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.
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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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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
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Anger
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Jesus’ parable reminds us that this world stinks.
We go to fields and gardens, we try to plant things, and it’s hit or miss.
Sometimes they grow.
Sometimes they don’t.
Green thumbs and farmers know tricks, but even they have crops fail and weeds grow.
The same holds true spiritually.
The Sower sows His seed.
God sends His Word like rain and snow to water the earth; and it does stuff.
The Word does not return empty.
To our eyes, it appears like the Word mostly fails.
It hits the path and the devil snatches it.
It falls on shallow or rocky soil and persecution and things strangle it.
Some fall on good ground.
Some faith gets created.
Some believers last.
Some.
But not nearly all.
Look at your family field, our congregational crop, and see the parable borne out.
God sows his working Word and we see faith.
And we see seed snatched, scorched, choked, and matted flat.
Teachers see it too.
They look back over years of cherubic faces and see some growing and producing fruit and some they can only label “weeds.”
Pastors have the “confirmation syndrome.”
Or there’s the joke about the bats.
A priest, a rabbi, and a Lutheran all have bat problems and compare notes on removing them.
The priest and rabbi failed.
The Lutheran succeeded.
“How?” the others ask.
“I baptized ‘em and confirmed ‘em.
Haven’t seen ‘em since.”
That’s real go-get ‘em stuff, isn’t it, Becca?
That fires you up to enter your classroom.
I bet you heard four years of that at MLC: “The world stinks!
Your crops fail!
Your students are weeds!”
These truths that Jesus, Isaiah and Paul, talk about today highlight where things stand in our world.
Paul, in Romans 8, talked about “present sufferings.”
The world surrounds us with misfortune and affliction.
Later, Paul lists some: “trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword.”
Those are external things that the world and the devil throw at you, throw at all Christians, throw at all people.
But up until this point in Romans 8, Paul really focused on one main thing that causes suffering: the flesh.
Oh, there it is again, “the flesh.”
Can’t we stop talking about that?
No, we can’t, because we still have it.
It hangs on to us with a death grip, trying to choke out God’s Word, trying to keep the rain and the snow from getting to us, trying to get us to do what it desires, trying to destroy us.
Even the world feels it.
“The creation was subjected to frustration.”
“The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.”
“The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up until the present time.”
Because of us.
I don’t know if global warming is real or not.
I know scientists and politicians go back and forth, mostly yelling, about whether what man does will lead to the whole world turning into a ball of fire or a rock of ice.
I also know that the world isn’t what it once was or should be because of man.
Genesis 3 tells me that.
When man sinned, one of the consequences God announced afflicted the earth: “Cursed is the ground because of you.”
Thorns and thistles grow among our crops.
Work becomes toil.
The ground doesn’t cooperate.
Then we die.
This wasn’t the world’s choice.
God did this to the world – because of us.
Man bears responsibility for how much life stinks and how wrong things go.
Everything lines up against us: things physical and spiritual, visible and invisible.
Even in faith, Paul says, “we…who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly.”
Present sufferings.
Present failures.
Present challenges to ministry.
We need that serenity prayer, the one dealing with things we can’t control.
That’s how Paul ends, right?
“We wait for it patiently.”
We’re ever so good at that.
Patience.
Taking the long-view, not getting bogged down in the short-term.
Seeing forests, not just trees.
That God does work out all things for the good of those who love him.
Yes, 24 hours a day, that’s us, patient.
With God.
Oh wait, it’s not.
We turn on God post haste.
We experience some “present suffering” and it’s, “Hey, God, how could you!?” We feel bound in some chain, and immediately wonder, “God, have you abandoned me?”
We groan a little, we have a contraction or two, and we start looking for other sources for comfort and help.
Luther reminds us that the moment we do that we worship another god.
Then the bondage to decay makes itself felt.
Death seeps in.
Things fall apart.
Things aren’t what they used to be.
Friends decay.
Family decays.
My things decay.
My money doesn’t have the power it once had.
My body doesn’t have the power it once had.
The whole world gets topsy-turvy.
I can’t do what I once did when I used to do it, and it doesn’t help to wait five minutes for new weather.
This whole thing’s a mess.
Life stinks!
It’s God’s fault!
He’s abandoned me and denied me.
He doesn’t love me or care.
He doesn’t help my ministry.
If he did, wouldn’t I have more success?
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