"For Shame" by Rev. Jillian Hankamer, February 1, 2026

Mark 8: 27-38 

             Think for a moment about a time you felt ashamed. Maybe it was because you behaved badly. Maybe you got called out for being unkind. Perhaps you lost your temper or broke the rules. Maybe you failed to meet someone’s expectations or did something that hurt a loved one. Or perhaps you made a personal choice someone else didn’t agree with or didn’t expect.

             There was a story several years ago that made national headlines. Former Cosby Show star Geoffrey Owens was being shamed on social media after pictures were taken of him working at Trader Joe’s. Beyond the invasion of his privacy, the worst part of the story is the insinuation that Owens had fallen on such hard times that was being forced to work a menial job that pays by the hour rather than working as an actor. As if holding down any job is something to be ashamed of.

In reality, Owens is still a working actor and said in an interview, “The period of devastation was so short…and fortunately the shame part didn’t last very long.” This is born out by the overwhelming support and solidarity from other actors on social media and quite a few acting roles being offered to Owens. But many people are not so lucky, and from mommy shaming to fat shaming to victim shaming there seems to be an endless supply of people who’re willing to be cruel to their fellow human beings.

             Now, I doubt this is because people are any meaner than they were, let’s say, 50 years ago. And being Southern, we all know “Bless her heart” often isn’t a compliment. What I do think we’re seeing, however, is the power technology gives us to be immediate in our opinions and anonymous in our words. It’s much easier to sit at a computer and be nasty than to say the same thing to someone’s face. We also have access to each other’s lives through social media in a way that’s never existed before. And, as every thoughtless college graduate looking for a job has found out the hard way, the internet is forever.

             While we’re on the subject of shame, it isn’t possible to say that shame is always a bad thing. It does have its uses, as when powerful corporations are shamed into changing their racist, misogynistic, or bigoted hiring policies. And there are things we should be ashamed of. Male leaders using their power, influence and position to abuse and then silence women and children for decades. Executives who take massive salary increases but argue that money’s too tight to pay their workers a living wage. We should be ashamed that our country has become so polarized we struggle to have conversations instead of screaming matches. We should be ashamed of such behavior.

             With few exceptions, though, shame is something to be avoided. Shaming is not something to be used as a weapon against another person. It is not a reliable teaching tool. Most often shame is heavy and cumbersome, weighing us down. Shame is constrictive, keeping us in our prescribed places. And shame is a major theme in today’s gospel lesson from Mark.

             This is one of those scripture passages that makes organizing a sermon feel like verbal cat herding. For the passage to make sense it should be read all together, but reading the entire passage results in a dizzying number of options to focus on homiletically. This morning I’m focusing on verse 38, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” This is my focus because as I’ve already alluded to, shame and shaming others seems to be so prevalent, but also because I wonder if shame might just be the motivation for Jesus asking the disciples who people say that he is and chastising Peter so harshly.

             First, however, let’s talk about Greek because that’s where the germination of this conversation around shame comes from. Richard W. Swanson, college professor and Director of the Provoking the Gospel Storytelling Project got me started down this path with his commentary in which he highlights the connection to the Koine Greek word for “ashamed” epaischynomai has among it’s definitions “ugly” and “ugliness.” This is not so much that shame and being ashamed are ugly, which they can be, but that humans often react to things to ugliness with shame. To break this down a bit more here’s what Swanson says, “[t]his is an interesting link: shame is a shudder reaction in the face of ugliness…this rootage imagines that we should shudder when we encounter unworthy action, action of which a person of quality ought to be ashamed”^[1] Thinking in terms  of Jesus and this passage this element of epaischynomai’s definition matters because what this  entire passage revolves around is crucifixion “and that [is] both ugly and shudder-inducing.”^[2]

             You’ve heard the gory, painful details of what crucifixion does to the body before I’m sure, but what we modern believers can sometimes forget that there is no more shameful death in Jesus’ world than crucifixion. Keep in mind the murderer Barabbas is the man the crowd asks to be released instead of Jesus, and Jesus is crucified with two thieves. Crucifixion is capital punishment of the most brutal, ferocious, terrifying kind and being the follower of someone who is crucified not only links you to their shame, but to the shame of “all those who [have] been crucified, all those who [are] set up as ugly reminders of what [happens] to you when Rome [singles] you out.”^[3]

             All of which Jesus is aware of. It’s clear in this passage that Jesus knows his life is going to end, but what you have to look a little deeper to see his cognizance of what the disciples lives will be like when he’s gone. The shame that’ll come with trying to spread a new movement when your leader was crucified. The uphill battle the disciples will face in getting people to understand that Jesus life is about more than its ending.

             I wonder if this awareness of shame is why Jesus orders the disciples not to tell anyone who he truly is. I’m convinced it’s a least part of the reason Peter pulls Jesus aside and “rebukes” him for speaking so openly about the end of his life. Suffering, rejection, and being killed are simply not topics to be talked about carelessly or flippantly, even if you are the man most likely to turn the religious establishment on its head. And I wholeheartedly believe Jesus words in verse 38 are about “solidarity with the outcasts who have been made ugly,” unacceptable, unworthy, or who have been shamed “and less about not being loud enough in your public Christianity, which is often how this text is preached.”^[4]

             Some of you know that in the summer of 2016 I led a group of 13 youth and 5 other adults on a 16 day mission trip that included Barcelona, Skopje, Macedonia, and Athens. What you might not know is that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the country’s official name and the main focus of our trip, is a shame-based culture. This means that society is controlled by impressing upon people the ever-present threat of being shamed and ostracized. In such cultures appearances are what count most, and anything that’s considered outside the norm is shameful. This plays out practically in many different ways, but where we encountered in most obviously was in Macedonia’s treatment of those with developmental disabilities.

             Before the trip Jeff, the husband of the missionary team we worked with, sent us an article he wrote summarizing the government’s institutional service model for those with developmental disabilities. The majority of these people are abandoned by their families, in part because Macedonia is a poor country and few people have the money for specialized care, but mostly because of the shame and stigma attached to having a child that isn’t “normal.” For years the government’s solution was to lock all of these sweet, innocent souls up together in facilities that literally crumbled around them. We read about people starving because no one thought to provide food and going for weeks without showers, basic hygienic assistance or sanitary facilities that functioned properly. One woman talked about not having a mattress and having to sleep on her metal bedframe with a threadbare blanket through several winters. What staff there was ran the gamut from abusive to apathetic.

             By the end of the article, it all sounded like an overblown movie script or poorly written novel, but Jeff assured us it was all true as is the current government solution to close down such facilities. This is both a blessing and a curse because while they’re getting rid of the awful facilities, they aren’t providing anywhere for the residents to go. And since most of their families refuse to take them back if the residents can make contact with them at all, there’s a whole segment of the Macedonian population that’s left homeless.

             This is why places like Poraka exist. Poraka is what we would call a group home. It’s a place Macedonian folks with developmental disabilities can live, learn skills, and find community. The residents have their own multi-acre garden that produces most of their food and they raise their own livestock, some of which they eat and some of which they sell for profit. They make crafts that are sold to provide for their needs. The residents even assisted in building their home, complete with classroom and an office for the director, and if I could transport all of us there this very minute I would in a heartbeat.

             I have never been to a place that’s infused with joy and relief. We were the first youth group to ever visit and the residents came alive with my youth and brought out compassion and patience I’d never seen in those young people. Our time at Poraka was rich in a way none of us could have imagine, but we were told by early on not to ask the residents anything about life before Poraka because many of them are still dealing with the trauma of their experiences. This didn’t stop a resident from sharing with one of my youth that she’d lived somewhere else before. “It was a bad place,” she said. “I cried a lot there, but I don’t cry here. That’s why I love it here.”

             My friends, to be ashamed of Jesus and of his words is, to borrow from Matthew’s gospel, to also be ashamed of the “least of these, of my sisters and brothers,” because whether we like it or not the “crucifixion links Christian faith to people get called ‘ugly,’ who are ‘hard to see that way,’ who are taught from childhood that they are targets for the anger” and shame “of the larger society.”^[5] The Good News this morning is that the cross of Christ can and should serve as a source of solidarity, as starting point for the refuge and grace that is available to all people. And I realize I’m preaching to choir as were when I say this, but there is no place for the shame of others within the church. We don’t get to decide who’s accepted here because this place is not “ours.” We’re simply the caretakers of this space and these resources, so as we think about our next 175 years we must decide what kind of caretakers we will be. Will we be content to do as we’ve always done? Or will we commit ourselves to sharing, but more importantly living out this Gospel that links us with the “least of these” and drives out shame?

^[1] Richard W. Swanson, “A Provocation: Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 16, 2018: Mark 8:27-38.” from https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/a-provocation-seventeenth-sunday-after-pentecost-september-16-2018-mark-827-38/

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4]Ibid.

^[5]Ibid.