Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · September 6, 2009
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Prayer of the Day
Gracious and Loving God, this morning we pray that you will help us dream dreams, follow visions, and always seek to serve you. Through Christ, we say together, Amen.
Scripture
Daniel 2:20-23
Daniel said:
“Blessed be the name of God from age to age,
for wisdom and power are his.
He changes times and seasons,
deposes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what is in the darkness,
and light dwells with him.
To you, O God of my ancestors,
I give thanks and praise,
for you have given me wisdom and power,
and have now revealed to me what we asked of you,
for you have revealed to us what the king ordered.”
Message
Dreams and Visions
Jacob Thorne
I want to begin this morning with a question: Do you ever have recurring dreams? Have you ever had a dream, or even a nightmare, that just really bothered you? Have you ever woken up from a dream that seemed so real you could not imagine it was not true? Do you ever wonder what your dreams mean?
Fred Craddock once told a story of a lady named Stella. Stella came to Fred one Sunday after church and said, “Pastor, I have a terrible nightmare. It is a nightmare that I have two or three times a week. Can I come and talk to you about it sometime?”
Fred said, “Well, sure.”
Stella came to Fred’s office the next day. She sat down. Fred really didn’t know her, so he said to her, “Stella, share with me your story.”
Stella said she was from Oklahoma, from a small town, a small community, and from a small church. As Fred listened to Stella tell her story, it became clear that Stella also had a small theology. This wasn’t bad, according to Fred. It wasn’t a judgment. It is just what it was. After graduating from high school, Stella attended Oral Roberts University. There the university authenticated her small-church experience. Stella did very well. She graduated. She became a social worker. Now, as she was talking to Fred, she was getting ready to go back to graduate school. She wanted to become a psychiatric social worker.
But the problem was that, as she was getting ready to go back to school, she kept having this dream, or this nightmare, two or three times a week. She was back at Oral Roberts University. It was in a dormitory. She was on the 13th floor. All of a sudden, a fire broke out. The fire started creeping up the stairwells. The fire came up the elevator shaft. The only way to escape was to go to the balcony. In her dreams, Stella makes it to the balcony, and she looks below – 13 floors below. She sees the firefighters down there. In her dream, they are holding the trampoline and saying to her, “Jump! Jump!”
She doesn’t want to jump. Anyway, she grabs on to the railing, and just when she is ready to jump, she wakes up, screaming as loudly as she can. She tells this story to Fred. Then she says, “Well, pastor, what do you think this means?”
Fred said, “I don’t know. I’m not a dream interpreter. Let me think about it for a few days.”
Stella left, and Fred thought about it. After several days, it occurred to him that the alchemist, the chemist from the Middle Ages, used fire to redefine the metal. Fire was used to try to change metal into gold. Fire was used as a positive force, as a transforming force. The next time Fred saw Stella, he said to her, “Tell me your dream once again.” He listened to her tell the story. Then he asked her, “Stella, why are you so afraid of this dream?”
There was no answer. He said, “Sometimes, fire – not in the literal sense, but fire in the sense of passion, fire in the sense of the Holy Spirit – can be used as a transforming moment in your life. This experience you have had in your university, this theology that you have, is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is a base. But now you are ready to take the next step in your journey. You are ready to feel the flames of transformation. This dream is telling you that your journey to your next stage in life is a positive force – a positive encounter.”
Stella listened to Fred share his interpretation. That moment, that day, that hour was transforming for her. Stella never, ever dreamed that dream again. The last that Fred had heard, Stella was going back to school pursuing her Ph.D. as a psychiatric social worker.
Sometimes, our dreams move us forward.
Our text this morning is taken from the book of Daniel. Daniel is a very interesting book. The first portion of the book is written in Hebrew. The second portion of the book is written in Aramaic.
During the time of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had recently come into power. King Nebuchadnezzar was not liked by the Jewish people. He was responsible for destroying Jerusalem and the famed Jewish temple. Following the destruction, he was also responsible for forcing the Jewish people into exile. King Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon, and a king who did not like to be challenged.
Despite his ruthlessness, King Nebuchadnezzar had some very odd traits and characteristics. He knew, as a ruler, that he had to maintain some type of relationship with the individuals that he conquered. Early on in his reign, Nebuchadnezzar called four young Israelites from the royal family who were, says the Bible, “free of any physical defects, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve.” He called them to learn the language and the literature of the Babylonians. Daniel was one of those four.
Another odd characteristic about Nebuchadnezzar is that most top scholars claim he had a mental illness. In the fourth chapter of Daniel, we learn that for seven years, King Nebuchadnezzar lived in the wilds like an animal. In addition to living in the wilds, like Stella, in Fred’s story, King Nebuchadnezzar was very concerned about how dreams can be interpreted.
In the second chapter of Daniel, our text for this morning, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that really disturbed him. It was a dream that seemed so very, very real. It was a dream that threatened his reality, that threatened his empire.
Babylon, during the time of King Nebuchadnezzar, was the largest city in the world. It was more than 2,500 acres. The city was encircled by an outer layer of defense that had both an outer wall and an inner wall. In between the two walls was a canal or a river that was surrounded by gardens. Throughout the city, there were temples, palaces, 300-ft.-high towers. Then, in the very middle of the city, was the most beautiful garden of all. It was so beautiful that it was known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This grand city, located in present-day Iraq, was King Nebuchadnezzar’s identity. Babylon defined King Nebuchadnezzar’s life and empire.
But in this dream, King Nebuchadnezzar is very, very troubled, because his empire is completely destroyed. The book of Daniel tells us his mind is so troubled, his dreams are so troubling, that he calls his wise men to come and interpret his dream. He calls forth the astrologers, the enchanters, the magicians, everybody he can think of. When they come to him, he says to them without telling them what his dream is, “Interpret my dream.”
Well, nobody can. King Nebuchadnezzar says, “Well, that’s fine. If you cannot interpret my dream, then the next morning, all of you will be executed.”
Then Daniel comes forward. Daniel claims that he will be able to interpret the dream, but only after he has had the opportunity to meet with his colleagues and pray. Daniel returned home. He had a conversation with his friends. He prayed to God, and then in a vision of the night, Daniel received from God an interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.
The next day, Daniel bravely returns to King Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. He tells the king what his dream means. It is simple, really. Despite his beautiful kingdom, despite all of the wealth, all of the power, all of the riches, Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar that one day his kingdom will fall and that others will fall after him. But the one true kingdom, the one revealed in dreams and in real life, God’s kingdom, says Daniel, will never fail. Surprisingly, King Nebuchadnezzar listens to Daniel. He is awakened to the mystery of his dream, the dream of what God wants.
Sometimes our dreams convey to us a deeper meaning about our lives. Our dreams can lead us to transform our lives, to change our ways of living, to see things in a new light.
Whether or not we know the dates, I imagine we are all familiar with August 28, 1963. In a speech at the nation’s capital, Martin Luther King, Jr. was just about finished giving his address. But sitting next to him, while he was speaking to the crowd of 20,000 on that hot, humid day in Washington, was the gospel signer Mahalia Jackson. Just as King was ready to conclude his speech, Jackson leaned over to King and said, “Tell them about your dream, Martin. Tell them about your dream.”
It was there that Martin Luther King, Jr. did something that he didn’t normally do. He departed from his scripted speech, and he uttered the words that we all know, “I have a dream!”
Stella’s dream. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Daniel’s dreaming vision. Martin Luther King’s dream. And sometimes our dreams convey to us a deeper message about our lives. Sometimes our dreams move us forward.
But how do we find the courage to follow our dreams? How do we take that next step?
The other day, I shared the story of Larry Walters with our youth at the Back-to-School Bash. Larry Walters was a truck driver, but his life-long dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot, but his poor eye-sight kept him from getting a pilot’s license.
When he finally left the service, he had to satisfy his desire to fly by watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies from his backyard. All afternoon, he would just sit there in his lawn chair dreaming about the magic of flying.
Then one day Larry had an idea. This is a true story. He went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. When he returned to his backyard, Larry securely strapped the balloons to his lawn chair. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep. He called over a few friends, and he inflated all 45 balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches, a few drinks, (this is the best part) and a loaded B-B gun. His great plan was to just shoot the balloons when it was time to return to the ground.
With all of the preparations complete, and with all of his friends saying, “Oh, yea, great idea, Larry,” (they weren’t going up with him), he sat down in his chair, and he cut the anchoring cord. Now, Larry’s plan was to float lazily up into the sky and eventually back to the ground. But the event didn’t go quite as he planned. When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he shot up into the sky like a cannon. He didn’t climb just a couple of hundred feet. He gained elevation all the way up to 11,000 feet. At that height, Larry was so afraid that he thought it would be foolish to shoot any of the balloons for fear that it would throw everything off balance. So, he just stayed up in the sky floating around for 14 hours.
Well… guess what happened. Eventually, Larry managed to drift into the approach corridor for the Los Angles International Airport. You can go back to the news reports and there is a recording of a Pan Am pilot radioing the control tower: “I just passed a guy in a lawn chair at 11,000 feet, and he is holding a B-B gun in his lap.”
As you can imagine, the authorities were not very happy. The entire airline schedule, clear across the country, was delayed. Finally, after flying all day long, Larry made it safely to the ground. At the moment he stepped out of that lawn chair, he is thoroughly arrested. But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out to him, “Larry, why did you do it?”
Larry stopped, and he stared at the reporter. Then he said, “A person just can’t sit around. You have to follow your dream.”
This story is amusing. I told the youth it is not a story to be repeated at home, but his message, “A person just can’t sit around,” really is, in essence, the same message we hear in the book of Daniel, and the same message that Jesus gave to his disciples.
In the Acts 1:1-11, Jesus disappears into a cloud right before the eyes of his disciples. Eventually, he is hidden from their sight. The disciples just stand there looking around wondering what to do. Suddenly they see two men dressed in white. These men, these angels, come to the disciples and ask, “Why are you standing here looking up at the sky?”
They don’t wait for an answer. The two angels dressed in white encourage the disciples to do something and to actively seek God’s will. The disciples decide to join together as one. In the next chapter, as we heard last week, the Spirit of God descends upon the people, in Acts, and they come together resulting in one voice, one body, one Spirit. When we seek God’s will and God’s dreams for us, we are active instead of passive. We are following our dreams instead of letting life pass us by. We do something.
Next week, as we all know, we will begin a new transition and a new era at Broadway Christian Church. For the past year we have all been in a period of transition. We have been dreaming about our future. We have held all types of gatherings, surveys, and studies. We have had consultants. We have had new ideas. We have had visioning. Out of all of this, I think, the plan has become clear. We are called to follow God’s dream of what it means to be a church that proclaims that we can help people encounter the Spirit of the Living Christ and transform our lives and the lives of others. Our dreams have awakened us to our ministries. We have dreamed together, not about what I want or about what you want, but about what we want and what God wants. Our dreams will hold our feet to the fire. The future, as Daniel proclaims to Nebuchadnezzar, is God’s and God’s alone.
Who we are, what Broadway Christian Church stands for, how we act, how we react to one another, how we live, how we embody our teachings, are all part of God’s dream for us. I am so looking forward to next week. I am so looking forward to our future. I know each of you is, as well, because now it is our turn. It is our turn to step up and take responsibility for who the church is going to be. It is our turn to reexamine, redefine, and reaffirm our dream for God’s Church. It is our turn to feel the fire that transforms our dreams and our ministries into reality.
Through Christ, we all say together… “Amen.”
Benediction
God of Our Dreams, thank you for visions. Thank you for your plans for us. We ask that you bolster our faith that we might rest in the reliance that we have no need to fear. Our future is not only safe; it is glorious with you. Amen.
