Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
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GATHERING
Dying, Christ destroyed our death.
Rising, Christ restored our life.
Christ will come again in glory.
As in baptism Arthur put on Christ,
so in Christ may Arthur be clothed with glory.
Here and now, dear friends, we are God's children.
What we shall be has not yet been revealed;
but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
Those who have this hope purify themselves
as Christ is pure.
THE WORD OF GRACE
Jesus said, I am the resurrection and I am life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live,
and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
I died, and behold I am alive for evermore,
and I hold the keys of hell and death.
Because I live, you shall live also.
GREETING
Friends, we have gathered here to praise God
and to witness to our faith as we celebrate the life of Arthur.
We come together in grief, acknowledging our human loss.
May God grant us grace, that in pain we may find comfort,
in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.
PRAYER
Let us pray.
O God, who gave us birth,
you are ever more ready to hear
than we are to pray.
You know our needs before we ask,
and our ignorance in asking.
Give to us now your grace,
that as we shrink before the mystery of death,
we may see the light of eternity.
Speak to us once more
your solemn message of life and of death.
Help us to live as those who are prepared to die.
And when our days here are accomplished,
enable us to die as those who go forth to live,
so that living or dying, our life may be in you,
and that nothing in life or in death will be able to separate us
from your great love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE
OLD TESTAMENT LESSON
Selections from Isaiah 40
Isaiah 40:1–8, 28-31 (NLT)
1 “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. 2 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned.
Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.”
3 Listen!
It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord!
Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! 4 Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills.
Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places.
5 Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken!” 6 A voice said, “Shout!”
I asked, “What should I shout?” “Shout that people are like the grass.
Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord.
And so it is with people.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever”...
28 Have you never heard?
Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
29 He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless.
30 Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion.
31 But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
NEW TESTAMENT LESSON
Revelation 21:1-7
GOSPEL LESSON
Selections from John 14
SERMON
We often approach the Bible as if it were written about alien people in an alien time.
Now, I am not suggesting that we think the Bible was written by extraterrestrial aliens…I’ll leave that interpretation for the so-called History Channel...
But alien as in foreign…
as if the Bible were written by foreigners in a time so far off
that it can’t possibly bear much relevance in today’s time.
Yet, when read, the Bible proves to be profoundly relevant
and the lives of those who wrote it were struggling with the same human fears, losses and pains…
They were seeking out the same kind of answers as we find ourselves seeking today.
In the Gospel reading, we find Jesus assuring his disciples that they should not be worried…
that their hearts should not be troubled.
But, let’s be honest, how could their hearts not be troubled.
Seriously!
How could their hearts not be troubled when Jesus just told them that he was going to be handed over to the Romans and put to a humiliating death on the cross?
How could their hearts not be troubled when they’d been following him for three years,
after leaving their families and friends behind,
their hopes and dreams, their livelihoods,
their very futures behind with the hope that Jesus was the Messiah who would kick the Romans out of Israel?
How could their hearts not be troubled…
when everything they had done up to that fateful night seemed to be utterly and tragically in vain?
Yet, Jesus’ words echoed out into the silence…Let not your hearts be troubled…
With such confidence, Jesus utters words that seem to fly into the face of everything we know.
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