When Shame is Shattered By Love

I’d really like to have coffee with Simon Peter. The “Rock” was Jesus’ best friend and a prominent leader among the disciples. He walked on water with the One who split all of time in half. This man knew the Messiah, knew His favorite foods, the pattern of His gate, the touch of His healing hand. But Peter also fell head first into the darkest pit any one could ever fall into.

Shame.

Maybe you have felt it too – that warm, creepy feeling that tightens around your gut, pulling you deeper and deeper with each cinch into the cavernous dark. Suffocating the very breath out of you, holding you captive, consuming your soul.

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”  Brown, Brené, The Gifts of Imperfection

Shame comes from a disconnect with our creator. Sometimes it starts as a sin or wrong doing and other times it comes as an attack for no reason at all. Either way, shame is an assault on who you are. (Verses guilt, which focuses on what you’ve done). Guilt can fester into shame. And a barrage of lies can set your soul ablaze with shame. This assault is lethal. Shame is a deadly weapon of fear. Fear that you just might not be worthy of God’s gaze.

So as I sit with Peter, the one who denied his connection to Jesus, I want to know how he fell into shame and came back out to do earth-changing Kingdom work. His friend Judas, who committed the same crime, did not make it out of that pit. Judas thought about what he’d done and turned to despair with suffocating agony.

But Peter, Peter wept. He wept bitterly.

Perhaps the tears fell first in the dark alleyway just around the corner, among the rats and discarded trash. His heart nearly exploding through his lungs at the realization of what had just happened. He had rejected the very friend that had filled his soul with a fullness of life barely describable with words. The ache must have buckled his knees. And the shadows, the dark isolation of shame, probably felt like shelter under the weight.

As the darkness encroached and the tears emptied, I wonder if the whisper of Jesus’ words began to breathe over his salty cheeks. Words from a distant memory, splashed upon his soul by a Teacher in a boat about to sink under the weight of the largest load of fish ever seen. Words telling him “Not to fear, come follow Me, you are a fisher of men”.

There are no details of what happened to Peter between his third denial and his one-on-one encounter with the resurrected Jesus. For days he hid in the shadows of shame. I imagine he wrestled between the weight of sin intruding his mind and the truth of freedom that echoed through his heart.  But it is clear that wrestle was immediately settled when Christ called him out of the shadows and stood before him, scars and all. There in that moment, radiant light burst through the darkness, demolishing shame in one breath-taking moment of a love filled gaze.

Social researcher, Brené Brown, says: “The mirror image of shame is love.” A mirrored image is a reflected duplication of an object that appears identical but reversed.* Shame is reversed by love.

The same Kinsman Redeemer, who came for Peter, came for you.  You are identified as a child of God, sealed by the blood of the Lamb. Nothing, can take that identity from you. You can do nothing to remove that title.

Friend, You are worthy, you are redeemed, you are free to dance in the light of love. You are righteousness and purity. You are good and you are lovely. That is who you are. You are not the culmination of sin or of disgraceful mistruths, you are a reflection of Christ Jesus and His love. You’re misguided behaviors can be changed and rectified, but your identity, that is untouchable, you are permanently marked as holy.

There is no condemnation (no shame) for those who are in Christ. None.  (paraphrase mine)

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture….

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing – nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable – absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Romans 8:1 and 8:35-39