Sermon manuscript:
Shame is very powerful. Being ashamed, being under the power
of shame, is so unpleasant we all try to escape it if that is at all possible. So
we try not to let anyone see. If some evidence of wrong-doing comes to light,
it is awfully tempting to lie: “No, I didn’t do that.” And since our fellow
human beings are not God, those lies work, maybe even most of the
time—especially if you get good at telling lies.
But sometimes the proof for the shameful deed is
overwhelming. There’s no denying it. The perpetrator was caught in the act. Or,
in light of what we heard this morning, the woman got pregnant. How are you
going to explain that? There’s only one way for a woman to become pregnant. And
if Joseph knew that he couldn’t be the father of Mary’s baby, then some other
man must have been.
Mary’s pregnancy appeared to be incontrovertible proof that
something shameful occurred. From Joseph’s perspective Mary must have had an
affair even though she was engaged to be married to him. From any other
on-looker’s perspective either Mary had an affair or Joseph and Mary came
together for the marital union before they were married. Either way something
shameful has happened here.
The truth of what actually happened sounds a little far-fetched,
in fact. It sounds like one of those lies kids might use before they learn to
be more sophisticated and believable: “The child was conceived by the Holy
Spirit.” “Yeah, right,” the worldly wise would say. If the goal were merely
to avoid shame, Mary and Joseph could probably come up with some lies that
would have seemed more probable. They could claim, for example, that Mary was
raped. Then, at least, she could have gotten some sympathy.
But Mary and Joseph were different. They didn’t handle shame
the way most people do. That is to say that they weren’t ashamed. They had to
have known what most people were thinking about them, but they were not
ashamed. They believed what they had been told: the child which was conceived
was by the Holy Spirit. They did nothing wrong, so they had nothing to be
ashamed of. This is special and unusual. Mary and Joseph did not live in such a
way where they were trying to impress everyone around them. They were living in
the sight of God. They were not slaves of the judgment of their fellow human
beings.
This is something special and important for living as a
Christian. I’ll give you another example of this. Paul says to the Corinthians
that he does not care whether he is judged by them as adequate or inadequate.
Paul does not go by what other human beings regard as good or useful. That
wasn’t going to change how he did things, because he was doing what God wanted
him to do. The Corinthians weren’t his judges. It is the Lord who judges him. “Thus,”
he says, “do not judge anything ahead of time, until the Lord comes. He will
bring to light whatever is hidden in darkness and also reveal the intentions of
hearts. Then there will be praise for each person from God.”
Let’s apply this to Mary and Joseph. They were told by God
and they believed that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Probably
most of their neighbors and friends were like: “Yeah, right.” But when the Lord
comes he will bring everything to light. The neighbors and friends probably
thought that they were very knowing and very discerning. They were wrong, so
who cares what wrong things they might say. What matters is what God has said.
So the right thing for Mary and Joseph to do was not to hang
their head in shame. So many tsking people around them had to have thought that
they should hang their heads in shame, but they wouldn’t and they didn’t. They
had nothing to be ashamed of. They didn’t do anything wrong. The ones who were
doing something wrong were the ones who were judging them. According to reason
and common sense it is understandable why people should make such judgements
against Mary and Joseph, but that just goes to show that sometimes reason and
common sense are dead wrong.
Now let’s apply this to you. If you’ve done nothing wrong,
you shouldn’t hang your head in shame either. That is to say, if you’ve done
what God tells you to do in his Ten Commandments, if you’ve acted uprightly in
God’s sight, you shouldn’t be ashamed when other people judge you.
For example, let’s take an issue that is brought to mind by
our reading. Now, in our times, it is against our society’s norms to remain
chaste until you are married. Remaining chaste until God gives us a spouse is
what God requires of us in the 6th commandment, but in people’s
popular understanding you are expected to sexually experiment. If you don’t,
then there’s probably something wrong with you. Maybe you’re not sexually
attractive enough to get laid. A great many evil people in our society might
like to shame you, to mock you, for doing what is right. Don’t be ashamed for
doing what is right.
Or, another example: Your boss wants you to do something
that is unethical but probably highly profitable. Maybe you are just supposed
to lie or merely withhold some vital information. The other party won’t know, and
even if they suspect it, there’s no way for them to prove it. This kind of
thing is incredibly common, so that nobody thinks twice about it. If you don’t
go along with what is expected of you, you might be fired. That might not be
the end of it either. Maybe they’ll go around town spreading the word that you
are some kind of religious freak.
In such a situation don’t panic. God still exists. Evil
doers won’t get away with their evil-doing forever. Even if they throw you into
a fiery furnace or a lion’s den, if God so wills it, you’ll come out fine on
the other end. What you must not do is act as though these fellow human beings
are God, as though whatever wicked things they think or do determines what is
right and wrong. If you are doing right according to what God has said, then
you must not be ashamed. Hold your head up high, like Mary and Joseph, even if
everybody else is saying, “Yeah, right.”
But we should deal with how we should handle the other side
of shame too. Unfortunately very few, or probably none of us are like Mary and
Joseph. We are not blameless according to what God has said. We should be
ashamed. How should we handle shame when we are deserving of shame?
The proper way to act when we are guilty is also very
strange in the eyes of unbelievers. If we are guilty, then we should plead
guilty. If punishment is due, then let the punishment come. Let us confess our
sins, and receive absolution, that is, forgiveness from God. What is best is to
put yourselves into God’s hands and let his will be done.
Here we have to unlearn something we learned in very early
childhood. As just a tiny tike you learned that if you lied you might be able
to get away with stuff. You could simply say, “I didn’t do it,” and if you had
siblings, and if there wasn’t incontrovertible proof saying that you did it,
you probably didn’t get punished. You were rewarded for lying. Judgment and
punishment are terribly frightening things. In order to avoid these frightening
things we can lie so as to avoid them. If you lie at least you have the chance
of escaping punishment. If you admit what you have done punishment is
guaranteed. Plus there’s the shame that you then have to admit and fully own:
Yes, I did this shameful thing.
The devil would like you to keep you being afraid of shame
and punishment your whole life through. The devil would like you to stay in the
dark so that nobody knows what you have done. The devil says, “You’ll be safe
here in the dark where no one can see you.” The one thing that you can’t do, so
far as the devil is concerned, is to say the truth. If you say the truth the
game is up. Lies are your best friend. Lies keep you safe. Lies keep you
unpunished. And the devil wants to keep you in this state your whole life long
until the time of grace is over. And he is remarkably successful in this
endeavor because it is the very thing we also want to do. It is what comes
naturally to us. It’s easy and appears to be the safer option. But it is not
the safer option because then you will never be free of the darkness. You will
never be free of the shame. And you will never be free of the punishment.
Pluck up your courage to defy that old lord of ours, the
devil. Courage has been in the background of everything I’ve been talking about
today. It takes courage for a kid to say: “I did it.” It takes courage for
someone who has committed a crime to plead: “Guilty.” It takes courage for any
of us to admit: “Yes, I did wrong,” when through lies and hiding we could keep
things in the dark until Christ comes. All of this takes courage because
thereby you are giving up control over what happens to you. You are then at the
mercy of the authority that God has put in place for punishment. That’s scary.
It is scary to leave the darkness and to come into the light of God’s truth.
But here’s the thing: God’s light is good. It always has
been good. It is good now. It will forever be good. Now, during this time of
grace, God’s light is also healing and life giving. We still have time to
repent. The devil wants us scared to death of the shame, and scared to death of
any punishment, so by all means lie your head off. He will say you’re better
off dead than having the wrong that you have done come to light. But know this:
he is a foul, stinking, and especially pathetic liar. He is so pathetic. The
devil does not have the power you think he has. The only power the devil has is
in his lies. He has to have people believe his lies, otherwise he has no power.
He can’t keep you safe. He ultimately can’t even keep you in the dark. He’s not
God.
And the truth is that God is not some ogre who hates you.
What more does God need to do in order to show you what his intentions are
toward you? He sent his Son, his dearest treasure, to become incarnate in the
womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is “Immanuel,”
that is, “God with us.” His name is Jesus, which means, “the Lord
saves,” because he saves us from our sins. Jesus was humiliated, Jesus was
shamed, Jesus was punished for your sins and in your place. He rose from the
dead, thereby showing us that this veil of tears, this world of darkness, is by
no means the only life we have. There is a new life where there is no darkness,
no shame, but only God’s love. That love of God is already present here and now
among us sinners, beaconing us from the darkness to live in the light.
It is telling the truth that breaks the power of shame. If
you don’t tell the truth shame is always going to be hanging around at your
elbow, ushering you back into the darkness. Telling the truth breaks the power
of shame. Telling the truth has two parts. First, that we confess our sins. (Yuck,
that seems only to amplify the shame.) But then, second, that we receive
absolution, that is, forgiveness, from God himself. We all know that our sins
are real. Understand this also: Jesus’s suffering and death are real too. The
forgiveness is real. It’s God’s forgiveness. That’s just as true as your sins.
No, the work of Jesus is truer than your sins.
So if God forgives you, who cares what other people might
think, or what the devil thinks. They want you to stay guilty and ashamed. It
is God who judges you. And in Christ he has forgiven you. That’s the truth.
This light of truth doesn’t hurt you. It heals you. You may have a good
conscience before God even though you have been and are a sinner. Jesus is your
righteousness.
God’s light is always good, even if it’s a little scary.
Don’t be so afraid of the true and good Lord God that you go running for cover
in the bushes with the pathetic loser, the devil. Pluck up your courage to put
your life in God’s hands, for him to do what is best. You can’t know and you won’t
know exactly how that will all turn out, but you may rest assured that it will
be for the best. God is for you in our Lord Jesus Christ, not against you.
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