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
0.62LIKELY
Joy
0.59LIKELY
Sadness
0.47UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
0.76LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.93LIKELY
Extraversion
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Agreeableness
0.53LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.68LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
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Conflict
What the Spirit did to Ananias and Sapphira sends shivers down the spine.
Chilling.
Unnerving.
Unsettling.
Couldn’t the Spirit have been more lenient?
This unsettling feeling follows this story wherever and whenever it is told.
Even Uncle Arthur’s mild interpretation.. On Wednesday evening, I read this story to my kids for family worship.
Midway through the story, I looked up to see that my daughter’s eyes were dilated.
Her eyes opened wide, but not in delight.
In shock.
So I braced for the inevitable.
“Daddy, why did God do that?”
“Well, babydoll...”
And so started me and my wife’s defense of the Spirit’s action.
And the result of the awful event, when it first happened, must have been more shocking, terrifying, scary.
And so it was.
The Spirit’s action had a chilling effect: ,
,
,
Complication
Unpredictable, Restless Spirit.
Reminds me of the time when the Spirit was restlessly hovering over a dark, unformed, and restless mass of sea.
This was the beginning of our human story.
How restless the Spirit was!
Oh, but how restless the Spirit was!
“Hovering over the waters” fails to capture the Spirit’s movements there in .
I was waiting for the start of my son’s orchestral recital one evening.
Outside Haskell Hall, on Weimar’s campus, some months ago.
When I hear constant drone of a small engine.
Look around.
All the cars are parked.
Look up and there above the pines is a white drone, hovering, keeping an eye on things below.
I had seen this same drone on campus before.
I wonder what the owner is up to.
I think we were being spied on!
Saw a young bald eagle on Bear River last week doing a flyby passed our spot.
Lou Cuccia says it’s a young ‘un, since the head has turned white, but not yet the tail.
I’ve seen eagles, or falcons, or even vultures hover up there.
Looking for prey down here.
Smooth, elegant movement.
Hovering.
But the movement of the Spirit in is more like that of a hummingbird, darting to and fro between flowers or, if you’ve been to Keith and Adrienne Brower’s porch, between feeders.
Quick, sudden movements.
Darting to and fro is a far better phrase to describe the Spirit’s action in .
A restless Spirit?
It appears that in the Spirit is darting to and fro once again.
But why?
Shift
Restless?
Fidgety?
Cranky?
Having a bad day in that deep, chaotic darkness?
In , the Spirit’s movements were the very creative movements of God.
Darting to and fro, the Spirit pushes back the primordial deep darkness and chaotic sea.
To create living space.
To create order.
The Spirit was darting to and fro as He began to push back the deep darkness and the chaotic primordial sea in order to create and to create livable space.
In order to create creatures to inhabit this livable space.
By the sixth act—the sixth day—the Godhead confers amongst each other.
Are we ready for the coup de grace?
, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...” ().
And He did in seven movements.
In seven acts.
By the sixth movement—the sixth act—Father, Son, and Spirit confer:
Couldn’t stand deep, dark chaos.
“Is everything ready?
Check?
Check!
Check?
Check!
Check?
Check!
Good.
Are we ready for the Magnum Opus?
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...” ().
“Yes,” say all three of them.
Thousands upon thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand angels looking at this seven-movement symphony, gasp.
“Alright then,
Genesis 1:
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...” ()
And the storyteller picks up the story:
,
On the Spirit’s sixth movement, humanity was born.
On the seventh and final movement, humanity was set for a life of harmony and peace.
Unfolding
This is what the Spirit does.
He darts to and fro.
As he did at creation.
As he did at the beginning of the new creation—at the birth of the church.
As he does today.
Like the Fralick’s Old English Shepherd dog, Tucker, whose basic instinct is to nudge you back to the pen.
Like the Krussow’s dog Kayia—good old, faithful Kayia, may she rest in peace—who for many years stood guard in the front lawn come rain or shine to make sure the family is safe.
The Spirit is like a shepherd dog, herding a chaotic scene of bolting in every direction.
Why?
To kill the erring sheep?
To make an example of them?
No.
To protect the integrity of the fold!
To protect its unity, solidarity, cohesion.
To protect the very quality of its life.
And,
To restore in the church the marred communal image of the Trinitarian God.
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