Shame and Guilt: A Lesson of A Sinful Woman

Brené Brown makes a very important distinction between shame and guilt in her second TED talk. Guilt is feeling bad for doing something wrong. For example, I really messed up that math test. Shame, on the other hand, is feeling bad for being someone wrong. I am messed up and a bad person because I didn’t do well on that math test. In this coming Sunday’s gospel story we learn what freedom from that latter looks like in real life.

In the Luke 7:36-8:3 story a Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner. In the midst of the dinner a woman in the city “who was a sinner” found out that Jesus was dining at this home, so she went out of her way to go and get a costly jar of ointment, and came to the Pharisee’s home. This woman wept and wept and wept, so much so that she could wipe Jesus’ dirty feet with the tearful solution. She kissed Jesus’ feet, and even broke open the oil to care for them. We never discover precisely why she felt the need to do this, but we can look around at the clues in this story to find out more.

The narrator in the story never lists the woman’s name and uses the straightforward descriptor, “who was a sinner.” To me this points out that she was not someone who felt she had done something wrong, but her entire identity was wrapped up in this term. Her name was sinner. At least her name used to be sinner.

Something had obviously happened between Jesus and this woman, or maybe she wanted some holy transaction to occur. The Pharisee was still focused on the old identity of shame that he had established for this woman, but Jesus was much more interested in what was happening in that moment. Whatever she had done in the past was gone. In the place of that entity of sinfulness the woman had put on a new being of service.

I believe this means that this display of kindness and service was a step in a new direction for this courageous woman. She no longer wanted to be the sinful woman, she knew through following Jesus the true reality that lies within all of us. We are made good in our creation, we are restored to goodness in our salvation through Christ, and we are perpetually remade into goodness through the power of the Spirit. It’s easy to forget this. It’s even easy to think that when we make a mistake it’s because we are bad, stupid, ignorant, unworthy, cursed, etc. This isn’t the truth.

We all make mistakes. When we do we may see them as misguided actions or we may choose to believe that these mistakes are part of our identity as sinners. Through Jesus we see that Christ’s redemptive works make us no longer shameful sinners, but redeemed children of God who may make mistakes, but always have a God who serves us through forgiving us. How will we serve in response to God’s love like this woman did?