Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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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
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Anger
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Mark Airey
Funeral~/Dick Parker (Father-in-law)
1 John 3:1-2 (Epistle)~/Josh.
24:14-15 (Chosen by the Deceased)
 
Focus:  God calls us His children throughout our lives and for eternity through the resurrection.
Function:  That the hearers rejoice as children of God and have hope in His resurrection.[DS1]
Sermon Structure:  Problem~/Solution
 
We’re here today to remember and thank God for a special man, my father-in-law, Richard Parker.
Dick has been more than a father-in-law to me.  [DS2] He truly was a /special/ man in the way that he trusted and put his hope in Jesus Christ our Lord, and I, like all of you here today, will miss him dearly.
One of the reasons I’m standing here speaking to you today is because of the encouragement, support, and love of this special man.
[DS3] He is gone from us now, for he goes to be with Jesus and we can be sure that we will see him again at the time of the resurrection[DS4] ..
This we know through the word of God.
What we can be certain of is that there is no sting of death, it is gone.
This death is merely a separation of his soul from his body.
He is with his Lord and dawns the crown of eternal life.
Now what did God give us through the life of Dick Parker?
[DS5] He was very social.
He liked to be around people.
He could be dogged determined and focused.
Sometimes he could overbid in Pinochle…Okay;, no one could overbid in Pinochle like Dick.
He loved the Lord and wanted to share his message of salvation with others.
He loved this wonderful womanlady, Joanie, and their three beautiful daughters and nine grandchildren.
You’ve probably all seen his license plate, GRAMPS 9.  It’s a testament to his love for his family.
He loved them as a child of God and with the knowledge that they were also children of God.
He served His Lord through serving his family[DS6] .
We /all/ aren’t perfect, as Dick wasn’t perfect.
He made mistakes, (I mentioned the overbidding in Pinochle).
He had his worries and regrets.
What I admire most about Dick was that he lived his life “.../as unto the Lord”/.
He knew the forgiveness of the Cross and he was not shy about sharing that message of forgiveness with anyone he met.
[DS7] There are times when we wonder if anyone understands our lives and what we are all about.
I think Dick sometimes questioned whether or not people knew what was really important to him.
I believe this is typical of us Christians.
We live our lives loving our Lord, raising our families, doing our work, and yet do we display a clear witness of our faith?
Do people know who’s we are?
Are we just seen as strange or even a bit loony?
I think the world doesn’t understand us because we are not /of/ the world.
Our Epistle verse today speaks of this dilemma.
[DS8]  John explains that our Lord has lavished His love on us and plucked us out of this world to become one of His.
His child!  [DS9] Now this should give us incredible clout in this world, now that we are the children of the creator of the universe…  Well, that must mean we have the run of the place.
I mean, hey, He is the “King of Kings,” the maker of all things!
But it turns out the world doesn’t know Him.
Those that are not believers never knew Him and have no idea who He is.
Therefore, we do /not/ have the rights of a prince, or princess in this world as the children of God.
As a matter of fact, we seem to have /fewer/ rights as Christians, especially in some of the other countries of this world.
Yet this passage teaches us that we are “children of God” and when He comes again we will be /like Him/, and not only that, we will see Him as He is!
I know Dick knew this teaching.
He went about His life as though he understood this great love that our Lord has for all of us.
He knew that he was saved by the grace of God through his baptism.
He just kept on serving His Lord even when people cocked their heads to the side like dogs that don’t seem to understand what they are hearing or seeing.
He always seemed to want to help his fellow man even when it seemed a strange thing to do.
I have been the recipient of this help countless times, and I know many of you have also.
But, I really believe his greatest joy came from helping people he didn’t even know.
It always seemed to be against the grain of the world and when he did it in front of me I was convicted by the fact that it was against the grain of what I would have done.
Especially when he would share his faith with /anyone/ we met together.
Yet this is what we are to do as Christians right…share our faith.
But the world doesn’t necessarily seem to be too keen on this.
In fact, we can get into trouble nowadays when we share our faith.
This is because the world does not know Jesus Christ and therefore they do not know us.
Dick loved to share Christ with others he met.
Whether it was; with his neighbors, at the gym in the Jacuzzi after his 6AM workout, at the gas station, or even in the hardware store.
Wherever, he wanted to try to pass on his understanding of who Jesus was.
As children of God that is what we are called to do, even if the world doesn’t understand what we are doing.
In /Dick’s/ life, you could see Christ’s love and Christ at work in his life.
[DS10] Dick chose to have us read Joshua 24:14 and 15.
Gabrielle (or Luke-his eldest Grandchildren) read the whole passage for you.
I’m going to highlight verse 14a and 15b[DS11] .
“Now fear the Lord and serve Him with all faithfulness...But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.
But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Often people are defined by their job or what they do.
You know, this guy, oh, he’s a lawyer, a baker, he works at the sawmill, etc.
With Dick, he could only really be defined by how he saw himself, who he was.
A child of God.
He always seemed to be wearing a pin, a shirt, or a hat that told people whosewho’s he was.
There is a book that Dick enjoyed entitled God At Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life, by Gene Edward Veith.
The book talks about living your life for the Glory of God.
It details that in every aspect, every role, even the very ordinary areas of our lives you have an opportunity to serve Christ.
I states, “In each task He has given us-in our workplaces, and families, our churches and society-God Himself is at work.”
That was Dick.
Not defined by his roles, work, or jobs, but being Christ’s representative in every aspect of his life.
You can see it in his life as he served in the church as President or property director, in the insights and wisdom he shared at the Lifelight Bible studies he attended.
You can witness his legacy of serving in his children’s families.
His Daughter, Peggi, and her family sharing their gifts of music, Jackie and the Andersons, as missionaries in Nigeria serving the widows and orphans.
As I preach and proclaim God’s Good News of forgiveness you can know that Dick’s love and encouragement helped me be here and these other children continue to serve the Lord and remember that we are children of God no matter what the world has to say about it.
We have this same knowledge that Dick had.
We know that we are children of God and He loves every single one of us no matter what our flaws and faults are.
[DS12] He has called us to be His children and we have the resurrection to look forward to just as Dick does.
We only have to serve Him through serving His people until that day comes.
His coming again is the time in which we will witness His glory and the greatness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
He is the hope that we have.
Christ is the final climactic ending to all death in this world and the victory over all sin.
This is when we will see the redemption of all of His creation.
In Dick’s life you can see the message in both 1 Jn. and Josh.
24...
 “Now fear the Lord and serve Him with all faithfulness.
This is because we are loved lavishly and He calls us children of God through our baptism.
Mark,
            Thanks for your self-reflections on your own struggles with this sermon.
I appreciate the fact that you are aware of the struggle with coherence in this piece.
While it does not help the sermon as a whole, it does demonstrate that you are growing in your ability to critically evaluate your own work and I would agree with your assessment.
In terms of the funeral sermon, you do well in this sermon to offer us concrete references to Dick’s life.
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