Fifth Sunday in Epiphany February 8, 2009

Epiphany 5
February 8th, 2009

There’s a danger lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce. A major threat to our mental and spiritual health-----------Shame.
In the catalogue of awful feelings, shame is right up there in the top two or three. I don’t know about you, but for me shame feels like little worms crawling over my skin.
The hard part about shame is that it’s often so vague. Sometimes I know why I feel ashamed, but more often shame descends on me like a cloud and I don’t really know why.
Or I find myself in a situation where I sense something’s wrong, but I don’t know what. And of course I assume whatever it is is my fault and I’m ashamed, even though I’ve no idea what went wrong.
I prefer good healthy guilt, when I know I’ve done something wrong. I can do something about it—I can own up to what I’ve done, and often I’m able to say I’m sorry and do what I can to mend the situation.
Shame, though—what can you do about that? It’s so indefinite, so shadowy, so vague.

Imagine Peter waking up in his own house early in the morning after Jesus had cured the sick and demon-wracked people of Capernaum.
Once Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law of course he became a family hero, and they invited him to spend the night with them.
But at the first crow of the family rooster, Peter opened his eyes and Jesus was gone.
Peter searched the house—probably doesn’t take long—probably it’s only two or three rooms—and outside.
He saw the grass trampled down by last night’s crowds, but no Jesus.
And he feels shame.
Because Jesus was gone—this man who wasn’t like anyone else Peter had ever met.
Jesus, the man who’d looked at Peter as if he was the only person on earth and said, “Come, follow me.”
Peter had fixed it up with his wife and fishing partners and was supposed to leave today with Jesus, traveling who knows where.
But now Jesus was gone.
Suffused with shame, Peter tried to guess why: Maybe Jesus had been watching Peter all that day before and decided he wasn’t up to the job. Maybe Jesus regretted calling him to follow him. Maybe, basically, he just wasn’t good enough.

That’s the trouble with shame—it shrinks us into ourselves.
When I’m feeling ashamed I assume it’s obvious to everybody around me that I’ve got some awful flaw, even though I don’t know quite what it is.
At its worst, shame can spiral us down into real depression where we can’t do anything at all. We stop trying, stop hoping, isolate ourselves, even from people who love us.

In the world we live in, one of the most powerful sources of shame is failure because Americans worship success!
For the last three or four months in the Styles and Business sections of the NY Times I’ve been reading articles about how hard the current economic free fall is for high-power executives who suddenly find themselves out of work.
For years they’ve been “Masters of the Universe,” with seemingly infinite power, money, and perks. Now they sit at home, unemployed, wondering what hit them.
Whether or not some of them feel (sometimes appropriate!) guilt about things they may have done to get all that power and money, the articles describe in vivid detail the shame they feel at being out of a job. Sometimes they get dressed up and go out in the mornings so that the neighbors won’t guess that they really have no where to go. They’re terrified others will see them as they see themselves—as failures.

Alas, that sort of shame deriving from a sense of failure can haunt church members and church communities as well.
If we’ve come here from elsewhere, we’ve probably brought with us our vision of a “successful church”: What is a successful church? A full time priest—maybe more than one!, big Sunday School, active youth group, variety of education programs, big choir, a hefty endowment as a financial cushion . . . .
When that vision (even though maybe only semi-conscious) gets laid over the reality of the church one is actually in, shame can creep in. We can feel like failures.

But that denies the deepest truest thing about the church—that Christ has called every one of us here, just as truly as he called Peter.
When Peter finally cast off the shadow of shame and depression and went looking for the Master who had called him, he’d stopped thinking in terms of success or failure.
He remembered how Jesus had looked at him that day on the beach—scruffy, smelling of fish and sweat, not all that bright—and still chose him.
Jesus could work through him, just as he was.
And in the same way. God works with what we have, what we are, both as individuals and a church.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t grow and change and submit to God’s transforming love. Of course not. A friend of mine has a tag at the bottom of all his e-mails which says “God loves me just as I am, and God loves me too much to let me stay that way!”
But God doesn’t do shame. God doesn’t worship “success.” God just calls us to follow him and that should be quite enough for us.
Through God’s eyes, you are enough, each one of you; I am enough; we are enough. That’s all we need to know . . . . the rest is up to God.