From shame to praise (Zephaniah 3.14-20)
“From shame to praise” (Zephaniah 3.14-20)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Advent 3C (December 16, 2018)
Tom James
When I go to the store, I’m focused on what I’m going to buy. In fact, I start to zero in on my target well before I enter the store. Even when I’m in the parking lot, I’m already thinking about that sweater I’m going to get someone for Christmas, or that tool I need for some project I’m working on. And that means that I’m not thinking about my car as I pull into my parking spot—or, more importantly, where that spot is in relation to all the others. And so, pretty often, I exit the store with that prized purchase, feeling like I’ve accomplished my mission, and then look out on that sea of cars in the parking lot and have no idea where mine is. At that point, it’s time for a guess. Hopefully, my guess gets me close enough so that I can at least see some part of my car and then quickly and as gracefully as possible make the necessary course adjustments. But then, there are those times when I guess wrong. And then, of course, rather than worrying whether I will find my car, I worry about whether someone will see me looking for it. That blank expression on my face, wandering aimlessly, furiously pushing buttons on my key fob hoping that I will see the flashing lights as my car unlocks—I can’t imagine it’s a very good look.
Now, I can tell that story because we all know what it is like to be embarrassed. It’s a little uncomfortable, but in order to deal with the shame of embarrassment that is certain to come in life, we have to learn at some point to laugh at ourselves.
But there’s something that cuts a level deeper than embarrassment. Something that we can’t deal with simply by laughing it off. I’m talking about humiliation. Most of us have stories of being humiliated, too, but the person or people we tell those stories to have to earn the right to hear them. We don’t trust just anybody with stories of humiliation. They cut to the core of who we are—they threaten the image we may have of ourselves, and we need to know that the people with whom we entrust those stories and those feelings won’t trample on us or somehow make our humiliation worse. We have to feel like they are on our side before we expose our inner selves to them in that way.
The thing about humiliation is that it tends to stick with you, like gum to the bottom of a shoe. It’s like a mark or a burden that we can carry around for a long time. It creates a memory that is hard to shake, and it can also affect our expectations. In fact, in extreme cases, a humiliation can all but take away our sense of a meaningful future. We feel defeated, beaten, helpless, unable to move forward.
Groups can feel that way, too. I’ve enjoyed watching my children’s sports teams over the past few years, and I’ve seen the pattern I learned from my own childhood sports experiences being repeated—a bad play or some bad luck can get easily amplified in its effects because the team gets down on itself, loses confidence, gets rattled. It’s why I don’t watch college sports much anymore—North Carolina basketball, or Michigan football! How often they disappoint!
But sometimes it’s way more important than sports. I’m struck by a line from our Old Testament reading for this morning. God says, “I will remove disaster from you.” What’s interesting about this is that disaster is not treated as an unfortunate event that comes and then is gone—rather, disaster is something that the people possess. Disaster is something that clings to them, like a stain, like a burden they must bear, like gum on their shoes.
This passage was most likely written during a time of exile after the kingdom of Judah had been destroyed, after its temple had been leveled and its leadership taken captive. It was written, in other words, in the wake a stinging defeat. These are words that are spoken from the depths of a lasting humiliation. And so, the disaster that has befallen Judah—and if we follow the story, we recognize that it comes in no small part because of their own faults—this disaster is something that Judah has to live with. It’s a shame that remains attached to them, exposing them before the nations and before each other.
Shame is not something that we talk about very much in the church. I guess it’s for a good reason—shame is something that wants to stay hidden! But I wonder how much you and I, and how much our little group of Christians today, are plagued by shame. I wonder if we don’t look around ourselves sometimes and see empty pews, and feel a little twinge of defeat. We remember when these pews weren’t so empty, when the church was much stronger and more influential than it is now, when we had to break out the folding chairs to accommodate everyone who heard our voice and responded to the call to worship in this place.
I’m not talking about guilt. Those of us who are here are doing our best, and we know that there are forces beyond our control that have a lot to do with how things stand today. But, still, becoming smaller, less powerful, less respected, less noticed, even—doesn’t that sometimes stir feelings of shame?
And we know that, sometimes, shame visits people who have done nothing wrong. A good part of Job’s famous suffering was shame. Anyone who has been sick for a long time or who has borne the burden of a long season of grief and hears for the thousandth time, “how are you feeling today?” knows that even well-meaning compassion can remind us of our weaknesses and ratchet up feelings of defeat.
Would it surprise you to know that the Bible is much more preoccupied with the problem of shame than with the problem of guilt? Guilt is an obsession that comes much later in history when our culture became more and more focused on the inner experiences of individuals. Guilt is driven by a sense of moral failings; guilt is hidden on the inside of us, but shame is for all to see: it comes from defeat, from being exposed as weak and fragile, from public disgrace.
And, so, shame is something that, in order to be freed from, requires that our defeats must somehow be reversed. It isn’t enough to be forgiven or to experience some kind of psychological change that makes us see ourselves differently. For our shame to be removed, our circumstances must be changed. This is the way Zephaniah puts it:
How can this happen? Researcher Brené Brown has studied shame and how it is overcome. According to Brown, shame can’t survive being spoken. There’s something about telling the story of our humiliations that takes away their power over us. But, of course, we can’t just tell anyone. We have to find people that we trust—perhaps, people who have undergone similar defeats. Support groups and recovery groups are incredibly important. They allow people to speak their shame among people who understand it, and speaking it can actually begin to destroy it.
Well, but, does that change our circumstances?
It can. The shame of alcoholism is the loss of control the alcoholic has over their life. Recovery groups can help them put their life back together. The shame of a nation’s destruction is that there is no more national identity—the bonds are broken, and the power of collective action is gone. But, in exile, people can begin to share their stories and to rebuild the old solidarities, and a nation can be reborn, perhaps even refounded. As Zephaniah says, God may gather them, and bring them home, no longer a people who, in their indifference and complacency, are ripe for destruction, but a people have been tested and who know what it takes to be a people.
Ultimately, what changes us, and what takes away our shame, is not a stroke of luck or a series of them. It is the insistent spirit of life within us, the spirit of God who comes to us in our weakness and isolation and makes a people out of us, who gathers us anew: moving us from weakness to strength, from complacency and boredom to bold and intentional action, from an inward focus that seeks simply to maintain ourselves as we were to an outward focus that seeks to impact the world.
God’s advent, God’s interruption, happens within us. Things may not look all that different. All that happens is that we begin to get real. We talk to each other—more than just Sunday pleasantries but our hopes, our dreams, our disappointments, and, yes, our humiliations and defeats. In other words, we tell our stories. We open ourselves to the truth. And the truth begins to free us, and we find that our conversations are taking us somewhere. And then, we listen to the stories of those around us. The shame that keeps us shackled to strategies of mere survival begins to lose its power, and, in its place, faith. And, with faith, new life.
This is nothing other than the story of Christ’s church, from age to age. And the story lives today because it keeps getting restarted. We need new beginnings in order to be the church. We need advents. We need to welcome the savior, again and again, in order to be who we are.
“And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.”
O come, O come, Immanuel. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
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