it happened, but there's no way they will go back there when so many people know their secret. They are ashamed.
A nominating committee asked a woman to serve as an elder in a church I used to serve. At first she said, "Yes," but then she dropped by for coffee to voice some second thoughts. "What if people find out about my daughter?" she asked. Her daughter is an exotic dancer who also had a problem with cocaine. "I've never been able to reach her since she was fifteen," her mom says. "I'm not sure the church would want a parent like me to serve," she said. I can hear the tremor in her voice.
Once in a while, one of our members may get in trouble with the law. It's right there, splashed across the paper, before they can defend themselves. It's embarrassing. Even if he is exonerated, he is afraid that everybody has an opinion about it. So he stays away on Sunday morning.
Other times, somebody may come down too hard and it bruises somebody's spirit. I have a friend in the ministry whose teenage daughter was attending a youth group meeting. They were talking about faith and doubt, and the girl got up the courage to tell the others about some of her doubts. The youth group advisor slammed down on her. "You're the minister's daughter," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." My friend said it took ten years before his daughter would even consider going back to a church.
It is painful to have shame rubbed in your face. But Paul says, "I'm not ashamed."
What a remarkable thing for him to say! The Apostle Paul grew up in a culture where shame was a way of creating order. It still happens in many corners of the Middle East. Woe to you, if you bring shame to your family! One of the members of our men's Bible study brought in a news clipping. It told of a woman in another culture who returned home after being abused by another man. What did her brothers do? Go after the abuser? Press charges against him? No, her brothers put her to death, announcing that her abuse had brought shame to her family.
All throughout the Jewish scriptures, the notion of shame is a very powerful force. I did a word search on my computer. The word "shame" shows up 174 times in the Old Testament. You can hear it repeated in passages like Psalm 25: "O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame" (v. 2). "Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame" (v. 3). "Let the treacherous be put to shame" (v. 3).
This was one of the ways that people worked out a theology of works. They believed that you had to be good. You had to maintain a good reputation. Your family needed to keep a good family name. And if there was ever a mistake, if there was a moral miscue, if there was an obvious and public sin, then the whole community descended on you and put you to shame.
As a Presbyterian, I admit there is some Puritan starch in my veins. Some of this shame business is in our background. In the early settlements of our country, you were mocked if you were a Sabbath--breaker. If you took a loaf of bread without paying for it, they put you in stocks for public display. Good Christians wagged their tongues and said, "For shame! For shame!"
Yet Paul says, "But I am not ashamed."
Paul, of all people. If anybody had anything to be ashamed about, it was the Apostle Paul. We know about his former life. He was the commander of the Jerusalem secret police. He is the man who dragged Christians out of their homes and demanded their death by stoning. I'm talking about Paul, or as we used to call him, Saul. He was no honey: pushy, arrogant, and always insisting on his own way. And that's how he acted after his conversion.
He says at one point in one of his letters, "I think all of you ought to stay single, just like me."
We were in a Bible study when somebody read those words. A woman spoke up and said, "Listen, Paul, you're going to have to stay single because I don't know anybody who could live with you."
Sometimes he says things that are an embarrassment to the church. Ever read his letter to the Galatians? He is furious with those Christians up in Turkey. They are up there in Asia Minor, debating the virtues of circumcision. Paul is furious with them. He calls them stupid and says, "You're bewitched." At one point, he gets so worked up that he says, "I wish those people who are upsetting you about circumcision would castrate themselves!" (Galatians 5:12). Now his angry outburst is a verse in our Bible.
When an apostle talks like that, he is an embarrassment. Paul ought to be ashamed of himself. Yet he says, "I am not ashamed."
Do you suppose he is one of these people who just puts it out there, and doesn't care what people think? You know the type. They shoot off their mouths, say whatever they want, and justify themselves by saying, "I'm only telling the truth." Certainly Paul has that capacity, just like the rest of us. You never know what he's going to say.
Sometimes he is able to be quite tender. He could be kind and gracious. He wrote to the Philippians, to a church he loved, and he said, "I have great affection for you from all the way down in my gut."
Paul could be crass. He could be tender. And he certainly could be honest.
He told the truth about his former life. "I used to hunt down Christians to destroy them," he confesses, "and now I am a Christian." How can anybody explain this - except by the power of God? Paul thought he knew what he was supposed to do with his life. Then he discovered he was wrong. That experience lies behind all of the theological language in the Roman letter.
"The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes," he says. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it can take a wretched man like me and turn me in another direction. I am not ashamed of God's redemptive power."
The gospel has the authority to change our lives. It has the power to wipe away our shame. That is the essence of what the church has to say, and it's good news.
One of the problems, however, is that the news has been around so long that we have let it get rusty. We have turned the kingdom of God from a movement into an institution. For most of American history, the church has been a privileged institution in our culture. We have not had to fight for anything. We haven't felt the need to speak our message in compelling words. I'm afraid we have gotten a little flabby about our witness.
Not long ago we had two funerals in our sanctuary during the same week. Both were funerals for church members. At the first funeral, the funeral director pointed out three people who have never been in our church sanctuary. All three of them have lived in this community all their lives. All three asked the funeral director for directions to our church. Lifelong residents of our community, they didn't know where our building was located. Meanwhile here we sit, Sunday after Sunday, assuming people are going to drop in.
At the second funeral that week, we had at least fifteen people who used to attend our church but don't come anymore. In fact, most of them don't go to any church anymore. Some of them are still on our membership rolls. Most of them slipped out the side window and never came back. One man said he hadn't been here since the manse next door was torn down in 1992. He said, "I've thought about coming back a number of times, but I got into the habit of not coming, and now I feel ashamed."
I think we should respond to both of those situations with an honest look at our congregation and its message. First, we can never expect to have much of an impact if nobody knows where we are. Second, we can never expect to help people in the depths of their being if we don't help them counter the shame they carry with a dose of good news. It is really that simple, and it is really that difficult.
Years ago, something happened in one of the first churches I ever served. We had a nice little church. Every year, they put together a vacation Bible school. It was a great program, but nobody outside the church knew about it. The committee refused to advertise the program. They kept to the same teachers who taught the same things, and they did it really well. I said, "I'm only the pastor, but maybe we could let some people know about this."
"Oh, no," they said. "That's not necessary."
I tried to change their minds, but didn't get anywhere. One year, I took a big piece of orange poster board and wrote "Vacation Bible School." Adding the dates, times, and the church phone number, I put the sign out on the street corner. A couple of days later, the sign was gone.
The Sunday school superintendent took it down. "You don't get it," he said to me. "If we invite everybody, there's no telling who might come."
I said, "I thought that was the point."
He said, "We don't want just anybody to come. We want to keep it manageable. If anybody shows up, it could get out of hand."
I don't know why he was worried. In my kind of church, hardly anything ever gets out of hand. It sounded to me as if he was ashamed of what we were doing.
Here is something I want you to do. Think of the people with whom you spend the most time. Take a piece of paper and write down their names. With whom do you spend your time? List your friends, family members, co--workers, and neighbors. Then ask the question: Have you ever told them we're here? Do they have any idea how you're spending this hour? Would you ever invite them to come along with you next Sunday?
One year, our church sponsored a special day. We called it "Invite a Friend Sunday." The only people who brought a friend were the associate pastor and her husband, who invited their next--door neighbor. She belongs to a Lutheran church near her home, but she was here. Even I was ashamed that I didn't invite any of my neighbors. In fact, I am ashamed I don't even know most of my neighbors. Maybe I ought to cut back on the church work and do a little more of the Lord's work.
Paul reminds us that God has the power to transform every life. One way to say it is that God has the power to take away our shame. You know what the New Testament says?
The Father of Jesus is our Father, and Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
- Hebrews 2:11
God has prepared a city for us, and God is not ashamed to be called their God.
- Hebrews 11:16
The Bible says Jesus is not ashamed of us. God is not ashamed of us. Where do church people get the crazy idea of wagging their fingers at the world and saying, "You ought to be ashamed"?
The good news of the gospel is that God deals with our shame. God sees those secrets that we don't want anybody to find out about us. God knows all those behaviors that we try to hide from other church people. God brings our dark secrets right out into the light where they can be seen, and then God cancels every one of them, and says, "No more damage!"
As it is written, "We look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross and disregarded its shame" (Hebrews 12:2). The old law was clear: It is a shame to be sentenced to death and hung on a tree. But that is the shame Jesus endured ... and he did it to take away our shame.
Despite whatever messages that parents or preachers told you, the gospel is not about shame. There is no shame in the gospel. It is not the church's job to reinforce the shame that has been dumped on us. What we do is point to the Christ who died a shameful death in order to take away all shame. Now we live in freedom. We belong to the daylight. Our mission is to invite others to share that freedom and join us in the daylight. We can do it because we're not ashamed.
Not long ago, I was talking with a man who sees the world in ways quite different from me. That's not a bad idea once in a while. All of us can get stuck in our little enclaves and rarely venture out of our comfortable circles. This was a person who has done great things to advance the gospel. He has his flaws. He has his troubles. But he keeps going. And he is effective.
I asked him, "What's your secret? How do you keep doing what you do?" He smiled. He took out a piece of paper from his wallet, unfolded it a few times, and gave it to me. This is what it said:
´ I am a member of the fellowship of the unashamed.
´ I have Holy Spirit power.
´ I have stepped over the line.
´ The decision has been made.
´ I am his disciple.
´ I won't look back, slow down, back away, or be still.
´ My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure.
´ I am finished and done with low living, side walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, same visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and puny goals.
´ I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, promotions, positions, plaudits, or popularity.
´ I don't have to be right, recognized, regarded, rewarded, or praised.
´ I now live by grace, lean by faith, walk by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power.
´ My face is set, my gate is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear.
´ I cannot be bought, compromised, lured, manipulated, enticed, or bribed.
´ I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
´ I won't give up, shut up, or let up until I've stayed up, prayed up, and preached up for the cause for Christ.
´ I am his disciple.
´ I must go until he comes, give until I drop, preach until all know, work until he stops me.
´ When he comes back, I want him to recognize my face.
´ For I have forgotten all that is in the past, I'm pressing on for the prize, the high calling of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
´ My colors are clear.
´ I am his disciple.
´ And I am not ashamed.1
That, my friends, is the great open secret of our salvation: "I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith" (Romans 1:16).
____________
1. Original source unknown.
