Olly, Olly, Oxen Free! Olly, Olly, Oxen Free! This cry floats over the warm summer breeze. You are seven and hidden away in your favorite hiding spot. You have crouched there for quite some time and are relieved to hear this call which gives you the all clear that it is safe to come out of hiding. Hide and Go Seek is the game of the day. You and your friends all hide and the person who is “IT” then has the challenge of finding you, after counting slowly to 10. Once someone is found, they yell, Olly, Olly Oxen free, everyone comes out of hiding. I discovered this phrase comes from “All ye, all ye ‘outs’ in free,” in other words: all who are “out” may come in without penalty. All who are hiding are called home without the fear of being tagged.
The first game of Hide and God Seek happened in the Garden. OK God was not really “IT,” but the man and woman were certainly hiding from God. As soon as they heard God approaching, they hid themselves behind the trees. They were afraid of God, because they were naked. They only realized they were naked because they had broken the one rule God gave them – do not eat from the tree of knowledge. You see when God created man and woman, scripture tells us, “both were naked and not ashamed” (Gen: 2:25). How easily do we stand naked before God? Even though that is the way we were created, we hide more often than not. We hide ourselves and that hiding can come from shame.
The roots of the word shame are thought to derive from an older word meaning “to cover.” So maybe the very first moment of shame happened when the man and woman covered themselves with fig leaves or behind the trees. Covering oneself, literally or figuratively, is a natural expression of shame. That is why for shame to thrive it needs to have secrecy, silence and judgment. Our psalm declares shame, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord…. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, (my failings, my mistakes, my imperfections) Lord, who could stand?” (vs.1,3). If we spent a day recalling all of our mistakes, how we have failed, the ways we have disappointed; how could we get out of bed and stand- stand before God. We all know the downward spiral of negative self-talk. Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul. We will do almost anything to not go there, including blaming someone else. That is what happens in our story. The man gets caught and blames his wife. When God asks the woman she blames the snake. Blaming is a way of discharging pain and discomfort and defends us from shame. It keeps us from facing the part about ourselves we do not want to see.
Most of us will say I’m sorry when we do something wrong and that is a response to guilt, to an action we want to correct. Guilt is the response to a mistake, but shame is the response to believing I am a mistake. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says “I am bad.” In their book Facing Shame, Fossum and Mason say that, “While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one’s actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person.”
Shame is personal. Dr. Brene Brown who studied shame for over six year defines shame as, “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” (mariashriver.com/blog/2012/04/shame-empathy-and-wholehearted-journey/) Who wouldn’t hide from that? In a TED talk Dr. Brown describes shame gremlins, which are those thoughts and beliefs that say, you’re not good enough, you didn’t finish college, Dad never paid attention to you, you’re not pretty enough, I know things happened to you as a child. Fill in the blank for your own shame gremlin. Shame comes down to two main beliefs, “I’m not good enough,” and if you can talk yourself down from that one, Shame says, “Who do you think you are?” (TED March 12)
In their moment of shame, when the man and woman are hiding from God, God is seeking them. God asks, “Where are you?” God wants to connect with them and is reaching out. Dr. Brown writes, “Shame hurts because it brings with it disconnection, and we are physically, cognitively, emotionally, and for many of us spiritually wired for connection.” Shame is the fear of disconnection.
And yet we disconnect and hide from God when we numb ourselves with shopping, alcohol, food and medication.
We hide from God when we make the uncertain certain, abandoning the mysteries of faith for the certainty of dogmatic religion.
We hide from God when we stop praying and refuse to share our lives with our loving Creator.
That is why the psalm speaks of connecting to the Lord, through forgiveness, redemption and God’s steadfast love. God’s hand of forgiveness and love reaches over the barriers of shame to connect and welcome us home.
Remember I said shame needs three things to thrive: silence, secrecy and judgment. Silence and secrecy means we will never tell people of what we are ashamed, judgment means we are our own worst critic. We judge ourselves more harshly than anyone else. What kills shame is empathy; connecting with another and they say me too. We share the antidote for shame when we hear and share our vulnerabilities and we connect. Christ died to give us that connection; God’s love enfleshed in Jesus gives us that connection. Christ did not die only for our sins, our mistakes, but also for our redemption, healing our shame and creating our wholeness. The man and woman ate the fruit, that was the beginning of sin, Christ’s death restores us to the place of wholeness. God’s love means we can embrace our imperfections and know we are worthy of love and belonging.
I wish I could stand here and tell you my faith is such that I never hear those shame gremlins. I cannot. Yet my soul waits on the Lord, and hopes in the Lord and I have comfort in knowing I am truly connected to God through Christ. Sometimes I still hide in shame. If you find yourself hiding from God, covering yourself from God, then I invite you to Christ’s table; a place of deep communion and connection. It is a place of healing and belonging. Christ’s table is a place where your hiding will cease when you hear your Lord whispering to you, Olly, Olly oxen free. Welcome home. AMEN.
