Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection

by Edward T. Welch

He understands Nothings because he chose to be one. He elevates Nothings when they associate themselves with him.

Follow the life and death of King Jesus and you get the sense that everything is reversed. The outcasts and unclean are accepted; the reputable people with power are declared pitiful outsiders. The Nothings are his children. He prefers the Zeroes. The Servant-King is on the move, making everything the way it was intended to be.

To discard shame, you must be connected to someone highly honored.

These were all women whose sin and shame would no longer define them. Instead, because of God’s mercy, they were honored as part of the Davidic line and ancestors of the Messiah.

Jesus was indeed of royal blood, but Matthew highlights the dark side of the family tree to show that Jesus was no ordinary king. Given this irony, we would expect his birthplace to have a few wrinkles in it too.

The best you can say about Jesus’ geographic origin is that he was a commoner. Common and poor people saw him as one of their own, while the ruling class thought he should stay in his place.

Listen to the envoy and you will learn much about the King.

You should hear in all this that the King identifies with outcasts.

Now, with John and Jesus, he is unveiling more of his plan, and it is a radical one: an unclean, shamed person could experience cleansing simply by confessing his or her own sin.

Noticeably absent from John’s message is any mention of pigeons, goats, lambs, or any other sacrificial food or animal. Unclean people brought nothing to John the Baptist. They confessed that they had no perfection in themselves and no sacrifices that could truly wash away their sin and shame. A new era was coming.

The King would identify with the shamed and destitute, and he would become shamed and destitute with them.

The poor and the prisoner were Jesus’ constituency. These were the worthless and forgotten of the day.

The blind were definitely numbered among the outcasts.

Jesus’ mission was to pursue those who were outside the camp—far outside. His message was strictly good news.

But if you feel like nothing, Jesus is continuing his mission of crossing the boundary between clean and unclean, and he crosses it to reach you.

His congregation of beloved misfits was growing. It even included Gentiles and women.

The fact that this woman was of low worth in her own community means that no one can ever say, “Oh, that’s her, but Jesus would never act that way toward me.”

The King is staking his reputation on it. There is nothing random about this meeting with the Samaritan woman. Jesus intentionally violated the boundaries of shame and, in so doing, chose to defile himself.

Jesus is taking the initiative toward you. He speaks first.

But when you think about it, the fact that he asks you to do something for him is even more amazing. If an important person asks you to help, it is an honor.

You barely realize what just happened. It is called faith. You just turned in Jesus’ direction and you are listening. You want what he offers. And all this is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Not everyone wants what he gives—the elite seemed uninterested or offended by Jesus—but desperate people learn more quickly than most.

He is knocking on the door of a dark and shameful place, and you don’t want to go there. “Oh, and don’t worry. I know about your past—all the details. I know your many lovers by name. I know you are living with a man you aren’t married to. I knew all that before I spoke to you.”

You, like the Samaritan woman and my daughter, don’t have to go into the details of your life’s shameful events either. Before you can construct a strategy to cover them up, Jesus says, “I know what happened to you,” or “I know what you have done.” Immediately, you can tell he doesn’t reject you, expose you, or pull back to avoid being contaminated by you. He just says, “Be sure to come back.”

Either way, you still don’t get who Jesus is. You are just scrambling to avoid your shame.

“What is most important is that you look away from yourself to the true God. No matter who you are or where you are from, you will be able to know him and worship him. And when you worship him, it means you are accepted into his presence.”

When in doubt, look at the Lord. Lift up your eyes (Numbers 21:4–9). That will be something it will take all your life to master, but what better time to start than now? Still, you...

“Yes, Jesus, someday.” “I—the one speaking with you right now—am the true God.”

What does worship him mean? It means everything. It means you turn away from the stagnant pools where you once drank. For the Samaritan woman, it meant she would align her lifestyle with his kingdom. In technical terms, she would repent. She would turn away from acts of death to receive living water, and she would love it. For the young man struggling with thoughts of same-sex attraction, it means that he says to Jesus, “You are not like anyone I have ever known. I trust you.” For the anorectic woman, it means that she no longer puts all her trust in her husband’s love but trusts in Jesus alone, who is the only one capable of bearing the weight of her tremendous emptiness and need.

Meanwhile, there is lot going on in this story. Jesus just revealed his heart to you, and that is something a friend does to a friend. Do you feel your shame when you are with a dear friend?

What good is quenched thirst and a bath when you are isolated and outside the camp? The horror of shame is the isolation. Even though isolation is temporarily safe, it isn’t the way you were intended to live. So if this water is going to be really good, it must be more than water. A little later John tells us that this is the case. The living water ultimately points to the Spirit who would be given to all who believe in Jesus. This Holy Spirit (John 7:39) had already begun his work in the Samaritan woman. The Spirit’s presence in you is the real living water. The Spirit himself goes outside the camp and never leaves you, but I am jumping ahead of the story.

For now, know that this unclean, exposed outcast is connected to the King. Shame is no longer her husband.

He pursued the dregs—those who would make you unclean—and he ate with them, a huge misstep in Hebrew society.

“Friend of Sinners.” Sinners meant “the really bad (or different) people who are not us.” They included people who were known by their sins: Joe the Divorcer, Jane the Adulteress, Jim the Thief. And they included those who were physically handicapped or abused: Jack the Blind, Jane the Molested. “Sinners” had everyone gossiping. But Jesus sought them out, and they sought him out. He was their friend, and happy to touch them.

Remember Isaiah’s vision of the King? It was a frightful event filled with rumblings, smoke, and the refrain, “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6). The most shocking feature of the scene was the seraphim, a representative of the King, coming on the King’s behalf to touch Isaiah’s tongue with a live coal, which symbolized his purification. The people of Israel had come to expect God to be close—but not too close. Certainly, no one expected to touch God or be touched by him. Certainly no one would eat with God. But Isaiah was pointing to the time when God would come closer than we could imagine. And who could have imagined he would insist on touching the untouchables?

We want purposeful, meaningful touch, not the professional touch of someone taking our blood pressure or inserting a new IV.

Then, instead of healing this man simply by saying a word, he purposefully touched him, though touching was completely unnecessary. All it accomplished was to make Jesus himself ceremonially unclean. Jesus could have avoided this but it was part of his plan.

All you need in order to make it your own is to feel utterly worthless and deserving of rejection.

Can you say, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean”? It doesn’t count if you nod your head with the leper but can’t say it out loud.

Next, do you believe it? Do you believe that Jesus responds, “I am willing, be clean”?

Do you believe what he says? If not, be careful. You are giving more authority to your worthlessness than you are to Jesus, and when you make it personal like that, it is a scary thought.

Faith means you need healing, you can’t do it yourself, and you are confident that Jesus is the hands-on Healer.