Ed, my neighbor next door, is embarrassed to know me. It is a "last straw" kind of thing. The list against me is pretty long with Ed. It has to do with me being a pencil pusher type. A pencil pusher Ed describes as, "a person who has never done any real work." Ed believes the only people that really work are farmers.
According to Ed, my being a school teacher wasn't real work, it was just glorified babysitting. And being a pastor was a joke, as pastors don't work, they just bore people to death. Being retired means you never really work, but just put in time in your yard or garden. Most of all, part-time work in retirement is not work, it just gets you out of the house.
The last straw came when I was talking with Ruby, Ed's wife, over the fence. Ruby is interested in my hobby of writing. Ed heard me tell Ruby that I had a poem accepted for publication in a book of poetry. That did it for Ed - now he is just embarrassed by the sight of me. Ed believes being a poet is even worse than a pencil pusher. When Ed was in school, students had to learn and recite a certain amount of poetry. He thought poetry was something that teachers invented to torture students. Ed doesn't read books and if he was given a book of poetry he would be inclined to burn it.
I like the definition that says, "embarrass: to cause to experience a state of self-conscious distress." We have all done something, or said something, or had something happen that left us in a state distress. As parents, sometimes our children have embarrassed us with their conduct. We remember that, but we tend to forget those moments we embarrassed ourselves. I have heard that husbands have embarrassed their wives, but it may just be gossip.
We are told in the gospel of Mark that when crowds gathered about Jesus so much that he and his disciples were not even able to eat, his family came to take charge of him, for they said ,"He is out of his mind." They went 30 miles from Nazareth to Capernaum to bring him home. They were determined he was getting carried away with his ministry and the reports about Jesus were both good and bad. Jesus was popular, but also offending many powerful religious leaders. It seems his family was concerned for his mental and physical well being.
When we are who we are and we do what we do, we can upset many people without even trying. We cannot live without distressing someone about something. Mostly, people don't care about us unless we do something that causes them to feel distressed. Write a poem and your next door neighbour can be thoroughly disgusted with you because he hates poetry.
When Jesus' mother and brothers got to Capernaum they sent word he should leave the crowd he was teaching and come out to them. Knowing why his family was outside looking for him, Jesus continued his teaching and said looking at those seated in a circle around him: "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."
Perhaps more and more people in general are embarrassed by any reference to Jesus and the Christian faith. Recent results of a survey suggest people still believe in heaven after death, but not so much that there is hell. Jesus speaks of hell often in Matthew, Mark and Luke. What we think needs to be compared to what God's word says. Jesus said it this way, "Anyone who is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
