Sermon Tone Analysis

One thing I love about being back here in Michigan is Blue Moon ice cream.

Blue Moon is a flavor that seems to be regional here to Michigan.

I have never seen it at any ice cream stores anywhere else in the country.

Full disclosure; I have not done an exhaustive search of every ice cream store around the country.

But here in Michigan, all my favorite ice cream places have Blue Moon flavor ice cream.

Houseman’s in Byron Center has it.

Plainwell Ice Cream on M-89 has it.

House of Flavors up in Ludington has it.

I have boycotted camping at the Conference Grounds because they refused my request to have Blue Moon ice cream in the camp store.

However, if the right person was working the counter, I could get a Superman cone—only the blue part.

Blue Moon is my absolute favorite flavor ice cream ever.

All the years I lived in Denver I missed having Blue Moon ice cream close by.

And if you have never had Blue Moon ice cream before, and if you were to ask me what Blue Moon ice cream tastes like, I don’t think I have an answer for you.

I am not at all sure what to describe Blue Moon ice cream as tasting like.

Some people have described it as a citrus lemony raspberry.

Some people say it is more of a slightly tart vanilla almond.

I have heard one person describe it as the milk that is left in the bowl after you eat a serving of Fruit Loops cereal.

I don’t know that any one of those things accurately captures the essence that is Blue Moon ice cream.

I am not sure what it is, I just know I like it and I always order it when I am out for ice cream.

And maybe, in fact, it is the mystery of not exactly being able to know that makes Blue Moon ice cream so appealing to me.

I am drawn to it every time precisely because it is a mystery that I cannot fully explain.

It is the mystery and wonder that invites me to always keep coming back for a single scoop waffle cone of my favorite Blue Moon flavor.

And somehow, if I actually knew what ingredients give Blue Moon ice cream its mysterious flavor, I am afraid that just might ruin the experience for me.

I don’t even want to know; I just want to have it.

And here’s the thing.

I can enjoy snacking on a Blue Moon ice cream cone without having to know or explain exactly everything about its flavor.

Today we get to this final ‘I Am’ saying of Jesus.

This time the apostle John does not include it in his gospel as he did for the other seven ‘I Am’ statements we have been looking at all summer.

This time John records this final ‘I Am’ saying of Jesus in the book of Revelation—the very last book of the Bible.

And it comes at the very end of chapter 22, the last section in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible.

So, how in the world do you wrap up and form a conclusion to this massive collection of 66 books revealed to dozens of authors over the span of more than a thousand years?

I mean, we have to wrap up and tie together some pretty big themes.

If there ever were a place to leave us with some kind of single summary of the Bible, it seems like this would be the place for the Holy Spirit to make that known.

So then, in some sense this passage looks back upon the previous 66 books of the Bible and the thousands of years in which God has revealed himself to his people.

This ‘I Am’ statement is loaded with meaning that points beyond this one single passage.

Let’s pull some of that together here.

Imminence

We should remember that these words in Revelation are written by the apostle John.

He traveled with Jesus, accompanying Jesus throughout his earthly ministry.

John got to witness the real-life human experience of Jesus upon this earth.

John was familiar with what Jesus actually looked like.

John knew the sound of Jesus’ voice.

John spent years of his life as close to Jesus as you are close to the people sitting around you right now.

It is the apostle John who begins his gospel with the declaration that the word became flesh and has dwelled among us.

God himself become incarnate as a human.

I imagine that this was something to which John and his fellow disciples had to adjust.

This idea of God being so close, so relatable, so knowable was brand new.

We should remember that for the Jewish people who lived in Israel there was a very special group of Levite priests who were allowed into the inner parts of the temple only at certain times and on certain occasions, and only after performing a series of ceremonial washings and offering ceremonial sacrifices.

But ordinary people just were not allowed to be close to God. it just didn’t work that way.

For us who live two thousand years later, we’ve gotten pretty used to the idea that God came as a man and lived upon this earth.

In fact, even though it was two thousand years ago, we still use very close language to describe it.

We talk about the ways in which Jesus lives in our hearts.

God doesn’t get much closer than that.

We talk about what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

That’s getting pretty close to God.

We have a word to describe this kind of closeness to Jesus.

We refer to it as God’s imminence.

Imminent is a word that we use to describe something that is right upon us.

Often, when we refer to something that is imminent, we mean it is so close that it cannot be stopped or turned away.

On Thursday evening this past week, I was out in the car and there were dark clouds pressing on the horizon and lightning was flashing all around.

There was an imminent storm.

There was only a matter of minutes till rain was pouring.

Something imminent is so close that it is practically right upon you.

In Jesus, the imminence of God became plainly evident.

We talk about that imminent closeness of Jesus in the first statement of the Heidelberg Catechism; that my only comfort in life and death is that I belong body and soul to my faithful savior Jesus Christ; that he also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.

This is the kind of imminence that David writes about in Psalm 139.

“You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.”

We sing about it in hymns like “What A Friend I Have In Jesus.”

And all of this is true.

Jesus does live in our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out upon the church.

God is so close to you and knows each one of us so intimately that he is always attentive to each one of us.

Jesus calls himself our brother.

Jesus tells us that God the Father is our “Abba;” an Aramaic word that means daddy.

John knew all this.

John is referred to in the gospels as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

In fact, perhaps John and the other close followers of Jesus knew this imminence of God so well that Jesus had to give a reminder that there is more to him than that.

Transcendence

In these closing words to the book of Revelation which also serve as the closing words to the entire Bible, Jesus refers to himself as the Alpha and the Omega.

Those are letters in the Greek alphabet.

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.

It is sort of like saying A and Z in our alphabet.

The beginning and the end; the first and the last.

Jesus is giving a reminder of just how large and beyond us he extends.

Jesus was there before the creation of the universe.

Jesus remains forever eternal and unchanging for days and months and years to come.

Jesus, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit are all powerful and ever present and eternal.

David speaks about this as well in Psalm 139.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”

God is so completely beyond and above us that nothing escapes him.

We have a word for this we well.

We say that God is transcendent; that he is otherworldly, beyond and above.

God is in a place that is unreachable and unattainable by anyone here on earth.

In other religions of the world, the transcendence of their gods meant that they were distant and disconnected.

The mythical gods of the Greeks lived on Mount Olympus, a place where no mortal human could ever go.

And in Greek mythology, those gods such as Zeus and Poseidon cared little about humankind except as a game for their amusement.

Sometimes maybe God feels a little bit that way too; so distant, so removed, so far away, so otherworldly – beyond our reach.

After all, God’s perfection and God’s holiness separate him from anything unholy and imperfect.