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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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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You know how sometimes two people can be talking to each other, and their words all seem to fit, but they are really having two very different conversations?
There’s this great scene in Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye meets with the butcher, Lazar Wolf.
As far as Tevye knows, they are meeting because Lazar wants to buy his new milk cow.
Lazar is actually there to ask Tevye for his eldest daughter’s hand in marriage.
And so the conversation begins.
[Maybe find someone to do scene with?]
LAZAR: Tevye, I suppose you know why I wanted to see you.
TEVYE Yes, I do, Reb Lazar, but there is no use talking about it.
LAZAR (Upset) Why not?
TEVYE Why yes?
Why should I get rid of her?
LAZAR Well, you have a few more without her.
TEVYE I see!
Today you want one.
Tomorrow you may want two.
LAZAR (Startled) Two?
What would I do with two?
TEVYE The same as you do with one!
LAZAR (Shocked) Tevye!
This is very important to me.
TEVYE Why is it so important to you?
LAZAR Frankly, because I am lonesome.
TEVYE (Startled) Lonesome?
What are you talking about?
LAZAR You don't know?
Eventually, the two of them get it straightened out, and… well, I won’t say more.
You should really see the show if you haven’t already.
A similar interaction - with about the same degree of innuendo and confusion - is what starts Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman.
Jesus asks her for something she shouldn’t give him… by which I mean, Jesus asks her for something.
The two of them shouldn’t be talking at all.
Any request he might make of her is already a serious breach of protocol.
It’s evident to her on first meeting him that this man is a little too forward.
A little too impolite.
A little too disrespectful of society’s rules.
So she calls him on it: How can you ask me such a thing?
And he responds by explaining who he is.
He’s not just some Jew asking some Samaritan woman for help.
He is the one sent from God to both the Jews and the Samaritans.
Except, that’s not what he says.
Not yet, anyway.
Instead, he speaks to her in riddles.
“If you knew who I was, you’d be asking me for my special living water.”
Living water, by the way, just means any water that flows continuously, like a river or a stream.
The Samaritan woman is confused.
Jesus doesn’t have a bucket.
The well is deep.
He literally just asked for her help getting at the water.
And now he has water to offer?
This makes no sense.
Is he some kind of magic person?
Jesus continues “If you drink the water from this well, you’ll be thirsty again.
But the living water I offer will satisfy you forever.”
Now the woman thinks she gets it.
She concludes this strange man who does not understand social boundaries is probably trying to indicate he’s attracted to her.
And it’s not just his words.
It’s the setting.
The Samaritans and the Israelites have the first 5 books of the Bible in common, so she knows the stories about this place.
This is the very location where a foreign prince saw one of the daughters of Israel, and decided he had to have her, with disastrous consequences.
Not only that, but there’s a well here now.
Three times in those first five books of the Bible, a man and a woman met alone by a well.
Three times, one of them drew water for the other.
And three times, she ends up married as a result.
That’s what happens between men and women when they meet each other at a well.
So, she concludes, this strange man who does not understand social boundaries is probably trying to indicate he’s attracted to her.
And it’s not just his words.
It’s the setting.
The Samaritans and the Israelites have the first 5 books of the Bible in common, so she knows the stories about this place.
This is the very location where a foreign prince saw one of the daughters of Israel, and decided he had to have her, with disastrous consequences.
Not only that, but there’s a well here now.
Three times in those first five books of the Bible, a man and a woman met alone by a well.
Three times, one of them drew water for the other.
And three times, she ends up married as a result.
She decides to play along.
“Can you show me this magic water, please?”
And his response seals the deal for her.
“Go and get your husband.”
Real subtle, she’s got to be thinking.
In this moment, Jesus is everyone who tried to find out if a person is single by asking about their significant other.
You know, the old “I’ll bet your boyfriend loves that dress.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, really?
Wanna dance?”
And she keeps the conversation going.
“I don’t have a husband.”
Wink, wink.
She’s available.
And that’s when she finds out they’ve been having two different conversations this whole time.
Jesus does not respond with a proposition of marriage.
Instead, he tells her more about her than he has any reason to know.
And as he does so, her eyes are opened to the deeper truth.
Here before her is not the man she’s been waiting for, who will love her and treat her right.
No, this is the other man she’s been waiting for.
The man they’ve all been waiting for.
The one who will restore their relationship with God.
She has so many questions.
He’s a Jew - does that mean the Jews have been right and the Samaritans wrong this whole time?
That she will have to go to the temple of Israel?
No, he has come to do away with these petty divisions.
He’s going to show the people how they can all worship God without any one piece of real estate being better than the other.
This is exciting news!
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