THE WALK OF SHAME

This week I learned of the famous “walk of shame” scene in Game of Thrones. How many of you know it? Not being a Thrones fan, I’ll do my best to explain. Cersei Lannister is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. After confessing adultery with her cousin, she is stripped nude and paraded through the streets. She is jeered at and spat at as garbage and feces are hurled at her. As “shame, shame, shame” is intoned over and over.

Such mob mentality was hard to watch for many. For some, it reminded them that there is great entertainment in watching women being humiliated. The scene derives from accusations against Jane Shore, a mistress to England’s King Edward IV in the late 1400s. She was also humiliated by a walk of shame through the city. And in 13th and 14th century France such public shaming was a prominent humiliation for adultery. The punishment, often for only the woman, was designed to be a lasting stigma. It would ruin your life forever.

Well, Merry Christmas and welcome to Matthew’s telling of the birth of Jesus. It’s not a sweet Christmas carol. It’s not a sanitized nativity scene. It’s rated R and it’s filled with scandal, stigma and shame. And the messiness of being human.

The main character isn’t Mary as it is in Luke. It is Joseph who is described as righteous. In other words, he has high ethical standards. He is a person of his word, a person of integrity, a person who does the right thing. He is engaged to a wonderful young woman yet one day everything changes. Mary is pregnant and he is not the father. He must decide how to respond. If he calls attention to the out-of-wedlock pregnancy, Mary will have to do a walk of shame. She could be stoned to death as outlined in Levitical law. If Joseph divorces her quietly, and he saves her from “public disgrace” as the text says, Mary’s fate may be begging or prostitution simply to survive. Joseph’s reputation is at risk too. He will have his own walk of shame because of this illicit pregnancy not to mention Mary’s outrageous and blasphemous claim that the baby’s father is the Holy Spirit, in other words, God. Mary is yet one more woman whose story is not believed! And there’s more! In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, there are all kinds of shady characters: the trickster Jacob; David who slept with another man’s wife and then ordered the man murdered to guard his reputation; Tamar who pretended to be a sex worker; and Rahab who was one. Talk about shame!

I’ve been thinking a lot about shame this week. Some would say we feel guilt over something we did, but we feel shame because of who we are. Either way, the words “sham” and “shame” were tossed around earlier this week in the halls of congress and more. “Shame, shame, shame,” we heard shouted. Yet many of us felt a sense of sadness and shame for our country and the arrogant vitriol and partisan hate spewed forth.

Some of you have read or heard Brene Brown talk about shame. We all have shame and we rarely talk about it. Shame is the feeling that we are flawed and unworthy of love. Many women feel shame because they are never thin, young or beautiful enough, and they’re expected to be perfect—all the time being as small, sweet and quiet as possible.

After studying women’s shame for years, Brene Brown had a rude awakening to the shame that men carry as well. As one man told her, with tears in his eyes, “my wife and daughters—the ones you signed all those books for—they’d rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall off. You can say you want us to be vulnerable and real, but c’mon. You can’t stand it. it’s makes you sick to see us like that.” These days there is a phrase for the shame men carry: toxic masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is what happens when we teach boys they can’t express emotion openly, that they have to be tough all the time, or they’ll come across as weak or soft. And all this tough-guy talk can lead to violence as an indicator of power.

We all carry some kind of shame in our walk through life. When everything becomes messy, Joseph has to look past the norms of his society and his own reputation. He gets his calling—he gets his answer in a dream. Like an earlier “dreamer Joseph” in the Hebrew scriptures. Joseph will need to surrender all he thinks he knows about fairness, purity, and justice. By taking Mary as his wife and the mother of a child not his, he becomes the talk of the town, and not in the way he wants. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Joseph’s strong sense of masculinity (in the best sense of the word) allows him to consent to a divine calling and embrace a mess he has not created . . . as one writer puts it, “to love a woman whose story he didn’t understand, to protect a baby he didn’t father, to accept an heir who was not his son.” (Debie Thomas)

We may face shame or vulnerability at Christmas. At times feelings will overtake us. Unmet expectations. Difficult relations. A sadness we can’t explain. A sense that our gift, or our words, or our very being are somehow inadequate.

Nadia Bolz-Weber has written a book called Shameless: A New Reformation. She boldly states that through history the Church has had a negative obsession about sex, patriarchy and purity. Many feel shame about their bodies and sexuality. It is time for us reclaim the heart of the incarnation: God sharing our humanity. Our bodies are good, and sex is a gift of God—something to be honored, cherished, enjoyed, and yes, reverenced with trust and commitment.

Whether it is the state of politics, or the state of our beloved planet, or the state of our bodies and souls, we are Advent people: waiting, hoping, pleading, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

And yet it is into this messy, vulnerable, unfair, mysterious, and scandalous world Christ comes. Emmanuel, God with us.

God with us in the shame and doubt. God with us in the questions and ambivalence. God with us in the disappointments and confusion. God with us in a world or a life that is not turning out how we always thought or hoped it would. Through the imperfect story of Joseph and Mary, and their walk of shame, comes our very salvation and healing.

God is with you this day. God removes your shame and guilt. No walk of shame today! Walk with grace to the table. Hold your head up high. You are a child of God. You are beloved. You are worthy of dignity. And then walk into the world with grace, reverencing all people and all creatures as honored siblings. Let us welcome Emmanuel, God with us.

Inspiration:

“Into the Mess,” Debie Thomas. Journey with Jesus: A Weekly Webzine for the Global Church, 15 December 2019.

Brene Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead