Rewired by Love | The Parts We're Protecting

Well, I'm excited to I'm excited to talk about this passage of

scripture this morning. I'm excited to talk about shame.

Anybody else? Woo woo, super fun.

This is such a powerful text of Scripture, and I think there's

something that can incredibly meaningfully unlock places of

stuckness for us that I want to look at together.

This morning, when I was about 12 years old, I remember

spilling a pitcher of water in my family kitchen in a way that

scarred me deeply and I don't think I will ever forget.

It was me, my dad and his business associate, Greg.

Greg was visiting from out of town.

He lived a long way away and we didn't see him very often,

didn't know him well, but it was clear to me that this was a man

that my dad deeply respected. There was a lot of like honor

and deference to Greg, who was doing really important work.

And so Greg was in town, He was staying at our house.

And I remember 1 evening kind of after dinner, dad and Greg were

in the kitchen and they were having a conversation.

I think they were talking about work.

I don't honestly remember at this point, but I was, I was a

curious kid and, and I was like, you know, this is interesting to

me. I wonder what it would be like

to, to, to sit at the grown-ups table.

So I snuck in and, and slid into the booth across from them and

just started listening. And I remember feeling kind of

proud, like they were mostly just talking to each other, but

I felt included in this moment of, you know, meaningful

conversation. And that's when Greg, who was

sitting across to me to my left, said, Hey Josh, can you pass me

that pitcher of water that's sitting in front of you?

Greg was a little bit too far away to like actually hand the

pitcher of water too. So in my 12 year old brain, I

decided that it would be a great idea to slide the pitcher across

the table to him. Some of you can already tell

where this is going, but sure enough, the pitcher started to

slide and then hit that seam right in the middle of the

table, caught tipped and just gushed water all over Greg's

lap. I remember just this wave of

anxiety and embarrassment just surging through my body and I, I

blurted out like I didn't see the crack.

I know it was there. Where did that come from?

And in that moment, Greg, I, I remember he looked at me and,

and with like this kind of attitude of scorn, repeated my

words back to me. You, you didn't see the crack, I

guess it just magically appeared in the table when you started to

slide a, a completely full pitcher of water towards me.

And Greg, thinking this was hysterically funny, started to

laugh, dumbled over what a ridiculous thing to say.

And I remember the feeling in my body as as he laughed, like I

just, I felt smaller and smaller.

My embarrassment was compounded. I just wanted to to shrink, to

somehow disappear into my seat. I was completely overtaken by a

feeling of shame. Shame is at the center of this

story that we read here in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

And in fact, it's such an intense story, it feels like it

should come with a trigger warning.

Here we find a woman, sexually exposed, standing in in front of

a group of religious men who glower over her with

condemnation and contempt. And this is a supercharged

situation. Of course, we read in the text

here in John 8 that the main point wasn't the woman for these

men. They were here weaponizing shame

in order to to catch Jesus in a trap.

And man, they had really thought this through.

This was a, a, a brilliant dilemma.

See on on one hand, Jesus might kind of pardon the the woman,

say, hey, we should extend grace and mercy, in which case the the

Pharisees that the teachers of the law could point that that

this was not what the the Mosaic law of the Torah actually

prescribed. In instances such as this, he

would be weak on sin. If Jesus went in this direction,

they could kind of dismiss him and accuse him and say, you're

not a a real Bible scholar. You're just, you know, some kind

of liberal who doesn't actually care about the truth of God's

word. On the other hand, Jesus could,

could, could enforce the provisions of the Torah,

provisions that kind of like nobody actually followed in 1st

century Judea. The woman could be stoned, but

but this would paint Jesus as some kind of of of cruel monster

who didn't care or have compassion.

Surely he would lose his audience and his following.

The Pharisees had it all figured out.

Jesus was caught. There was no way out, they were

sure. And it's beautiful and

instructive how Jesus navigates this dilemma.

I think there's a huge amount for us to learn here.

But before we turn to consider how Jesus responds to this

moment, I first want to take a a beat to to consider the emotion

that's right at the center of this whole encounter.

Shame. Shame is one of the core human

emotions, one of one of the very few central emotions that all of

us experience at times, as Brené Brown, the shame researcher,

defines it, shame is the intensely painful, fearing

feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and

therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

We are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

It's what we feel when we have these moments, like I I did in

that kitchen, where we just get this crushing sense that

something's wrong with me, I'm broken or a defective.

But unlike guilt, shame is a social emotion.

It happens specifically in relationship with other people.

Evolutionary psychologists would tell us that shame developed as

a way of reinforcing and policing communal norms.

This is the social punishment that gets meted out, that keeps

people from cheating or, or, or cutting in line, right?

It, it's what we do to that guy who takes all the credit for the

group project, even though he was a a minor player, right?

We, we mete out, we employ shame to to punish bad behaviour

without resorting to, to violence.

Shame at its best guards boundaries and reinforces group

identity. Shame has a place.

In fact, this is familiar to us when we when we talk about the

idea of we say somebody is shameless.

That's not a good thing, right? It means that they, they flout

conventions and norms, other people's boundaries or concerns.

They're not attentive to the needs and preferences of other

people. They're selfish.

They do what they want. So we ascribe the level

shameless. They don't feel the requisite

shame that they should. But shame, for whatever its

virtues, is a lousy fuel for transformation.

Shame does not help us to change.

In the series, we've been exploring how we change, how we

actually transform in the way of Jesus from the inside out.

What is true and lasting transformation look like in a

way that changes not only what we know, but how we live our our

explicit knowledge as well as our implicit, our reflexes and

defaults. And for this, shame is an

obstacle. I can tell you this from

personal experience. I'm just telling myself today,

but I know deeply well what it means to try and change oneself

by way of shame. One area where I I've engaged in

a lot of shame filled striving over the course of my life has

been in the area of managing my weight.

When I put my height and weight into a ABMI calculator, I get

that the painful declaration obese feels way too strong, but

there it is right in front of me.

Now, most of the time, I don't feel that kind of way about my

body. I'm not angry at myself or, or

beating myself up. I sleep well.

I can do everything that I want to.

I'm I don't don't have any, any limitations.

I'm active and, and in most days I feel fine with where I'm at

with my health and weight. But then there are those times,

maybe, you know, these times, the times when I'm, you know, in

the dressing room trying to find a new pair of clothes and I'll,

I'll put a shirt on and I really like it.

It looks great on the rack. But then the way it hugs my

body, it, it accentuates all the parts that I don't want to be

seen. I feel gross or, or I'll try

another shirt on or, or something that, that I really

like. And it, it, it fits me in one

place, but then it's just incredibly baggy everywhere

else. I feel stuck.

And in these moments, there's, there's a part of me, a voice in

my head that that comes out and in just this contemptuous and

cruel way passes verdict over me.

You're disgusting, It'll say. And, and, and that that word,

that condemnation, that judgement, it, it, you know, it

lands right here in my chest. Like I feel it deeply.

I start to almost like cowering and try and protect myself in

some way. And this, this shame fueled part

of me is, is in a, in a bizarre way, it's trying to serve me.

It's trying to protect me. It thinks that if my body looks

this way, then other people will judge me, other people will

reject me. And so it it rushes to do the

judging first. And I think the logic is

something like, well, if I can be mean enough, if I can be

cruel enough to myself, then, then, then I'll recognize how

urgent it is, how, how big of a deal it is that I fix this

problem. And sometimes for a brief period

of time that kind of works, like I'll have this wave of

adrenaline and energy and willpower because I'm

embarrassed and, and I want to fix this thing about myself.

And so I'll dive into whatever the latest thing is,

intermittent fasting or calorie counting, exercising more times

per week, right? There's, there's this surge of

willpower and energy that comes from this place of condemnation

and shame. And I'm a pretty intentional

guy. I'm a pretty, you know, I have

some willpower reserves. And so for a while that'll work.

Like for a bit, I'll, I'll drop 1020, maybe even 30 lbs.

But then the reserve of willpower starts to go dry,

right? Other things begin to, to pull

at my attention. The shame isn't quite so

piercing because maybe I look a little bit better in my clothes.

I, I, I feel a little bit better about it.

The intensity isn't there. And so everything slides right

back to baseline. Now, I share this with you

today, not because I'm hoping that you come up and tell me

immediately after the gathering how beautiful I am in my body,

not because I'm desperately searching out here for for three

simple steps that are going to help me solve this problem.

I get it. This is not a knowledge issue

for me. But I name this dynamic, which

is vulnerable for me, which is painful for me because I make up

that although you may have an entirely healthier relationship

with your body than I do, but there's somewhere in your life

that you can notice a similar pattern, a similar dynamic.

See, because this isn't just limited to me.

Maybe your relationship with your body is healthy.

Shame doesn't have its claws. And you in the in, in the areas

of diet and weight. But you notice this showing up

in your life and you're dating, You haven't found a partner yet

and you're just embarrassed about it.

Like what? What if something's wrong with

me? Like what if I'm unworthy of

love and connection? What if I I, I don't find that

person and so they're striving that comes out.

Maybe you find yourself trying to fill some kind of hole in

your soul by way of educational or vocational attainment.

There's this this gnawing sense of like, I'm not good enough.

I haven't lived up to the expectations of my parents.

I'm not like where my siblings are, where my peers are.

And so you're you're hustling, you're striving, you're trying

to get ahead. You're trying to get that next

performance review or that next degree, that next certification.

You keep chasing. Maybe for you, the place of

stackness shows up in in a place that you're pretty embarrassed

about. Like over and over and over you,

you say, like, I'm going to quit looking at porn.

Over and over and over you say, I'm going to, I'm going to stop

doom scrolling on my phone. Over and over and over you say,

man, I'm going to stop at the second beer tonight.

And over and over and over again, you find yourself going

through the same pattern. For many of us, this even shows

up in our spirituality. We want to pray more, read our

Bibles more, show up in community better, and maybe if

we were just more disciplined, maybe if we were just better

than everything would work out. God would be pleased with us and

he would bless us. Or so the story goes.

The problem is, is that this is something of a treadmill.

A dynamic that I like to describe.

Is that the treadmill of self improvement?

We're we're trying to fuel change by way of shame.

And just like a treadmill, huge amounts of effort, sweat, blood

and tears can be expended, but we don't end up getting

anywhere. The the shame slinging parts of

us believe that if we just work harder, if we strive more than

maybe we'll fix that which is broken inside of us and and then

we'll be worthy of belonging, worthy of acceptance.

But it's just a treadmill. Shame begets striving.

Striving begets exhaustion. Exhaustion begets relapse.

Relapse begets resignation. Resignation begets shame.

Shame begets striving. And here we go again and again,

through the same patterns that have become so familiar and yet

in which we find ourselves so stuck.

I'd go so far as to make this bet with you.

I would suggest to you the risk of maybe generalizing a bit too

much that wherever you feel an acute sense of shame is probably

a place in your life where you're stuck.

Shame and stuckness are such close companions because as long

as shame is calling the shots, we end up compulsively doubling

down on resources that get us nowhere.

We just keep cycling along the treadmill, or just as likely, we

end up numbing out and avoiding altogether.

I mean, I don't know about you, but when my shame cycle is at

the worst, when I'm feeling the worst about my body, there's

nothing that feels like it could relieve that ache like salty,

crunchy Doritos, right? Sometimes that the patterns that

we find ourselves stuck in, like we reach for these numbing

mechanisms precisely at the time when we're covered in shame.

Shame is not a motivator for growth.

It's actually a mechanism of paralysis.

It doesn't fuel transformation. It just pushes our bad behavior

into the shadows. And look for a lot of

communities, that's OK. Like I want to, I want to tell

the truth about this dynamic here because this is important.

See, we get a lot of payouts for pushing our bad behavior into

the shadows, don't we? Like, we can perform, we can

pretend. And, and we think that maybe

even if people don't really see what's true, maybe that'll be

good enough. So many communities, so many

families, so many churches operate in this way.

It's like we don't really talk beyond a surface level.

We don't name the places where we're really struggling, the

places where we're really stuck, because that would be an

embarrassment. We might even baptize it and

say, well, we wouldn't want to spoil our witness.

And so instead we, we pretend. We, we talk only about the the

sin, only about the problems of those people over there that we

can hold at arm's length. And then we, as a community of

shiny, happy people with these smiles on our face, live in the

plastic land of pretense where we keep showing up pretending as

though things are not actually wrong, as though we're not

actually stuck, as though shame doesn't have its claws in US.

And see, it's a paradoxical thing, but the only way to

interrupt this cycle is actually through it.

We see such a beautiful response in the way that Jesus navigates

this. I love how he shows up, how he

responds to this moment of crisis, this dilemma.

Jesus diffuses the power of shame.

His his response is profound. I want you to look at it here in

John chapter 8. The first thing he does is

John 8 · chapter mention

actually to not respond. Somebody who's like a teacher

likes to talk about things like this is hard for me to fathom.

Somebody asking a question and not like being like, well,

here's what I think about that. Like Jesus has an answer to this

question, but he doesn't respond to the Pharisees.

Jesus recognizes that this is is not some honest and sincere

seeking of truth. They're not trying to figure out

how to interpret Scripture rightly.

This is a trap and they're abusing this woman in order to

set it for him. And so first thing that Jesus

does here is he just slows everything down.

Man, I don't know about you, but this is one of the most

resourceful tools that I have learned when I'm feeling these

moments. Awash and shame.

Just slow down. Like actually take a beat.

Actually take a breath. Instead of just reaching for

whatever numbing mechanism of choice is available to you.

To to to ignore it or avoid it, or to to push the feelings down.

Just just take a breath. Jesus pauses.

He doesn't jump immediately to response.

Maybe you've heard the advice to count to 10 before responding

when you're angry. This is this is kind of what he

does here. Everybody is locked into this

high stakes encounter, this anxious system in which there

can be no curiosity, no learning, no awareness, just

reactivity. The Pharisees are, are feeling

good about themselves. They're trying to control the

situation and, and, and, and, and they're convinced and, and,

and looking to, to be right and to be proven right.

The woman is cowering, frozen in shame, and Jesus just steps out

of the cycle. He doesn't react.

He pauses. He does something confusing and

curious that makes everybody be like, like they're, they're,

he's drawn in the ground like a kid.

Like what is what is going on here?

I think the confusion is not accidental.

It's intentional. We see in verse 6 that Jesus

bends down and starts to write on the ground with his finger.

But the second thing that Jesus does here that I think is so

interesting is that Jesus actually shames the shameless we

talked earlier about. Like shame is a lousy motivator

for growth, but it's it's not always out of bounds.

Like Jesus actually turns the trap right back on the religious

leaders who are not actually in touch with their own sin.

He says to them in response to their questions.

Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to

throw a stone. And in a single sentence, Jesus

turns the trap back on its architects.

They were using shame to condemn the woman, and now they're being

interrogated. What's true in your life?

What log is in your own eye? The spectacle of her shame

becomes a crisis of their conscience.

Jesus actually uses shame to shame the shameless, but not

with a woman. With a woman, Jesus is tender.

He Stoops down and writes in the dirt.

This is so interesting. Now I don't sometimes things are

really clear from the text and other times I'm not sure.

So this is one of those I'm not sure moments, but I think it's

so interesting that Jesus gets low.

Like when you're looking down on someone, if you're looking up at

someone, right, it's very easy to feel the power dynamic right?

Sometimes, like parenting experts say that when your, when

your kid is really dysregulated, one of the things that you can

do to help the situation is actually to like get down on

their level, right? You get down low eye to eye to

help attune to them, to connect with them.

So maybe it's incidental, I don't know.

But also Jesus made our nervous systems and he knows what's up.

Jesus slows the situation down. And then this woman who I, I

imagine is, is cowering in the dust, Jesus gets on her level.

He attunes to her, he connects with her like we talked about

last couple weeks ago. Now Jesus becomes the safe haven

for her. He he both dismantles the

accusations of her accusers with his question.

And then after one by one, their accusation, their condemnation

has been disarmed. Jesus turns to her in verse 10

and says, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

Neither do I condemn you. Jesus says.

He also refuses to pass judgement on her, to, to, to pin

her into the dust, to double down outlook.

This woman does not need more shame.

She is already aware of the brokenness.

And I think it's so beautiful how Jesus responds to her.

It's so powerful because he defuses the shame.

He drives away the accusers. He declares no condemnation.

But then he also in verse 11 says, Hey, go now and leave your

life of sin. There's an opportunity now for

change. And, and I think this is worth

noting because I think in our culture, sometimes we, we get

this wrong, like sometimes we go too far to an extreme.

Like we are rightly worried about the damaging and

destructive power of shame, the way it can harm people and

dehumanize people and, and, and, and push people down and crush

them. And so we've swung at times to

the other side where we say everything about you is

terrific. You are amazing, you are

perfect, you are beautiful, Everything is great.

And that's not a gift either, right?

It is a beauty. It, it is true to recognize our

belovedness, our goodness, the fact that we are created in the

imago day. But sometimes leaving people

stuck in real problems is not generous.

Like that too is a trap. This lady's life was not working

right. There were other dynamics like

that guy should have been here too, like she's not doing

adultery by herself. Like what's going on here,

right? But also her life was not

working. She was stuck in a trap, not

just of their making, but of hers as well.

And Jesus doesn't do one or the other.

He doesn't say fix your life up, get everything squared away

because then once you've done everything correctly, then you

can be accepted. He says no condemnation right

here, right now. You are beloved.

But then he also says go and sin no more like you have an

opportunity now to be free, not from the place of shame, but

from the place of belovedness, from the place of being seen and

known. Friends, we don't have to choose

a false binary between no shame or or motivation by way of

shame. Shame is a trap.

It will not help us become the people that we have been

designed to be. And far too often in

communities, in families, in churches, in our own internal

conversations, we're still playing on the same treadmill.

We want to fix that thing about us that we're embarrassed about.

So we just beat ourselves up. We punish ourselves in the hopes

that maybe it will spark the willpower to strive so that we

can change, so that we can be accepted.

And this is absolutely backwards for those of us who follow Jesus

because Jesus does not start with clean your life up, get it

together, fix your problems. He starts with belovedness.

You are loved, you are welcome, you are accepted.

There is now no condemnation for you.

And this all happens because Jesus from the beginning is one

who who actually takes our shame.

You guys know the story at the beginning of creation, the first

story in Scripture here in the book of Genesis, we see man and

woman created and and Genesis 2 says that they were together,

they were naked and they were not ashamed.

I think he's obviously talking about physical nudity, but he's

also talking about emotional, spiritual exposure.

Like in everything that they were, they were seen and they

didn't feel any condemnation. They felt welcomed, they felt

accepted. And of course, sin enters the

picture and fouls it all up. Sin and the shame that it brings

with it forges disconnection. So as the story progresses,

they're they're separated from each other and from God.

And what do the people do in the story?

Well, they dive into the bushes and try and sew themselves some

fig leaves, like some fig leaf aprons, the Bible says some

garments to cover up, to cover up their shame.

That doesn't work friends. So many of us are there.

We're in this space of cover ups.

We're trying to fix ourselves by, by covering up the shame, by

pretending, by performing, by over functioning, by freezing up

and numbing to avoid the feelings.

We're running on autopilot. And this, this fast track of our

brain, this, this implicit knowledge is, is striving in all

of these ways to, to, to access worthiness, to access belonging

and, and we're just trying to beat ourselves up to get there.

The fig leaves never work. They can't cover the shame.

Our cover ups always end up leaving us right where we

started. But instead, what happens in the

garden? God comes, he meets them, God

himself makes them a covering. And this is what a beautiful

picture of the gospel like this is what Jesus does for us.

He comes near to us. He takes our shame himself in

his body so that we can be covered, so that we can walk

free, so that we can walk blameless, so that we can enter

boldly into the presence of God, so that we can live out of our

identity as one who is beloved, so that we can know the story

that God loves us. Friends, what a beautiful

picture of the gospel. There's a practice that God has

given us to support us in piercing through this dynamic of

shame. It's called confession.

Confession very simply is, is a practice in which we name

reality. We say what is so, particularly

the, the ways in which we are not who we long to be, where

we're out of integrity, where we're stuck.

And I think many of us, especially in like low church

Protestant world, many people are kind of allergic to the idea

of confession because confession too has been weaponized, right?

Often times people confess and then are used in that space to,

to, to bring more shame. Our shame is intensified by way

of the confession. Kurt Thompson talks about it.

This, he says. Like this, he says when we

experience shame, we tend to turn away from others because

the prospect of being seen or known by another carries the

anticipation of shame being intensified or reactivated.

Like, we don't want to be seen because it feels like as other

people witness that, as other people judge us for that, that

the shame will be further intensified, that we'll just be

completely lost. We feel like we're going to die.

But here's the paradoxical truth.

It's that shame actually can't stand up to being witnessed in

love. Brené Brown says it this way.

She says shame cannot survive being spoken.

It cannot survive empathy. See, God invites us into a space

where we're those parts of us that are broken, that are

dysfunctional, that are distorted, can be named and can

be healed because we're not rejected.

Instead, even in those places where things are off, we're not

who we want to be. We can be seen and held.

And this is the practice of confession at its core.

It's the practice of of naming what is not so in a trustworthy

space where then we can be held. God, of course, paradoxically,

for all the hiding we do. He already knows, right.

He's not surprised, as it turns out, even if we feel that way

sometimes. But confession, I'll say in my

own experience, I've learned and, and I think this is true

throughout Christian tradition. We see this example.

Confession was actually designed in Scripture and and by the

church not to be something that we do just privately and

individually with God. We're actually designed to

experience this. We're going to talk more about

this next week in relationship with other people, Not

everybody, not people who will layer on more judgement, but

those who can hold it, those who can extend empathy and

compassion, recognizing the duality of like, there's an

opportunity to go and sin no more, but but not because you

need to do that in order to be loved because because of the

blood of Jesus, because of what Jesus has already done.

Right now, you're already welcomed.

You're already accepted. So friends, as we move into a

time of reflection, into a time of response, don't panic.

I'm not going to ask you to turn to your neighbor and, like,

divulge your deepest, darkest secret, OK?

We're going to make the invitation lightweight because I

know for some of us, like, this is a regular practice.

And for others, you're looking at this and you're like, Oh my

gosh, this sounds like the worst thing ever.

I'm convinced that if I were to name something that I am

embarrassed by, I would just, I would die.

That would be the end. Right now, I want to invite you

to just notice and touch that place of stuckness, that place

where shame is operative in your life.

Maybe as you reflect this morning, you could say, Josh,

man, I relate to your story. There's some place where I see

the treadmill is operative for me.

I am on it. I'm spinning.

I've been spinning for a while. I keep telling myself that I'm

going to be more disciplined, that I'm going to try harder,

but here I am. Maybe that's what you need to

name. Maybe there's something else,

but I want to invite you to consider naming at least to

yourself and then to God, this place in your life where you

feel the claws of shame digging into your soul.

And then if you'd like to, you could take it a step further and

identify one person to talk to about that, to share that.

And maybe that's somebody right now right here in the room.

Maybe it's your therapist. Maybe it's a parent or a

grandparent. Maybe it's a close friend.

Maybe it's your romantic partner.

Maybe it's somebody from our pastoral team.

There's no pressure to do this perfectly.

It's not about just being out there, letting everybody know.

It's about the shame emerging from the secret place, from the

dark place where it's power grows, beginning to be exposed

and dispersed by the empathy and compassion that we see Jesus

extend here in this story. Friends, what if we were a

community of the kind of freedom, of the kind of power

that really believed that we could name what was not so with

us because we have a God who loves us so much that we didn't

believe that we would be crushed if we did?

What if we believed in God's love so much that we were

willing to be actually honest about what was true for us, the

places of our stuckness and shame?

What if we were the kind of people like Jesus is in this

story who are willing to hold space for others, Not with

judgement, not with score, not getting the payouts that these

religious leaders here are by feeling better about myself

because I can look down on you. But in our common humanity,

being willing to look at one another and say, I see you.

This thing that you've done this way in which you've shown up

isn't great. It might be harmful, it might be

damaging, it might be devastating.

And Even so, you are loved. Friends, this is the good news

that although we are far from who we are designed to be, we

are loved into transformation.