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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23 Foot Tall Karate Kid
I told them my Dad was 23 feet tall.
I did.
One of them challenged me.
“No way!
My Dad is tall and he is only 6 feet”
And I said “No way, I’m at least 6 feet tall because I’m also to my Dad’s waist.”
And he said “Do you know how big a foot is?” like I’m the idiot!?
So I started showing him.
“1 foot (at knee), two feet (at waist, quickly realizing I am running out of room, I start making the feet smaller), 10 feet (as I reach the top of my head).
See!
Totally fooled them.
That was Kindergarten.
True story.
First grade: “Yeah, I totally know Karate.”
“Oh yeah, prove it.
Show me your Karate, go karate kick Robbie.”
Robbie is actually 6 foot… in the first grade.
For the reals (pretty sure).
So I did.
I went full karate kid on Robbie.
No actual content, just chased him around while ninja kicking like a crazy person.
Totally fooled them.
Have you ever said something maybe… less than true… in order to impress someone else?
Have you ever pretended to know Karate to impress your friends?
Keep your hands up.
We have all been there.
Popular.
We want to be popular.
Popular - to be liked, enjoyed or admired by many people.
Of COURSE you want to be liked.
Enjoyed.
Admired.
And for you it may not be “all the peoples”… but in very specific crowds or with very specific people… that’s where you want to be popular.
This is natural, human, we are social creatures!
It is natural for us to want our friends, our family, our parents, our kids, our co-workers to like us.
It is less natural for us to want random Internet strangers to like us… but that works too.
For some definition of popular, we all want it.
Popular Jesus
Was Jesus popular?
I’m going to say something crazy… Jesus wanted people to like him.
It’s a guess, it is reading between the lines quite a bit.
But Jesus was fully human and we can expect that he felt many and most and maybe all the same feelings and impulses we have.
And Jesus knows how to be popular.
Remember this story from John 6. “Jesus feeds the Five Thousand.”
Teaching to a HUGE crowd, Jesus miraculously multiplies the five loaves and two fish… and there’s food for all, with 12 baskets left over.
People heard a good word.
People ate good food.
People saw a good miracle.
Even here, Jesus was so subtle, he did it all through the hands of the 12.
Still, the people were so excited they were going to make him King!
I bet that part felt pretty good…
He fled from the popularity… what’s going on here?
Still in the same chapter.
Disciples go across the sea.
Jesus jogs across the water and freaks them all out.
Then on the other side the crowd follows and he teaches again.
This time he teaches them about the bread of life.
Moses gave Manna - which means “what is it?”
Jesus is the answer to the question.
I am.
Translation: “EAAAAT MEEEEEE!!!!”
And they freak out… because that’s such a weird thing to say.
John 666 (woah, easy to remember)
What’s going on here?
Jesus rejects popularity.
By fleeing when necessary.
It wasn’t his time to be King.
Then by preaching and bringing the hard truth, saying the hard thing, maybe even in a harder to understand way then necessary.
In both cases: absolutely obedient to what he was to be and do and say, without consideration to what people would think or do in response.
I imagine myself in this moment.
I had a church of 5000+ minutes ago.
Now I’m down to a dozen.
I think Jesus felt that loss...
and he asks:
Peter is so sweet, he almost saves the moment.
But I think Jesus is feeling all the things.
Even of those precious few who are going to stick with him… he knows one of those is going to betray him.
And does he know yet that the rest will abandon him?
It doesn’t hurt less because he is Jesus.
Likely it hurts more… because he loves them perfectly.
Well and truly and honestly and fully.
Wayne said this to me last week, and I thought it was profound, so I’m stealing it now.
When Jesus prayed, sweating blood to His Father in the Garden: “take this cup from me.”
It wasn’t just the physical pain of the cross.
Not even just the humiliation and the mockery.
The weight of all sin and death, absolutely.
But also, intimately, the rejection of the people he so loved.
The betrayal with a kiss of a man he loved, heart and soul, walked with and taught for 3 years.
The abandonment and denial of all the rest.
It doesn’t hurt less because he is Jesus.
And yet… “not my will but yours be done.”
It is possible to be Jesus-centered, Christ-centered, but not cross-centered.
Remember that?
In particular, this week, we see the way Jesus carried his cross, obedient on the road to the cross, long before he climbed the hill of Calvary.
Everytime he rejected popularity, the power and prestige, the adulation that comes with it, he rejected popularity with people to be popular with His Father alone.
He embraced the cross.
And he says to us: take up your cross and follow me.
“But isn’t Christianity just believing the right things inside your head?” Mental assent
Contrast that with all the “disciples” who
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