Wanted: Dreamers Willing to Work
Isaiah 65:17-25
2 Thess 3:6-13
Today we celebrate this congregation’s 154th
anniversary. When it began in 1859, it
was more a dream than anything else. A
dream of a few people who felt called by God to form a Presbyterian church here
in Fort Scott. But congregations don’t
endure by dreams alone. Those dreams
have to go to work. And they have. For 154 years, men, women, and children have
been worshiping and praying, singing and celebrating, serving and caring,
learning and growing.
And it’s wonderful that on this anniversary Sunday there are
several people wanting to receiving baptism and to become part of this
congregation’s shared ministry. 154
years from the congregation’s official beginning, God’s Spirit is still at work
among us; God’s light continues to shine in our hearts. Our new members are excited about what God
has in store for them. They have dreams
of what’s possible for themselves and for this congregation.
Here’s what I want you to hear this morning from these two
Scripture readings: if we want to live fully the life God offers us, we’ll need
to be willing to dream and to work. Both
dreaming and working are required. If
you lose either side of the equation, you will lose your sense of purpose and
meaning; you will miss out on an attitude of joy and peace that God makes
available to you.
And here’s why I think we all have something at stake this
morning. Most of us have probably let
one side of this equation slip away through neglect. Most of us have either stopped dreaming or
stopped working. What about you? Are you still excited and energized by the
hopeful possibilities in your heart? Or
have you given up dreaming because of frustrations and disappointments, or
maybe because the stress of life? Or
maybe you’ve continued to dream but you’re neglecting the work. You’re less involved. You’re less willing to say yes. You’re not spending your time, energy, and
money to share with others the work of putting flesh on your dreams.
What this congregation most needs – what it HAS TO HAVE –
for continuing faithful ministry, is dreamers
willing to work. We need you to keep
doing both – the dreaming and the working.
And what YOU need, as a person created by God for a deep and joyful
life, is to continue to dream and to let those dreams pull you forward into
practical effort that makes the world around you a little bit better each day.
The Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City is a beautiful
limestone building that overlooks a gorgeous, manicured lawn. There are the famous badminton shuttlecock
sculptures that create a whimsical and playful mood. But carved into the limestone on either side
of the entrance is a quotation by the French writer, Victor Hugo. He is best known to us as the author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The inscription reads: "The soul has greater need of
the ideal than of the real. It is by the
real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.” Hugo’s point is that our lives have depth and
richness and mystery to them. And you
can’t live with maximum delight by simply bumbling along from one obligation to
another. You can’t just stack up a
life’s worth of meals and errands and workdays call it “living.” You can’t present at the end of your life a
bunch of completed to-do-lists and say, “Well now, I’ve really lived.” No, we need ideals and dreams to pull us
forward into the future. If you ever
stop dreaming, you are no longer living.
You are merely existing, as a walking corpse, or a zombie.
I want you to hear and feel the tension between our two
readings from Scripture today. Sometimes
our readings from the Old and New Testaments compliment one another. But not today. Today they appear to be in tension.
The Isaiah reading inspires us to hope and dream for the new
heaven and new earth that we’ve been promised by God. God is working to see to it that everything
wrong with us and with the world will be put to rights. Everything bent will be made straight. Our bodies will be strong and healthy and our
lives long. Our children will flourish
and the work we do will be dignifying and meaningful.
Our homes will stand strong and our gardens will be
bountiful. Even the violence in the food
chain will disappear. The carnivorous
lion will eat salad greens, and the wolf will lie down peacefully with the
defenseless lamb. The Lord will be so
intimately present to our lives that “Before we call the Lord will answer” (v.
24). The Lord will take delight in his
people. This is a Spirit-inspired dream
that has excited and energized God’s people for thousands of years. Are you still able to dream about a new
heaven and a new earth?
The reading from 2 Thessalonians sounds nothing like
that. It’s harsh. Pointed.
It’s disciplinary really. The
believers in Thessalonica who initially responded with gladness to the good
news of Jesus Christ are now struggling.
Some people in the congregation are confused. They have heard rumors that Jesus Christ has
already returned. Others have heard that
Jesus Christ is set to return any day now.
So they’ve stopped working.
They’ve let their gardens go to the weeds. They’ve neglected the sagging porch and
leaking roof. The whole world’s about to
end, they’re thinking. So why bother
going to work anymore? But some people
are still working hard to make a living and so that they have something to
share with the poor. But they’re not
getting enough help. You see, it’s not a
very pretty picture of a church community.
But it’s an honest one. It’s a
real one. And it’s a call for us to keep
working hard captured best in verse 13: “And as for you, brothers and sisters,
never tire of doing what is good.”
Some of us are more comfortable dreaming, others of us more
comfortable getting stuff done. But
here’s the powerful piece of good news today: God invites us to be fully human,
whole persons. And that means that all
of us are called to be both things -- dreamers willing to work.
This past summer we took our family vacation to Yellowstone
National Park. I had never been. Steph had never been. And we wanted our kids to experience the
beauty of the park. So we talked about
this trip for months and months. Setting
aside money. Making reservations. Doing research. Planning our route from here to there.
And all those well laid plans were set in motion on Friday
morning, July 5th, at around 5am.
We knew exactly how far we were going, and how long it would take
us. It was a beautiful plan.
We got as far West 54 Highway as Uniontown when Stephanie
says to Oliver, “Did you get your glasses?”
He said, “Uh, I thought you got them.”
She said, “No, they were on your nightstand. Do you mean you didn’t bring them with you?”.
It was at this point that I eased the van over to the side
of the road. We were only 20 miles into
the trip, but I could already smell Wyoming.
We had packed the car the night before.
We had all gotten up and around and left right on time. I was already doing calculations in my head
about how this early start was going to work perfectly, stopping for lunch,
arriving at our hotel half way there.
I do not want to give you a detailed picture of the scene
that ensued inside the Witt mini-van on the side of the highway right past
Uniontown. When the Witts come unglued,
it’s never pretty. So I will slide past
the details just to say that we turned around, drove back to Fort Scott. Oliver went in the house, retrieved his
glasses off of his night stand - where his mother had laid them. And we got on our way, over an hour behind
schedule. I was trying to go zen, just
taking deep breaths as a way to calm myself down. It was a full hour on the road before I was
able to speak.
I had dreamed about that trip, and about how that trip would
begin. And the dream was beautiful. But the actual trip didn’t match the dream.
Has that ever happened to you? Maybe that’s what your marriage has felt like. Or what the experience of being a parent has
felt like. Maybe your career path or
your current job has been like that. And
if you’re older, maybe retirement has felt like that. Now don’t tell those receiving baptism today
this, but maybe even your visions of the life of faith and worship and service
has felt like this – big dreams, great plans, and then a series of
disappointments.
It’s enough, sometimes, to make you stop dreaming, or to
quit doing the work.
Wendell Berry, in his Sabbath
Poems, captures the interplay of dreaming and doing:
Whatever is foreseen in joy
must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
by our ten thousand days of work.
It’s messy – this living out of the good news alongside
others traveling the same path. But life
is always messy. And God is right here
in the middle of it with us, keeping hope and dreams alive to give shape to our
best efforts. May God’s Spirit be at
work in you and in me, to inspire our dreams and energize our work. Amen.
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