Honor-Shame, Gender, and Childlessness
Luke’s first chapter starts with an account of a childless couple.
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. (Luke 1:5-7, NIV)
Childlessness characterized the start of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thus, in beginning this way, Luke is communicating that the Jesus story, while a new beginning, is still part of the larger story of Israel.
Further, beginning in this way draws attention to a theological theme throughout the Old Testament and the New: It is God who opens and closes wombs. The conception of children is God’s work. Just as Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were long awaited and arrived when God ordained, so it is with this new breaking in of God’s work in the world.
But childbirth is not just a theological (or even a biological) matter; it is a social matter. In the honor-shame culture that characterized the Mediterranean world, women have borne (pun intended) the brunt.
Honor
Malina and Neyrey define honor as “the positive value of a person in his or her own eyes plus the positive appreciation of that person in the eyes of his or her social group…honor is a claim to positive worth along with the social acknowledgment of that worth by others.”1 In this social world, men earn honor by their actions in the public square. Women, usually confined to private domestic worlds, have no such opportunity. Their primary chance at achieving honor and avoiding shame is first, by keeping their reputations pure, and second, by marrying and bearing sons, sons who will grow up and bring their families honor.
But honor-shame culture does not just have implications for human relations or for gender roles; it affects the entire religious experience. While justice-oriented individualistic cultures (such as the United States) view God as Judge and Lawgiver, as perfect and sinless, as alone capable of keeping the absolute moral standard (all of which is true), honor-oriented collectivistic cultures view God as Father and Patron, as glorious and faithful, as alone worthy of deserving all reverence (all of which is also true).
Justice-oriented individualistic cultures view the essence of God’s sovereignty as forgiving sinners and granting salvation. Honor-oriented collectivistic cultures see God’s sovereignty in a different expression, as honoring lowly sinners and humbling the falsely proud. Such a theology can be difficult for those of us coming from individualistic justice-oriented cultures to get our heads around, for we are used to thinking of salvation in terms of wiping away legal and abstract notions of wrongdoing.
So for help in understanding how God’s work is such good news in an honor-shame culture, it makes sense to listen to one who had experienced shame herself, the previously childless Hannah of the Old Testament. In praising God after she gave birth to a long-awaited son, she sang a song about the Lord to whom she gave her son in service:
The Lord brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.
The Lord sends poverty and wealth;
he humbles and he exalts.
He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor. (1 Sam. 2:6-8, NIV)
This Great Reversal,2 first articulated by Hannah, would come into its fullness when God opened the womb of a virgin, who would give birth to his Son.
Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, “Honor and Shame in Luke-Acts: Pivotal Values of the Mediterranean World,” in The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, edited by Jerome H. Neyrey (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 25.
Justo L. González, The Story Luke Tells: Luke’s Unique Witness to the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015).