Sunday, November 29, 2015

Hopes & Dreams (Jeremiah 33: 14-16)

Every day I take my dog Saydee for a walk. One day a few weeks back, I was walking Saydee in the park, and a song popped in my head. “A dream is a wish your heart makes…”
From Cinderella, right?
What’s the next line?
“When you’re fast asleep…”
I looked at Saydee and said, “Is that really how the song goes?”
“In dreams you will lose your heartache, Whatever you wish for you keep… (Just make a wish, and it will all come true?) Have faith in your dreams and someday Your rainbow will come smiling through…Don't let your heart be filled with sorrow For all you know tomorrow The dream that you wish will come true.”
“So if I have a dream,” (I said to Saydee), “I’m just supposed to make a wish, go to sleep, and hope that tomorrow when I wake up everything will be fine?”
Saydee looked at me and said, “I don’t know about that. What I do know is that every night I dream about catching that squirrel. That’s my dream. When I wake up in the morning, I still haven’t caught that squirrel. But if I go out the front door and walk in the park, I just might see the squirrel, and who knows? If I work hard enough and run fast enough, that might just be the day I catch the squirrel. So I may dream about that squirrel at night, but that dream won’t come true if all I do is lay in bed. It won’t come true unless I wake up in the morning, head out the front door and take off running.”
I thought about what Saydee said. It’s a little different message than the one from Cinderella.
Cinderella is, of course, a movie by Walt Disney. It came out in 1950 – 65 years ago, and five years before the opening of Disneyland.
As Saydee and I continued our walk around the park, I thought: Walt Disney was a dreamer; but he did more than just sleep and hope that, somehow, all his dreams would magically come true in the morning… he worked hard, and he insisted that all those who worked for him worked hard. He of all people should know that a dream requires hard work. Especially if your dream is big: you need to get up early every morning, open the door, head outside and take off running.
What is your dream? Are you laying around, hoping it will come true on its own? Or do you get up and take off running, working hard every day to make your dream a reality?
In the Bible, we read about God’s dream. It’s not a small wish. It’s about the biggest dream one can dream.
It is a dream of a new heaven and a new earth.
It is a dream of no more weeping or cries of distress.
It is a dream of every single person living in freedom, in their own home, enjoying the wealth that they help create.
Isaiah 65 describes God’s dream like this: God’s dream is of a world in which no one labors in vain. All those who work hard will benefit from their work. The wealth they create won’t go to the 1% at the top. The wealth they create will be shared by all in society, especially those who helped create it. No one who works will live in poverty. “They shall not labor in vain...”
That’s God’s dream. It is presented not only in Isaiah 65, but throughout the writings of the prophets. God allows the prophets to catch a glimpse of the dream, and fills the prophets with a longing for the dream to come come true.
God has promised to do God’s part in making the dream come true. We heard today from Jeremiah: “I will fulfill the promise.” But God also demands that we share in the work of making the dream come true.
How hard are you willing to work for your dream, for God’s dream? Are you willing to chase after it, like Saydee; to wake up every morning, head out the front door, and take off running?
In the book of Genesis there is a story about a young man named Jacob. Jacob had a dream. I’m not talking about the dream he had when he was sleeping one night using a rock for a pillow; I’m talking about a dream that was with him night and day, a dream that wasn’t really all that different from Cindrella’s dream.
Jacob’s dream was to marry his true love. Jacob’s true love was a beautiful and graceful young woman named Rachel. Jacob dreamed about Rachel night and day. She was everything to him. But he knew that just dreaming and sleeping wasn’t going to make his dream come true.
Jacob went to Rachel’s father, as was the custom in those days. Jacob knew he needed to offer Rachel’s father something in return for Rachel’s hand in marriage.
So Jacob offered to work for him for seven years. Seven years of labor, in exchange for the opportunity to marry Rachel and have his dream come true.
That’s a long time, isn’t it? Seven years of work! What happened to making a wish when you’re fast asleep, and having your dream come true in the morning?
Yeah, that’s only in fairy tales.
Seven years. That was the plan, anyway. But you know, sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan. There are delays, unexpected circumstances, unforseen situations… sometimes it takes longer than we expect.
Haven’t you ever chased after a dream, worked hard to make it happen, and got frustrated because it was taking longer than expected?
In Jacob’s case, seven years became fourteen years! He thought he’d have to work seven years for his dream, and ended up working twice that! (It’s quite an interesting story how that happened – you should read it some time. It’s in Genesis chapter 29.)
Finally, after fourteen years of hard work, Jacob married Rachel, and his dream came true.
Was it worth it? Jacob thought so.
Back to the prophet Jeremiah... Like the other prophets, Jeremiah had a dream.  Jeremiah’s dream was similar to the new heaven and earth described by Isaiah.
One of the Bibles I own has an introduction to the book of Jeremiah that says his dream was of a “new day when religion would be more than a set of outward rules to be kept,” a day when faith would transform people’s hearts and be lived out in their lives.
And how hard was Jeremiah willing to work for this dream? It wasn’t easy. Dreams rarely do come true without great effort.
In the course of his work, Jeremiah was slandered, imprisoned, and on one occasion, thrown into a deep mud pit by his enemies and left to die. He sank in the mud; it was like quicksand.
He wanted to give up. After all, what’s the point? All his hard work and what was the result? Stuck in a deep pit, sinking in the mud, death all but certain.
At the last minute, he was rescued from the pit, and he went right back to working toward the dream.
I bet Jacob – who worked 7 years for Rachel, and then 7 more years – felt like he was stuck in a pit. I bet he felt like he was stuck with no hope when he finished his seven years of hard work only to discover that he had an additional seven years of hard work ahead of him. Would his dream ever come true? Or would he be stuck in the mud forever?
But the dream was important to him – it was everything – and he worked the extra seven years to make it come true.
The dream of the prophets was not fully realized in their time. But the dream stayed alive. Hope remained. After all, God made a promise, and assured the people that he would fulfill that promise.
Jesus repackaged the dream and called it the kingdom of God. He did this so effectively that when early Christians read of the dream of the prophets and of the promise to be fulfilled, they saw Jesus as the one who would make that happen. They saw him as the promised one.
According to Isaiah, when this dream is realized, there would be good news for the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, freedom for the captives, and comfort for all those who mourn.
When Jesus entered the synagogue in Nazareth and read this passage from Isaiah, he knew that the work to make this dream a reality was his work. He said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled.” It was fulfilled in him, in the message he proclaimed, in the work he did.
And, it is fulfilled in us. The dream comes true when those follow Christ work with God to make it real. As we anticipate the birth of Christ and the realization of the dream, we work with God to make it happen. We work to end oppression and discrimination. We work to end the economic inequality that plagues our land. We work to end hateful speech directed against refugees, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and others.
This is the dream expressed in the scriptures we read and the songs we sing. This is what we hope for. This is what we pray for. This is what we work for.

A note on the image of Jeremiah: this is the artwork of James C. Lewis. For more info:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/characters-from-bible-really-look-like-_n_5281519.html



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