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
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Anger
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“When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.
And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.
And he asked them, ‘What are you arguing about with them?’
And someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.
And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.
So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.’
And he answered them, ‘“O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?
How long am I to bear with you?
Bring him to me.’
And they brought the boy to him.
And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.
And Jesus asked his father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’
And he said, ‘From childhood.
And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him.
But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’
And Jesus said to him, ‘“If you can”!
All things are possible for one who believes.’
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’
And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.’
And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’
But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’
And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’”
[1], [2]
Battles raged throughout Europe and in the Far East.
During these dark days a Scottish pastor occupied a strategic pulpit in the capital of the United States.
His name was Peter Marshall; his sermons have become legend.
His wife, Catherine Marshall, compiled his sermons and published them that others removed in time and distance from his ministry in Washington might benefit from his preaching.
Of him, it may truthfully be said that though dead, he still speaks.
One Sunday morning his sermon began in this way: “It was an afternoon in the early summer; there was a strange quiet on the battle field.
In the bright sunshine, the air was balmy and had a breath of garden in it.
By some grotesque miracle, a bird was singing somewhere near at hand.
“On the firing step, with his rifle lying in a groove in the parapet, stood a private soldier in field-grey, his uniform stained with mud and blood.
On his face, so young yet strangely marked with the lines of war that made him look old, was a wistful faraway expression.
He was enjoying the sunshine and the quiet of this strange lull in the firing.
The heavy guns had been silent—there was no sound to break the eerie stillness.
“Suddenly a butterfly fluttered into view and alighted on the ground almost at the end of his rifle.
It was a strange visitor to a battleground—so out of place—so out of keeping with the grim setting, rifles and bayonets, barbed wire and parapets, shell holes and twisted bodies.
But there it was—a gorgeous creature, the wings like gold leaf splashed with carmine, swaying in the warm breath of spring.
“As the war-weary youngster watched the butterfly, he was no longer a private in field-grey.
He was a boy once more, fresh and clean, swinging through a field in sunny Saxony, knee-deep in clover, buttercups and daisies.
That strange visitor to the front-line trench recalled to him the joys of his boyhood, when he had collected butterflies.
It spoke to him of days of peace.
It was a symbol of the lovelier things of life.
It was the emblem of the eternal, a reminder that there was still beauty and peace in the world—that somewhere there was colour and fragility and perfume and flowers and gardens.
“He forgot the enemy a few hundred yards across no man’s land.
He forgot the danger and privation and suffering.
He forgot everything as he watched that butterfly.
With all the hunger in his heart, with the resurrection of dreams and visions that he thought were gone, he reach out his hand toward that butterfly.
His fingers moved slowly, cautiously, lest he frighten away this visitor to the battlefield.
“In showing one kind of caution, he forgot another.
The butterfly was just beyond his reach—so he stretched, forgetting that watchful eyes were waiting for a target.
He brought himself out slowly—with infinite care and patience—until now he had just a little distance to go.
He could almost touch the wings that were so lovely.
“And then … ping … ing … ing … ing… A sniper’s bullet found its mark.
The stretching fingers relaxed … the hand dropped flat on the ground … for the private soldier in field-grey, the war was over.
“An official bulletin issued that afternoon said that ‘All was quiet on the Western Front…’ And for a boy in field-grey it was a quiet that no guns would ever break.”
Then Marshall added, “There is always a risk—when you reach for the beautiful.
When you reach out for the lovelier, finer, more fragrant things of life—there is always a risk—and you can’t escape it.
The risk is what makes the Christian life exciting.
It is thrilling—make no mistake about it.
It is an adventure.
As long as we live in this world, there will always be a risk in reach.”
[3]
I am naïve enough to believe that there is still the wonder and faith of a child residing in each of us.
Despite all the hot stoves that have burned us, in spite of all the hateful people who have hurt us, hope still slumbers within each of us.
There is a hope which comes from a quiet and child-like confidence in God—a confidence we seem to have been born with.
Things which appear imaginary and dreamlike to other people are real to us.
And we will need to lay claim to this visionary hope through the risk of reach.
The Bible calls that reach “prayer.”
Our great problem is that we are better students of the battlefield than we are of butterflies.
We seem always to hear the words of our enemies playing back in our minds.
Our minds continually bring us accusations of guilt, memories of wrong, failures of yesterday; and those come like flaming missiles from the enemy to say, “Stop reaching.
Stop asking.
Stop praying.
There are no butterflies.”
And we listen to those defeatist voices.
As a messenger from God, representing His truth, let me caution you that if you stop reaching, you stop living—you can’t survive if you stop reaching.
Don’t misunderstand; there is a war on, a war that keeps us from seeing the butterflies.
So never forget that you are in the midst of a battlefield.
In fact, look at the last chapter of the encyclical we know as EPHESIANS, beginning with VERSE ELEVEN.
The war this passage talks about is an invisible warfare, but it is warfare nevertheless.
It requires special equipment which is also invisible.
When you put invisible equipment together with an invisible war, you can spell “mystery.”
Our inclination is to push it away and call it “imaginary.”
Don’t you believe that!
Paul talks about a “battle” in EPHESIANS 6:11-20 (see Holman Christian Standard Bible).
From the lines on some of our faces today, others can tell we’ve been in that battle.
This is what the Apostle wrote in that passage.
“Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil.
For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.
This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.
Stand, therefore,
“with truth like a belt around your waist,
righteousness like armor on your chest,
and your feet sandaled with readiness
for the gospel of peace.
In every situation take the shield of faith,
and with it you will be able to extinguish
all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit,
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