I love the way Chonda Pierce teaches the creation story. She talks about how, in the story of Adam and Eve — before they sinned or ever talked to that serpent — the Bible says they were naked and unashamed. There was no sense of judgment or condemnation. No fear of rejection. No shame. Then came the temptation of Satan to be something they were not, and then that terrible fall from grace. That’s the moment a human first saw himself — herself — as somehow not good enough. That’s why they put clothes on. Shame compelled them to hide behind something.
It must have broken the Father’s heart to see his beautiful children experience such shame.
Dis-grace.
God came looking for them and since they were covered, he asked, “Where are you?” They answered, “We were afraid because we were naked, and so we hid ourselves.” God said (and you can just hear the grief in the question), “Who told you that you were naked? Who told you that you had something to be ashamed of? Who spoke that word into your life? Because that word is a lie.”
Don’t move too quickly past this truth: shame causes us to hide things. Shame sends us to dark places.
Shame is a lie.
Shame is the very word our Jesus has come to heal. He came to heal that word of dis-grace, that
lie that someone along the way has spoken into our lives to make us feel ashamed. The lie that because you are childless you are second-class or because you are broke, you’re worthless. It is the lie that makes us make a lot of money when it doesn’t come naturally to us to do so. It is the lie that leaves us tethered to jobs we don’t like, and relationships that aren’t healthy, and addictions that choke the life out of us. It is the lie that makes us expect too much of our kids, while we shrink back when we look in the mirror because we’re not who we think we ought to be.
Dis-grace.
God came to heal that. When John the Baptist’s father doubted God’s ability to give him a child, an angel indignantly struck him mute for a few months. “Take time to think about what you’re saying, Priest,” the angel seemed to say. So Zechariah did. In that season of silence, he contemplated the nature of a God who would both send a Redeemer and strike a man mute. When his son was finally born and Zechariah directed them to name him John — “God is full of grace” — he got his voice back.
Grace is the word that gives us our voice. It is the assurance that it is God’s work, not ours. God’s work, God’s word, God’s redemption, God’s plan, God’s grace.
In Christ, God has come to heal our dis-grace, and in him there is no shame at all. Hallelujah.
