From Shame to Sacrament

In the marvelous book The Shack by Paul Young, the Person representing the Holy Spirit asks the main character for help in clearing a patch of land for a garden.  The land is a mess, filled with debris and stones, and it must be cleared of trash and then worked on before anything can be planted in it.  Later, Mackenzie discovers that the patch of land is his soul:  You have to take the time to prepare the soil if you want it to embrace the seed (page 178).

Later on in the book, Mackenzie apologizes to Papa [i.e. God the Father] for having thought so ill of Him/Her for so long.  Then Papa opens Mackenzie's heart and lets him in on a life-changing secret:

Let's say, for example, that I am trying to teach you how not to hide inside of lies...and let's say that I know it will take you forty-seven situations and events before you will actually hear me---that is, before you will hear clearly enough to agree with me and change.  So when you don't hear me the first time, I'm not frustrated or disappointed; I'm thrilled.  Only forty-six more times to go.  And that first time is a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day...you will walk across (189).

 

Jesus came to dwell in our flesh, in our world, so that we could learn to walk with Him step-by-step through this world that we know to His world, the Trinitarian Life that we do not yet know.  And when we get there, His world must be familiar to us; we must feel truly that it is our world --the one in which we belong.  We must feel at home in His world. 

 

So how do we make the transition from this world to His?  He is walking us home, and along the way, our shame is the lesson that allows us to "let go" of the world we know -- the world of ambition, of screaming and manipulation, the world of inflicting pain on others so that we can get our own way-- to the way of love, of respect, of waiting for the other.  As Richard Rohr puts it, "There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes."

 

The Father and the Spirit entered creation (once we had shut them out) again in the flesh of Jesus Incarnate -- born of the Virgin.  They were present in His birth, in His life, and in His death.  And His birth, life, and death was ours -- He took on our existence on this earth in order that, united with Him, we might take on His existence in the Father and the Spirit. 

 

Our sins, our shame tend to push us away from the holiness, the goodness, the peace and the joy of the Holy Trinity.  But He is not satisfied with our shame; He could not wait for us to come back to Him -- He went after us with passion in the Person of Jesus.  And in Mary Magdalene, in Matthew the tax-collector, in the lepers, the blind, the lame, in the woman at the well, He said, "Come with Me; I will bring you home."  Martin Luther said that God makes theologians by sending them to hell.  What we learn in hell is that we want out.  We learn desperation for life, for healing, for salvation.  We learn our need for a Savior when we learn we cannot save ourselves.  We don't need theology; we need deliverance from our shame.

 

Like the sinners in the Gospel, our shame becomes the sacrament of finding our Savior, the One sent from God to lift us up out of the pit of darkness and despair.  Once we taste the joy of Life, we can never again descend into the pit of despair.  Once we are covered with the mantle of joy, we can never again return to the chains of slavery.  Our God is a patient God; only He knows how long it will take us to finally clasp His hand and say, "I am home!"