From Shame to Forgiveness
Romans 10: 6-13; Luke 4: 1-13
March 8, 1992
Last week, following the service, someone came up to me and said I enjoyed your sermon on forgiveness but I think you left something out. It is relatively easy to forgive someone else. I imagine if I kept count my score would be quite high. But what about forgiving yourself? That’s the difficult part.
I was reminded of the gifted black author Maya Angelo autobiographic writing, when in time of despair, she sought help from a white psychiatrist. He asked her, are you troubled? She describes her feelings, yes I was troubled why else would I be here? What could I tell this man? Would he understand Arkansas which I left yet would never could never leave? No I couldn’t tell him about living inside a skin that was hated or feared by majority of my fellow citizens. I had nothing to say to the doctor.
Maya Angelou left the white psychiatrist abruptly and sought out uncle Wilkie, an old friend, a singing teacher who was as black as ever. This approach was in sharp contrast to the white psychiatrist. He held her in a warm embrace, gave her a stiff drink, and then set her down at his desk and had her write down what she had to be thankful for. When he sent her away, he put his arm around her and said let uncle Wilkie tell you one last thing. Don’t ask God to forgive you, where that’s been already been done. Forgive yourself.
Forgiving yourself, finding the antidote for self condemnation, that’s the focus of our thoughts this first Sunday in lent. The person after church was right. One has to learn to forgive oneself before 1 can forgive others. Forgiving yourself, it’s easy to say but ohh so difficult to do.
Lately, in the field of psychology, as well in the the recovery area, a new insight has been thought out. It’s not simply good enough to talk about guilt, or guilt speaks to those things, sins, trespasses, which we’ve done towards other people. Guilt is the feeling we have in which we need forgiveness from others. But now a new concept is beginning popular and it’s important period the concept of shame. That feeling of being flawed, of not being quite right, not fitting in or measuring up. That’s the feeling where we have to learn to forgive ourselves. The recovery people tell us that shame is much deeper problem and guilt. Guilt tells us we made a mistake, Shane tells us we are a mistake and is the cause of much of our misery and emotional distress. The problem was shame, which parenthetically we all have 1 deg or another is that it’s like talking about dysfunctional families. All of us come from dysfunctional families. It’s simply a matter of the level of dysfunction. The reason I bring up shame today is that forgiving yourself is the only antidote to the crippling effects of shame. Forgiving yourself is the very foundation of self worth and self love. Love thy neighbor as thyself we are told. The problem is not the neighbors, the problem is the self. Shame has done such a job that there is little self love. We know our emptiness, our brokenness, lacks badness. You just don’t know how to forgive ourselves.
It always amazes me how contemporary psychology discovers a concept that has been around for thousands of years. The writers of scripture recognize shame as the core and consequences of the human dilemma. As far back as Adam and Eve, the Bible tells us they were ashamed. The first 3 chapters of genesis is a story of our forebearers who were not satisfied with who or what they were. They didn’t accept their limitations they wanted to be more than they were. They weren’t satisfied with it as it was. Does that sound like anyone you know? And so they ate the apple and went into hiding. And the Lord God called unto Adam, where art thou? And Adam said, I heard thy voice in the garden and I hid myself for I was naked and ashamed. Adam and Eve are naked which doesn’t mean they are without clothes. Nakedness means they are aware of themselves. They see themselves as they are and they are ashamed. Not guilty but shamed. They are aware that they do not measure up and that’s what the psychologists have now discovered. Jane is not being satisfied with who you are and the antidote is learning to love, accept, and forgive who you are as Carl young once wrote.
The great task in life is learning to accept the little clot of earth that you are. The little cloud may not be as pure as you would like. Jung talks about each of us having a shadow side but our task is accepting the bad parts as well as the good parts of ourselves.
That’s the task of these 40 days. The great spiritual writers speak of lent as appeared at going into the desert, the wilderness, just as Jesus did. The Mystics speak of the time as the dark night of the soul. But whatever designation you choose this is a time when we are called to recognize our shadows gramma accept our darkness, and begin to cure the shame which infects us all.
Since the time of Adam and Eve we have learned to hide, even from ourselves. We’ve learned to pretend that I’m OK and you’re OK and that’s OK and we’ve done this because we fear our shadows might just overwhelm us.
But what if, what if someone new year shadow better than you did. Recognized your flawed natures more perceptively then you could. And, what if the person still loved you as you were? Would that make a difference? Paul, in our epistle, says no one who believes in Christ will be put to shame. Jesus makes no distinction between the good and bad parts he loves them all and it is in this power that we begin to love our shadows.
Good people, last week I asked you to keep score during these 40 days of how many times you forgive people. Today, I would ask you to start your list by forgiving yourself. To paraphrase what Michi once said may we gain the courage, during these 40 days, to baptize our badness.
One of my favorite lines comes from a play after the fall by Arthur Miller. One of the characters Holga, had a dream that plagues her. She tells us, the same dream returned each night until I dared not go to sleep. Even in that dream, I saw it represented my life. In that dream, I was a child and I saw it represent my life. The child was an idiot, and I kept running from it. But, in the dream, it always crept into my lap again and clutched at my clothes. Finally, I began to think if I could kiss it, perhaps, I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face and it was horrible. But I kissed it. And then comes my favorite wine I think the time comes when one must finally take one’s life into one’s arms and kiss it.
Facing and even embracing the brokenness of our lives may be the way we find forgiveness. And that’s what these 40 days in the wilderness can begin to do. Enable us to kiss ourselves. In Christ there is no shame. For when you know you are loved, not for what you have done for accomplished but for what you are, you can begin to accept the little clot of earth that is you.
How do you forgive yourself, by learning in these 40 days to kiss yourself. How do you kiss yourself? By knowing you have first been kissed by Christ. Amen