Passing On Shame
Shame has often played a large part of our society and especially our religious circles. We have chosen to shame those who do not measure up to our standards or those standards we understand to be God's. We have done such to make sure people have an impetus to repent of their ways. Along the process, however, we find that shame just does not work that way. Instead of helping those who err to change their ways, it tends to send them in the direction of covering up their shame, ignoring what they have done, or breaking off communication with those who would shame them. If the purpose of shaming someone is to change their behavior, we need to switch gears.
Nowhere does shame reside more strongly in our religious culture than in issues of sexuality. Long ago Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his book, The Scarlet Letter, as a depiction of shaming as a not so successful strategy, as well as falling short of responding to the realities of life and hypocrisy that so often go along with it. When we turn to the Bible, we hear mixed messages on shame, but when it comes to Jesus, we find that he virtually disavows its use. That message begins with Matthew's birth narrative.
Matthew chapter one takes up Jesus' birth story at the conclusion of his review of Jesus' genealogy. We find mentions of several women in the genealogy, which should make us pay special attention, as they would normally be skipped over. We find Tamar, wife to one of Judah's sons who died and left her a widow. She became a widow once again with the death of Judah's second son who took her to wife. When Judah refused to marry her to his third son, she ended up pregnant by him. We find another woman mentioned in the genealogy, Rahab, who was both a harlot and a foreigner. Then we find Ruth, another widow in the Jesus' genealogy, who was also an immigrant. Next, we find Bathsheba, the widow of an immigrant taken forcibly by King David and subsequently become part of Jesus' line.
It is from this heritage including women who found themselves variously abused or in desperate situations that Matthew introduces us to Mary's pregnancy. Mary and Joseph had become betrothed, a legal engagement which could only be broken by divorce. While they were still awaiting the date of their wedding, Mary was found to be pregnant.
While we might conclude from reading Luke's account of Jesus' birth that Mary was still a virgin, there is nothing substantial in Matthew's account to lend credibility to that notion. The text simply tells us that God's Spirit had acted in allowing her to become pregnant by whatever means. As far as Joseph knew, Mary had been unfaithful to him. Matthew tells us that he found out she was pregnant and decided not to bring shame upon her, but to divorce her as quietly as possible so she could get on with her life and he with his.
The legal code was not quite so gracious, although allowances could be made in regard to how it was applied. By rights, Mary could have been stoned for being pregnant and not married. That was not necessarily how the law was always applied, but it was a possible course of action. It would be the course to take for Joseph to protect his own honor in the community. It would be the course to take as a statement to other girls of their responsibility to remain chaste before marriage.
Joseph, however, chose not to embark upon that path. He chose not to cast shame upon Mary, but to end the marriage quietly in order to cause her the least amount of harm. For Matthew, this was the result of Joseph's righteousness. He was unwilling to cause harm and shame. He resolved that shame would not be of benefit to anyone. It would not advance any just cause. It would simply make a situation that was less than ideal a full degree worse.
We don't know how long Joseph took to ponder what course of action he would take. Matthew just tells us that he came to the conclusion not to hurt Mary when God intervened in his plans. In a dream, God's messenger came to Joseph to tell him to proceed with the marriage. God laid claim upon the child. Joseph was to take Mary, accept the child, and name him Jesus with the understanding that this Jesus would enact the salvation of the nation from their sins.
There is more to that simple argument than normally meets the eye for us. In the ancient world of the Near East, naming a child was more than giving that being a moniker by which they could be called. The process of naming a child was the right of a father, for it was also a statement of paternity. Naming the child Jesus, Joseph would be claiming this child as his own. He would accept paternity with all of its rights, privileges, and responsibilities. This was an act akin to our process of legal adoption by which a child comes under the protection and full responsibility of their new parents.
More to the point, Joseph was told to assume full paternity of this child, while he knew nothing in regard to the child's parentage. Rather than shaming Mary or simply refusing to shame her, God called Joseph to go one step further. God called Joseph to remove her shame and take the child Jesus as though he were his own.
It was a righteous or just thing for Joseph to simply put Mary away quietly. It was a way to grant her a modicum of respect in the midst of her shame. Accepting God's proposal for going through with the marriage and accepting the child as his own was a whole different ballgame.
People would still talk. We can be sure the local gossips were aware that Jesus would come to term before the marriage was official. Mary might run away and hide with her cousin for a while, but there would still be those who counted the months and put two and two together. Joseph accepted all of that as part of the package. In taking Mary as his wife, he sheltered her from as much of the shame talk as possible, but he also carried part of the same burden of those accusations.
Matthew would have us know this was the context into which Jesus was born. The whole village knew he was conceived and born much too early. They knew the shame under which he was born and reared. In the words quoted by God's messenger, a young girl would bear a son and he would be known as God's presence among us. God was willing to enter the world under the cloud of that story of shame.
It was a shame Jesus bore, but it had no bearing on the quality of his life, his ministry, and his relationship with God. Shame was the reality under which he grew up in Nazareth, but shame had no place in God's regard. It was a human invention wielded as a weapon of exclusion toward his parents, but it was not a reality to which God paid attention.
Setting aside concerns over Mary's virginity, we Jesus was born amid a cloud of shame which was not his own. He accepted that cloud of shame. God blessed it, accepting Jesus as son and instructing Joseph to do the same.
Shame does not work out God's purposes. Shame is not a category that actually advances God's purposes and designs for our living. More often than not, it simply gets in the way. We use it to exclude, which God accepted it to join with us in our existence as broken and failed creatures. Rather than focus on shame and who should feel ashamed, isn't it time we took a pass on shame and got on with the gospel of God's grace, instead? That would be more in keeping with God's purposes.
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