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
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
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When I was a student
the church I attended put on weekly student lunches.
When they began doing this,
they decided not to charge anything.
They went out,
bought all the food,
prepared the room,
laid everything out...
and no one came.
And over the following weeks, that continued.
Very few people came in.
\\ After a while, the church changed tack.
They decided to charge for the lunch –
a nominal sum,
so it was still the cheapest lunch available anywhere,
but still,
there was a cost.
In a couple of weeks, the room was packed out.
People flooded in.
Some weeks there was even insufficient food
for all the students who turned up.
When the food was free,
people thought it was worthless.
When there was a cost,
people recognised it had value.
\\ In our gospel reading today
Jesus laid out the cost of being his disciple.
There were huge crowds following him,
yet many did not know where he was going.
Perhaps they enjoyed how he embarrassed the religious authorities.
Perhaps they wanted to see him take on the Roman authorities.
Perhaps they wanted to see more miracles.
The truth was,
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.
In Luke chapter 9 he had set his face in that direction
and from that time onwards he was always moving closer to it.
In chapter 13 he made clear what going to Jerusalem signified –
his death.
\\ And so, as these great crowds followed,
he turned to them to make clear what following him meant.
And Jesus is still calling disciples.
In his great commission at the end of Matthew's gospel
he called on his disciples to make more disciples.
We are part of that continuing process –
so Jesus' words here apply also to us.
What does it take for us to be disciples of Jesus?
What is the cost?
\\ There is a cost for our closest relationships.
Jesus said
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother,
wife and children,
brothers and sisters,
yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple”.
\\ To hate here means to love less –
our relationship with Jesus must come first.
To be a disciple of Jesus requires a new birth.
Jesus is creating a new family,
based not on natural birth,
but on spiritual birth.
And our primary allegiance as his disciples is to him
rather than our natural family.
\\ Does this mean we abandon our families?
Not at all.
Mandy, my wife, moved from Alabama to England
and now, having married me,
has stayed there for much longer than she expected.
There have been a number of people in England
who have assumed that she must have hated Alabama
in order to move to England.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
She loves Alabama,
and she loves her family,
and yet God called her to England.
Following Jesus has made it look like Mandy hates her family.
The truth is, Mandy loves her family deeply –
but she loves Jesus more.
\\ And now that we are married,
one of us will always be away from home.
If God calls us to stay in England,
Mandy will be away from her family here.
If God calls us to move here,
I will be away from my family.
If we are going to be disciples of Jesus,
then obedience to his call must take precedence over our family.
\\ The second cost is to our lives.
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
cannot be my disciple.”
Where there's a cross,
there's a crucifixion.
The world says to people, “Come fly with me!”;
Jesus says to us, “Come die with me”.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem
and he is on his way to die.
Anyone who follows him must be willing to do the same.
We don't have to find the cross –
it is already there.
We need to carry it.
Does this mean we seek suffering and death?
Again, not at all.
But we must be prepared for it.
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