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.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.08UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.05UNLIKELY
Fear
0.04UNLIKELY
Joy
0.73LIKELY
Sadness
0.52LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.47UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.56LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.86LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.94LIKELY
Extraversion
0.6LIKELY
Agreeableness
0.97LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.59LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
WELCOME
CALL TO WORSHIP
As we come to worship,
let us think about what it means to be free.
As we come to worship,
let us remember what it feels like when people see our needs.
As we come to worship,
let us consider how we can respond to the needs of those around us.
Hymn 255: Crown him with many crowns
PRAYERS
Praise the Lord, my soul; praise the Lord.
All my being, praise God’s holy name.
God forgives, God heals and makes whole.
God blesses us with love and mercy.
We praise the Lord as we come to worship.
Praise the Lord, my soul; praise the Lord.
Amen.
Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
we can never see you in all your fullness,
all your glory, all your majesty.
Your greatness is beyond our understanding,
your deeds beyond our imagining,
your love beyond our deepest yearning.
You are the God we adore – certain, secure and sure.
You are God from one generation to the next,
not waning or changing, but forever our God.
Amen.
O God, all people are part of your created order, all are worthy
of love and respect, care and attention, justice and equality.
Forgive us if our prejudice excludes people.
Forgive us if our views are entrenched and misguided.
Forgive us if we fail to see people as equals.
Forgive us if in our zeal to worship we exclude so many.
Forgive us for our excuses that stop us responding to the needs
of others – and to your command to love as you love us.
Amen.
We do not understand how you can forgive us again and again,
Lord, yet we have again confessed our failings, our shortcoming,
our wrongdoings, our sins – and your promise still stands:
‘My child, go in peace, your sins are forgiven.’
So, let us go and serve the Lord.
Amen.
THE LORD’S PRAYER
Hymn 257: How sweet the name of Jesus Sounds
READING
Luke 13.10-17
10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years.
She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”
13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work.
So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites!
Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?
16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
Hymn 482: Your words to me are life and health
SERMON
Who has heard the saying when life gives you lemons make lemonade
“With Jesus, Lemons do make Excellent Lemonade!!!”
Have you ever sat in church, listening to the music or an impressive sermon, and your thoughts were all turned inward?
Thoughts like: No one cares that I am hurting.
When I first was widowed or divorced or when this illness first was diagnosed, people prayed for me, called me on the phone, visited me, sent me notes.
But now that time has passed and everyone is used to me, I guess they expect that I do not need anyone, that I am coping with my problem and that I not really hurting anymore.
Maybe they even think that if I were really depending on the Lord, I would be able to handle my situation without any difficulty.
But I am in pain, and I do not think anyone cares.
I sometimes wonder if even God cares!
There was a woman in the synagogue one Sabbath morning when Jesus was teaching there that might have been feeling just like that.
I fear there are a lot of us who are walking through this life—“bent over.”
If we look especially close at our Gospel reading for this morning, we might just assume that Jesus healed the woman of a physical disease of the spine like osteoporosis.
While this is possible, it isn’t necessarily what Luke is telling us.
The seventeenth century translation says the woman was “bowed by a spirit of infirmity”—which suggests a spiritual problem rather than a physical one.
The more modern New English Bible translates the Greek by saying, she was “possessed by a spirit that had crippled her.”
J.B. Philips’ translation cuts to the heart by saying that for eighteen years the woman had been doubled over from some “psychological cause.”
Now, what might that be?
What psychological problem or spiritual crisis could keep a person “bent over” for nearly two decades?
Maybe somebody had persistently abused her, verbally or physically.
Perhaps she had been called so many bad names that she had come to own those names—bending from their pressure.
Or maybe she had some twisted up emotions that communicated themselves to her body, and she found she couldn’t get herself straight.
Have you ever been “bent over”?
Perhaps you feel that way now.
The pressures of this world can take its toll on us.
Excessive worrying can weigh on us heavily.
Sometimes the most crippling disabilities are those of the spirit…
…the doubts and insecurities that keep us paralysed, unable to act, that prevent us from realising our fullest potential as God-created and God-loved beings.
Guilt can also cause backs to bend.
As can poverty……or even having too much money.
Some people are worn out by worrying that somebody is going to steal their stuff.
Some folks are unable to see the forest for the trees due to their stuff!
They are worn out by their stuff…
…buying it, cleaning it, polishing it, and storing it.
Frankly, we just don’t know what the psychological cause was that caused the woman in our Gospel Lesson to have a bowed back.
All we know is that it was severe, and she had it for 18 years!
For 18 years she had a very, unpleasant…perspective on life.
She had been walking around looking at passing feet.
She couldn’t see the smiles on the faces of strangers passing her by.
She couldn’t see the green trees in the meadow.
One Sabbath day she entered the synagogue, and likely, she was doing nothing whatsoever to attract attention to herself.
She probably slipped in through the side door, quietly, unobtrusively.
Jesus was teaching the people, and then He looked off to one side, or up in the balcony and saw that woman come in with her peculiar, crippled, bent-over walk.
He interrupted His lesson, then and there, and invited the woman to come over to Him.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9