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September 18, 2019
The Beatitudes were not pithy sayings for ensuring our happiness or moral rules for entering heaven, but subversive declarations of honor and worth.
The Sermon on the Mount is a countercultural “code of honor”—divine in origin and eternal in scope.
The Sermon on the Mount does more than outline ethical behavior; it transforms our notions of identity, worth and value at the heart level.
First, Jesus taught that honorable behavior in God’s eyes comes from things most often associated with cultural disgrace: the loss of wealth, family and reputation due to loyalty to Jesus, bearing one’s cross, enslavement, humility and debasement to last place
Purity now results from association with Jesus, not from proper observance of the Torah.
Obeying Jesus’ words reckons a person faithful to God and part of true Israel. In this way Jesus overturned prevailing notions of honor and offered liberation to those burdened with shame.
Rather than Jesus receiving the leper’s defilement as expected, the leper received Jesus’ purity.
Simon sought to honor those who complied and to shame those who did not. He threatened exclusion to pressure people to live according to the Pharisees’ definition of piety.
In that time and culture it was acceptable for people who were not invited guests to gather around the edges of the room and observe the event. Hosts desired this. They accrued honor through others’ participating in this way. More people meant more honor.
But Jesus did not act to save his own honor. At cost to his own reputation he accepted and defended her.
The peace, or shalom, Jesus commissioned her toward was not just the internal serenity of a guiltless conscience, but public restoration to community and wholeness. She was freed to live in harmony with others.
Jesus loved her so much he was willing to suffer shame to save her from being shamed. This story is a precursor of the costly demonstration of unexpected love at the cross.
This incident marks a common pattern in Jesus’ ministry of honoring the shamed via public association.
Not only did he worry about his father’s anger, he knew about our custom to banish anyone who lost or sold family inheritance among Gentiles—called the kezazah. We’d break a large pot of roasted nuts and declare, “You are rejected from this community!”
His father was running, yes running, down the street! We were shocked. In our culture, old men do not run. Not because of physical inability, but because of social decorum. Old men wait for others to approach them. Running is for schoolchildren, not elders. It was a thing of shame to do so. Just imagine what might be exposed with robes flying up in the air!
He had done more than waste money; he hurt his father, so all he could do was ask for mercy.
Without saying a word, the father covered his filth and restored him as a true son.
This was just as shameful to the father as the younger son asking for an inheritance and selling off family land.
For the second time that day, the father went out to restore a dishonoring son.
Jesus ends the story midscene, because the listeners’ real-life response to this invitation is the conclusion of the parable.
Anyone in that culture would have seen that the older son, although keeping the letter of the law, also had done things that were shameful and damaged relationships. Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees, “Yes, you too are sinners!”
Jesus is communicating God’s gracious welcome to the Pharisees and scribes as well.
Jesus’ story questioned the flawed identities of both groups—the falsely shamed and the falsely honored.
The parable reveals the loving and honoring nature of God at the theological level, but also interprets the meaning and significance of Jesus’ ministry among the shamed.
It was a costly demonstration of unexpected love, something Jesus did in a much greater way at the cross.
A key element in understanding the atonement is to recognize the centrality of shame to crucifixion itself.
words of Cicero defending a Roman senator: “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things or the endurance of them, but liability to them, the expectation, indeed the very mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man.”
Set within Roman conventions, Jesus’ crucifixion is a tale of shame and humiliation, the ultimate form of labeling a person as an outcast.
Clearly then the actual concrete shame of the cross is central to its saving significance.
For someone shamed and excluded by a society’s twisted concept of status, it can be life-transforming to comprehend and experience that God does not stand with the shamers. In fact God stands with the excluded (see Heb 2:9-10).
sin dishonors God and shames people (including oneself).
people fail to properly glorify God and lack the glorified existence God intended.
As we have emphasized in this book, honor and shame are not just internal emotions; they are concretely expressed in actions that affect others.
The crucifixion was the ultimate expression of a culture’s honor gone awry—killing a truly honorable human who had lived faithfully according to God’s ways.
The crucifixion is the representative culmination of human rejection of God.
Wow. Powerful quote about the crucifixion.
Although in the Roman context Jesus’ death on the cross was the epitome of shame, from God’s perspective this ultimate act of faithful obedience was the epitome of honor (Phil 2:6-11).
Jesus did what no other human could ever do—live honorably and completely honor God. Jesus brought honor to God on our behalf.
To be justified is to be placed in proper relationship to God, to be made a full participant in the community of God’s people. Justification is not simply being declared not guilty, but God’s declaration that we belong within his community.
The resurrection is God’s seal of approval and affirmation that the way Jesus lived and his faithful obedience to the point of death was the truly honorable way.
B EFORE PROCLAIMING THE GOSPEL OF GOD’S HONOR, we as Christians must receive and embody it ourselves. Being precedes doing in the Christian life.
Hiding safely behind the digital wall of anonymity, digital bullies degrade with a snide comment or exposing image, producing shame. As social media integrates into our daily lives, it becomes the new playing field for social games of honor and shame, and an increasingly stronger influence on our constructions of human worth and value.
Honor and shame on social media.
Shame in Western cultures takes a different form than in Majority World cultures. Western shame is more private and personal, centered on the individual and his or her internal feelings. Eastern shame is public and communal, resulting from others’ negative evaluation and community reputation.
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
We see in our own hearts the weaknesses, the doubts, the selfishness, the spiritual apathy. We are not nearly the person we are expected to be (and never will be!). In that very gap between expectations and reality, we develop a sense of shame for not being adequate. We feel deficient for “not being good enough.” Regardless of what we know to be true, a gnawing sense of inadequacy controls our minds.
Moses’ shame belittles God’s power and demeans God’s glory. God reminds Moses that he, as the Creator, gives mortals their speech.
The unrealistically high views and expectations of “professional” Christians are demoralizing. We are baited with pride of success, then trapped by the shame of failure.
SHAME
Positive aspects of shame.
Unworthiness, or a desperate acknowledgement of our brokenness, before God is good and right. Prostrating before God’s throne in worship will fill our future days in his presence.
Kingdom ethics call us to voluntarily undignify ourselves out of love toward others. This heart of service and edification grows out of humility.
Pride is self-declared; honor is granted.
