Sunday's sermon: From Shame to Shalom

Photo by Claudia Soraya on Unsplash

 

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” 

But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” 

(Mark 5.21-34 NLT)

Years ago I read Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel, a novel set in prehistoric times. A little girl whose family is killed is taken in by a tribe of neanderthals. Some years later, the girl breaks a very important rule and is condemned to the worst possible punishment. The tribe’s holy man conducts a special ritual which ‘kills’ the girl’s spirit. Although she is still there bodily, the tribe believe she is dead, and even her own adopted mother cries in anguish because her daughter is no more. The girl leaves the home of the tribe – who are now pretending they cannot see or hear her, believing she is dead and just a shadow – and has to survive alone without the tribe’s protection. 

  

This is an extreme picture of shame. Someone who is shamed is out of relationship with their community. Others refuse to acknowledge them; or else they hide themselves away, not wanting to be seen. A person feeling shame will typically hide their face. If you’ve ever used the expression, “I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me,” you may have been feeling shame. Someone feels shame if they have done something bad – or if they feel that they themselves are bad in their very being.

In the story from Mark 5, Jesus meets a woman who lives in shame. We know she had been bleeding for 12 years. It's not clear exactly what was wrong, but it seems likely to have been some kind of gynaecological problem. Firstly, this would have been physically uncomfortable and may have been painful. Secondly, she has ‘suffered a great deal’ in the care of many doctors: any woman who has had a gynae examination; any man who has had a prostate exam can sympathise with her mortification and pain. Thirdly, this has made her poor – she has spent all she has on doctors, living as she does in the days before the NHS. Fourthly, and this is hinted at in the passage, her suffering has made her an outcast.

Notice that she sneaks up behind Jesus? That she doesn’t speak to him or touch him, but just touches his cloak? There are many, many healing stories in the gospels, but in every other case I can think of the person asks for healing – or their family ask on their behalf. This woman is too afraid to ask. She doesn’t make herself known until Jesus stops and asks, “Who touched me?”… and waits for an answer. She is perhaps just as desperate as Jairus, the man whose daughter Jesus is on the way to heal when she touches his cloak. But she is not a synagogue leader, an important person in society, not a rich person, not even a man. She is a poor, hurting, shamed woman who has been living for 12 years in the shadows.

To understand the depth of this woman’s shame, we need to turn to the Old Testament law, to Leviticus 15:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,“Give the following instructions to the people of Israel…

‘Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her during that time will be unclean until evening. Anything on which the woman lies or sits during the time of her period will be unclean. If any of you touch her bed, you must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening. If you touch any object she has sat on, you must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening. This includes her bed or any other object she has sat on; you will be unclean until evening if you touch it… If a woman has a flow of blood for many days that is unrelated to her menstrual period, or if the blood continues beyond the normal period, she is ceremonially unclean. As during her menstrual period, the woman will be unclean as long as the discharge continues. Any bed she lies on and any object she sits on during that time will be unclean, just as during her normal menstrual period. If any of you touch these things, you will be ceremonially unclean. You must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening.’ (15.1-2; 19-23; 25-27). Incidentally, the same rules applied to a man with any kind of bodily discharge.

This woman couldn’t touch anyone – couldn’t even sit on the same furniture as anyone else – without making them ritually unclean. She is dirty.

The culture we live in is very different from the culture of this unnamed woman. We are not ashamed of this kind of physical affliction. And yet shame still haunts us today. We tend to talk more about guilt than shame in churches. We remind each other that Christ has died to take away our guilt, to pay the penalty for our sin, so that we don’t have to carry the burden any more. And this is right and proper, and we need to keep reminding each other of this. But shame is a bit different from guilt. A number of writers have recently argued for a renewed understanding of shame and how it differs from guilt because of the importance for understanding the depth of the salvation Jesus has won for us. This arises from missionary literature on ‘honour/shame cultures’ (e.g. South East Asia, the Middle East) versus ‘guilt cultures’ (the UK, the USA). Shame is described as being focused on the self, a sense of being bad in one’s own being; whereas guilt focuses on the act, a knowledge that I have done something wrong. Guilt can be erased through an appropriate punishment, which justifies the guilty person; shame cannot be removed in this way, however. Shame is not individual but communal, and it requires a restoration of relationship which brings the offender back into the community. It has been argued that the categorisation of cultures into ‘guilt cultures’ and ‘shame cultures’ found in some missionary literature is arbitrary. I would argue that shame-talk is even more powerful than guilt-talk in understanding how Jesus saves us in our culture.

If Jesus came today, who would be the people sneaking up behind to grab at his cloak?

Who are the people we shun, either through disgust, fear or embarrassment?

People who are grieving – they sometimes find that others cross the road to avoid them, not knowing what to say.

People who struggle to find work, or whose health prevents them from working, experience shame in a culture with a protestant work ethic, where productivity is prized.

Beggars are both despised and feared: we are horrified and overwhelmed by their vast need, suspicious that we are being conned, our money used to fund a drug habit, and frightened of being drawn in.

While women don’t experience the same shame over gynaecological conditions as the woman in our Bible story, I suspect there are certain medical conditions that men and women would find excruciating to talk about, even with their closest friends and family.

People who have been abused or bullied often feel shame about what has happened to them – misplaced shame, because it was not their fault – but shame nevertheless which can be hard to shift.

People with disabilities are rightly treated with much greater respect and dignity than they were a generation ago, and yet still face ignorance and embarrassment.

Although the stigma is being challenged, mental illness is often something of which we do not speak. I suspect I frequently embarrass people by talking openly about my antidepressant medication, which has vastly improved my quality of life by relieving my anxiety. And yet there are aspects of my anxiety symptoms I don’t share openly as I’m ashamed of them.

To return to the story, Jesus knows that power has gone out of him and asks, “Who touched my robe?” He may well have known exactly who had touched his robe; in other healing stories Jesus seems to hear the thoughts of others, to know about their lives without their telling him. Someone has received healing from him but he is not going to let them melt away quietly into the crowd. What might this shamed woman, whose body has now been healed, have been thinking to herself? She knows the Levitical laws: anyone in the crowd she has jostled against has been made unclean; even this holy rabbi, Jesus, has been made unclean by her touch. Is he going to remonstrate with her? To shame her further for daring to steal a miracle from him? No. Instead he speaks words of precious blessing:

“Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” (5.34). Jesus knows, miraculously, instinctively, that her healing will not be complete until she has shown herself to him. This woman has had to hide from the world in her shame, untouchable, unseen. He gently pushes her out into the open, knowing this is what she needs. She needs to be seen. He reassures her that she is worth seeing.

'Daughter' – she is a child of God.

'Your faith has made you well' – he does not scold her for daring, but praises her faith.

'Your suffering is over' – not just her physical suffering, which would have been significant, but her social isolation too. No longer shamed, she is out in the open.

'Go in peace.' 

The Old Testament word for peace is shalom. Wholeness; completion; salvation in body, mind and spirit; restoration to peaceful life in community; the peace of the righteous.

I wonder what it might look like for us to receive this shalom from Jesus?

I wonder what it might look like for us to reach for the hem of his cloak and receive his welcome?

I wonder what it might look like for us to give this shalom to others experiencing shame?

I wonder what it might look like for us to receive this shalom from Jesus – whether we are ashamed because of our own shortcomings or because of something we have no control over, like the woman in the story.

Brené Brown is an American social researcher who has researched and written extensively on the subject of vulnerability and shame. She makes this insightful comment in her book, Daring Greatly: ‘Shame derives its power from being unspeakable… If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither…language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.’ (Daring Greatly, Kindle edition, chapter 3). Brown describes the voices of shame as like gremlins in our mind. When she experiences shame she asks herself, “What are the gremlins saying?”

“It’s too embarrassing. I can’t ever tell anybody.”

“I’ve made a mess of my life, and it’s my fault. I have to deal with it myself.”

“If they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me.”

“I don’t know what to say to that person. I might make a mistake and embarrass myself, or hurt their feelings. They might cry. Better to keep away.”

“Why are they asking for my money? Are they trying to get one over on me? I don’t want to deal with their problems – I have enough of my own. Why can’t they leave me alone?”

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, wants to speak words of peace and welcome into our hearts. He wants to dwell in us, to overflow from us into the lives of others; to silence the gremlins and bring shalom to all people.

You are my beloved daughter.

You are my own dear son.

I know everything about you, and I love you the same. You never have to hide yourself from me.

For the things you have done wrong, I forgive you.

From the things others have done to you, I will bring you healing.

Let us go into the world together and free other broken people from their shame.

Shame is overcome by reunion. Jesus has taken our shame on the cross, and defeated it. We no longer have to hide our faces from God; he no longer hides his face from us. And as people freed from shame we are called to build a community in which we remind each other of our freedom. A community where we can be open, vulnerable and honest about our shortcomings, about our secret fears and difficulties. A community where it is safe to be honest because we are rooted in the unconditional love of God. A community of people who strive to overcome their shaming of others, so that all people might know of the unconditional love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.