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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I let our confirmand select our text today.
She did well.
To be fair, it’s hard to choose an inappropriate Word of God.
I mean, it’s God’s Word.
Think of what Psalm 119’s anonymous psalmist says about God’s Word:
“I faint with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word.”
“Your word, o LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.”
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”
Three examples culled from 176 verses praising the Word.
Compare it to Morgan’s psalm, Psalm 56.
David wrote these words “when the Philistines had seized him in Gath.”
You can read about it in 1 Samuel 21.
Perhaps a little review of David’s life between Goliath and Bathsheba is in order.
David grew up during the reign of Saul, Israel’s first king.
For various reasons, the Lord rejects Saul and sends Samuel to anoint a new king, a man after the Lord’s heart.
God chose David.
Anointed, but not enthroned, David debuts defeating Goliath.
Saul notices and makes David a captain in his army, a captain who earns accolades: “Saul has slain his thousands; and David his tens of thousands.”
Such praise disturbs Saul.
He sees a rival for the throne (little does Saul know!).
So he tries to kill him.
A lot.
He throws spears.
He gives him suicide missions.
He sends hitmen.
David gets wise and runs; first, to the high priest.
He asks for food and weapons.
The priest provides both, the weapon being Goliath’s sword.
That decapitated Goliath.
Goliath.
From Gath.
Sensing Saul on his tail, David flees further.
He goes to King Achish.
The kingdom?
Gath.
What was David thinking?
He goes to the home of Goliath?!
Not only that, but as Saul’s captain he made mincemeat of the armies of Achish and the Philistines.
On one of the missions Saul hoped would kill David, David killed two hundred Philistines and brought their – eew – foreskins to Saul.
So David runs from the frying pan into the fire.
And almost buys it.
The enemies don’t want him there.
Well, they do, but not as an expatriate, as a captive.
“Isn’t this David, the king of the land?”
Perhaps rumors about Samuel’s anointing have spread.
Maybe David’s military prowess makes it de facto.
More, “Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.’”
The Philistines identify David as an enemy – their enemy.
Next, Psalm 56 tells us, they seized him.
David goes from one step ahead of Saul to being either the next public execution or a diplomatic card for negotiations with Saul.
No wonder David talks about hot pursuit.
“They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, eager to take my life,” David’s poem says.
In this case, it’s a little bit David’s fault.
What did he expect when he ran to Gath?
For a moment, David acts like his ancestors who determined that they needed a king, and so rejected God’s rule through judges like Moses, Gideon, Samson and Samuel.
For a moment David foreshadows his descendants who determine that to preserve kingdoms they must ally with Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, or Persia, even though God told them to trust him as their only ally.
So quickly, even the man after God’s own heart turns from God and to the world for aid and comfort.
He lifted up his eyes to the hills and said, “Where does my help come from?”
And his heart didn’t immediately say, “The LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
He hasn’t yet heard these words Jesus spoke, but he forgot their timeless truth, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
It’s easy to forget when the world closes in.
Think of Paul’s Romans 8 list: trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword.
Paul describes the Christian’s lot in the world: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
We live in that world.
It wants to and tries to kill us.
Think of life’s transitions.
Going from the shelter of home to college or the workplace.
Going from a Christian school to a public school.
Going from church back into the world.
As we welcome Morgan to the Lord’s Table, I’m sure she wonders about moving from catechism class and Bethel school into the grownup world.
Here it’s easy to find God’s Word.
It surrounds us.
Just as at Bethel school, and for Morgan next, at Great Plains.
Those words surround us.
Some call it a “bubble” or “cocoon.”
Some sneer when they say that.
As if it’s bad.
But it’s good, great, wonderful.
To have God’s Words around means we have God around, his Spirit around us and in us, breathing into us his breathed-out words.
But the sinful heart sneers at this bubble and cocoon.
This sneering stands at the heart of the so-called “confirmation syndrome”: that sad situation where so many confirmands disappear within days, weeks, or years of confirmation.
Some blame lay with pastors and congregations who do not nearly enough to work with this group at a critical age.
Some blame lay with parents who suddenly take the hands off the reins and require nothing of their children any more, as if they’ve “graduated” from all that Jesus stuff.
But a lot of the blame lay with the confirmands.
They leave confirmation class and enter a world where Saul hurls spears at them and Philistines seize them and they stop looking to the Lord for help.
They merge into and blend into the world.
They don’t just live “in” the world, they become “of” the world.
Like David.
All the while this transition often gets accompanied by that sneer about escaping the “bubble” and “cocoon” of Christian education, or confirmation class, or a Christian and Lutheran world-view for the “real world.”
It says, “All that confirmation stuff was nice, but the world doesn’t operate that way.
How can I survive with that stuff?
I need to get out, see things, experience them, do them the way the world does, or I’ll have nothing and be nothing.”
That sad syndrome that every pastor warns against in confirmation sermons, simply forgets those words of Jesus from Matthew, “Be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Confirmation syndrome isn’t just youthful rebellion, though it is partly that.
It isn’t just something to minimize by saying, “They’ll be back when they get married, or have kids.”
Though they might be.
Confirmation syndrome means fleeing God to live with Philistines.
It rejects God and relies on yourself.
And God destroys such souls and bodies in hell.
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