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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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
Tones
Emotion
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Social Tendencies
Anger
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I’m not so sure I understand video games anymore.
Time travel with me back to the 1980’s.
I snap that game cartridge into the Atari 2600, plug in the joystick controller, and off I go.
The joystick controller had two features.
It had one handle.
And it had one button.
Every game I had could be played with one handle and one button.
And the games pretty much spoke for themselves in the title.
The name of the game told you what it was.
Asteroids.
Space Invaders.
Centipede.
Pong.
Just this week one of my kids got the latest version of Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
I don’t understand these video games anymore.
I don’t even get the controllers anymore.
Video game controllers now have eight different buttons, two handles, and a control pad.
And don’t even get me started on the combinations.
I don’t understand that game.
I don’t want anything to do with it.
I don’t even try.
If I ever boot up one of my classic 80’s video games for the kids, it’s the same thing.
What even is this, dad?
What’s the point?
They don’t understand it.
They don’t want anything to do with it.
They don’t even try.
My father-in-law has a flip-phone.
No apps.
No text messaging.
I’m not sure he even knows how to retrieve his voicemail.
It has buttons with numbers and you talk into it.
Anything beyond that, he doesn’t understand it.
He doesn’t want anything to do with it.
He doesn’t even try.
You know what?
That’s fine with things like video games and cell phones.
If I don’t understand the video games my kids are playing, I don’t think there’s any harm in me just leaving it alone and keeping my distance.
It’s okay that I don’t want anything to do with that.
But is that same thing true for other things in life?
Are there other parts of our world and other parts of our culture where maybe it’s not okay for me to just shrug and say, “So what does this have to do with me?
I don’t understand it.
I don’t want anything to do with it.
I’m not even going t try.”
Today we’re cracking open a tough subject that has been front-and-center in America in recent weeks and months.
Our news is filled with a resurgence of clashes between different people.
Racism is once again in the spotlight.
Fringe groups that once hid in the far corners of society have come out and are seeking to take their message of racial hatred and white supremacy into the mainstream.
Identity politics dominates cable news.
Those who are the furthest on the conservative right, and the furthest on the liberal left push their messages of anger at one another.
All these examples of racial tension, nationalism, and identity politics seems to result in the same thing.
Division.
I think we all pretty obviously know that we live in a world where communities are bitterly divided by all kinds of things.
We are divided racially.
We are divided by nations.
We are divided by ideology.
We are divided politically.
We are divided economically.
We are divided generationally.
So, what do you think?
Like my kids’ video games, is it okay for me to push those other things aside because I don’t think it has anything to do with me?
Racism, nationalism, politics; I don’t really understand what all the fighting is about.
I don’t want anything to do with it.
I’m not even going to try.
Maybe that’s okay with things like video games and cell phones.
But is it okay with this?
Is it okay for me to say that what’s happening with those other people are their issues, not mine?
If there is injustice and tension that continues to split our society, that’s for them to figure out.
If I don’t think it has anything to do with me, then don’t I have the choice to just let it be?
Let them deal with it?
Listen to a story Jesus once told.
Luke 18:2–8 (NIV)
2 “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.
3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused.
But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.
7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?
Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.
However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Often, we read this parable of Jesus and use it to teach a lesson on the value of persistence in prayer.
Jesus tells this story so that we can relate to the widow in this story who continually pleads her case.
But today I want us to turn this story on another angle.
I think there is also something extremely valuable that God would have us learn from the example of the unjust judge.
In fact, I think we can give him a better label.
He is the apathetic judge.
His injustice stems from apathy.
Apathy is defined as a “lack of concern.”
That’s what this judge shows for the plight of the widow; he just plain doesn’t care.
He is not concerned.
And he only gets involved in the moment when he begins to think that her bothering might be a threat to himself.
Do you see this?
The judge only cares about his own interests, and has zero concern for the interests of the widow.
Maybe this can help us today to take a look at what is happening in our own country right now.
Consider with me what we see happening right now and let’s try to name the moment as we see it.
Naming the moment
So, what’s really happening?
We see news stories of protests, and counter protests, and clashes between groups of people.
We might look at the surface of what is happening and name the moment with words like tension, anger, division, hatred.
White supremacist groups have been holding gatherings in which they promote an agenda of diminishing entire groups of people just because they are Jewish, or African American, or Hispanic.
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