SHAME

Now Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, 'Lord, wilt Thou slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.' Then God said to him in the dream, 'Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her. Now therefore, restore the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours'...Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, ‘What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.’ And Abimelech said to Abraham, ‘What have you encountered that you have done this thing?’ And Abraham said, ‘Because I thought surely there is no fear of God in this place; and they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife; and it came about, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is the kindness which you will show to me: everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’ Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and restored his wife Sarah to him. And Abimelech said, ‘Behold, my land is before you; settle wherever you please.’ And to Sarah he said, ‘Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is your vindication before all who are with you, and before all men you are cleared.’  And Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children. For Yahweh had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Genesis 20:4-7, 9-18

I’ll be honest – I have a big crush on Abimelech. I have a weakness for men who have a noble spirit, integrity of heart, and a way with words. It is no small irony that of all the men who appear in the stories of the Patriarchs, it is the king of the Philistines who stands out as a man of character. There is no doubt that he behaves more righteously than Abraham and that he demonstrates a greater fear of God, showing Sarah uncommon kindness and respect, showing more regard for her honour and reputation than any man before him. He speaks directly to her, before handing her pointedly back into the care of her brother.

My heart hurts for Sarah. As a woman, as a wife, as a human being, I can only imagine her degradation. For a second time her husband had passed her off to another man – but this time he had Hagar and Ishmael to fill her barren space. I can imagine how it tormented her, after everything, to be so devalued and discarded, and how humiliating it would have been to then be returned by Abimelech, untouched, having once again been a curse to every fertile womb around. What dignity she had left must have crumpled under the weight of the polite pity she received from the honorable man she had conspired to deceive.

And how ashamed must the covenant-bearing Abraham have felt, to be bowed low before Abimelech’s integrity, to have it spelled out for him exactly how abhorrent his own behaviour was. How shame must have burned inside of him as God compelled him to come and beseech Divine mercy for the life of the guileless man Abraham himself had betrayed, and for a people cursed because of his treachery. He who had just bartered with God for the lives of the people of Sodom, who had questioned the righteousness and the judgement of God when measured against his own, who had perhaps believed up until that very point that the covenant blessing was still somehow about him – he was shamed by the revelation of his own thoughts and actions. He was shamed by the care and respect Abimelech showed to Sarah, bearer with him of the God-covenant, the wife he had forsaken.

This was not like in Egypt, when Pharaoh threw Sarai back at Abram with an unceremonious ‘take her and go’. They did not make out of Gerar like bandits. Their chastisement was slow, drawn out, deliberated – it was uncomfortable, personal and public.

Shame is a life experience not afforded to all. It is a hellish sort of torment – hot, like burning coals on your head. It wraps around you like a python, moves into your stomach and roosts there like a hen rolling eggs up and down your esophagus. Shame is the pain felt when your pride is slain and, like any uninvited death, it brings you to your knees praying for the laws of nature to be revoked, for time to be turned back, for the done to be undone. It swallows you up in regret.

It can happen to anyone. That old self you thought you’d sacrificed and buried at the foot of the cross can just sit up in the grave and start blinking, resurrected and ready to play. That old self can resurface as a desperate Smeagol with a second chance and nothing at all to lose – a tricky Gollum with no moral compass that simply wants what it wants. You tried to kill it – whatever loyalty it had to you is long gone. It is not remotely interested in preserving your dignity. It knows how to stay quiet and motionless for a long time, listening, watching for weakness – but when it opens its mouth it is a reckless confessor. It knows exactly what to say and it has no need to lie. You are a horrible person. You are pathetic. Could you possibly be more two-faced? Could you be more of a user? Could you be more of a hypocrite? Do you even know who you are? What do you have, a split personality? Google it – you’ll see. Your behaviour is positively clinical. It knows what you know, all that you so badly want to erase, all that refuses to stay buried under the sanctified, blood-soaked ground.

You don’t always feel the forgiveness. The shame doesn’t always lift off – you can walk with it, sleep with it, choke on it every day for years. It is a hard consequence of sin, to know that you have offended and that for that you have been cut off, that you might never be granted an opportunity to make amends. People don’t always want you to make it up to them. They don’t always want to make you pay. Sometimes they are content to leave you to burn with your own humiliation. Sometimes they just want you gone – so badly that they will give you sheep, oxen, servants, land and a thousand pieces of silver just to go. Sometimes they only have pity for you as they try to imagine how sad it must be to be inside your skin, cutting you free like a dead thing, dropping you off their back on a dusty road and going on their way, refusing to hear or acknowledge your desperate sorry, sorry, sorry, setting the sound of your voice to fade.

Shame isn’t remotely satisfied with forgiveness. It does not want you to be released – it wants you to be restored. Shame clamours for understanding and it craves redemption. It wants to see you lifted from the dust. It wants a do-over. It wants your dignity bought back from the place that you sold it. It covets an uncommon grace and a mercy that you can’t really hope to receive from anyone but God.

Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is your vindication before all who are with you, and before all men you are cleared.

And three short sentences after this, finally are written the words, Then Yahweh took note of Sarah as He had said, and Yahweh did for Sarah as He had promised. So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. Genesis 21:1-2

What weight did those thousand coins carry for Abraham, as Sarah’s belly swelled with a child? What precious silver it must have been to her, when she realized she was pregnant and she did not have to try to persuade her husband, This child is yours. How cherished Abimelech’s public shaming and the establishment of his own innocence must have been to them both as they walked through the camp, knowing how people gossip and how quick they are to count back the weeks.

This is the miraculous – how God is able to transform our humiliation into a grace and a covering.

This is a profound beauty – how God is able to lay hold of our self-inflicted wounds and shape them into blessed mercies.

This is the great mystery of how God redeems us – threading the pain through the joy, weaving our shame into the very cloak that restores our dignity.