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.
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Anger
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Agreeableness
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Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
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Anger
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12-1~/2-07
*Messy Relationships*
Did you hear what Mr. Marley said about family relationships?
He said, “How you feel about your family is a complicated thing.
You can hurt them and they can hurt you.”
Relationships at Christmas often get messy because the hurts that have been there all year long under the surface tend to bubble up.
At Christmas gatherings we often face messy relationships that exist in our extended family because we see people at this time of year that we don’t see any other time, or we are herded into the same house for Christmas parties with people we don’t really get along with.
In extended families, or work relationships, or in your network of friends there are probably some people who are not talking to each other.
It may be your brother and your Dad who are not getting along.
Your wife and your mother in law may have trouble talking to each other.
Someone in the past may have said something to your kids that you really didn’t like and you don’t want that to happen to them again.
In divorced situations there are all kinds of complications that make holiday gatherings uneasy.
You may get a sick feeling just thinking about seeing a particular person and you dread what will be tense moments at family gatherings or office parties.
There was an elderly man who lived in Phoenix and a few days before Christmas he called son in New York City.
He said, “I hate to ruin your Christmas, but your mom and I are going to get a divorce.
45 years of misery is enough.
We are sick of talking to each other, and sick of looking at each other.
It’s just over.
In fact, I’m tired of talking about this now so you’re going to have to call your sister in Chicago and tell her about this because I’m done.”
He hangs up the phone and his son calls sister.
“You’re not going to belive this.
Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.”
She said, “There’s no way.
They are not.”
She hangs up and calls Dad.  “Dad, you are not getting a divorce.
There’s no way I’m going to let this happen.
You don’t do one thing until I get there.
I’m going to call my brother back and we’re both going to be on a plane tomorrow.
We’re going to be there and get this straightened out.
Don’t you do a single thing until you hear from us.”
The man says, “OK,” and hangs up.
Then he turns to his wife and says, “OK, honey.
The kids are coming for Christmas and they’re paying their own airfare.”
Well, that might be a mess.
All of us deal with messy relationships of some kind at some time.
And, it’s quite possible you will again at this season when you get together with family and friends.
Messy relationships are painful, but, of course, they’re nothing new or unusual.
When Jesus was born it came about in the midst of a messy relationship.
"This is how Jesus the Messiah was born.
His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph.
But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit."
[Matthew 1:18, NLT]
 
Many of us are so familiar with this story we don’t realize how startling those statements are.
These facts so calmly and plainly stated were an emotional IED for Joseph.
He did not have all the information we just read.
He did not know Mary was still a virgin while being pregnant.
He did not know she had never had sexual relations with any man.
At that time Joseph didn’t know God was involved in all this.
All he knew is that Mary became pregnant.
This situation was terribly serious in that culture.
Engagement was so serious that a couple had to be legally divorced in order to end an engagement.
A pregnancy during the engagement period was socially, legally and religiously the same as adultery.
Joseph had a mess on his hands.
If you were Joseph and you knew you had not slept with Mary, you would be sure some other man did.
In your mind you would begin to go down a list of guys you think could be responsible for this.
You want to rip his arms off.
And then you realize Mary has lied to you about her love and broken her promises to you.
Pain and disappointment tear you up and you feel like tearing up something or somebody.
Maybe you might be the kind of person who just can’t take that kind of rejection and goes off and gets drunk.
Or maybe you just leave town and say it’s not your problem.
What’s the pattern of your family in dealing with messy situations?
We usually deal with messy situations in 1 of 4 ways.
Where are you in this?
Some families /pretend/.
When people ask how things are going they say, “We’re doing fine,”  to people on the outside but everyone inside the family knows there’s conflict, tension, and anger.
Some families /explode/--yelling, shouting, and tearing up each other verbally.
Some of you know this kind of experience.
At the end of a day like that there’s leftover turkey on the table and left over carnage in the living room because of all the horrible conversations that have occurred.
Some families /bury/ their messes.
These families say, “If we have enough food and it’s good enough; if we have enough presents and they’re nice enough; if we have lots of decorations are they’re pretty enough, we’ll just bury the mess underneath all that.
We won’t think about our family mess or the relational tension out there.”
In this family as you drive home with the kids in the back seat, mom and dad are in front talking badly about rest of family while the kids sit and listen in.
Other families try to /avoid/ their messes.
They decide to just not show up at parties or family gatherings.
You may have some family members who routinely don’t show up to family gatherings because of the mess.
Family messes may not just be about conflict.
It may be that there is a person whose life is going off in a bad direction and there’s part of you that doesn’t even want them around your kids.
You don’t want that kind of influence so you stay away.
We all have some messes to navigate.
Since God did the choosing of the people involved in the birth of His Son, it’s not surprising that Joseph was a ‘righteous’ man.
This description means that he was known for obeying God’s laws.
Respectable people in the community were like this.
Joseph was a man of admirable character, but he was dealt a mess.
Here he was a righteous man with pregnant fiancé.
And soon everyone would know it and assume the child is his and he would no longer be considered righteous.
This was a mess for him.
If he were a legalistic religious leader, he would do what Deuteronomy 22:21 says and take her to her father’s door and have her stoned to death by the men of the town.
Remember, later in Jesus’ life there were men ready to do that to a woman discovered to be an adulterous.
Joseph knew the law of God but he also knew the heart of God behind the law.
Joseph was not a legalistically religious man but a man with a heart like God’s full of mercy and grace.
So...
 
"Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly."
[Matthew 1:19, NLT]
 
Though Joseph was likely to be incredibly upset about this mess, he gave grace rather than rage.
He was not worrying about his own reputation, but he was concerned about hers.
Instead of getting even he gives even more to her.
Why would God bring Jesus into world in such a scandalous way that looks so sinful and wrong?
As far as any person could know, Mary should be executed according to God’s law.
Why would God do this?
Maybe it was for us to understand that in this sinful world where messy relationships are common, we could see what a truly good person is--not legalistic or judgmental, but knowing God’s law and knowing when to give grace.
God is always full of grace toward us.
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