Honoring the Shamed

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Honor and Shame. Last week’s message was entitled Shaming the Honored, and we looked at, among other things, the honor-shame cultural practice, especially common in the Middle East, of challenge and riposte, in which people of relatively similar honor status challenge one another in a game of words and rhetoric to jockey for “position” and status. Honor was often seen as a limited quantity, so that increasing one’s personal honor was seen to necessitate the reducing publicly the honor status of a rival. The Pharisees, scribes, and teachers of the law repeatedly entered this “honor shame game” with Jesus, seeking to discredit Him, but invariably He would emerge from the confrontations as even wiser, more good, and more honorable in the eyes of the crowds that watched. This of course meant that the honor status of the leaders continually became lower and lower. Because the “game” could only be played among those of similar honor status, eventually the leaders sought to kill Jesus, because He was beginning to threaten their very way of life, and they knew they could not beat Him any other way.

Today’s title is Honoring the Shamed. I want to start by reminding you, as we discussed in the first message in the series, that when the Bible talks about honor and shame it is primarily talking about how others see you; that is, honor and shame are communally determined.

How does a community or society decide who is honorable and who is shameful? They use a variety of measures, some of which line up with Scriptural ideas of what is good and bad behavior, what is right and wrong. But other measures, equally pervasive, are almost universally used that do not line up with Scripture.

An example of shaming an activity that does line up with Scripture is those who swindle people. Some people, through doing this repeatedly and systematically, can end up in positions of great wealth, power, and prestige (honor). From what I have read about the fall of Communism in Russia in the end of the 1980s, some people through various inappropriate means became multi-multi-millionaires almost quite quickly by taking advantage of the chaos that ensued after the collapse. Generally speaking, both in Bible times and throughout history, being wealthy is associated with a high honor status, and being poor is associated with shame. But the Bible clearly and repeatedly proclaims that wealth, or the lack of it, in and of itself, is neither honorable nor dishonorable.

I would say that there are certain “besetting sins” that are more common among the rich than the poor, and there are also sins more common among the poor than the rich. Because the rich are often treated with honor (whether deserved or not), a common sin among the rich is to expect or revel in the “perks” of your high position. They let it go to their heads. As a new believer while in graduate school, my research was funded in part by a major corporation, and because my work with my advisor was favorably recognized by the company, I was invited to attend a special meeting in New Orleans in which only the people with the top 1% of job ratings within the company could attend. The meeting was in a top-tier hotel and the rooms were amazing, the food even more so, and I remember liking the experience far more than I should have. It only got worse when my presentation at the conference received one of a limited number of awards. I remember actually thinking, “I’m really special! I can get used to this!” It’s been too many years, so I don’t remember exactly what snapped me back to reality, but I suspect it was God Himself, through my quiet times reading the Bible. I don’t know if the following verse was one that impacted me back then, but it certainly fits the bill:

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Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. – Luke 11:43 

Ouch! In Western culture, the whole idea of special treatment for higher honor individuals is somewhat against the grain of our culture, but you still find it especially among the upper class if you know where to look. But in many other cultures it is quite widespread. I have had the experience of having an administrative official (from one of these cultures) knock on the door of another professor I was in a meeting with and expecting me to leave immediately because he was here. I should note that there is a socially acceptable way to do this in our culture – basically, the official should be apologetic and explain that the question is very important and urgent. But this person did none of these things. Without using words, he communicated that I was unimportant and needed to leave at once. Honor and shame!

In honor-shame cultures, the rich are honored. One of the reasons for this is the potential for the patron-client relationship, which we have already discussed earlier in this series. But what I want to focus on today is the idea that the poor, the injured, the disfigured, and many others are shamed. A significant message, not only of Jesus, but throughout the Bible, is that for people such as these, their shame is undeserved, and followers of God are called to treat them far better than the culture tends to treat them.

Here is just one of the many examples of this theme from the Old Testament:

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. – Prov. 29:7

It is in the context of the poor and otherwise disadvantaged that the term justice appears frequently (maybe most frequently?) in the Bible. What does justice for the poor mean? It means that just because someone is poor does not mean that you can treat them unfairly. As this verse shows, it is not enough just to personally not mistreat the poor; we are called to care about their justice when someone else mistreats them. According to this verse, to not do so is to be wicked, a harsh term (rasha in Hebrew).

This brings to mind Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. Let’s look at this in some depth using an honor-shame perspective.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” He replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” – Luke 10:25-28

I want to make a few points here. First, as we talked about last week, this is an example of challenge and riposte. The fact that the expert in the law stands up is not the behavior of a disciple, but of an equal or even a superior. (He would have sat at Jesus’ feet if He intended to be as one “under” Jesus.) Note that Luke explicitly states his goal is to test Jesus. Jesus, as He often does, instead of answering the question directly, responds with another question – in this case, asking the expert his own opinion. In doing this, Jesus bestows honor to the expert, because He treats him as an “equal” expert. Of course, at the same time, Jesus is also avoiding whatever trap the expert is trying to lay out.

The expert gives an answer perhaps He has heard Jesus say at other times, or perhaps which he has astutely figured out. But Jesus does not stop there. He says, in effect, yes, love the Lord perfectly and totally, and love your neighbor in similar fashion. Do these things that are impossible for you to do, and yes, you will “inherit” heaven based on your own works. The expert does not realize that he has just been told to do something that is utterly impossible. A proper response at this point would be to say, as happens elsewhere in conversations with Jesus, “Wait, then nobody can be saved!” And apart from faith in Jesus, he would be right.

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” – Luke 10:29

The expert, however, wants to justify, or (same word), save himself. He thinks this is doable. In fact, he likely thinks that the “loving the Lord” part is just about keeping the Law, which he thinks he is doing (but which Jesus shows in the Sermon on the Mount that nobody is doing). The expert, however, is less sure about the “loving your neighbor” part; all he needs, though, is to know exactly who these people are, and then he will be all set. And so with that setup, let us listen freshly to Jesus’ amazing response in the way of a parable:

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ – Luke 10:30-35

It is significant that the man who was robbed was stripped. Again, people were clearly divided by honor classes; Jewish people wore their own clothing, and even this was further subdivided by honor class. The priests wore their own robes, Levites as well, and regular peasants wore clothing that indicated what part of Israel they were from. Non-Jews similarly wore regionally-based clothing and also had further identification by social class.

This man who was robbed has no clothes, so you don’t know anything about his class or identity. He has been beaten senseless; indeed, “half dead” is quite a literal translation. As a result, one cannot have a meaningful conversation with the man (probably he is completely unconscious) so you cannot even use conversation to figure out his social class. Depending on how marred his face was, perhaps you could not even tell if this man was Jewish.

Priests at the time of the New Testament were both highly regarded (high in honor) and generally wealthy. He likely came with at least a good transport and probably an entourage. It would have been relatively easy to pick him up and take him with him. Now if the man were Jewish, he would be obligated under the Law to help him, but if he were Egyptian, Greek, Syrian, Phoenician, etc., he would not be required under the Law to do anything. If he brought the man with him and he then died, he would be ritually unclean, have to tear his valuable robes, and be unable to perform his duties for a week (according to the Law). Even if the man didn’t die but he turned out not to be Jewish, he would likely be berated for bringing such a person into Jericho, a Jewish village. There were many serious risks to his honor status. So he decided to simply keep going on his way.

What about the Levite? Well, at a minimum, he had a decision process to make similar to that of the priest, and he came to a similar decision. The Levites were not as wealthy as the priests, but it is again likely that he did not come alone. To do so was simply unwise, due to the dangers of highwaymen. It is also possible that the Levite knew that the priest was ahead of him. If this were true, it would have been a deep insult to the honor of the priest to take an action of compassion that his superior had decided was best to forgo. From the Levite’s perspective, it didn’t matter if the victim lived or died, was Jewish or non-Jewish; in every case the result was bad for him, whether he was laughed at as a fool (if the victim died or turned out not to be Jewish) or the priest became his lifelong enemy (if the victim was Jewish and lived).

Then we get to the… what everyone expects is a “layperson” Jew. But what Jesus delivers is like a punch to the gut – the person isn’t even Jewish; even worse, a hated Samaritan! This heathen treats him with great compassion and at great personal cost as well as risk. The implication of the story is that the inn they went to would be in Jericho. There were no other towns that would have such conveniences along the way. The payment of treatment was also necessary, because if he left him there without paying, the man would have been in debt to the innkeeper. In such situations it wasn’t uncommon that such people were sold to the Romans as slaves (especially if the man wasn’t Jewish). But the risk to the Samaritan went beyond the great personal cost – he presumably went into Jericho, a Jewish town, all the way to this inn. He could have simply dropped off the man at the edge of the Jewish territory and disappeared, but he did not do this.

The following helpful analogy is from Kenneth Bailey. Imagine it is around 1830, and a Native American finds a cowboy with two arrows in his back. He places the cowboy on his horse and rides into, say, Dodge City. The man goes to the saloon and rents out a room upstairs to take care of the cowboy. How do you think the people of Dodge City would react to seeing the Native American bringing in this cowboy with arrow wounds? They would probably kill him even if he claimed he had nothing to do with the injury! The situation for the Samaritan is not that different. Yet this is what he does, risking far more than his honor. 

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” – Luke 10:36-37

The expert in the law can’t even spit out the word “Samaritan.” He is undoubtedly furious at the turn this story has taken. It is insulting to him! Samaritan scum don’t do that! And yet now, if the expert is honest with himself (which is doubtful here) – he would have to admit that he cannot go and do likewise. It is as far beyond him as loving the Lord with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind – although he doesn’t get that either. What Jesus’ story is trying to drive the man to is admission of his own sinfulness and complete inability to live like this. It would only be then that he would become open to the truth of the gospel (which would likely only be presented to him after Jesus died and rose from the dead and the early church began to spread). I should point out that it is possible that these things did happen – we don’t know what happened to this man.

Honoring the shamed is hard. And yet this is what God calls us to do, in both the Old and New Testaments. From Isaiah:

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. – Isaiah 1:17

And God speaks in this psalm of Asaph:

How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. – Psalm 82:2-4

And here in Proverbs, King Lemuel’s mother speaks an “inspired utterance” to her son, the king:

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.  Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy. – Prov. 31:8-9

And Jeremiah faithfully proclaims the word of the Lord to the king of Judah and his officials and people when he says:

Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. – Jer. 22:3

And Zechariah responds to a request by the priests about whether they should continue a long tradition of fasting mourning in the fifth month, in memory/honor of how the Jews were overtaken by hostile nations and scattered. Speaking for the Lord, he explains that they weren’t really doing this “for the Lord.” Instead, says Zecharaiah, referring to Israel’s history,

This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ – Zech 7:8-10

He goes on to say that back then they didn’t do these things. And as a result, God scattered them by overtaking them with foreign nations and scattering them “to the winds.” The unasked but implied question is “Are you finally humbled enough to seek to do these things now?”

It is important for us to understand that Jesus actively sought out those that the culture of His day placed as low in honor status. He treated women amazingly, as intellectual equals to men. He spoke to people of ill repute, even those who had exacerbated their own problems in social status such as the Samaritan woman at the well. He spoke with prostitutes and treated them kindly. He ate meals with tax collectors and even one of his disciples was a former tax collector. Even the rest of his disciples were mostly a bunch of uneducated fishermen. He had compassion on the sick, even those with the greatest social stigma, such as the perpetually unclean woman (due to bleeding) and lepers (those with a skin condition that not only made them perpetually unclean but also ones who should be isolated from everyone else out of fear that their condition could spread to others). He loved little children, who were generally treated as more of a nuisance than anything else.

Jesus’ message of “who is my neighbor” was not just a parable. He lived it day in and day out. I don’t think the disciples understood it until after Jesus rose from the dead and the early church was born. But then they did get it.

It was a Roman practice to permit the abandonment of babies to the elements (to die) if the father did not want the child. It is hard to imagine being lower on the honor-shame spectrum than this – to be abandoned by your own family! We know from the writings of Augustine and others that such children, if found alive, were adopted by Christians, sometimes by single women and sometimes by families. Unfortunately, we also know from the catacombs that many such children were found already dead. Even these were picked up and given a proper burial so that their bodies would not be desecrated by animals. When such children were picked up alive, they truly became a part of their new family and raised as if they were children by blood. I cannot think of a more vivid picture of honoring the shamed than this!

We also know that caring provisionally for orphans and widows was an important part of the day-to-day life of the early church from the very beginning. In Acts we read about men who were chosen to oversee this task.  From other writings we additionally know that once persecution started, the early church also cared for the families of men who had been imprisoned or killed for their faith.

A somewhat later example you have probably never heard of is Basil of Caesarea who lived in the 300s. His grandmother was a Christian martyr who died around the time of Constantine I’s conversion. He however lived a pretty secular life as a lawyer and teacher of secular rhetoric until he came face to face with the realities of the Christian gospel thanks to another believer who took him under his wing. He then abandoned his former pursuits and lived for the God who had saved him. From one of his letters:

I had wasted much time on follies and spent nearly all of my youth in vain labors, and devotion to the teachings of a wisdom that God had made foolish. Suddenly, I awoke as out of a deep sleep. I beheld the wonderful light of the Gospel truth, and I recognized the nothingness of the wisdom of the princes of this world.

Basil went on to become leader of the church in Caesarea after the early church father Eusebius died. In this role, during a famine he created a soup kitchen in Caesarea and distributed food to the poor. He eventually gave away his entire personal family inheritance to help the poor. His letters show that he had a special heart for thieves and prostitutes and worked especially hard to bring them the Gospel and then help them, with God’s help and power, reform. When public officials failed to properly administer justice in Caesarea, he openly criticized them, an action that put him at great personal risk. Just outside Caesarea, he built a large complex which included a poorhouse, a hospice, and a hospital (arguably the first such hospital). Other Christians called this place a “wonder of the world.”

I will say that it is tremendously challenging to find ways to help people without creating unhealthy dependencies that can actually make people worse. Giving money to a drug addict, for example, is a recipe for failure. Interestingly, this is essentially what you see happening in John 6. In the beginning of the chapter, Jesus feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish. That night, Jesus escaped to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, but the crowds found Him there. They asked when He got there, and Jesus replied:

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” – John 6:26-27

From here the conversation degenerated and the people became more and more disgruntled. Jumping ahead a little bit:

Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” – John 6:43-51

The conversation went even more poorly as Jesus was more and more upfront about how He, Jesus, really was the Gospel, the good news. The crowds eventually began to leave en masse, and many of the larger group of disciples (not the twelve) left also. Jesus even asked the twelve if they were going to leave as well!

I see two things from this exchange. One is that sometimes Jesus gave a message before He gave aid, but other times (such as here) He gave aid before He gave the message. So I don’t think there is any hard and fast rule about how to integrate helping the needy with sharing the Gospel. The second thing I see is that it is unrealistic to expect perfect (or anywhere near to perfect) success, no matter what approach we take. Crowds are always going to walk away from the Gospel. But there should also be some whom do come to saving faith in Christ.

So how do we honor the shamed? From these and other passages I see a few principles:

1. Don’t walk the other way. We need to be available to God at all times. We should never be too busy to let God “blow up” our plans and our day. What this looks like will be different for each of us. Some of us may need to limit our exposure (just as Jesus did at times) while (I suspect) more of us may need to go out of our way to get any exposure. It is pretty easy in our modern world to avoid all interactions with people of a different social status than you; in many cases it is the default. You may need to be deliberate, to make some changes to your life, to become more available to God.

2. An essential part of honoring the shamed is to see them with God’s eyes of love rather than on the world’s eyes of shame. When we have an opportunity to help one of the “shamed,” we need to not overanalyze whether the person caused their own predicament. It’s simply not important. The Gospel is for sinners, not the righteous. Recall the sinful woman (a prostitute, most likely) who opened the alabaster jar of perfume and, weeping, wet His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and poured the perfume on them.  As Jesus said, (even) her sins were forgiven. For anyone, no matter what they have done, their honor in God’s eyes (and therefore in ours as well) is restored when they, repenting, put their faith in Christ.  But even before they do this, we are to follow as Jesus demonstrated and show Christ’s love, compassion, and kindness.

3. We need to let God heal us of our own biases and brokenness. The truth is that we all, to at least some degree, know some people that make us uncomfortable, or we have other attitudes that are not God’s attitudes. We need to prayerfully ask God to examine our hearts and show these areas of sin to us, and then we need to ourselves repent and, with God’s empowering Spirit, change these behaviors and attitudes.

4. We need to equip others to carry on this ministry of caring. This includes our own children. It also includes those very people we are talking about, because they are often the most effective people at reaching out to those in circumstances like the circumstances they were in. Perhaps this is obvious, but Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, was not a Gentile, but he equipped Gentiles to reach out to Gentiles. I sometimes feel like I am an Apostle to Failing Students even though I was not a failing student (with one minor exception). But my prayer and hope would be that the failing students through God’s grace that I have been able to help would go on to reach other failing students. If I want this to happen, I need to seek God to show me how to train them to do it!

5. We can honor the shamed with our giving to ministries around the world that help the poor and the persecuted. This is an excellent thing to do and should be encouraged and commended. At the same time, however, I think we are mistaken if we think that doing this somehow exempts us from doing the first four things I have mentioned.

Christ continually honored the shamed, and as Christ’s ambassadors, we are called to continually honor the shamed as well. There are countless opportunities to do so, but it often requires a little work in our culture to find them. I encourage you to prayerfully seek the Lord to direct you in how He would like you to serve.