Lectionary for July 27, 2025
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138;
Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13
While working out today, I listened to a podcast about how to be a better dad. The two hosts talked about how shame often gets in the way of some dads asking for the help they need and from fully showing up in their relationships with friends, partners and children. The truth of the matter is that I listened to the podcast because I’m embarrassed about not being a better dad. And I ran as I listened because I’m embarrassed about not being in better shape. To be clear, the podcast hosts were speaking directly to me about how to cope with shame.
The lectionary passages this week talk about shame too—when it should be felt, and when it definitely should not be felt.
We start with Jesus’ prayer in Luke 11. Jesus teaches his disciples to bless God’s name, ask for their daily bread, request forgiveness of sins in proportion to how completely they forgive the sins of others and, finally, to be excused from temptation. Preachers can take this prayer in any of a thousand directions, but I’m interested in Jesus’ follow-up lesson.
Jesus makes sure his disciples understand the posture he wants them to take with God. He tells a parable about a man who pounds on his neighbor’s door late at night, asking for bread to set before a surprise guest. This is an outrageous request. Breadmaking was and is usually done in the morning, and enough was usually made for the full day. Of course, bread can be made whenever, like when Abraham commanded Sarah to make bread for guests in the heat of the afternoon. But that demonstrates radical hospitality, not normalcy.
The neighbor here asks for bread at night, and the man is in bed with his children. I put my three boys to sleep every night, frequently by letting them fall asleep on me (or by falling asleep first and waking up to find them asleep on me). The thought of having someone knock repeatedly on my door at bedtime (or my brother unfailingly calling me during the middle of bedtime) drives me crazy! But the point of Jesus’ parable is that the insistent neighbor will receive the bread after all, specifically because of his anaideian—his anti-shame, or shamelessness.
Jesus’ point is that we should pray to our Creator, the God of the Universe, completely without shame, asking like a crazy neighbor banging on the door in the middle of the night. We are to have no shame in our prayers before God!
The lectionary passages this week talk about shame—when it should be felt, and when it definitely should not be felt.
Back in Genesis, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are without shame. The cry against them has risen to God’s ears (18:20-21). But the God of justice wants to investigate to see if it really is as bad as reported—and it was! The people of Sodom are arrogant, overfed and unconcerned, and they don’t help the poor or needy (Ezekiel 16:49). They desire to have their way with foreign flesh (Jude 1:7) and use sex as a weapon to harm foreign visitors. The shameless violence of the cities of the plain rises to God.
But look at Abraham. He already knows to talk with God as Jesus instructs. He may or may not know that Lot and his family settled in the cities concerned, but Abraham immediately swings into action to negotiate with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah. Asking for a smaller number of salvific righteous people, Abraham eventually convinces God to not destroy the cities for the presence of even 10 righteous people. Abraham has no shame when requesting to save the cities that have no shame in abusing the poor and the foreigner.
So, how are we to be properly ashamed and properly shameless? The letter to the Colossians instructs Christians to not be taken captive by philosophy or empty deceptions of human traditions. Just today I saw that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) decried “willful childlessness” and singleness, as if both Jesus (Matthew 19:12) and Paul (1 Corinthians 7) did not say that being single and childless is better when it is possible. I think the writers of the SBC resolution, which shows a preference for human traditions over Jesus and Paul, should be ashamed.
Even in these days, there are Christians who champion war and violence in the United States as well as around the world, as if some human philosophy justifies hunting, abusing and killing the people for whom Jesus died (especially foreigners and the poor). We should be ashamed of ourselves for thinking that way!
But we should absolutely be unashamed to pester God, day and night, knocking on the doors of heaven to beg for loaves of the bread of peace to feed the world with calm, tranquility and love.
