(52) Honor and Shame

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Honor and Shame, originally shared on October 1, 2020. It was the fifty-second video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What is more important in life, appearance or reality? Is what people think of us or who we really are that is more important?

   Has that changed during the pandemic, when most of our social interactions are communicated through our superficial appearance, with fewer of the normal social cues, like body language and context, coming into play?

   Today, we’re going to share with you some ideas on how to live a genuine life. 

   This is the text for our 52^nd Streams of Living Water video, which we do twice a week, so it’s been 6 months. How is that possible? We hope they have been meaningful.

   One of our members of the church I served in San Dimas worked for an organization that sent English teachers to China. They were all Christians.

   Christian missionaries from other countries are not allowed in China. In many ways, that has led to a stronger, Chinese Christian Church, even under persecution. The Chinese government, however, is desperate for English language teachers, so Christian English language teachers are as close to missionaries to Chine as we are likely to get for awhile.

   There are limitations, however. Teachers may have a Bible on their desk at school, but they are not allowed to say anything about it unless they are asked. Teachers may go to church, but they are not allowed to say anything about it unless they are asked, and then only in vague terms. There is no proselytizing allowed.

   Our member had been a teacher but was promoted to being a supervisor. Once a year, she went to China to meet with the organization’s teachers there.

   One year, she was called in to the office of a regional official of the Chinese government. One of their teachers had crossed the line.

   The official lectured our member for hours and finally, at the end, he said, “Look. We’ll pretend that we don’t know what you are doing, if you pretend that you’re not doing it.”

   Honor and shame.

   Not that I’m singling out China. It’s just one of many places with the same culture: honor and shame, appearance over reality.

   I would say that our culture is primarily based on achievement of measurable factors such as the money we make, the car we drive, our education, where we live, and so on.

   But, many other cultures are based on honor and shame, including some traditional cultures in the Middle East today, where if, for example, a young woman dishonors her family by getting pregnant without being married, it is her brothers duty to kill her.

   Or, in much of the culture of the New Testament.

   Remember when Joseph, the earthly father sometimes called step-father of Jesus, found out that his fiancé Mary was pregnant, and he knew it wasn’t his.

   Though, “fiancé” is much too inadequate a description of their relationship status. We read that they were “betrothed”. The status of Joseph and Mary’s relationship was past engagement, or agreement. Betrothal was a legal relationship that was not yet marriage, but could not be broken without a divorce. It often lasted a year, and the couple remained virgins, living with their respective families, during that time.

*Matthew 1:18-21

   Mary was pregnant and Joseph could legally have had her stoned to death. But, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.  But, then, an angel showed up.

   Honor and shame.

   Or when Jesus performed his first miracle, changing water into wine.

*John 2:1-11

   Did Jesus just want to make sure his guests could party?  

   No. Honor and shame. He wanted to help the host avoid a major social embarrassment and, as a result, lose the respect of his peers and his standing in his society.

   It’s been said that miracles are not exceptions to the natural order, they are a restoration of the natural order to the way things were intended to be, the way they ought to be.

   And, perhaps this miracle is a metaphor for God’s extravagant grace, God’s un-earned love for God’s people. We all run out of what we can do to justify ourselves. God takes our shame to the cross. Apart from God we can do nothing, and there is no satisfaction in life.

   It’s interesting to read these stories because they seem so foreign to the values of our culture. Do people in our culture think more about retaining their honor or about how to reduce standards to conform to their behavior? Do we think about shame at all, or do we above all else not want to seem judgmental?

  What do you think? Do we only value success as our culture defines it? Do we even think about honor in our culture, and do we have a capacity for shame? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

   When I was in 9^th-grade, I admit that I had a bit of a temper. An incident from that time is still burned into my sister and brothers’ memories. I’ll be on a Zoom call with them this afternoon and, if you were there, all you would have to mention are the words Chicago and chair and they could tell you the whole story.

   We were on vacation and in a hotel room in Chicago. It was Sunday and we were getting ready to go to church.

   Ready to go, I presented myself in my vacation clothes, shorts and a t-shirt.

   “We need to leave. Where are your church clothes?”, my parents said.

   “I’m ready. This is what I’m wearing,” I answered.

   “You’re not wearing that to church,” my parents said.

   “This is what I’m wearing. We’re on vacation,” I said.

   “You’re not wearing that to church,” my parents retorted.

   Things started to escalate.

   “I am wearing this to church. God sees the heart. God doesn’t care what I wear to church,” I theologized.

   “Well, we care what you wear to church. Now get changed. We need to leave now,” they responded, practically.

   At some point, a chair might have been thrown. Did I mention that I had a temper?

   But, see, I was right. And, my parents were right also.

   How do we show awe and respect to God as a public witness?

   What do we show people when we share the Christian life, that sets us apart from other lives? How do we demonstrate the singular nature of the life of faith in a living relationship with the one true living God?

   What to we say, “Come visit my church?”, “Come hear our pastor?”, “Come listen to our choir? Our band?

   How do people come to an actual living relationship with God? Where are the mentors in the Christian life for new believers, people fresh out of destructive lifestyles and spiritual darkness?

   God is Ultimate Reality. How much reality are we willing to know and embody as God’s people?

   We can’t give away what we don’t have. Who are we as the people of God, right here, what now, and what do we really care about?

   We are at a point in the pandemic where over a million people have died of COVID-19 world-wide that we know of. Who knows how honest other countries are at listing their dead? It would be anathema for any one at any level in an honor and shame culture, including the country as a whole, to admit to any negative outcomes. California is the first state in our country to go over 700,000 confirmed cases, and almost 13,000 people have died.

   Yet, leaders all over the country are still having to beg people to do the simplest things to prevent the spread. Do we have no honor, no shame? Are we unwilling to do what is required to show care for a brother or sister?

   The Dodgers are in the play-offs. They beat the Milwaukee Brewers last night. They are among the boys of October, and look good for going all the way.

   Leo Durocher, coach of the Brooklyn Dodgers once said, “Nice guys finish last.” He meant it.

   Garry Shandling, the comedian, in one of my favorite sports quotes, said, “Nice guys finish first. If you don't know that, then you don't know where the finish line is.”

   This life is not all there is. There is Judgement and a life that is to come.

   Our creeds, our core belief statements, declare that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead, that there will be the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

   That’s the finish line. That is the scale by which we measure a genuine life.

   It’s lived in response to God’s grace, God’s unearned love for us and for our welfare.

*Romans 5:6-8

   Paul describes the center around which this life revolves.

   Turn away from your Sin, your shame, what is separating you from God. Christ died for you so that you can receive God’s gift of faith, a living relationship with the one true living God, because you can’t give away what you don’t have.

   Seek the mentorship of a Christian you respect, and be a mentor to someone who needs something genuine in their life, the genuine love of God.

   This is the only way to live a genuine life: by giving it away.

   We all, in a sense, live lives of honor and shame.

   Our shame, and Christ’s honor.

   Let us live lives that are genuine, to the glory of God.