Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning, my name is Rabbi Vowell, and I’m the Rabbi here at Beth El Shalom .I’d like to welcome all of our guests here today!

And I’d like to say hello to everyone watching this online.…we

know most people will check us out online before they ever visit…so, we really look forward to seeing you soon…I want to start today by…”

INTRODUCTION (10 minutes)

Jab 1 (74 Words, 33 Seconds): When I started preparing to preach this message this week, I felt like I had won the lottery.

Here it is just another ordinary Shabbat in November and yet I feel like someone just called out my numbers: 281491587: the verses from Rev 6:12-7:8, I could not be happier, just 13 verses from the book of Revelation.

Thirteen verses that have driven me along for over 20 years now.

God is good isn’t he.

Jab 2 (303 Words, 2 Minutes): These verses are startling in all kinds of ways, at least they are for people who are convinced they know how God keeps His promises to His people.

In the first place, it is startling because it appears John has changed his attitude about Jewish people.

Remember that John the Seer chastises two different Jewish communities (Smyrna, Philadelphia) but now all of the sudden he has changed direction and seems to praise a highly selective group of 144,000 Jewish people.

Wait? What!

That is almost as big an attitude adjustment as the one I had when I finally liked eating spinach, of course, I really only like in the dip form.

That is what makes our passage startling, in the second place, because Jewish people now become the co-hero’s in God’s story about the Messiah?!

This has sent many a Christian commenters to medical school to learn how to perform the theological equivalent of a sex change or less pejoratively a blood transfusion.

They say you see the word “Israel” it now means “Christian” do you see the number 144,000 it means “the highest number possible” do you see the names of the twelve tribes they mean or either nothing or the “church.”

And the commentators on this passage are all like Humpty Dumpty.

You remember when he was talking to Alice about the number of un-birthdays she would have?

365 days – 1 = 364 said Alice.

That would make 364 days of presents Alice exclaims, to which Humpty says, “There’s glory for you.”

Alice says, “I don’t know what you mean by glory.”

And Humpty says, “Of course you don’t – you don’t know what it means until I tell you what it means.

Humpty says, “glory means a a nice knock-down argument.”

But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

That is what makes this passage startling in the last place, the number of Humpty Dumpty Theologians that sit on its wall and whenever they fall down and break the seminaries come and put them back together again.

Jab 3 (584 Words, 4:00 Minutes): Commercial break: since some of you may be concerned that I read the Bible to literally, let me pave the way ahead by saying that I do believe all the Word of God is true—true to life, true to human experience, true to the flawed but irrepressible human wish to get God down on paper, and true to the word-shattering reality of God that punches holes in all our best stories.

Does the Bible use metaphor, simile, figures of speech, parables, hyperboles to tell the truth?

I could not possibly say no.

Do all the biblical authors share our modern scientific understanding of the universe and the way it works?

I could not possibly say yes.

Do words somehow mystically and secretively change their meaning after so long a use in just one way?

I could not possibly say yes.

That would be akin to saying that after 4000 years of calling the sweet, edible fruit produced by a Malus domestica (apple tree) the apple we have now decided this is an orange but we still want to call it an apple.

When the Bible gives me a figure of speech I work with its wonder and awe and when it gives me proper nouns like “Israel” I treat them literally, “Israel.”

Here ends the commercial.

I understand why Humpty Dumpty Theologians want to be Israel.

After all, they are God’s “peculiar treasure.”

That is how the old KJV worded it (cf.

Psalm 135:4).

They were peculiar because of how quickly God could re-direct and re-purpose their lives.

Moses goes out of Egypt a liberator comes down Mt.

Sinai a law-giver.

Israel goes into the land as monotheistic liberators but lives as idolatrous farmers (not a good change).

They were also God’s “treasure.

The original word is segulla—a king’s treasure—some of it acquired by conquest and some of it given in friendship, all of it together the sign of the king’s sovereignty, the adornment of the royal throne.

You and I have a treasure in 401K or maybe some savings or investments, but Israel was a segulla more like the Prince of Saudia Arabia gave you all his wealth in oil.

I will be honest, I am a bit afraid to be peculiar myself and I am even more afraid to be a treasure.

After all, the one who adores the peculiar object will want its affection and the one who hunts for the King’s Treasure will not give up until I be found and taken.

Wars will be fought over me and treaties made about me and compromises made by me to try to find the right protector of this treasure.

This is Israel’s shaky history in the pages of the TaNaK.

The storied past and future of Israel is not for entertaining value though it has been used to make entertainment.

It is not just for renewed tribal patriotism or Christian Zionism.

The relationship of God to his “peculiar treasure”, the King’s Treasure, gives hope to weak hands that are groping in darkness looking for hope.

It lifts souls that have been stomped in the mud and left for dead.

As you see there broken hearts and broken lives desperately seeking for a ray of light, a beacon on the storm-tossed horizon, you can hold out your broken heart, hold out the pieces of your broken heart and say with Israel, “Here—do absolutely anything with this that you want, just keep your promises to this peculiar, treasured people.”

Right Hook (15 Seconds): And if I have done my job at the end of this sermon then you will know that we don’t need to decode the 144,000 chosen from Israel but we need to learn from them that God will keep His promises to His people.

Grab your copy of the Scriptures and say it with me like you mean it.

Ha-Foke-Bah, Ha-Foke-Bah, De-Colah-bah

Ha-Foke-Bah, Ha-Foke-Bah, Mashiach-bah

Turn-it, and turn-it, everything you need is in it.

Turn-it, and turn-it, the Messiah is in it!

Rev 6:12-7:8

EXPLANATION (10 minutes)

An Angry People with a Big Question (946 Words, 5.30 Minutes)

Last week, we were in heaven listening in as it were to the cries of the victims of evil.

Those people under the protection of the altar praying for God’s judgment on moral evil in this world.

This week we are yanked back down to earth to see an ancient warning has been fulfilled and a big question being asked.

The opening of the sixth seal results in a cosmic shakedown (Rev 6:12-14).

The earthquakes, the sun is darkened, the moon goes red, stars fall from the sky and the atmosphere is scorched.

I think it best to not try to identify the “means” by which these cosmic events happen.

People are always trying to point at this and say it is that.

That misses the point.

The point of the cosmic shakedown is to show that the warnings about the end of time Hebrew prophets predicted has come.

Since the earliest of days, Moses warned that creation would turn against humans in honor of it’s true Creator.

Isaiah predicted this, Jeremiah, Joel, Amos, even the Messiah himself all said it was coming.

If mankind remained in its state of rebellion, then wrath, and punishment was coming.

The punishment is egalitarian in nature.

What I mean is that it affects everyone left on earth after the four riders of the Sky are sent out (Rev 6:15).

There is no escaping the wrath of God because it is no discriminator of persons.

The imagery here could not be harder to swallow.

Rev 6:15

Why do slaves have to face this wrath?

Why do the poor have to face this wrath?

Haven’t they experienced enough pain and hardship already?

Haven’t those who have become military leaders earned their stars and stripes, haven’t the kings of the earth born up under immense pressure to lead sovereign nations?

The wrath of God and the Lamb feels disproportionate, indiscriminate, non-personal, and like an excessive abuse of power.

But what’s worse is it feels like a friend has turned foe, like the One who loves us, now hates us.

And hates with a dreadful retribution.

On the one hand, it makes sense.

Mankind has been warned.

For thousands of years through Prophets in Israel, and I would even say through many other natural channels, God has been warning mankind to start living in a different direction.

To cast away their idols or his wrath would come as a cosmic shakedown.

On the other hand, what a crushing disappointment that God’s love should be offered the same way as most human love: perform well, love you well, perform poorly, I withdraw or punish you; do good, loved more; do bad, feel the sting of my wrath.

This started, for all of us, very young.

Being nice to your brother made your mom’s face light up but when you made him cry her countenance changed and the warning came and discipline followed.

Being a good student made your teacher adore you but when you made that joke about her to the other students the warming came and when you did it again to detention you would go.

Even in relationships, you smiled and cried when you exchanged vows with your spouse, warnings came, promises were made, but now there are tears and threats of divorce because some behaviors are harder to change than others.

In all these situations, the space between the warning and the consequence is crucial.

The loving mother, the bright eyed teacher, the devoted spouse all know they must put their hand into the dough to help to shape it, to give it a fighting chance of becoming something better so that consequences do not ensue.