sermons
Summer at Reservoir
Moral Stain and the Scandal of Grace
Steve Watson
Jul 14, 2024
So I’ve been intrigued by this thing I have noticed over the years.
I’ll be driving in traffic or riding my bike, and a fellow Boston driver will do their thing. Speed up and cut me off. Or turn right in front of me without using their directional. And I’ll look over at them and not even say anything, not even honk my horn or put my fist up if I’m riding my bike, just make a face, like: hey, what are you doing?
And then the guy – sorry, my fellow men, it’s just about always a guy – the guy will lay on his horn like he’s offended. Or he’ll jam his middle finger into the air and cuss me out with his biggest, angriest, most offended voice.
And I’m just wondering: why are you so angry when you did the thing, no one else? And I just looked at you, like hey, I was hoping to get home alive today.
I’ve developed this theory over the years for this, which is that in a lot of people, and maybe especially in a lot of men, shame moves really fast to anger. Shame can go straight to anger.
Someone feels like an idiot because they did something reckless behind the wheel, and someone else had the indecency to notice that and look at them, and that creates this like half second of shame, or even possible shame. And we hate that.
We’ve felt insecure, scared, inadequate before and we don’t know what to do with those feelings, we hate shame, so we go somewhere that feels less vulnerable, that feels easier, more familiar. We go to anger.
I’ve heard this validated by experts. I’ve heard that when men in particular experience shame, we tend to shut down or get pissed off.
And I’ve wondered a lot if this isn’t a much bigger problem than just road rage. I feel like our society is filled with people who are carrying around shame, or guilt, or some other moral stain – I’ll say more what I mean by that in a minute. And we don’t know what to do with these things, so we’re shutting down or we’re lashing out.
And since I’m reading the Bible’s book of Acts this summer, along with the brilliant theologian Willie James Jennings, I thought of one of the dominant figures of the early church story. This angry, violent man who’s got a lot of shame and guilt and moral stain to reckon with. But the good news of Jesus empowers a better way for him than shutting down or lashing out.
So I want to talk about this story, the story of Saul, also known as Paul, and what God helps him do with his shame and guilt. I’m calling this talk Moral Stain and the Scandal of Grace.
Several bits of Bible today. We’ll start with two. First from Acts:
Acts 8:1-3 (Common English Bible)
Saul was in full agreement with Stephen’s murder.
At that time, the church in Jerusalem began to be subjected to vicious harassment. Everyone except the apostles was scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.
2 Some pious men buried Stephen and deeply grieved over him.
3 Saul began to wreak havoc against the church. Entering one house after another, he would drag off both men and women and throw them into prison.
I read this passage a couple of weeks ago when I gave this sermon, What Love Looks Like, and we talked about where love can take us in hard times. This was the context of those hard times, a time of vicious harassment. And the worst of the harassers is this very religious, very angry guy named Saul. He gets introduced here in Acts like he’s going to be the big villain of the story. But within a chapter, there’s a big surprise. Saul not only joins the Jesus movement, he becomes one of its biggest ambassadors and most creative thinkers.
Something like 20 years later in one of his letters that ends up in the Bible, he writes this:
I Corinthians 15:9-10 (Common English Bible)
9 I’m the least important of the apostles. I don’t deserve to be called an apostle, because I harassed God’s church.
10 I am what I am by God’s grace, and God’s grace hasn’t been for nothing. In fact, I have worked harder than all the others—that is, it wasn’t me but the grace of God that is with me.
I’m the least important. I don’t deserve.
I used to think Paul was just being dramatic or sort of humble bragging.
But now I hear shame. Guilt says:
I did something wrong.
Shame says:
I am something wrong. There’s something wrong with me.
And Paul’s owning that. There’s something wrong in my past. I’m shocked by where I am now. I’m the least important. I don’t deserve. Shame.
Some people say by the way that all shame is bad, that all shame is toxic. But I don’t think so. Shame evolved for a reason. It’s a kind of warning bell to not become the kind of person who lives badly, who does bad things.
When we say about someone that they are shameless, it’s not a compliment. We’re saying they have no moral compass, that they don’t care.
And in Paul’s case, he came by this feeling honestly. Paul/Saul by the way, same person. Saul was his birth name, a Jewish name. But he was a Roman citizen too, a bicultural person, and Paul was his Roman name. That’s all. I’ll use them interchangeably.
Saul has this well known, reactionary, problematic past. Now we all have reasons for what we do, all of us. Even Saul, he didn’t wake up one day and say to himself:
who can I harass? What group of people can I make miserable, even kill one of their leaders?
No, he was a diaspora Jew, part of a marginalized people group, and he had a passion to protect his people, protect his culture, protect their faith. And when a new movement sprung up from within that faith – this way of Jesus, he wanted it to not ruin them. So he went on the attack.
Actually, totally understandable. But in his case, also misguided and violent. And the world needed him to find a better way.
This is always the case when we fall for the myth of redemptive violence, when we think getting rid of someone through violence will solve our problems. We don’t know much about yesterday’s news yet, so I don’t have much to say here. But it seems there was an assassination attempt on one of our presidential candidates, Donald Trump. And much as I resent that man and what he stands for, the way of Jesus says that violence is not the way. Whatever is sick in him is something sick in our nation too, and it needs healing. God have mercy on our country in what is going to be a hard summer and hard fall in our politics. But we have to do so much better than this too.
Saul, recognizing this, tells the truth about himself.
I was so wrong,
he says.
So he tells the truth about himself –
I’m the least of the leaders in this movement. I don’t deserve to be here.
There’s shame here, but look at the miracle, Saul isn’t shutting down or lashing out. He’s doing something different. He’s engaged, and he’s telling the truth.
Grace does that. Grace helps us tell the truth about ourselves.
I’ve been drawn over the years to friendships and pastoral relationships with people in recovery. Because people doing recovery right are good at telling the truth. Step 1 in the 12 steps is this: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or whatever the problem is) —that our lives had become unmanageable.
Grace – knowing we are valued, we are wanted, we are loved – helps us tell that kind of truth. Grace – being valued, wanted, loved, makes it safe enough to be brave and tell the truth about ourselves.
It wasn’t easy in the family I grew up in for people to tell the truth. There was a lot of shutting down and a lot of lashing out instead. But I’ve been learning this skill over the years, so much better than shutting down or lashing out. And thank God, I’ve had a lot of grace – from the loving God we know in Jesus Christ and from a lot of people in my life too.
So now I find myself saying – in friendships and around Reservoir too –
hey, this is hard to say, but why do this if we’re not going to tell the truth? That’s what we’re here for, right?
Because the truth will set us free, friends. Always, even if it’s hard at first. And grace invites us to tell the truth about ourselves, whatever it is.
Let’s read another bit of Saul’s story.
Acts 9:1-6 (Common English Bible)
9 Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest,
2 seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
3 During the journey, as he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven encircled him.
4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why are you harassing me?”
5 Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus, whom you are harassing,” came the reply.
6 “Now get up and enter the city. You will be told what you must do.”
Saul begins to move from shame, through guilt, into owning a new direction for his life. Grace empowers responsibility.
Jesus says:
Saul, why are you harassing me? Not why are you harassing the leaders of the church, but me?
You’re hurting my body,
Jesus says. And Paul was somehow blinded for a couple of days. He had to discover there was something wrong with him. He didn’t just need to knock it off, he needed to get right inside.
So God calls a member of the Jesus movement, a man named Ananais, to go see Saul and to restore his sight, and to begin the process of welcoming him into the community. Ananais doesn’t want to do it – he tells God he’s afraid of this man. But God assures him,
he’s changing, you’ll be OK, go to him.
And this does two things for Saul.
He experiences love and care from a member of this movement he’s harassed. That helps tend to his shame. He learns he’s wanted, he’s not beyond repair.
But it also holds him accountable for his guilt. He’s got to prove he’s safe now. He has to seek forgiveness, God’s and theirs. And he has to make amends too. He has to earn their trust, which puts him on a growth journey.
Saul realizes that as someone who has done harm to Jesus and harm to the people following Jesus, it’s his responsibility now to take on the message of this good news and the well being of this community, to the point that it will cost him.
See, shame and guilt are there for a reason. They can have a point. But they’re never the end. They’re there as wake up calls to get us to take responsibility for our lives.
I’ve counseled parents before when their kid has done something bad to try to turn down the shame but turn up the guilt. Cause you don’t want your kid hating themselves and shutting down when they’ve done wrong, just thinking:
I’m a bad person. I can’t change.
Instead, own the guilt. And then in the recognition that they’ve done wrong, you want the kid to learn what it looks like to receive grace, a second chance, and what it means to move from there to take responsibility. To own making things right and doing better.
Fault is really not an interesting word. Because what matters in the end isn’t measuring how much we’re at fault, it’s that we own our lives and keep doing better.
With all the road rage stuff I opened with, I don’t really care if I’m on my bike and drivers cut me off and they feel good or bad about themselves, they say sorry or not. Their shame or guilt is really irrelevant to me. I just want them to drive right. I want to get home alive. I want them to be responsible, just like they’d want the same from me.
Grace does that. It empowers responsibility.
This is true even for things that we may or may not have done, but we feel kind of second hand implicated in through our ancestors, or the groups we’re part of. This is part of what I mean by moral stain – not just our personal wrongdoing, but the bad stuff we feel somehow connected to or stained by.
Just recently, I listened to the serial podcast on the torture of prisoners at Guantanomo, and it shook me. Because instead of just blaming other people – like those bad military men and women, or that Bush administration, or whatever, and feeling smug that someone else did all that stuff, I was like: my country did this.
Most of my religion approved of it or stayed silent. And at no point in the first decade of this century did I make it any part of my cause to try to stop the torture of people by my government. I didn’t approve of it, but I ignored it. I didn’t say or do anything.
That’s moral stain, to realize you’re connected to a big harm. And I think that in this age of awakening to greater societal harms, some of us feel this a lot. And this too can cause us to shut down or lash out, or to kind of stay stuck in shame or guilt. But in the end, that’s not the way.
This kind of moral stain also calls for telling the truth. To say, here’s how I’m connected to this harm. And it calls for taking responsibility. As a citizen of this country, there’s a lot I can’t do but whatever things I can do, I’m going to try. I’m going to take responsibility for my power, my actions. What I can do, even what small things I can do, to make things right.
Friends, I’ve got one more thing I feel like I should say, and I’ve struggled a little with exactly how it’s connected, but it feels important to me, so hang with me for a couple more minutes, OK?
Reading Paul’s life, we see how the grace of God helps him tell the truth and take responsibility, which I think is really powerful for him and can be powerful for us too. Grace can help us make apologies we need to make. Grace can help us make new starts in our lives, turn over new leaves. It can empower us to make changes, make amends. All so good.
I think some of how this happens, though, is that the grace of God can give us a new story for our lives, like a new script, a new model for being human.
I got this from an author I respect, someone Grace and I worked with way back in my student ministry days in the 90s. His name is Andy Crouch.
He wrote that a lot of the time we get stuck living our lives through a victim story or a hero’s story.
A victim story is when we get stuck seeing ourselves as too small, too vulnerable, taken advantage of, and done wrong in most situations.
It doesn’t take away the fact that we may have been an actual victim of abuse or a crime or bad treatment, maybe once, maybe repeatedly. If so, this is really important.
But a victim narrative is when we get stuck assuming this will always be the case. So and so will never agree to this. I’ve tried before and it didn’t work. This is above my pay grade. Someone else is responsible. People who’ve been done wrong can end up here. People as we’ve seen who have done wrong can too, the people that go straight from shame to anger and last out can be people with perpetual grievances. A lot of our national politics is fueled by this now. In our text, this is Saul when he thinks the Jesus movement is out to harm his culture, his people.
Victim narratives lie, though, by always placing blame on someone else, by making ourselves too small and disempowered, and they fuel resentment and despair. Some of us get stuck here.
Some of us get stuck, though, in hero narratives. We want to perpetually feel good about ourselves. We need to always be right. We assume others are incapable, that it’s our job to know best and fix everything.
So we simplify complicated people and make them into enemies or villains. We endlessly grab the high ground and don’t own our own mistakes. This is Saul when he takes it upon himself to end the Jesus movement through harassment and violence.
Hero narratives lie, though, by making everything cut and dry, black and white. They make ourselves too large and empowered, they fuel ego and pride. And some of us get stuck here too.
Grace we see in the life of Paul gives us a better way.
Grace gives us the chance to live more by the model of a rescue story.
A rescue story says I’m not only a victim. With the right help, things could get better. And a rescue story acknowledges that I am mostly not the hero of my own story. I too need help in all kinds of ways.
And so a rescue story hopes and prays for God to help and save. A rescue story looks for the help of God and friends that we all need. Living by a rescue story admits that things don’t always get better the way we want them to, but that things can get better. And sometimes they have already.
Rescue story-attitudes recenter gratitude in our lives. They see the ways we stand on the shoulders of others, that we have benefitted from other’s good struggles, others’ kindness, others’ courage and accomplishments.
Rescue stories don’t take away our agency or responsibility, but they encourage us to ask for and look for help. Rescue stories acknowledge that we need each other, and we need our creator.
Rescue stories are the deepest human stories, of how goodness, kindness, help, grace has saved us.
The grace of God moves Paul into life as a testimony to a rescue story.
And friends, I’m finding this is the good news of Jesus that I need too, that maybe we all need right now.
I’ve been dealing with a few difficult situations, worse than getting cut off in traffic. And I find it’s so easy to get stuck in victim story – feeling under assault, stressed, anxious, low energy, low hope. And now and then I swing toward the hero narrative, like I’ll say or do this grand thing which will fix everything. But none of that really helps in the end.
Instead, I’m trying to lean into the truth of rescue story, to remember the truth of where I am today, and how much grace and help have already transformed my life. And I’m trying to ask for help, to pray for what only God can do, and to accept that sometimes that stuff I can do to make things better is small and partial, but it’s still important.
I wonder if in a lot of our big problems as people, as a country too, if this isn’t exactly what we need. To not lose the gratitude that comes with rescue stories, to not forget how far we’ve come and how much goodness is already in the picture. And to not lose hope that with the help of God and the help of friends, big things have happened, and good and big things can happen again.
Because God’s arm is never too short to save. God is never shut down or pissed off. God is always getting to work on another rescue story. The scandal of grace is still here.
We too are children of God, we too are miracles, and we too share our little lives on this earth, with billions of other creatures with their version of that same story. And so we never know what remarkable goodness is yet possible.