The Big Dream

Sermon given at Grace UMC 9/6/15

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^NRSExodus 3:7 Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹ The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

Every one of us has dreams, some of them are big dreams and some of them are unfilled dreams but all of us have dreams. Over the next three weeks I intend to explore with you what it means to have dreams and why God wants you to fulfill your dreams. When Disney World held its grand opening in Orlando Florida, the widow of Walt Disney attended the ceremony. The great park was beautiful, exceeding every hope and dream. Someone walked up to Mrs. Disney and said, “I wish Walt could have seen this.” She smiled and replied, “He did.” If there hadn’t been a Walt Disney to dream it into existence, Disney World would never have been built. Walt Disney did not let the fact that the technology did not exist to stop him from inventing it. He allowed his dreams to guide him in spite of the world’s naysayer’s who said a permanent amusement park will never make a profit. In fact, I am told, that Disney envisioned a community with the best technology, people living with the things that we can only imagine as they went about their daily lives. This place was to be called Epcot. When Disney passed away the people at Disney could not see what he saw and so Epcot became another amusement park rather than the community Walt intended it to be. There are two types of people in the world, those that pursue their dreams and those who deny them. What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you achieve your dream? When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut and touch the sky. I learned to fly at a young age and pursued my dream. What I found was there was a bigger dream than even I could have imagined.

But if I had not pursued the big dream, I would not have found the special dream that God had just for me. George Bernard Shaw sums it up best when he said, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

Over the next three weeks we are going to learn about

Discovering the dream

How to move out of your comfort zone

Escaping the bullies

Persevering through the wilderness

Finding Sanctuary

Battling the giants

Entering the Promised Land

Much of this material comes from a great little book titled The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson. In fact I brought a copy with me so that you can see how small it is and yet I want you to know that it is the biggest little book I have ever found, next to the Bible. When you think you cannot, read this book.

Do you remember when you learned to swim? Remember stepping into the water for the first time and when you stepped out into water above your head. It was scary wasn’t it? And yet you did not want to appear to be scared so you dived in, right? Well, for most of us the answer is no. This was unfamiliar territory and we were not about to step out there.

That is where most dreams lie. Most of us are in our own comfort zones where we are content and happy. Life may not be what we want it to be and maybe it could be better, but hey, I am ok. And besides, no one else I know is out there doing silly stuff like pursuing their dreams. When you were little, did you parents tell you that you could do anything that you set your mind to as long as you pursued it? Or were your parents like mine who suggested that you should just be satisfied with life as it is?

We’ll talk about them next week, but suffice it to say that many of us never pursue our dreams because we are convinced we could not achieve them anyway. But just like learning to swim, if you step our in faith and with a little guidance, well wonderful things can happen.

But what does the bible say? Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

God is constantly telling us to run the race. Don’t stand around wishing you had, just jump right in. But this would require us to step out of our own comfort zones and leave the land of familiar behind. Why isn’t that what the new minister is asking me to do? He is saying that we need to step out in faith if we want the church to grow or for God to speak to us or…..

How would the story of Israel have ended if Moses had reacted differently? How did he react? Exodus 3:11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" How about Abraham? Or David and Goliath? Each of us comes to this place today with a big dream. It may be that we want to finish our education or help the poor. I remember not to many years ago that for a young girl to have any ambition was an unthinkable thing. Why, women are to stay home and have babies and shouldn’t they be happy with that? I wonder how many of us would be where we are today if our own mothers bought into that concept. What is your comfort zone? Where is it that you go on any given day? And while you are there do you ever dream about what might have been or what might be possible? And do you tell your children and grandchildren that they can achieve anything if they try? In order to achieve our dreams we first have to listen for them. I suspect all of you at this point are thinking about your own dreams, the ones you had or the ones you have. I know an 83 year old woman who is attended seminary. Oh she will tell you she never expects to preach. And yet, she was impacting an unbelievable group of young adults just because she was there. See, she decided to pursue her dream even though life and time had gotten in the way. It’s never too late to pursue your dreams. But first you have to value the dream more than you own comfort. Hebrews 11 tell us that ”¹³ All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, ¹⁴ for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. ¹⁵ If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”

If each of those that followed God had stayed in their comfort zones, where would we be today? You have to accept the possibility of failing. In fact God suggests in Hebrews 12 that we are to endure hardships in order to be guided through the childhood phase of our lives. And we must choose to be strong and courageous and make decisions not to turn back – a commitment with no escape clause. Have you ever considered the implications of a prenuptial agreement? Why the couple has written an escape clause for their eventual failure. They have one foot out the door before they ever step into the room. Don’t we do the same thing every day?

I’m gonna listen to this discipleship stuff, but you are not going to get me to buy into it until I see some results. I mean, I want the church to grow and I want to have that joy and I want to have a relationship with God, BUT! My good friend Rick Griffith tells me all the time that I have to let go of my comfort zone and listen to the quiet voice of God. Next week we will explore what is holding you back and who is holding you back. But for right now, do you have dreams? I want you to know that God has a dream for you. It is there for you to reach out and grab it. Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal!

Ordinary

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/30/15

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Scripture Reading:

^NRS  1 John 1:1 We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- ² this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us-- ³ we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. ⁴ We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. ⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷ but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Sometimes there are great books that come into my consciousness, books that change the way I think about things, important things like life. Bruce Wilkinson’s little book, The Dream Giver, is one of those works that I think everyone would enjoy reading and having a copy available in their libraries. It is a short book which makes it even more likeable to my way of thinking. The central character is someone that all of us can identify with, a person called Ordinary. I believe that this book is wonderful in its illustration of faith and perseverance.

You see this fellow Ordinary lived in the Land of Familiar. There he had the usual job, friends and family, and lived a life that could be considered by us as routine and well, Ordinary. Each of us can identify with this type of existence, for the most part; it is how we live our lives each and every day. We bumble along in our ordinary existence, wandering from place to place, looking for something to fulfill our needs. So too is the story of Ordinary. In the midst of this existence, Ordinary suddenly had a dream and in the window sill he found a feather. When he talked to his father, he found out that his father also had had a big dream when he was young, which included the feather. But unfortunately, his father never followed up on his dream and feather wilted away. What strikes me as rather extraordinary about this story is the inclusion of the feather. For a feather is the instrument that was used to write words on a page in the early days of our ancestors. So isn’t it interesting that a Big Dream would include a reference to a written record. It is my belief that we have here an analogy to the one true written record that records our big dreams and the story of each of our lives, the Bible. The other fact that strikes me in this story is the dream itself. For I believe that God reaches us sometimes through dreams. In our dreams we are given insight into our future opportunities as well as being instructed on his will for our lives.

So in our story, Ordinary decides to act on his dream. He decides to go in search of the land of opportunity. He doesn’t know where he is going or really how to get there. This story to this point really begins to remind me of the story of Abraham and Sara. They had a very comfortable life in the land of Abraham’s father, with land and wealth and means. And then one day, God sends Abraham a message, a Big Dream. Just as Ordinary decided to seek out this dream, so too did Abraham and we all are thankful for that decision.

I read the other day that we do not come to Jesus because we are righteous and strong, but because we are needy. Once in his presence, then he lifts us up so that we may become instruments of his ministry. As we experience our Big Dreams and begin to contemplate what they mean, let us be reminded to pray and experience then the discernment of God’s will. That is a difficult thing to do as each of us has at different moments in time experienced a strong urge to go in one direction or the other.

So Ordinary begins his quest. He sells all that he has, quits his job and says goodbye to all of his friends and sets out on his journey. Have you ever experienced this? Have you began a college career, gotten married and moved from where you were to a new place, gotten a new job or began a new phase of your life? Now several members of my family are in this phase of their lives today, college, marriage and new jobs. With each passing moment we experience anxiety and fear as we move out of that magical place called our comfort zone. I often ask myself what Abraham must have felt, moving to place as yet unknown to him, to a life he could not even imagine, for a future he could not even see. Each of us finds ourselves being asked to move out of our comfort zones many times during our lives and it is a difficult thing to do. We find hundreds of excuses and reasons why we should stay right where we are. If we are not careful, we then find ourselves stuck in the ordinary world and miss out on the extraordinary opportunities that God has in store for us. It is during these times that we must learn to pray, one with another and alone to discern what Big Dream God has for us.

As Ordinary begins his journey, he encounters bullies. Now these are not the bullies whom you might expect. They are his friends and his family. They have come to talk Ordinary out of this dream. I am reminded by this story of the story in Matthew where Mary and the brothers of Jesus had come to take him home. The reason that they try and help talk you out of your dreams is that the dream itself is taking them out of their comfort zone. While we are busily moving along in search of our purpose, we interact with others. That interaction can disrupt their lives as they are themselves forced to look introspectively into their purpose and their lives. So too it was with Ordinary as he first talks to his mother and then his friends. But we must prevail, God has a purpose for each of us and we cannot waver. When we do, the devil puts bullies in our path to discourage us or force us another way.

As we begin the journey, many of us have been fortunate to receive help from friends and new acquaintances. These champions help sustain us, lift us up and give us strength. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are great examples of those whom we can rely on when things do not go well or we need help and strength in the face of adversity and fear. We often refer to our guardian angel when we talk about those times that we were weak and yet we were given the strength to overcome the obstacles in front of us. One of the tragedies of the story is the loss of a champion who on the road to the Land of Promise gives all they have. The bright spot is that they are lifted up as a true hero. We have an excellent example of this type of champion in the story of Jesus who gave all that he could, so that we might yet attain our dreams.

This story would not be complete without a time of testing. As we move forward in our journey, we encounter the waste land and giants. Again I am reminded of a biblical story of the forty days in the desert and then of Paul who went off alone to prepare for his ministry. Many years ago, I was reminded that we are all tested and over the last few weeks, months and years, I have felt tested to limits of my very being. At times I have failed and have stood before God in tears and asked for forgiveness. How about you? Have you not had similar experiences in your journey and throughout your life? Why even now, one or all of us may be in the midst of the greatest trial of our lives. Before us stand giants who are prepared to keep us from our path. These giants are familiar beings, hate, financial woes, discouragement, lust, fear, anger, and bitterness. But we must lift our battle up to God to help us. We ourselves are not prepared or able to win these fights. Oh, we think we can our egos bigger than the world around us. But the reality is that we cannot. Much of our world’s noise and activity seems designed to silence our hungers and longings of our heart. Maybe we are unaware of these deep, inner hungers. They are there, but perhaps no one has encouraged us to pay attention. If we would listen to Jesus, we will discover that these longings are the doorways through which we come into the land of God. As we travel through the waste lands of our lives, occasionally we come to a place of sanctuary. In those places we may be tested even more by being asked by God to give up our dreams. Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? After all he had been through, Abraham was asked to give it all up. When he did, God knew that he truly was a man with God in his heart.

How would you do? Today I fear that asked to give up everything, I would waver from the path or fail in my strength to fall to the giants in my life. How about you? We must hold to the path, stay the course as the expression goes. And open our hearts to the God’s message. Will we falter, sure we will. Will we fail at times, we most certainly will. But God knows this and has sent champions into the world to help us fight these battles. Think about the pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. Even Jesus was having a weak moment, faced with death and fear. But he lifted it up to the father who sent angels to strengthen him. If you have not had the opportunity to see the movie “the Passion”, I highly recommend it. But be prepared to be challenged in how you currently thought about the last hours and how they actually were. Champions, who give their all in the struggle for righteousness, are beaten severely before they fall. Be thankful for champions.

And then one day when we least expect it, we have arrived. We begin our life of service as instruments of hope on a dark world. We become the means through which others may experience their big dreams and start on their journeys. But don’t get too comfortable. Just when things are going really well it’s time for a new big dream and off we go again. But don’t let that discourage you, for each dream takes us closer and closer to him, upon whom, all big dreams reside. You see my friends, God is always calling.  “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” (NRSV 1 Jn 1:5)

God and the Two Year Old

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/23/15

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^NRS Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. ² The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. ³ Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. ⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. ⁵ They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. ⁶ The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. ⁷ My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all. ⁸ How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹ I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. ¹⁰ They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. ¹¹ They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD. ¹² Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah still walks with God, and is faithful to the Holy One.

God loved the people of creation. And they disobeyed God and loved the idols of their culture. Sounds a lot like the story of today when so many of us immerse ourselves in the culture of today and forget what God calls us to do. To love one another! So we have a story of repeated disobedience as the people of Israel blended into the culture of the world around them. And God allowed them in their choice to be beaten by an enemy that God could have conquered. And in their history they knew this but still felt they were in control. And God allowed them to be scattered to the four winds. And yet God also loved them so much that God promised them God would bring them back to the Promised Land again. Because within the remnant of God’s people were some that were faithful.

But more importantly, God had promised and God never breaks Gods promise.

Our prism for understanding the heart of God is Hosea 11. The prophet ministered during the 9th/8th century BC. That was an age of apostasy, an age of open rebellion against God by the special elect people, Israel. Prophet after prophet was sent in a futile attempt to stem the tide of sin and evil that was propelling Israel to its ultimate doom. By virtue of his personal experience, Hosea, more than any other person, understood perfectly the heart of God. His wife, Gomer, had proven to be an unfaithful a spouse as could be found. It appears that at least two of their children were not Hosea’s. Gomer’s trysts finally led her to leave her husband and children. She eventually ended up in a slave market. Following instructions from God, Hosea went to the market and bought his wife back and restored her to her rightful place as his wife. Through his eyes we will now gaze into the heart of God. So often in life we are Gomer. We search for love in all the wrong places. We give ourselves and our bodies, our money and our allegiance to the world in hopes that the world will give us back the kind of love that we desperately want. And every single time we give all that we have to the world, what we get back is somehow lacking in what we expected, wanted or desired. God’s story is the story of the bible. I want this morning to talk with you about God and humanity. It is a story of a people who had the love of God who found ways to share that love with the Hebrew people. And repeatedly they blended into the culture of their world and disobeyed God.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis tell us the story of God saying yes and the people saying no. It begins with Adam and Eve being given the Garden of Eden. A perfect existence where they could live, no pain and no struggles, everything taken care of. And then they disobeyed. And then we have the twelfth chapter when God asks Abraham and Sarah to live in communion with God. And what does Abraham do? He tries to pass Sarah off as his sister and disobeys God. In the book of Jonah we have a story of God wanting Jonah to go to Nineveh and bring healing and love. Jonah wants justice. Jonah meets a big fish. You know the story.

So what does this have to do with me you ask? I heard a story of a shopkeeper that was in competition with his competitor from across the street. They constantly marketed their own goods and talked badly about the other one. They raised and lowered prices in order to cause the other harm. One day an angel arrives in an effort to stop this madness. The angel offers the one man anything he wants with a caveat. The caveat is that whatever the man gets, his competitor gets double as long as the request is for good, not evil. The man asks if I ask for a million dollars what will I get. Two million the angel replies. What if I ask for lifetime health, he asks. The angel replies he will live beyond you. Any guess what the owner asked for? He refused the offer because he could not bring himself to accept God’s gift if it meant that his competitor benefitted. Isn’t that how we are? We hope for people to have good things happen to them. That is, as long as those things don’t happen to our enemies.

Do you know the three favorite words of a two year old? Me, Mine and No! If we follow the story of the bible from beginning to end, what we see over and over again are those three words. I want the world to be about me not God! I want everything to be mine, not someone else’s. Why else do we have wars?

And when confronted with rules for living, we yell, not simply say, no to God. No we don’t want the Ten Commandments. No we don’t want to love our neighbors. No we don’t want to be told how to live. God constantly wants to share with us the three words we, us and our. We have been created for communion. Communion amongst our neighbors! Communion in the world with all of God’s people! God wants us to share in God’s love and to share that love with the entire world.

A friend of mine said in one of his sermons that love is the thread to ties all of these stories together. And this thread, this communion is a part of our brokenness. While we want grace to be earned, God wants to give it to us. It isn’t free you understand. But God knows that. So we look to the power of God shown to us through Easter. Not Easter morning, rather we find the answer in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We find the answer in the communion service of Jesus to his disciples that we will celebrate the first week of every month. We find the answer in the cross on Golgotha on Friday and the placing of a body in a tomb before sunset on that day. We find the story there because that is God’s gift to us. The atonement of sin, of our very nature, the nature of a two year old, me, mine and no. We want our grace to be earned; God wants to give it to us. And then we find Mary standing in the presence of the living, resurrected Lord. And she wants to hold on to him, just as we want to hold to our past. And Jesus tells her and us, take on a new identity.

Become the new person that God wants you to be. So what do we do?

Some will run as fast as they can in the opposite direction.

Some will accept this gift and be blessed. Some will walk away from God because they believe the world offers them a better deal.

And everyday we will act like two year olds. We will answer God’s offer with me, mine and no.   

In a testimony an evangelist one time described his mother as being love personified. As a boy he found her sitting at the table with an old tramp one day. Apparently she had gone shopping, met the tramp along the way, and invited him home for a warm meal. During the conversation the tramp said, "I wish there were more people like you in the world." Whereupon his mother replied, "Oh, there are. But you must look for them." The old man simply shook his head, saying. "But, lady, I didn’t need to look for you. You looked for me."

When that mother reflected her Christian kindness toward the tramp she did something more than simply offer him welfare. It was a compassion that went out of its way to love the unlovely. And that’s the story of our Savior’s live, death and resurrection. He came looking for us in the sick, the maimed, the lame, the bruised, the broken hearted, the wretched wanderer, the poor and forgotten, the prisoner, and the lonely rich. Has he found you?