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
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Anger
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! Introduction
" I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
* I hate this situation - a famous, even central passage among the readings
* It is much easier to preach on one of the other lessons
* Now I have to come up with a way to make you think again about this, and there have been lots of very skillful preachers working on this for years!
* So why did I not just do something else?
* Because it is simply too important to ignore
!! The Visit of the Old Lady
* The Vist of the Old Lady - Friedrick Durrenmatt
* Set in the town of Guellen, somewhere in Europe
* Trains go through
* The Flying Dutchman stops
* Claire Zachnassian
* Anton - a respectable townsman, seduced her years ago
* Abandoned her, became a prostitute - married a millionaire
* Now comes for revenge with a coffin
Kill him, and I will make the town rich
["The world made me into a whore; now I will make the world a whorehouse"]
Bit by bit, the town buys into it, including his own family
Finally, he is killed - the doctor says "Heart attack"
The mayor says "He died of joy"
The trains stop, and the town is happy
!! Sisters of St. Agnes
* Sr Rene is a CSA nun ( Community of St. Agnes)
* The founding mother was Sr. Agnes - founded in Wisconsin
* details +++
* There was a Sister in the early years who was Sr. Agnes' best friend and confidant
* Spread some kind of rumors about her
* Ecclesiastical court trial
* Agnes was exonerated, and the other nun was expelled
* Years later, this same woman asked to be readmitted to the order
* Sr. Agnes agreed, but changed her professed name and moved her to a different community so that no one would know of the history
* Although they have many of Sr. Agnes' papers and letters, no one knows what the rumors were about.
!! Discussion:
* A glaring contrast in the handling of two injustices
* I deliberately chose a fictional one for the negative one
* I have scores of true ones that I cannot tell
* Good life stories are not as easy to come by, especially at the jail
* Important to look at where we are in the Gospel
* The request by the Gentiles
* The Footwashing and the Last Supper
* Judas has just left
* "Now is the Son of Man glorified" - tenses are shifting
* Farewell Discourses
* Glorified
* Better phrased for us
* Little children
* Where I am going - different than when he spoke to the Jews
* Did not say, as he did to the Jews, "you will not find me"
* The disciples will find him, but not immediately
* *Love one another - not new*
* Love your neighbor as yourself- Lev.19:18
* Not even as Jesus redefined neighbor in Luke 10:29-37
* *But "As I have loved you!!"*
* John 15.13
!! Flesh it out
* Do you think that the death of Jesus was an accident?
A unpleasant happenstance?
* The Romans didn't care, for the most part, about Jesus' activities
* They were even distantly interested in what He was saying
* The Pharisees really had to work to get them interested and have Him condemned
* Remember who the Pharisees were
* They were "good people"
* They were the townspeople in Durrenmatt's play
* They were the German Christians when Hitler came to power before WWII
* I won't go any further
* Jesus asks us to heed his new commandment as a new way of life
* Not seeking revenge, redress, justice
* Not even the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
* Could almost rewrite the Golden Rule to "Do unto others as no one expects to be done unto, because it is too good to hope for"
* Paul put it very succintly: "But God proves his love for us in that while we still sinners Christ died for us."
(Rom.
5.8)
* You already knew that, didn't you?
* Here's the kicker - *Jesus did not intend for his sacrifice to be a spectacular marvel to be admired from a distance*
* He expected his disciples to *imitate* him in the role of the Suffering Servant for the sake of others
* That is the way Paul and the other apostles saw it as well
* *That is too hard - too much to ask!*
* It *is* too hard, especially if you try to do it by yourself
* That is why he sent the Holy Spirit, and why we need the church
* We cannot do it alone
* How can we expect people to be willing to do that?
* Consider this:
* No one thinks a thing of it when someone goes off to the jungles and the bugs and diseases in the Peace Corps
* No one is suprised when sevicemen die for each other in combat
* Even street gangs claim life and death loyalty
* So let's get going
* You don't have to go into the jungles or overseas
* You can do it *right here*, as they say, in the privacy of your own home
!
Amen
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