​Without Shame or Fear

It seems like so much of our public life is rooted in shame. Brené Brown, a New York Times Bestselling author, professor, and CEO of “The Daring Way”, makes a distinction between guilt and shame. She distinguishes, “guilt is what we feel when we think we’ve done something bad, shame is what we feel when made to think that we are bad.” Shame is corrosive and hurtful, and very rarely leads to transformed behavior. Indeed, more often than not shame leads to greater disfunction as someone begins to act out of shame rather than hope or self-compassion.

Anyone who has ever been made to feel ashamed knows the impact; that awful feeling in the pit our our stomachs can grow and distort our perceptions of ourselves and our place in the world.

We cannot build the world God imagines with shame. We simply can’t.

Our feelings of fear can also become viral and lead us to shut off from the world in pursuit of comfort and safety. We fear change. We fear the other. We fear disruptions to our lives. Sometimes, we fear those who threaten our security. We can so easily forget that our true security lies in God, becoming vulnerable to those who would prey on our fears for their own power or profit.

One of my favorite prayers in Advent is the preface to several of our Eucharistic prayers: That when Christ shall come again in power and great triumph, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.

That idea is so important to us that we place it at the center or our worship, in the prayer over communion. Our faith leads us not only to await the coming of Christ, but to realize a state of being where God holds us in perfect peace with waters untroubled by the corrosive presence of shame or fear.

In Advent, we name it. Fear and shame are not of God; they keep us inward-focussed and stuck. Today, we look forward to welcoming the one who tells us not to be afraid, and not to fall for the corrosive idea that we are anything less than beloved of God.

The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens, Dean