2 Samuel 10
Our culture hates shame so much that we have become people who live feeling to feeling, moment to moment, worldview to worldview - accepting everything in between. I am sure we understand why our culture is becoming like this. Shame is nasty, heavy and captures us to bring us to our most vulnerable and darkest moments. Of course we want to get rid of it!
Shame is a great tool of the enemy and we see it being used to create a lasting shift in David’s life. Yesterday we read about David honoring Mephibosheth, a crippled heir from the lineage of Saul, his enemy. Not to mention, bosheth, means shame, and though everything in culture tells David to leave him, turn away, he foreshadows what Christ would do for everyone one day. He will honor the shamed, he will be kind to those who mocked him and generous to those who put him on the cross. Yet, in 2 Samuel 10, David’s reputation is on the line through his servants who are shamed by Hanun, King of the Ammonites and it is here David’s eyes are taken from God to look at himself.
Why is this subtle shift that many of us wouldn’t have seen so easily so important? It is the cycle of sin. Sin begets more sin, always. It is this first little sin - the selfishness of David to keep his own honor that starts the next few chapters. The growing mass of sin, that we are always so ready to rebuke, but never dive into what started it. We never want to start with the subtle shifts, yet we’d rather rebuke it, ignore it, or create the biggest barriers to try and bar shame to ever come into our lives again.
Those are the ways our society tries to rid the world of sin and shame. As believers we cannot participate those actions because that is not the gospel. Jesus takes on death to defeat death. We do not believe a God who overlooks shame or ignores it, but seeks to heal the subtle shifts that put shame into motion.
What would it look like if we became a people who never overlooked the little shames? What if we were quick to call out the subtle shifts in love to avoid the big moments of sin and shame? What if instead of pretending it doesn’t exist or living into a culture that accepts everything we could be a people who are willing to do the hard work of uprooting the places where shame has subtly taken place?
What would it look like to live as if Jesus has already restored our honor and we were free and bold in proclaiming where shame belongs - in the grave forever.
