Should I be Ashamed of Myself?

In this week’s sermon prep, I am spending time with the hotly contested 1st chapter of Romans. While you are going to need to join us for service to hear those thoughts, my attention has been caught on Romans 1:16-17 (which, I am proud to say, I still have mostly memorized from my teen years):

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’

What really caught my attention was that Paul starts off by telling folks that he isn’t ashamed of the Gospel he lives by and preaches. Paul had it kind of rough at times, with multiple stays in jail in cultures that placed heavy emphasis on shame and honor. It certainly wasn’t good for his reputation to be imprisoned, but is there more going on here than him salvaging his reputation?

While Paul wasn’t asking the same questions we ask about shame, he might still help us with our own. We don’t live in the same context of shame and honor, but we know quite a bit about living with or avoiding shame. You know shame - it can be that heavy feeling of not-enough-ness that can lodge in your chest and weigh your shoulders down.

Lewis B. Smedes, in his book Shame and Grace, reminds us that feelings of being flawed are natural “because we are in fact flawed. Our shame may be a painful signal that we are failing to be the person we are meant to be and may therefore be the first hope of healing” (31). He goes on to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy forms of shame, but before doing that he wants his readers to accept that some shame is good for us. Ouch.

Sometimes we feel shame because we aren’t living as our true self. Perhaps we feel shame because when we should have been kind to others we were harmful. Perhaps we feel shame because when we should have lived with integrity we divided ourselves between our public and private lives. We often split ourselves in two, and shame can be the feeling that calls us to heal.

But, sometimes feelings of shame are something else altogether, arising from the broken parts inside of us. Shame sounds like lies that prevent us from knowing our goodness and strengths.

The problem is that both healthy and unhealthy shame are often tangled up together.

So, back to Paul. Paul writes a lot about how other folks needn’t be ashamed of him. But, I suspect that the mere fact that writes about it so often is a sign that he is wrestling with his own mixed up voices of shame. After all, Paul was human too.

As we sort through where our shame is calling us to heal ourselves and our relationships and where our shame is actually preventing us from doing so, let us keep our eyes on the Gospel. Because the good news that Jesus came and loved all, upsetting power structures and freeing both oppressor and oppressed, and offering grace to folks caught in harmful shame (such as the man born blind) and courage to folks caught in helpful shame (such as Zaccheaus, the wee little man, who needed to make amends), is still good news for us! And one quick rule of thumb: if others were harmed by our actions, the shame we feel is likely (at least in part) healthy shame.

Friends, this week may your healthy shame call you toward personal and relational healing and may your unhealthy shame dissipate a bit more in the light of God’s grace.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy