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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Analytical
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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For many of you, this might be the strangest sermon you’ve ever heard.
That’s my introduction.
Let’s open our Bibles to Mark 15:42-47.
Let’s read.
This passage is about Jesus’ death.
To understand the significance of this, we need to talk about death.
Our points will be 1) Death is a problem, 2) Jesus died, 3) how we can face death.
1 - Death is a Problem.
Let’s talk about death.
Americans of the 21st century hate talking about death.
And our lack of discussion about death is crippling us and making us fools.
According to Psalm 90, a wise man numbers his days.
Many of us, however, are numbering our dollars, not our days, and we’re fools for it.
We think we’ll never run out of days.
Let’s think about this for a while.
First, we don’t see death.
I am thankful for the medical advances of the previous century.
But one strange, unnoticed side effect is that death has been pushed to the margins of human experience.
Many of us have never seen anyone die.
This simple fact sets us apart from any other time in history and most other places in the world.
Let’s rewind to early America in the 1600s.
One historian commented, “Death dwelt within the family.”
People didn’t die in hospitals but in their homes.
And not just grandparents.
If you lived to your twenties, you likely had already witnessed several deaths.
It would’ve happened to your grandparents, probably a sibling or two, most certainly to aunts and uncles and cousins.
The average family would give birth to 9 children, but on average 6 would survive to age 21.
In other words, 1 in 3 children would die before adulthood.
Cotton Mather was a puritan who had 14 children - but only one outlived him.
7 died in infancy, 1 at the age of 2, and 5 in their 20s.
He buried all but one of his children.
A fever wasn’t just an inconvenience.
It could mean death’s early arrival.
The average life span was late 30s.
Today, it’s closer to 80.
We don’t grow up this way.
We isolate ourselves from it.
We don’t hear the moans and screams of the dying next door.
We don’t see the prolonged agony of a disease that slowly and painfully took the life of a loved one.
We can fathom what it would be like to face real pain without powerful pain medication.
Now, death happens in neat, sanitized, somewhat removed hospitals.
We don’t see death.
Second, we don’t believe death.
Because of the incredible advancement of medical technology, we don’t believe in the inevitability of death.
Even doctors are trained to use everything at their disposal to prolong life.
That is good, but it creates almost a sense of entitlement - “I can’t die!
You’ve got to do something!”
We have chemo pills that can kill cancer.
We can cut open the body with lazers and remove harmful growths.
We can insert tubes, or staples, or stints.
Our technology for life-preservation has become so advanced that sometimes we refer to dying as “pulling the plug” - we literally have advanced technologies that can beat a heart beating and lungs breathing.
And because of all this, many people refuse to believe they will die.
Some people think if you have enough money you can afford to escape death.
This idea has led one author to speak of “our society’s denial of the naturalness, and even the necessity, of death.”
Third, we don’t admit death.
Did you know there’s a massive business around burying the dead these days?
One company, called “Practical Burial Footwear,” offers luxury shoes for the departed.
These shoes are “soft, cushioned soles and warm, luxurious slipper comfort.”
Or you can go for upgraded coffins.
You can purchase soft interior cushioned ones, with an adjustable foam mattress (who adjusts the mattress?).
Why does this business work, while we sit here laughing about it?
Because when death comes, we hate to admit the finality of it.
We don’t admit death.
Fourth, we don’t talk about death.
Pay attention to the next funeral you attend - or whether or not they even call it a funeral.
They’ll likely call it a “Celebration of Life.”
They won’t say “corpse,” probably not even “body.”
They will likely use the person’s name.
There are no more morticians or undertakers, there are now funeral directors.
We talk about those who have passed, expired, deceased, moved on, got promoted - but we feel impolite to suggest that the guy in the casket is dead.
This, you must realize, is strange.
We are not “more advanced” for talking this way.
We are more delusional.
It’s not wrong to celebrate life; this is simply more evidence that we are trying to escape the reality of death.
Our careful language only feeds the illusion.
Previous generations spoke about death like it was normal.
And they were right.
It is normal.
Cotton Mather, the same one who buried 13 of his 14 children, once wrote, “When we sit at our Tables, let us think, I shall shortly be myself a morsel for the worms.
When we rest in our lodgings, let us think, A cold grave will shortly be my bed.
And when we view the chests, where we put our treasures, let us think.
A little black chest is that wherein I myself shortly may be locked up.”
Is he crazy, or are we for denying the truth of what he’s saying?
How come it’s not more normal to talk about death?
How come we feel awkward asking the elderly how they feel about being closer to death?
And also, Are we a wiser people for ignoring death?
Are we more biblical?
Apparently, death is a problem we don’t know what to do with.
So to understand our text better, we need to talk about death.
Let’s do a quick overview of God’s perspective on death.
This all feels very uncomfortable, but it’s very important for us.
Death is a consequence of sin.
Gen. 2:17 indicates that death was the consequence for eating the forbidden fruit.
Romans 5:12 says that “death spread to all men because all sinned.”
Death is a fitting and appropriate and just consequence for sin.
We will all face it.
Death is ordered by God.
Deuteronomy 32:39 “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”
God gives and takes life, and no one can withstand his decree.
You have a limited number of days on this earth, given to you by God himself, and then he will take your life, and nothing you can do can stop him when it’s time.
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