Beautiful Embarrassment
The word embarrass means to shame, humiliate, and to feel awkward or self-conscious. In addition to shame and humiliate, some other words for embarrass are demean, abash, mortify, and horrify.
I think the above graphic for this blog is a PERFECT visual to use if we had to paint a picture of what it means to FEEL embarrassed, don’t you? Whereas Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed in Genesis 2:25, that little guy to the left is the opposite. He is very much ashamed, horrified even.
Can you think of a time when you embarrassed yourself by accident? Of course you can! You may have even done so today! Does it make the mortification any less mortifying when the embarrassment is the result of an accident? Probably not.
How about when you embarrass yourself doing something you could have avoided? Something that falls in that gray area between on purpose and accidental, when afterwards you find yourself moaning, “if only I had done_______________this could have been avoided.” Read the scenario below for a picture of what I mean. Afterwards, we’ll get into the subject of what I want to talk about today, which is Beautiful Embarrassment: What is it? Why do you want it? How do you get brave enough to pursue it?
On Purpose & Accidental Embarrassment scenario (a little over-the-top, but fun!):
You’ve been busy with studying for and taking final exams for a few weeks now and you wake up that last morning to discover that the only pair of clean underwear you have is “that pair”. You know the pair; the one that your mom warned you to throw out because God forbid you ever got in a car accident wearing them. In your mind, as you get dressed your thinking, “wrong again mom! If I had listened to you, I’d be going commando right about now!”
Well, wouldn’t you know, on the way to the exam, some jerk, I mean, some precious child of God, rams into you! As your head hits the steering wheel, your final paranoid thought as your mother’s horrified face floats before your eyes and you fight to stay conscious is, “I should have gone commando!”
The next thing you’re aware of is a desire for Jesus to take you home to glory as you open your eyes to see a handsome male nurse helping your mom help you into a hospital gown. One look at your mom’s face, and you know she’s noticed the underwear. A closer look at the nurse, and you realize he looks pretty turned off as well. As someone who’s used to lots of male attention, you know it can only be one thing, and your look of shame brings a familiar look to your mom’s face. You know “that face”. You lived with it for 18 years before running away to college. It’s her, “when are you going to learn, Honey? Mama’s always right” face.
Angry, defeated, definitely dateless for the weekend, and way too embarrassed to lash out, you keep quiet, all the while thinking to yourself. “This could have been avoided, if only…”,
So, we’ve covered accidental embarrassment and the avoidable embarrassment that we bring on ourselves. None of that sounds beautiful, right? Right! What about embarrassment you bring upon yourself, on purpose? I’m talking about bringing shame to your name, non-accidentally. I’ll say it more clearly: knowingly humiliating yourself. Does that sound beautiful? It doesn’t, at least it didn’t to me until I realized that JESUS MADE A PRACTICE OF IT! So, since Jesus did it, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should follow in His footsteps? Paul said, “follow me as I follow Christ”, and in I Cor. 4:10 he writes, “We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ! We are the frail; you are the powerful. You are celebrated; we are humiliated.” Paul and the other disciples followed Christ into foolishness, frailty, and humiliation. They embarrassed themselves like He did, and I believe we should do the same. So, follow me into bravery and let’s explore that a bit. I promise you won’t regret it!
Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus allowing Himself to be embarrassed. We know that because He is God, He could have called a legion of angels to His defense at any time; yet, time and time again, we see Him choosing to love us instead. Loving us meant taking the walk of shame on many occasions (not THAT walk of shame, people!). Here are just a few:
He was raised in Nazareth, which was a place described by one author like this: Nazareth is the most disregarded valley in a despised province of a conquered land. Being raised there is like choosing to be raised in the worst house, on the worst street, in the worst neighborhood in Compton instead of the at Kennedy Compound on Martha’s Vineyard (which He had every right to as the King of Kings). One of the disciples, when discovering that Jesus was from that disregarded, despised, conquered place mockingly said, “can anything good come from Nazareth?” HOW IS THIS BEAUTIFUL? We can read the last page of the Book and see that not only did “anything good” come from Nazareth, but EVERYTHING GOOD came from there, and His name is Jesus! God chose a place of marginalization and oppression to be His womb until such time as He chose to die and become mankind’s Savior.
He took on the punishments for every sin and shame of all mankind and paid for them on the cross; a perfect sacrifice humbled between two thieves, made to look guilty. WHAT IS THE BEAUTY IN THIS? How many tears have you shed or how many sighs of admiration have come from you as you watched movies or read books of innocent people who gave their lives for others? Well, we serve a God who was truly the only innocent there ever was or ever will be. Even babies are born in sin, but not Him. He was perfect, sinless, innocent, without spot or blemish; he had to be in order to be the sacrifice for us, fallen humanity. We call ourselves “good people” yet, if we hate our brother, the Bible calls it murder. By that standard alone, how many of us are guilty? Yet, He still died and chose humiliation for us.
He hung naked or mostly naked on a cross as the very people who bruised, bloodied, and ridiculed him watched and continued to scorn Him. WHAT IS THE BEAUTY IN THIS? Love!!! Some may say, “well, He didn’t have a choice; that’s the condition in which people were crucified in those days.” I say, if anyone had a choice, it was God! Who could have said anything if He chose to keep a tunic on? I know it seems silly, but many of us won’t even go to a class reunion unless we lose those 20 extra pounds we gained after high-school. And let’s be real, if handed the choice to hang naked or with some clothes on for modesty, we’d choose modesty. He made a choice to die, not just in that horrible manner, but as every other person died: immodest, humbled, embarrassed, exposed. Wow!
He carried a heavy, wooden beam through an angry violent crowd calling for His death, after a night of beatings and humiliation. WHAT IS THE BEAUTY IN THIS? All He had to do was die for our sins, and take our punishment upon Himself on the cross. Yet, he chose to go through so much more than that before the horror of the actual crucifixion. Pieces of his beard were ripped out! He was flogged, betrayed, tried and found guilty, and a crown of thorns was placed on his head (not gently, otherwise, why use thorns?). He took so much pain and shame on our behalf and He did it all willingly. He wanted us to see the seriousness of our sin, the horror of it, the price of it, and He wanted us to see what love covered; how powerful it was / is. It’s like God was holding all that Jesus was going through in one hand and love in His other hand, and the hand holding His love was infinitely bigger and brighter, getting bigger and brighter the more Jesus suffered. Can you imagine this horrific yet beautiful contrast?
On the way to be crucified, He could not complete the walk to Golgotha. God humbled Himself to a weak frail human form, and had to depend on someone else to help Him. WHAT IS THE BEAUTY IN THIS? Because He did that, now we can glory in our own weakness. When we are weak, He is made strong (2 Cor 12:10). You can’t do it? He’s saying, “it’s ok! There’s help! Even I needed help.”
He revealed Himself after His resurrection to a woman first and sent a woman to deliver the news of His resurrection. According to Lee Strobel, in his book, The Case for Christ, Jesus revealing Himself first to a woman was a countercultural event. He said, “during that time it was frowned upon - even considered embarrassing - for women to deliver information. So much so that belief in the news of Christ’s Resurrection could have been jeopardized by the involvement of Mary Magdalene and the ‘Other Mary’ who were the first to deliver the Good News.” WHAT IS THE BEAUTY IN THIS? Was Jesus the first feminist? LOL! He took a chance on, not just a woman, but a former prostitute! Talk about answering the question, “Can anything good come out of a place?” How about, ““Can anything good come out of the Red Light District?” YES! Jesus took the risk of the legitimacy of the Gospel message itself by having the news of His resurrection delivered by a Woman. As a woman, I find that particularly BEAUTIFUL! He took a chance on women from the beginning. This gives HOPE to minorities, everywhere. We serve a Savior, who does not flow with the tide of the power structure of society, but according to His own perfect will, which includes you and me, no matter who we are or where we come from!
So, why would we want to subject ourselves to this “shame on purpose” kind of existence? Saying, “because Jesus did” is kind of like when our parents would say, “because I said so,” when we asked them “why“ to a difficult question. Is “because Jesus did” a sufficient answer? I think so, but because we serve a God who is familiar with our humanity, He doesn’t just leave us there. Yes, that is the answer, but it comes with benefits. What benefits? I could name them, but then I would really live up to being “long winded”. So, for the sake of time (I know, it’s probably too late for that), I’ll just name one of those benefits: ETERNITY!
How do we get brave enough to pursue beautiful embarrassment? My answer is my own recipe for bravery: LOVE. Do I love the Lord or the other person enough to be brave enough to do what needs to be done for their benefit? Notice, I didn’t mention LOVE OF SELF because sometimes, that’s not enough to motivate us to do the brave thing. Sometimes, I can fool myself into thinking that self-preservation is the same as self-love, and talk myself out of bravery. But, if my motivation is for the Kingdom (for God and for you), well then, the road of courage becomes the easiest journey to take. Easy as in, the choice is easy to make to take the journeys, not easy as in easy to carry out. Beautiful embarrassment means pride must be disregarded, fear must be conquered, and even my very life may need to be despised (Luke 14:16). Notice, those are the same words used to describe Nazareth! Can anything good come out of Beautiful Embarrassment? Why Yes! Yes it can! Yes it has! Yes it will!
So, I conclude by concluding that beautiful embarrassment is beautiful because it’s not embarrassment at all! From the point of view of an outsider, perhaps. They look at the person effected by the situation, and they can’t see why the person isn’t ashamed by their circumstances. In their mind, Jesus should have been ashamed to come from Nazareth, and way too mortified to take the punishment for sins like theft, murder, molestation, etc. so that we can be saved. But, when you look at it from the insider point of view, OUR POINT OF VIEW, you can’t help but feel the love of our God around us like a holy triune hug.