Posts Tagged ‘Psalm 71:1-14’

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Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 71:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 12:20-36

When praying with our scriptures appointed for this evening, one word kept grabbing my attention and has stayed with me now for several days.  It is something that I have spent a lifetime trying to evade but continues to show up and rear its head at me no matter how much I try to control it, manipulate it, and cover it up.  I have a personal and intimate knowledge of it, yet I know it to be a pervasive reality in all of humanity and I suspect that every one of us here has an intimate knowledge of this word.  The word is:  shame.

Wikipedia defines shame as:  a painful, social emotion that can be seen as resulting “…from comparison of the self’s action with the self’s standards…,” but which may equally stem from comparison of the self’s state of being with the ideal social context’s standard. Both the comparison and standards are enabled by socialization. Though usually considered an emotion, shame may also variously be considered an affect, cognition, state, or condition.[i]

From the beginning of the canon of scripture, it only takes three chapters for shame to appear in the human condition.  The last sentence of Genesis chapter two reads:  “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”  In the course of chapter three we read that Adam and Eve act on their temptation to do the one thing their creator has told them they must not do, eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Their eyes are opened and they hide themselves.  When God moves through the garden and cannot find them he calls out to them, “Where are you?”  The man answers, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And from that moment, shame enters the human condition and continues to show up continually throughout our existence. Read More