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
0.45UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.53LIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.59LIKELY
Sadness
0.5UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.51LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.59LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.76LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.87LIKELY
Extraversion
0.24UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.81LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.77LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Sermon on John 13:1-17
Theme: Christians have been commissioned by Christ for humble service.
Goal: to motivate Christians to accept their commissioning to be humble servants
Need: Christians often fall short of serving humbly.
Outline:
1. Introduction: How we don’t serve humbly
2. Christ’s washes so that humble service shows the full extent of his love.
3. Christ washes to symbolize the washing away for sin.
4. Christ washes to give the example of how disciples are to live
5. Conclusion: Go wash.
Sermon:
Congregation,
*“Be the change you want to see in the world.”*
Do you know where that quote is from?
I read it the first time when it was put as the status by one of my facebook friends.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
It’s by a guy named Ghandi.
*I feel challenged by the line because it captures so much of what is wrong with me and you might feel the same way.*
All too often we are quick to notice what things that need to be changed in the world.
We see that the environment is being destroyed by our love for things like oil and plastic and disposable diapers, yeechs, and the benefit of doing things the easy way.
It bothers me.
I am sure it bothers many of us when we stop to think about it.
We see people who are caught in downward cycles of poverty.
We see that people are going hungry on the other side of the world or even right here in our own town.
We know that in poverty people often turn to drugs and alcohol or prostitution.
Then you hear of children who grow up in homes like this.
Homes with parents too drunk to answer the door.
Too wasted to clean up themselves much less the mess around the house.
*We wonder how such a big problem in the world.
I see these sorts of things and we wonder in what way have I really helped out.
*
* Be the change you want to see in the world.
*
*The words might have been spoken by Ghandi, but the concept came from a more reliable teacher.
Jesus Christ.*
In the chapter that we read for this morning, we need to realize that Jesus is passing something important on to his followers.
*He is showing them how he wants them to influence the world around them.
He is showing them the attitude it takes to be a follower of Jesus.
He is showing them what is at the heart of true morality, being a good person in the only sense of the word.*
*Jesus bows down to wash his disciples feet to leave them with something concrete, something they have experienced, so they know how they can be a part of the changing of the world.*
*As we look at this awesome moment we need to pay special attention to how Jesus washed his disciples feet to change our lives so that we could change our world.*
*Jesus washed to change our lives so we could change our world.*
* *
* First what we hear in the passage is that Jesus washes his disciples feet to show the full extent of his love.*
Jesus humbly washes their feet to show the full extent of his love.
We hear this at the end of *verse 1*.
The full verse goes like this *“1**It was just before the Passover Feast.
Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.
Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”*
The full extent of his love! *That’s a pretty huge package to be wrapped up in one little action of washing feet.*
Its powerful just to think about that.
The God who is defined as love.
God is love right.
The God who is defined as love has taken on human flesh in Jesus Christ.
And the passage says at this moment.
Right here and now God, the very definition of love, is going to show the full extent of his love.
He’s going to push his love to the limits.
God’s going to make clear to everyone what that love consists of.
*The fullest extent of Christ’s love includes this humble act of washing his disciples feet.
It also includes the events that follow soon after the washing of the disciples feet*.
The full extent of Christ’s love includes his betrayal, his persecution, his unjust death for our sins.
It includes the miracle of Easter where Christ defeats death for us.
His ascension into heaven.
His sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
All of those things put together makes for one great big humongous showing of the definition of love by Jesus Christ.
So quickly we can be amazed at the marvelous parts of Good Friday, Christ death, and Easter, his coming back to life.
We have to be careful not to fly right past the moment where Christ strips down to his undergarments.
Puts a towel around his waist and washes the filth off the feet of his disciples.
The real humility in this is almost hard for our generation today.
We don’t know what slavery is like.
We don’t really know what it would look like for many households to have a low level slave.
Perhaps in the days before emancipation and the civil rights movement.
But today we really don’t have a sense of what sort of degrading it would be to take on the role of a servant.
But in order to understand what Christ did for his disciples we need to understand that step down, that humility.
By taking putting a towel around his waist and preparing to wash his disciples feet he took on the *job of a gentile servant.*
In Jewish households, they wouldn’t even let the Jewish hired servants do the job of washing feet.
That was for the scum of the earth.
Jesus stepped down.
He washed feet.
He humbled himself as low as he could go to show the greatest extent of his love.
The greatest extent of his love would bring him lower down as well.
Down to the cross.
Cursed by God.
Down to the grave.
Down to death itself.
Down down down is the fullest extent of the love of Christ.
That’s the love for his disciples and that’s the love for all those who put their trust in Christ alone.
*He did more in this feet washing than show the fullest extent of the deepest love in the universe.
He gave a symbol of what Christ’s love effectively does for us.
*The love of Christ isn’t just a nice cuddly, oh he loves me sort of happening.
The love of Christ effectively takes washes us clean just like he washed the disciples feet clean.
*Perhaps our hearts are a little bit like some gross looking feet.
Anyone want to see my feet.
Oh, its gross.
But our hearts are often callused and hard.
And DIRTY.*
Anyone remember playing outside as a kid with your shoes off.
That’s nice and pretty clean.
Your mom was happy to have you come into the house like that, right?
Nope.
When sin gets us it gets ground in and gross in our lives.
It needs to be scoured and scrubbed away.
Jesus Christ, gives that to us.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9