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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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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Jesus makes sure we don’t lose sight of who God is.
He does it by showing us God.
“He was transfigured before them.”
Jesus cuts through all the notions and ideas we might have.
He gets right down to it and says, “This is God and no other.”
So does the Father for that matter.
He envelopes these terrified apostles in his cloud and puts an end to any debate or dispute: “This is my Son, whom I love.
Listen to him.”
God has spoken, the cause is finished.
Here endeth the lesson.
But why?
We ask.
Why this weird event on the mountain.
Why the glory?
Why the ghosts of Moses and Elijah?
Why the cloud?
Why the voice?
Our knee jerk answer, and it isn’t wrong, is that Jesus prepares the path for the Lenten journey.
He’s about to be stricken, smitten, and afflicted.
Killed to death.
So he reminds us who he is: whiter than white, more dazzling than dazzling.
He is the White, the good, the God!
Yet on both sides of this moment of glory we find misunderstanding.
We hear Peter, ever talking Peter, whose terror couldn’t keep his mouth shut on the mount, tell Jesus the path to the cross is no path for him.
Jesus begins unfolding the truth of death and resurrection to the apostles in the week leading up to the transfiguration.
Peter hears and says, “No.
This shall not be.
Take it back, Lord.”
This forces Jesus to use the strongest card in his hand, “Get behind me, Satan!”
As on the mount, Peter has no idea what he’s saying.
So Jesus tells him what to say.
“You don’t tell me what to do.
I tell you.
We’re going and you’re following.
I’m bearing a cross and so will you.
I’m losing my life and you will lose yours for me.
The world will cause you to forfeit your soul.
If you are ashamed of this, of me, then I am and will be ashamed of you before my Father.”
Later, after Jesus “puts back” his glory for the moment, we find him dealing with his disciples’ inability to drive out a demon from a man’s son.
They fail because they fail to pray.
Jesus says to the whole crowd, many of whom stare unbelievingly at the inability of Jesus’ men, and so therefore, God, to help, Jesus says, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I stay with you?
How long shall I put up with you?”
And in between: “He was transfigured before them.”
Not all of them, just the three: Peter, James, and John.
He metamorphosed.
He changed.
He transformed.
He gave them both barrels of the really-real, Jesus as he is.
Reading Mark makes me think of a part of Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim altar piece, painted in the early 1500s.
The artwork I’m thinking of isn’t actually of the Transfiguration, but of the resurrection.
We see a stark black background.
The soldiers pass out, falling or fallen to the ground, bodies all akimbo, struck by the power and majesty they witness.
The Lord emerges from his tomb with his wounds and his life.
We’ve seen many images of this, but none like this.
It’s a striking image.
It seems sci-fi and cosmic and ghostly and ghastly all at once, because Grunewald surrounds Jesus’ upper body in a circle of yellow-orange light, a fire-ball, a sun.
It makes Jesus seems ethereal, whiter than white, bleached, dazzling, yet not less real.
You can’t not look; he is the light in the darkness.
One critical comment notes that with his image Grunewald is “transfiguring the countenance of the Crucified into the face of God.”
Grunewald does just that.
Elsewhere in this altar piece Grunewald also gives us the crucifixion of our Lord, and what a juxtaposition, what a contrast.
There it’s Jesus all akimbo.
The nails twist his hands and feet all out of normal shape.
His head lolls at a disturbing angle.
The women weep and mourn and pray.
John the apostle can’t even look at this jaundiced figure.
But John the Baptist can.
As at the transfiguration, someone comes from the grave to speak.
John points to Jesus, and the lamb standing at the Baptist’s feet gives us the words, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Jesus talked of losing our life for him; here he shows us who we’re losing it for.
He asked if you’d rather gain the whole world and forfeit this?
He wonders how you could ever be ashamed of this?
What is this?
Jesus becomes the white we pray to be, the white God gives; but to do it he becomes the blackest of black, stained and bloodied and gory, a sacred head wounded, bleeding, dying, dead.
We agonize over this.
I read recently an article where a church historian posited two different types of spirituality: summery versus wintery spirituality.
Summery spirituality is skittles and beer.
It’s bubbly and dwells on the power of positive thinking.
All is well, all will be well.
If I just think it and convince myself of it, and thus convince God.
This summery view sees all things through rose colored glasses.
It says, “God loves you and I love you and we all love each other.”
It sings “Kum-bay-ah,” and in its worst form comes as the prosperity gospelers who tell you that God wants you to have your best life now and will give you your best life now if you believe hard enough.
This summery spirituality is all warm breezes and cool beers and good friends.
It comprehends nothing else and sees nothing else as adequately God.
But then there’s the wintery spirituality.
We know winter.
It blows.
It’s cold.
It’s fierce.
It’s unyielding.
It’s unfair.
You can die easily in this weather.
You can get lost fifty or a hundred feet from your car or your house in this weather.
And so it’s a struggle.
We bear down against it.
We bundle up.
We close our eyes to the wind, we lean into it, we slog on.
Which sounds more like your life?
I rejoice with you in your blessings and good fortune and in my own.
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