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
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
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The Blessing of the Curse
Intro [talk about series after thanks.
Then talk about the commercial and lead into my use of that great sermon idea as a starting off point for our text…]
Intro [talk about series after thanks, then talk about the commercial and lead into my use of that great sermon idea as a starting off point for our text]
Intro [talk about series after thanks, then talk about the commercial and lead into my use of that great sermon idea as a starting off point for our text]
[quote to point out on end…what we want to be]
And every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?"
And I leave the word to you this morning.
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral.
And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.
And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say.
Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important.
Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important.
Tell them not to mention where I went to school.
I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.
I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.
I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice.
Say that I was a drum major for peace.
I was a drum major for righteousness.
And all of the other shallow things will not matter.
I won't have any money to leave behind.
I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind.
But I just want to leave a committed life behind.
And that's all I want to say.
...This Drum Major Instinct can cause us to be great [for good and bad…list some]
John 9:1-
pray
[firstpichere]
“Who sinned, this man or his parents?”
You can tell by the reaction of the disciples that someone had to be blamed.
Someone had to have caused this curse that this man had in his flesh.
And even by saying that today, it makes it clear that the disciples, and likely everyone in that area, if not the world, thought of people much the same as we do today.
Some deserve goodness, and some deserve badness.
Now hear me clearly, that isn’t a good thing.
No, I think that when we think that, we fly directly in opposition to the very word of God, but nonetheless, here we stand.
Completely and utterly in agreement with these disciples, at least, if we are being honest.
I say that because of the countless conversations I have had with some of the most dedicated and wonderful servants of God I know!
People who confess the difficulty of viewing everyone through the lens of Christ, and holding everyone else as more valuable to God, if not at least JUST as valuable to God, as they are.
This past week I had conversations with some of our youth, and our prayer group, about some of those issues.
While I don’t feel the need to delve too far into them, the issues we discussed were ones that reflected our view of other people.
It centered around this idea of what makes one person deserving of punishment and not another.
In the hypothetical I placed before them, I asked them to consider someone killed a loved one.
And then after the murderer was convicted of said murder, and sentenced to die, another loved one kills the murderer.
Should he be sentenced to death as well?
It’s a hard question.
It’s hard because of how we rank sin, and even people because of their sin, in our own hearts.
We raise some up, especially if they look and think like us, while others we push down.
This drum major instinct that Dr. King spoke of, leads us to gather all those who are likeminded, and who live like us and perhaps look like us - to gather them all around and create from them our little micro-societies.
[picofblindmanpersecuted]
But to do that effectively, often we need a scapegoat.
An “other” that we can hold up against us.
For the intellectuals it is the uneducated.
For the rich it is the poor.
For the poor it is the rich.
For the liberal it is the conservative, and for the conservative the liberal.
There is always SOMEONE who has to be the “other.”
The one we are never like.
Someone who has it wrong or is just cursed to not know or be like us.
Unfortunately, even the faithful can be diagnosed with that disease.
The church holds it’s share of responsibility in this struggle against the drum major instinct.
Believers versus unbelievers.
Doers versus Faithers.
Baptists versus Catholics.
Denomination pitted against denomination, all vying for this invisible prize of “rightness” with God!
This pull towards orthodoxy, or right thinking as the word means, as long as orthodoxy looks like I want it to look.
But let me echo Dr. King in this moment.
In that same sermon he says:
“I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church."
And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers—they ought to be in church.
But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don't count.
And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor.
The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D. The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name.
The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer.
And any church that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.”
Church we are all the same.
We are all one in Christ.
From the richest to the poorest.
Young or old.
Schooled or unschooled.
We are meant to see everyone the same way - as children of God.
[paradepichere]
But these disciples, and we, can’t seem to always pull that off.
And not just these disciples, church, this story continues to hammer home this idea, and really draw it close to our hearts.
[summarize]
His town needed him to be the blind guy.
The Pharisees needed him to be a sinner.
His family needed him to take away the pressure of the church, and suffer, even though he had been healed!
The class order had been demolished, and that turns everything on it’s head!
They needed that “other.”
For them to be in the band at the head of the parade, they needed someone to not be as special as them watching as the parade passed them by.
They needed it so much that his neighbors demanded to see the one who did it.
The Pharisees insisted that He was a liar.
His parents disown him and leave him to his own destruction.
And then finally, after they find no reason or cause for this miracle, this sign of God, this unbelievable good that was bestowed on this man they would normally marginalize, finding no trace of God in it, they throw him out.
They cast him aside, and banish him from the faith.
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