Preaching Connection: Shame

Reading for Preaching

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

In June of 1967 Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq—all within six days.  In fact Israel wiped out the air forces of the other nations mostly in one afternoon.  Israel’s victory was crushing to her Muslim opponents, who had believed that God was on their side in the long struggle with Israel.  Obviously they...
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Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve

Smedes wants readers to see that human beings are inexpressibly complex creatures.  “What we are is a set of walking contradictions: our inner lives are not partitioned like day and night, with pure light on one side of us and total darkness on the other.  Mostly, our souls are shadowed places; we live at the...
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“Shame”

Shame used to be valued as a sign of character, of knowing limits. But contemporary culture…has tended to dismiss shame as the mark of a timid person. “We can be ashamed of anything—including our assets—when we see that they provoke disapproval, or divide us from others. Hidden and un-dealt-with shame can stalk one’s being, inflicting...
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The Problem of Pain

“Even pagan society has usually recognized shamelessness as the nadir of the soul.”
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Ethics

“Shame is man’s ineffaceable recollection of his estrangement from the origin; it is grief for this estrangement, and the powerless longing to return to unity with the origin. Man is ashamed because he has lost something which is essential to his original character, to himself as a whole; he is ashamed of his nakedness…. Shame...
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Craddock on the Craft of Preaching

Craddock and wife Nettie were vacationing in the Smoky Mountains, eating hamburgers in a restaurant. An old guy comes up to them and asks them who they are, what Fred does for a living, how long they plan to be there, etc., all making Fred antsy. Then, after finding out that Fred is a preacher,...
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Resurrection

Prince Dimitri Nekhlyudov (neck-lee-YOO-dov) seduces a beautiful housemaid, Katerína Máslova, impregnates her by the seduction, and spoils her life. On the day after the fateful seduction, Nekhlyudov makes a terrible decision: he ought to give Máslova some money “because it was the thing to do and he would be considered dishonorable if he did not...
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Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

During the 1930s Hitler’s aim in building up German arms, in rallying the German people, in defying other nations’ uneasiness over these things, was to expand German glory. Germany had been shamed at Versailles. Hitler understood that the only cure for shame was glory. All he needed was Lebensraum, living space, “into which a racially...
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Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full

One of the banes of Nixon’s life was his awkwardness. He would spill ink, conk his head on car door frames, and then spill blood on the white dress of one of the car’s occupants. “He stopped the habit of serving soup at White House official dinners after spilling soup down the front of his...
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Additional content related to Shame

Mark 9:30-37

Verses 30-37 in Mark 9 provide us a very clear picture of a human response to fear and confusion: changing the subject instead of taking the risk to look foolish. Who likes to look dumb? Worse yet, it was just last week when we heard Peter speak up and “question” Jesus, and where did that…

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John 20:19-31

Sample Sermon:  Why didn’t they go looking for him? Today we pick up right where we left off last week on Easter here in John 20.  When last we saw the disciples, Mary Magdalene had just burst in with the excited and exciting news, “I have seen the Lord!” Earlier that day, when Mary told…

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Mark 9:30-37

Digging Into the Text: Jesus and the disciples are “on the road again,” headed for Jerusalem.  But Jesus didn’t want anyone to know.  He didn’t want any more disturbances or interruptions because he was teaching the disciples, preparing them for what lay ahead.  Now, for the second time he tells them exactly what it is…

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Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

If you’re anything like me, you ask something like “What on earth is wrong with us?!” just about every time you read a newspaper, watch the news on television or peruse a news website.  There is something wrong, very wrong, with us.  We naturally prefer to blame someone or something rather than accept personal responsibility…

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2 Timothy 1:1-14

It is all at once so clear and yet so paradoxical. The opening verses of Paul’s second letter to Timothy are at once soaring in their reveling in God’s power and grace and yet brutally honest in talking about the suffering the gospel sometimes brings to its best heralds. Paul can see it so clearly:…

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Hebrews 11:29-12:2

There is a terrible moment early in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and most of his men have somehow survived the utter carnage of the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach and are now on a high bluff overlooking a scene of utter destruction. One of Miller’s men says “That’s quite a…

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John 20:19-31

Sample Sermon : Why didn’t they go looking for him? Today we pick up right where we left off last week on Easter here in John 20. When last we saw the disciples, Mary Magdalene had just burst in with the excited and exciting news, “I have seen the Lord!” Earlier that day, when Mary…

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Genesis 13:1-18

Have you ever returned to a special place from your past? The place you got engaged, for instance, your old dorm room, your first job. What about a place where you distinctly heard the voice of the Lord? Even sadder places seems to pull us back or make us speed up as we pass them:…

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Genesis 38

Genesis 38 has to be near the top of the list of least-preached texts in Scripture. There’s death (by the hand of God no less), sex—both in marriage and outside of it, and lots of things that parents might not be ready to have their kids understand (i.e. parents are too embarrassed to have to…

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Mark 9:30-37

Questions to Ponder / Issues to Address: It’s quite a picture: Jesus is walking up ahead of his disciples.  Outwardly Jesus is watching the path ahead, minding the curves in the road and stepping over potholes.  Inwardly the eyes of his heart are on the cross and on all that was now just ahead of…

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