Healing Shame through Communion

^{Luke 5:27-32}

²⁷ After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, ²⁸ and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

²⁹ Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

³¹ Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Shame

Tom is in prison, staying in a little room day after day, watching TV. He won’t look at other people in the eye, and he speaks very softly. He hears messages day after day that are shaming: “You’re Lazy, You’re Fat, You’re Stupid, You’re a bad person!” He feels like running and hiding every time he hears one of those messages, but there is nowhere to go. He just retreats further into himself. The messages from other people are nothing compared to the messages he tells himself; “I wish I’d never been born, I wish I could die, I wish I was someone else like the people I see on TV.”

Every meal, he sits alone on his bed, and watches TV and suffers in silence. The prison where Tom lives in his parent’s basement, he is 16 years old. Tom is a prisoner of his own shame.

Levi works as a tax collector and feels shame, since tax collectors were despised in Ancient Israel. One day a rabbi named Jesus comes by tells him to follow him. To follow a rabbi means that you will be taught by the rabbi and become a rabbi yourself! Levi has an opportunity to leave a despised occupation to be trained in the most honored profession in Israel.

To celebrate, Levi has a party at his house and Jesus comes and eats with other tax collectors and other sinners. When Jesus eats with them, he shows them acceptance. This is critical because a rabbi is the most honored profession in Israel, and for Jesus to eat with is amazing.

If the quarterback of the football team, the head cheerleader, the captain of the girls’ basketball team, the valedictorian, the lead soloist from the chorus, and the first chair tenor sax player all came to Tom’s house to invite him out for pizza, it would have a similar effect.

Sins we have committed against others and against ourselves produce shame in us. Sins done to us by other people also produce shame in us. Acceptance by others by others is the first step towards being healed of that shame. When we eat people, we are showing some level of acceptance. When we eat with Jesus at communion, we believe our sins are forgiven and our shame is healed!