Breaking Promises, Building Relationships

Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17, 3:1-8

            It begins with shame. Have you ever noticed that? The first thing that happens to Adam and Eve after eating the fruit from the tree is that they become ashamed. Their nakedness becomes something needing to be covered. Shame is a powerful thing. It’s one of the most powerful things. It’s so powerful that the fear of being outed as a fraud or being considered anything less than an upstanding citizen tends to exceed the judgment of actually being as bad as you imagine you might be. We are paralyzed by shame, afraid of what the neighbors are thinking; afraid to live in our own skin—private, too private--and our relationships suffer because of it.

            Shame is the harbor of gossip; it’s the dark cave that you live in even as you pretend your life is spent in the light. Shame is powerful. And shame shatters promises and kills relationships—with others, in your work, and even with yourself. Shame is the thing that begs us to put on fancy clothes and to not let anyone—even those closest to us—know us on anything other than the surface level. To risk more than that is terrifying.

            The church is rightly criticized for its hypocrisy on the topic of shame. The church will forever be filled with people who are not perfect—this is fine. You aren’t perfect people. The problem comes when the church is the safe harbor for the same kinds of practices that break promises and shatter relationships everywhere else in the world. The church needs to be the place where all those broken promises are strengthened by one another.
           This is the interconnected web of relationships in which we live and it is built on the foundation of trust with one another. This comes about by being honest with one another, by sharing our experiences and our stories, by not imagining the worst of one another but by sharing our misgivings openly and honestly and explaining the actions of others in the kindest ways. In short, trust comes through vulnerability, and vulnerability is the path out of shame. It’s actually the only way out. If you imagine what is the opposite of shame you might think of honor or glory—this is true—but the path out of shame is paved with vulnerability. You can’t walk from point A to point B without taking that road. And being vulnerable with one another is the only way to have authentic relationships.

So, everything we’re doing today in worship, everything we are called to be as a church—a fellowship of believers in this God we know in Jesus Christ—is grounded on our ability to be vulnerable with one another. We are only as strong as the community that holds us. Adam and Eve discover this when they fall into sin because for the first time they learned fear of the other. When they gained the knowledge of the fruit they discovered judgment not because God was some mean father-figure who didn’t want them to see the world as it truly was, but because when they tasted that knowledge they came face to face with something they couldn’t have known before, something shameful and frightening. They came to understand something they hadn’t counted on. They understood this:

They weren’t enough.

And this simple truth planted the seed of shame in them. Life after Eden is a slow, grinding process of entering into a community to uplift one another because know, now, that we are not enough and the enemy is ourselves--the shame is something that lives inside you and me. Some days the enemy-inside-me is pretty strong. Shame is powerful and it kills our trust in one another to have our best interests at heart. This is why the task of building relationships is never-ending. It will always be at the forefront of what we do. It must be one of the central tenets of a Christian community. This is the way we heal the effects of sin that keep us disconnected, and we can’t afford to be disconnected. The world, for all of its endless attempts at keeping you connected, is only disconnecting us from one another in ever-more creative ways. We don’t know our neighbors anymore; we don't share the same stories, same life-achievements. We don't know what makes each other tick.

So today is, after all, just one day. But little by little, day by day, in interactions with one another we are called to the tough work of relationship-building. It’s not how we are saved, but it is how we are church for one another. It’s how we hold one another—like links in a chain. Today you are part of that chain. Let’s keep at it. Every day. Loving one another as Christ loves us. Leaving shame for vulnerability, trusting in those who might even let us down, but not being ashamed of putting ourselves in that place—caring more for the relationship than our own pride. This is how we ultimately trade disconnection for connection.

It’s slow work. It’s good work. It begins today.