Lectionary readings
Brené Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and a leading researcher on shame and vulnerability, tells the story of an encounter with a man in a yellow golf jacket. At a book signing, a couple came up to Brown to get four books of hers signed, and as the wife turned to leave, the man said that he wanted to stay and ask Brown a question. He expressed to her how much he agreed with Brown’s research findings on shame, and of the importance to acknowledge and move past shame, to reach out and share stories. But, he wondered, where were the stories of men? When Brown explained that she only studied women, he muttered, “Well, that's convenient.” Then he went on to tell his story: “We [men] have shame, we have deep shame, but when we reach out and tell our stories, we get the emotional [bleep] beat out of us. And before you say anything about those mean fathers and those coaches and those brothers and those bully friends, my wife and three daughters, the ones who you just signed the books for, they had rather see me die on top of my white horse than have to watch me fall off.” Then this man turned and walked away. “In that moment,” Brown recalls of that evening, “I realized that men have their own stories and that if we’re going to find our way out of shame, it will be together.”
It is 2013, almost 2014, and as a culture we have come so far. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our feminist sisters to embrace and live out the simple premise that women’s lives, stories, and contributions are worth hearing, sharing, rewarding. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our LGBT sisters and brothers to embrace the diversity of sexual and gender identity as gifts from God, and I am so thankful to be part of a church that lives out this ongoing prophetic call, that those at God’s table need not be made up simply of straight men, but of all people whom God has created in God’s image. In December 2013, there is much to marvel at, just how far we’ve come.
And yet, there is also something in this morning’s Gospel lesson that reminds me that even in our complex, sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of the twenty-first century, something still rings true of that man in the yellow golf jacket who cannot voice his stories of shame, whose wife and children cannot bear to hear his deep vulnerability borne of shame. Shame is a universal experience, to be sure, and as Brené Brown has uncovered, the triggers for shame differ at times for women and for men. For a woman, shame is a sticky spiderweb of conflicting, competing expectations, of who she should be, what she should be, and how she should be. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Be perfect, but make it look natural. Respond to every person’s needs, your children, your spouse, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your friends. A real woman can have it all. For a man, the primary trigger for shame is the threat that he might be perceived as, or might think of himself, as weak. To be seen as soft, fearful, wrong, defective, to be ridiculed or criticized, are all ways that tell men that they are weak and not worthy of the love of their family and friends, of their coworkers, their supervisor, or their workers. Only strong men are real men. Brown tells another story—and before I tell it, I want to warn you all that I will be using a homophobic epithet. I use it because it is part of the story, but let me pause and say that I and Brené Brown both unequivocally repudiate this kind of homophobic language and its verbal violence. Brown tells the story of a young man in one of her classes who relayed how as a child he loved art—drawing, painting. When his uncle came to visit and saw this child’s art plastered on the refrigerator, he said to the father, “So what? You’re raising a f**got artist now?” That day was the last day this young man picked up a pencil, crayon or paintbrush. That day, a part of this young man’s soul died, and what replaced that part of his heart was this scar of shame that he carried into his adulthood.
In the honor/shame culture of the 1st century, Joseph knew very well how devastating the shadow of shame could be, for him and for Mary. It is a testament to his character that he planned to dismiss Mary quietly. Joseph could have turned what would have been a mark of shame on his identity as a Jewish man—his wife is pregnant but not with him—into an opportunity to project that shame onto Mary, to publicly disgrace her so as to maintain or regain his own sense of honor and manhood. But he doesn’t. There’s already a quiet dignity in Joseph. But that’s not enough. God wants more, and so what does God do? God meets Joseph where Joseph is most vulnerable: in his dreams. And in Joseph’s dream, God tells Joseph that God has a different dream, not only for Joseph but through Joseph for the world. And what does God’s dream look like? It goes something like this: “Joseph, I know this is scary, but there’s more to life than simply living out the same social expectations that leave women where they are, that leave men where they are. There’s more to life than trying to hide your weakness, to push down your fear, to let shame win again, and to let shame ruin so many lives. I know this is scary, but there’s a different way to live, where you live with your vulnerability and uncertainty and messiness, where you embrace all of that, and see what new thing happens.”
So when he awakes from his dream, this dream in which God reveals God’s dream, Joseph does just that: he decides to live differently. He casts aside the social conventions of honor/shame, between men and women, he marries Mary and he names and cares for the baby Jesus. God invited Joseph to step off the deadly wheel of shame that imprisons men and women, and Joseph did, and opened himself to a much more vulnerable way of being, but also a way of being that began to bring God’s dream into the world. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he modeled for Jesus a way of being open to others. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he taught Jesus that the meek would inherit the earth, that God is on the side of the poor. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he showed Jesus that no man should ever raise a hand or stone against a woman, that lepers should be embraced and not avoided, that a poor widow dropping two pennies in the offering plate touched God’s heart far more than the regular pledger, and that a father waits longingly for his lost son to come home so that he can embrace his child who has been found. And because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he gave Jesus the courage to say while he was dying, hanging on that Roman cross, that evil imperial form of execution, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Joseph awoke from his dream and gave up the pretense that real men needed to be strong and powerful and right and perfect, and instead opened himself to vulnerability. And when he did, he allowed God’s revolution to begin in the life and ministry of the child he named Jesus.
My sisters and brothers, this Advent season is about preparing ourselves for the God who comes to us as a helpless, vulnerable, poor child born in a stinky barn. This God asks us to strip away the stories that the world tells us we need to be, what we need to have, or else we should be ashamed of ourselves. This God asks you and me to give up the very stories that demand that we be real men or real women, so that we can open ourselves up to being authentic children of God. This God asks us to do something new. And when we do, when we awake from our dreams and begin to live out God’s dream, to be open, to be vulnerable, and to model this radical openness in our lives, then you and I will be ready to receive this child we call our savior, and to make Christmas the truly liberating event that it is: to turn the world upside down by daring to turn the human race into the human family.
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