In a 2016 article called “On Ash Wednesday, The Power of Scripture,” one of my editor predecessors, Charlotte Hand Greeson, lifts up the opening line of the Ash Wednesday collect as a meaningful testament to God’s love: “You despise nothing you have made.” I appreciate her theological insight about this prayer because she underscores the importance of grounding our understanding of sin and repentance in God’s unconditional love. Yet I find the very appearance of this phrase in The Book of Common Prayer heartbreaking.

That Christians before us—and probably among us today—would need to hear that God does not despise them indicates to me the struggle that people have experienced before a portrait of a vengeful, hate-filled, or domineering God. That people would need to hear this as they enter Lent suggests that this portrait has held particular potency in Christians’ imaginations during the Lenten season.

I can understand why. In a season cast as penitential, in which people are called to worship with recitations of “Thou shalt nots” and confessions of sin and then sent back into the world to fast, the line between sin and sinner can grow thin in Christians’ minds. Grace can seem fleeting, penitence never done or satisfied, and God reluctant to forgive or have mercy. When narratives like these shape Christians’ Lenten journeys, we can become mired not only in guilt, but also in fear and shame.

I do not believe that the Lenten journey should be a shaming one. I believe that the invitation into a holy Lent is an invitation into a shame-freeing Lent. While Lent is not devoid of shame, this season provides several liberating ways of dealing with shame. In this article, I want to highlight these shame-freeing sites for Christian formation in Lent with the hope that the prayers of present and future generations may rise without fear to our unconditionally loving God.

Understanding Shame

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.” It is an emotion that is part of being human, Brown indicates, but one that can compel us to turn against ourselves or our neighbors in an effort to alleviate rejection, isolation, and estrangement. Brown describes shame as a “social emotion” that needs “empathy” and “compassion” to loosen its grip and debunk its untruths when we would rather hide, bury, and not breathe a word of it to another soul.

When an empathetic response is not guaranteed, though, showing our shame to someone else can feel like a serious risk. Because shame gets attached to who we are rather than to what we’ve done or what has been done to us, as Brown notes, it puts a lot on the line in simply naming it to another person. Additionally, because empathy requires facing and acknowledging our own shame in order to meet someone in theirs, it can also feel too costly to give.

Shame Stories in Lenten Traditions

We don’t have to look far in Lenten traditions to find sites where shame stories can flare up. Human sinfulness is writ large in the Ash Wednesday liturgy as well as in the call to practice Lenten disciplines in The Book of Common Prayer. It seeps into the imposition of ashes as they symbolize “penitence” (p. 265). It swells in the lengthy “Litany of Penitence” for numerous actions, behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that we are instructed to name as sins and claim as “our own fault” (p. 267). The vision of God that appears near the end of this litany is one characterized by “anger” at us for these sins (p. 268) and whom we should seek to “please” with “pure and holy” lives (p. 269). The disciplines prescribed for “a holy Lent” combine “repentance” with “self-examination” and the complicated idea of “self-denial” (p. 265). These prayers and practices can give rise to stories like the following:

• When God looks at me, all God sees is my sin
• When God looks at me, all God sees is wretchedness
• When God looks at me, all God feels is anger and displeasure
• In order for God to see me, I must identify with my sinfulness and reject who I am
• In order for God to see me, I must feel ashamed

When we believe such stories, shame morphs into a theological requirement for forgiveness or salvation. Not only does this produce a portrait of God as limited or lacking in empathy and compassion for people entrenched in a sin-compromised world, but it also creates barriers to giving and receiving empathy and compassion from one another.

Brené Brown says in Atlas of the Heart, “Shame is not a compass for moral behavior. It’s much more likely to drive destructive, hurtful, immoral, and self-aggrandizing behavior than it is to heal it. Why? Because where shame exists, empathy is almost always absent.”

If shame isn’t a compass for moral behavior, neither can it be a theological compass for relationship with God and one another. If God is above all a God of mercy, compassion, and steadfast love, according to scripture, then shaming is neither redemptive nor reflective of who God has revealed Godself to be.

A Shame-freeing Lent

How might we let go of stories of a shaming God and of shame-inducing practices in the Lenten season? How might we experience a shame-freeing Lent instead? I see three key sites in our Lenten tradition where we find stories and practices that can meet us in shame and dispel its power: Jesus’s death and resurrection, baptism, and reconciliation.

1. Jesus’s Story: A Counternarrative to Shame

The primary focal point of Lent, according to the Ash Wednesday liturgy, is the Triduum, “the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 264). Lent is designed to draw our attention to the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection, and in this story, we find an amazing counternarrative to shame.

In the death of Jesus, we find a God who experiences the profound shame of Roman imperial crucifixion. As Raquel St. Clair notes in Call and Consequences, “[the cross] . . . symbolizes perhaps the most extreme example of dishonor to be found in ancient Mediterranean society.” The crucifixion of Jesus shows us, therefore, God identifying with human beings in our shame rather than keeping Godself at a distance.

In Jesus’s resurrection, we find a God who unravels the shame of the crucifixion by issuing a resounding “No” to the Roman imperial condemnation and dehumanization of Jesus. In Enfleshing Freedom, Shawn Copeland says, “In his [the lynched Jesus’s] raised body, a compassionate God interrupts the structures of death and sin, of violation and oppression. A divine praxis of solidarity sets the dynamics of love against the dynamics of domination — recreating and regenerating the world, offering us a new way of being in relation to God, to others, to self.” God disrupts Jesus’s shame story with rehumanizing new life and invites all people into that new, rehumanizing life with Jesus.

2. Baptism into a Body: Shame Stories Overturned

The second key focal point of Lent that the Ash Wednesday liturgy identifies is “prepar[ation] for Holy Baptism” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 265). Baptism incorporates us into the body of Christ, as Paul indicates in I Corinthians 12:13, and being part of this body transforms every member’s relationship to shame.

In the body of Christ, members whom the world might deem “less honorable” or “less respectable” receive “greater honor” and “greater respect” (I Cor 12:23, NRSVUE). As Dale Martin explains in The Corinthian Body, Paul’s characterization of the body of Christ subverts inequitable social hierarchies that would assign less value to certain members in order to secure more value for others. In this way, God’s ordering of this community turns shame stories on their heads, creating a body in which social mechanisms of shaming are interrupted. In the body of Christ, those who might be shamed in society are to be met not only with inclusion instead of exclusion, but with deep reverence that reflects their inherent, God-given worth.

Baptism reminds us that we are not alone as members of this body. It shows us that shame is no barrier for God or for inclusion in this body. It also calls us to be a body that continually includes new members and overturns shame stories in the community and in the social order.

3. Reconciliation: Restoring rather than Shaming

A third focal point of Lent mentioned in the Ash Wednesday liturgy is “reconcil[iation]” among church members (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 265). Because reconciliation in the body of Christ aims at “restor[ing] . . . fellowship,” it is a process that runs counter to shaming.

Reconciliation practiced well creates space for addressing sin and repairing relationships within the community so that members can meet one another in sites of shame with compassion and empathy (for a helpful source on the importance of reparative work, see Jennifer Harvey’s book Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation). In seeking reconciliation, members of the body of Christ bear witness to God’s refusal to let sin or shame determine who we are. Reconciliation does not ignore sin or its effects but opens space for “repentance,” as the Ash Wednesday liturgy says, or turning around from hurtful, destructive actions and toward the life and love of God. “Shame,” Brené Brown says, “corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better” (Atlas of the Heart). Reconciliation undermines that corrosive work of shame in the body of Christ.

Conclusion

Jesus’s death and resurrection, baptism, and reconciliation offer powerful Lenten stories and practices for people who know shame. They announce God’s unending empathy and compassion for us, which have the power to liberate us from getting mired in shame. God’s loving presence with us also empowers us to cultivate empathy and compassion for one another when shame rears its head in the church and in the world.

What difference might these images of a shame-freeing God make in our Lenten journeys this year? How might a God of unconditional empathy and love transform our relationships to shame? What might we pray? With whom might we walk in solidarity with the empathy we ourselves have received? What shame-freeing stories might we tell and live?

Formation Activity: Interrogating Sin & Shame with Luke

If you are interested in a practical way to explore shame theologically in community, consider doing a Bible study that investigates and interrogates how sin and shame figure in Luke’s gospel. I recommend examining Luke in particular for two reasons: 1) the words “sin” and “sinner” show up more often in Luke than in the other three gospels; and 2) as numerous biblical scholars have noted, Luke often uses the term “sinner” in ways that call into question the validity and meaning of that term. This study can work well for adult groups in a single formation session or over multiple sessions.

Here are a few ideas you might try:

• Search for every occurrence of “sin,” “sinner,” and “shame” in Luke and discuss what you find; it may be helpful to search in more than one Bible translation as well
• Talk about the different meanings that “sin” and “sinner” carry and how shame might enter into each
• Examine what Jesus is saying and doing when the topics of “sin” and “sinner” appear: How does he treat and respond to people?
• Where do you notice shame in the stories? Where do you notice compassion and empathy?

References

Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. New York: Random House, 2021. See pp. 134 – 142, 147.

Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010 (second edition available 2023). See pp. 124 – 128.

Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014 (second edition available 2020).

Martin, Dale B. The Corinthian Body. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. See especially pp. 92 – 96.

St. Clair, Raquel A. Call and Consequences: A Womanist Reading of Mark. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. See especially pp. 137 – 144.

Featured image is by Alicia Quan on Unsplash