“Hope in God’s Dream”    

Date:  September 20, 2009

Script:  James 3 & Mark 9

Revd William F. Meier    ~   First United Methodist Church, Saint Cloud, Minnesota

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Over the last few weeks we’ve been thinking about Joseph with our children.  When he was young he had an extraordinary ability to dream and remember them.  He grew up to have the skill of interpreting those dreams for others… as skill that oftentimes helped him.  Even more, it helped him help others.  Fast-forward twelve hundred years and we find another Joseph (probably named intentionally) who also had dreams that helped him accept things and save the toddler Jesus and Mary from the nightmare of an ethnic-cleansing slaughter of children.  Joseph’s dream made them refugees in Egypt for a time, but allowed salvation to come from this ancient land once again.

When I was young I had a vibrant dream life, although I didn’t use it to help others.  In fact, I used this ability to torment my parents unknowingly. You see, they had to listen to the endless scrambled details of my dreams each morning at the breakfast table. 

Langston Hughes wrote a short poem about dreams:

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

“Hold fast to dreams” he says, for they are essential to life.  If we don’t have dreams, we have nightmares— nocturnal and wide awake.  Bishop Michael Curry says that waking “life must be lived, but it cannot be lived on its own terms.  We have to rise above it somehow.”  Waking life on its own terms is more often than not a nightmare if we’re paying attention.  Life goes well one day…terrible the next.  One day you are happy and content— the next you are jobless, under threat of losing your beloved home and the close relationships of love are strained to say the least under the weight of it all.  Life will crush you on its own terms, Bishop Curry[1] says, and the only hope is to somehow have a center that you can operate out of that doesn’t change.  That center is God’s dream. 

Our own nightmares cause us to climb and crash, sail with happiness one moment and plunge into despair the next.  Our own small dreams cause us to seek positions of honor (even Jesus’ closest students did this) or fight and bicker with selfish ambition and envy as those in James’ faith community did.  Our nightmares are the result of our own personal agenda’s…pushing for the outcome we want, rather than being open to God’s dream for us.  “Thy will be done…”

I get a little uncomfortable, to be honest with you, about talk of God’s will for us as if it is singular…as if it is so mapped out and specific that God’s wills every detail of our life, right down to where we are standing at 3:21pm on a certain day.  God works in our lives in deep and mysterious ways, but somewhere in the mix are our choices and just plain dumb luck or coincidence sometimes.  But I do believe in God’s dream for God’s creation, and every last part and piece of it…down to afternoons and the hair on our head.

Hope in God’s dream is what enables us to rise above the nightmare rollercoaster.  God has a dream, a waking lucid dream, that includes your life, that includes our church and its ministry, that includes the Saint Cloud area, that includes the United States and even our “enemies.”  It is inclusive of the whole of creation— plant, animal, mineral.  God’s dream is nearby… it is what enlivens and energizes all things…it was sometimes called “the Kingdom of God” or “heaven” by Jesus.

A word-picture:  A man and his wife had an experience of God’s dream in, of all places, Orlando, Florida, at the tourist extravaganza known as Sea World.  He put the experience this way.

The way the show began was that at a given signal they released into the tank five or six killer whales, as we call them (it would be interesting to know what they call us), and no creatures under heaven could have looked less killerlike as they went racing around and around in circles.  What with the dazzle of the sky and sun, the beautiful young people on the platform, the soft Southern air, and the crowds all around us watching the performance with a delight matched only by what seemed the delight of the performing whales, it was as if the whole creation- men and women and beasts and sun and water and earth and sky and, for all I know, God himself—was caught up in one great, jubilant dance of unimaginable beauty.  And then, right in the midst of it, I was astonished to find that my eyes were filled with tears.

“We shed tears because we had caught a glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom, and it had almost broken our hearts.  For a few moments we had seen Eden and been a part of the great dance that goes on at the heart of creation.  We shed tears because we were given a glimpse of the way life was created to be and is not…at the heart of darkness— there is joy unimaginable… I believe that what we saw was that joy is what we belong to.  Joy is our home… God created us in joy and created us for joy…we have God’s joy in our blood.”[2]

God’s dream enables us to rise above the nightmare.  Jesus at his last meal with his friends was not bound by that dark time to see it so.  In fact, at that meal he told them things, so “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  Joy…genuine joy, at your last meal!  Only possible if you base your life in God’s dream that is beyond circumstance.

Hoping in God’s dream brings a joy that sustains us, offers us peace and a strength that passes understanding.  Based in God’s dream we can pivot into the rest of our lives in meaningful, purposeful, joyful actions of freedom and love. 

In the comic strip “Non Sequitur” there was once a guru and a disciple talking about the difficult task of living beyond our ego or eliminating the ego.  The ego is that part of us that seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (physically, psychically, emotionally…).  The disciple said, “I’m all for eliminating my ego.  But I was just wondering Master, What’s in it for me?” 

The odd thing, the paradoxical thing is that we do get something out of it, and that is the real hope of living into God’s dream instead of our own small circular rollercoaster nightmare.  It is the deep and genuine joy that only God can give… a joy that enabled Paul, in prison on death row, to write “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” 

So how might we enter God’s dream?  Two images.  Jesus, when confronted by the selfish ambition of his disciples held a child in his arms and said that it was further along than the rest of us.  Embracing the child he said: "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me (Mark 9:37)."  Other places Jesus suggests that we must enter God’s dream as a child.

Children in that culture were not necessarily the apple of their parent’s eyes.  Nearly two-thirds of them died before they were old enough to be useful around the farm or household.  Extending your heart too much into them was risky business because chances are they were going to break it, and soon.  Children brought risk of death to the mother in delivery, risk of hunger to the rest of the family, and little return for years in terms of contributing to the good of the family.  They were the least powerful of all- no vote, no rights, no voice. 

As such, children are good at being open, good at receiving…without bargains or claims to entitlements.  In an ancient early church writing Jesus offers a teaching about children.  He spoke about children playing in a field that doesn’t belong to them.  The owners appear and demand “Give us back our field!”  The children have no sense of what ownership means, nothing to defend and so they strip themselves and stand before the owners naked, demonstrating that they are truly without possessions.[3]  They are trusting in God’s dream.

The other image is an icon called “Mary of the signs.”  In the depiction Mary is holding the child Jesus in her lap, embracing him, while both of her hands are free and raised.  This is the posture of holding God’s dream; embracing that which is most precious, while at the same time being free to work and offer praise.  This is a picture of what we talked about last week, “Embrace everything.  Cling to nothing.”  Those who trust in God’s dream can manage that tension.

Trusting in God’s dream, (as opposed to the nightmare of our personal preferences, our selfish ambition, always wanting what we want), is the hope for peace, joy and strength.  In your own life, can you trust God’s dream and be open to it?  As we ponder soon our own future as a church, are we open to God’s dream of love, justice, life and joy?  And for the world, can we take on the posture of Mary- embracing what is precious, yet ready to work and praise?

What we get out of it is nothing less than genuine complete joy, strength to work and praise, and a peace at the last…a peace that indeed, passes all our understanding.  So be it.  Amen.