Wanted: Dreamers Willing to Work

Isaiah 65:17-25

2 Thess 3:6-13

Today we celebrate this congregation’s 154^th 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 5^th, 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.