Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: humiliation, mortification, chagrin, ignominy, loss of face, shamefacedness, embarrassment, indignity, abashment, discomfort, discomfiture, discomposure, guilt, remorse, contrition, compunction, disgrace, dishonour, discredit, degradation, disrepute, ill-repute, infamy, scandal, odium, opprobrium, obloquy, condemnation, contempt, pity, misfortune, crying shame, cause for regret, source of regret, sad thing, unfortunate thing, discredit to, disgrace to, stain on, blemish on, blot on, blot on the escutcheon of, slur on, reproach to, bad reflection on, bring into disrepute, degrade, debase, defame, stigmatize, taint, sully, tarnish, besmirch, stain, blacken, drag through the mud/mire, give a bad name to, put in a bad light, humiliate, mortify, make someone feel ashamed, embarrass, abash, chasten, humble, put someone in their place, take down a peg or two, cut down to size, show up

Antonyms: honor, pride, respect, glory, praise, dignity, honor, esteem, glorification, laud, compliment, regard, credit, elevate, acclaim, pleasure, favor, kudos, recognition, flatter, admiration, greatness, happiness, self-confidence, reverence

Showing all results

1. Bitter-Sweet Recollections

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Barbara Brokhoff

... act was carried an ugly step further when they crucified him. Gone, then, was his own robe. The soldiers gambled for it at the foot of his cross. Gone, too, was the purple robe, and then his blessed, God-in-the-flesh body was laid bare to the shameful ignominy of the gaze of all who would witness the spectacle of his nakedness. How it must have shocked his pure and holy heart to be so ignobly exposed to all who passed by! He was deprived of all of the respectability of covering for his human form. In our ...

2. A Dead Man in a Witch’s Cave

1 Samuel 28:1-25

Sermon

R. Blaine Detrick

... God’s protection in the present ... and hope because of God’s promise for the future. For personal reading: 1 Samuel 1--46; 25:1; 28 For public reading: 1 Samuel 28:3-19 Outline The Power of Prayer (1 Samuel 1) The Reality of Revelation (1 Samuel 3) The Ignominy of "Ichabod" (1 Samuel 4) The Eternity of "Ebenezer" (1 Samuel 7) Q-SHEET Samuel - A Dead Man in a Witch’s Cave 1 Samuel 1--16 QUIZ: (True or False? Try first without a Bible; then use the verses to verify each answer.) 1. ____ Samuel was born ...

3. Which Way To Jesus?

John 12:20-36

Sermon

Harry N. Huxhold

... following our Lord Jesus Christ. How You Die We, of course, know how Jesus died. In these Lenten days we meditate upon the Passion and death of our Lord, who was crucified as a common criminal. Accused both by religious and civil communities, he died an ignominious death as an insurrectionist and blasphemer. Both crimes were the highest offense against either the state or the church. We know that Jesus was guilty of neither. Yet that is not what the law said. Under the law he died as accused. We know that ...

4. Shameless Passion

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Paul W. Kummer

... That stings, but its not humiliating like the plucking of the beard Jesus went through out of hardened anger against him or the degradation of the spittle that ran down his face after one of the soldiers cleared his throat and let it fly. Utter contempt. Ignominy to the highest degree. Yet, Jesus wasn't disgraced. The only shame for Jesus would have been resisting this and many other embarrassing indecencies that were done to him. He was not shamed, because he bore the weight of our sin all the way and was ...

5. Holy Week

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... through our baptismal commitment. This life will be filled with challenges; it will not always be easy to accept the call. The model we have is Jesus. He knew that his message would not be accepted. He knew that his mission would lead to an agonizing death of ignominy on the cross. Yet he fulfilled his mission to the fullest. We as those who follow in his footsteps have become the benefactors of his great act of love. Let us make a greater effort to live the vocation we have been given. In this holiest of ...

6. A Seeking Savior

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

W. Robert McClelland

... not just any human form. It was the form of a servant; a servant who was willing to be obedient even unto death. And not just any death! Certainly not the peaceful death of old age after a full life surrounded by admirers. Death on a cross; the ignominious death of a common criminal, deserted and alone. Paul's conclusion is clear: Jesus had no intention of pulling rank. He took off his clerical collar and risked getting decked in the brawl. He risked taking his lumps with the rest of us and in so doing tore ...

7. The Same New Jesus

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Carl Hoefler

... Pharisees, discouraging the elaborate ritual of the priests and the liturgical extravagancies of the temple. We picture our Lord as the "Gentle Jesus," the humble "Servant-Savior" with a bowl and a towel, who sits washing the feet of his disciples and silently submitting to the ignominious death of a criminal on a cross. This is a true picture of our Lord, but, it is only a one-dimensional view. It is only a partial picture of our Lord, particularly when we fail to project our vision above time and space in ...

8. Independence Day - The Mission of the Mighty

John 8:31-41

Sermon

... never be truly or safely free until all people on earth enjoy that same freedom. Ironically, again and again, as democracies in the world have failed and fallen in South America, in Central America, in Asia and in Africa, we have found ourselves ignominiously supporting military juntas that represent everything that the founders of our nation utterly abhorred. Is THIS our mission in the world? A few years ago on the 4th of July an enterprising news reporter in Madison, Wisconsin, handed a slip of paper to ...

9. Death: Commonality Explored

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Sermon

... dull to hear only Baptists speak to Baptists, Methodists to Methodists, Lutherans to Lutherans, about this matter. Death is a grand opportunity! It provides a spiritually enriching experience which can lift us in our walk with Christ and not defeat us with ignominy. This opportunity is for all Christians and it especially grants us a means to reach out to those parts of traditions different from our own. In helping another pilgrim accept himself/herself before the death angel, we prepare ourselves to do the ...

10. The Post Launch Slump

2 Cor 8:10-11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... aspiration; his campaign is covered closely by the press; there is much hoopla surrounding his inauguration; promises are painted in reds and yellows and oranges and after a time in office indications of improprieties emerge and and what began in promise ends in ignominy. It happens religiously. She has a very moving conversion experience and for a while there is much excitement over the change; but after the passing of time there is only a worshiping of that conversion’s forms and what began as a gush ...

11. Embalmed With Cardiac Arrest

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... Kingdom of the Messiah was riding the crest of a wave of popularity. Jesus was acclaimed with enthusiasm wherever he went. And now, the Master was dead; the collapse of the Kingdom was complete. Instead of the long hoped for triumph, there was nothing except this ignominious defeat. And so these two men groveled along in utter despair. But let’s not be too hard on them; let’s not be too critical. They were too close to the horror of Calvary, too close to the cross and the debris of their own shattered ...

12. What On Earth Is God Doing? - 1940

Psalm 76:1-12

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... noblest, gentlest Man the world has ever known. Jesus stood before Pilate and admitted that the latter had enormous power to do evil. And Pilate cravenly used that power and allowed the Master to be crucified. But God took that cross, symbol as it was of ignominious defeat, and made it the medium of the mightiest moral victories conceivable. Whereas once it suggested a hiss, now it elicits a song, and men praise God by singing, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." What on earth is God doing? Well, at least, he ...

13. Is The Social Gospel Out Of Date?

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

Kent Moorehead

... whole economy depends, would be positively suicidal. The madness of militarism is driving us to a veritable pentecost of calamity. But everybody knows it would be unpatriotic, not to say downright subversive, to anything but acquiesce piously, impotently, ignominiously - and hide what little light there might be under the bushel of silence. So we tacitly agree to ignore these controversial matters and put exclusive emphasis on personal evangelism - an evangelism so personal that it dies aborning, because ...

14. The Outcome of Easter Faith

Isaiah 25:1-12

Sermon

Donald Macleod

... once said, "Because I live you will live also," (John 14:19 RSV) do we presume that this is automatically going to happen? If so, we are overlooking the fact that Christ’s aliveness was secured by the bloody sweat of Gethsemane and a ghastly and ignominious death upon Calvary. Indeed, no one of us has any right to celebrate or share in the victory of Easter Day who has not been through a Good Friday experience in which we have broken down all our worldly priorities and thrown ourselves upon the mercy ...

15. The Final Farewell

Luke 24:50-53, Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

George Bass

... trumpet will sound to usher in the fullness of his kingdom. For us, the Ascension of the Lord ought to mean that the resurrection of Jesus is now complete. His God-given mission, which ended so suddenly and, in the eyes of the world, so ignominiously, is closed out in triumph. He had to return to his Father, simply because he could not go on, century after century, manifesting his resurrected person to doubters and believers alike. That would have mislocated belief in Christ in the realm of sight, rather ...

16. On the Singing of Hymns

Mark 14:12-26

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... Jesus and His friends left the Upper Room on their way to Calvary, they needed a fresh start. And they found refreshment in singing a hymn together. Jesus knew, if they did not, that ahead of him lay the Garden of Gethsemane, Calvary, and an ignominious death. But with the words of the hymn still ringing in Jesus’ ears he found the strength for the struggle ahead. During the First World War a cynical English colonel delighted in badgering an old village priest, where the colonel’s regiment was billeted ...

17. Cross Connections

John 18:1-11

Sermon

Robert Noblett

... the seemingly inexplicable shifts that occur in the wake of Jesus' death? What is heinous becomes hopeful; what is deadly becomes salvific; what is seemingly an ending becomes instead a beginning; what is raised in hate issues in health; what is designed to be ignominious becomes something in which the community of faith glories; humankind's worst is met with God's best. We remember this gruesome, ugly event and it so dramatizes God's deadly determination to get our attention and win our hearts that we can ...

18. Death Leads to Life

Isaiah 52:13--53:12

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... for him will be profitable for the world and thus he is willing to endure whatever God asks of him. The paradoxical nature of today's famous passage from the Prophet Isaiah can be directly applied to our Good Friday commemoration. On the surface Jesus' ignominious death on the cross seems to make no sense. We remember, however, what Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 1:18) said about this apparent contradiction in our faith, "For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who ...

19. The Lamb's Book of Life

John 1:29-34

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... screamed, raged and (for some of the males) rejoiced, one could only pray that no one was planning at a later date to show this degenerate spectacle to the poor sleeping infants displayed prominently on each stage. Can you imagine a more shabby, shameful beginning? A more ignominious family history? I'll never forget reading about Bell Telephone's plan a few years back. Every prisoner could call his mother free on Mother's Day and his father free on Father's Day. Mother's Day was a big hit. Father's day was ...

20. A New Day Is Coming

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... gain something very important and learn some important lessons of life. The famous sixteenth-century mystic and church reformer, Saint John of the Cross, wrote about his dark night of the soul as a spiritual dryness. Jesus embraced his cross without regard to its ignominy. There is certainly no need for us to look for hurdles and problems for they will certainly come our way. Nonetheless we should not run away when they find us. What dark nights have you recently experienced? How have you fared and what is ...

21. Hebrews 12:1-2, 12-17

Hebrews 12:1-2, 12-17

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ground - rather he himself was broken on the cross, opening up this new way for us. Jesus' endurance was on the cross, a once-and-for-all trial, a perfect act of love. Our endurance is tested along the marathon road of life itself. Jesus suffered the ignominious, torturous death of a criminal, but in total victory overcame death to take his seat at God's right hand. Keeping our eyes on Jesus' victory is the only way we will be able to complete our race. The lectionary reading now skips to verse 12, where ...

22. A Frightening Friday

John 18:1-19:42

Sermon

Donald Charles Lacy

... conduct of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, we soon learn, is not the end. We group the events together, as best we can, and wait in anticipation of the supreme victory song of salvation history. Those, centuries ago, had mixed feelings. Some thought the ignominious tailgate had come down and the Master had failed in a definitive fiasco. The thing you and I must not do is to become lackadaisical which leads to a lackluster attitude toward Resurrection Sunday. Oh, dear Father of our Savior and Lord, please ...

23. Carrying the Burdens of Others

Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon

Richard Gribble

... , but he was also subject to all the pain, suffering, feelings of dislocation, and was forced to negotiate all the hurdles and obstacles of any other human. Jesus was completely obedient to the Father's will, even to the point of enduring an agonizing and ignominious death on the cross. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us, "Although he was a Son, he [Jesus] learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him ...

24. Victorious, Victims

Luke 6:20-36

Sermon

Will Willimon

... on the Mount. And he knew what he was talking about. Jesus knew firsthand what it's like to have friends desert you, to have spittle run down your cheek, to be dressed up by the police and mocked as a king, to be whipped, to hang there in ignominy. "When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." "If someone asks for your coat, give him your shirt as well." "When it comes time in the service for the offering, and you stand before the altar of God and remember that your neighbor has something ...

Showing 1 to 24 of 24all results