Sermon 4/19/15
Genesis 28:10-22
Dreaming: Jacob
How does God communicate with you? How do you most often
hear God’s voice? How can you tell the difference between God’s voice, and your
own voice in your mind? One of the
questions I’m asked regularly as a pastor is “why doesn’t God speak to us today
like God spoke to people in the Bible?” After all, in the scriptures, we read
about God speaking out from a burning bush, or God walking through the garden
where Adam and Eve lived, or speaking from an overshadowing cloud – all these
very dramatic ways of getting someone’s attention. And yet, I’ve encountered
very few people who have said that they have
heard God’s voice in this way. I don’t know,
of course, why God chooses to speak to us in the ways God does, but here’s what
I think: What if someone today told you that they heard a voice come to them
from, say, a tree, and that they were going to listen to what the voice told
them to do? Well, we’d probably suggest that person seek counseling.
Immediately. I think as our knowledge and understanding of the world around us
has changed, our understanding of what is believable
has changed too. It would be hard for us to believe for ourselves and for anyone
else that God would speak in these crazy ways. I think God, then, speaks to us
in ways that we are able to hear. And for most of us, that means that God might
speak to us in some deep, yet insistent, internal ways. I’m not saying God won’t call out to you in some surprising
way. But I’m saying: I don’t try to email
Janet Norris when I know she doesn’t use email! I’ll give her a call, or meet
with her face to face, in a way I know she can receive. I think our Creator is
certainly capable of doing the same!
Still though, I think we can learn from and explore being
open to hearing from God in some of the ways we witness God at work in the
scriptures. Throughout the scriptures, one unique way God communicates with
people is through dreams. Sometimes we see people dreaming of God’s future
plans for them. Other times, the Bible tells about people who were not
Israelites dreaming, and seeking interpretation of those dreams from one who
was a servant of God, and then was able to use that opportunity to teach them
about the God of Israel. Our Christmas story is shaped by dreams, with Joseph
learning about God’s purposes through dreams, while Mary hears mostly from
God’s messengers, angels. On the day of Pentecost, at the end of May, we’ll
hear that God’s vision for the church is that, through the Holy Spirit, young
and old, men and women, “see visions,” and “dream dreams.” Dreams are important
in the Bible: a method through which God communicates.
Is that still true for us? Do our dreams mean anything? Most of the time I hardly
remember mine. When I do: well, some of you saw on facebook recently that I had
a dream about swimming in a river with Patrick Stewart. I don’t think God was
trying to tell me anything there. Once I had a strange dream with trains and
climbing into windows and coins on the ground, and for fun, I looked up what
each part of the dream meant according to a “dream interpretation” guide – and
every part of my dream supposedly meant I was thinking about money and wealth.
I think most of the time, our dreams are the result of all the things we’re
thinking about in the background during the day. Our minds are amazingly
complex things, and they never stop, and I think our dreams are a way we
process everything we are experiencing and considering. But can they be more?
One dream I will never forget happened in the last year or two. My grandfather,
Millard Mudge, who was so dear to me, died when I was 19. But sometimes it
seems like just an instant since he’s died. He was very ill and frail for the
last couple years of his life, after always being a robust, jovial, smiling
man. And I dreamed that he was alive, happy, so healthy, with me again. And he
gave me a big hug. And I said to him “I have missed you so much.” I woke up with tears in my eyes when I realized I had
been dreaming. But I’m convinced it was more than just a dream. Maybe it wasn’t
a vision, exactly, a confirmation of
my grandfather’s eternal well-being. But I do believe it was a very precious
gift from God of one more hug from Grandpa. I think maybe, just maybe, in the
vulnerability of our sleep, sometimes God can speak to us in ways we’re not
ready for in our waking hours, when our skeptical, logical minds won’t let us
experience things that seem too good to be true.
Too good to be true. As we’re thinking about dreams and
dreaming, I want us to consider the other way we think about dreams. Not only
do we talk about dreams that represent our wandering thoughts during sleep. We
also use the word dream to describe
our hopes and visions for the future. Young people might talk about what they
dream about being when they grow up. Parents and grandparents might talk about
their hopes and dreams for their children and grandchildren – all the blessings
they wish their loved ones would experience. We think of the hopeful dreams for
the future articulated by visionaries and prophets through the ages, like
Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom where the lamb and lion lie down together, or where
Martin Luther King Jr. imaged a world where racism and inequality wouldn’t mar
the lives of black children. And I wonder, when we talk about dreams like this,
our daydreams, our visions, our hopes – are we so used to thinking of our crazy
dreams in sleep that mean nothing much, that we can’t put any stock in our
hopeful waking dreams ever becoming reality? Are dreams and reality
irreconcilable? Do we put any stock in our dreams ever coming true? Or are
dreams coming true just the stuff of fairy tales?
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be exploring what it
means to dream with God. In worship, we’ll be looking at several dreams and
dreamers in the Bible, and see how God used their dreams to communicate
something important. And in our book study, we’ll be looking pretty seriously
at what God is dreaming about for us, for each of us, and for Apple Valley. If
you haven’t committed already, I really encourage you to consider signing up
for one of our sections of the study – Monday afternoons or Wednesday evenings
starting next week. We want all of your voices, all of your dreams, to be a
part of the conversation in the weeks ahead.
Today we
heard from one dreamer – Jacob. We talked about Jacob back in January, when we
studied people who received new names from God in the Bible. Remember, Jacob is
a schemer, a swindler. He takes his twin brother Esau’s blessing. And when we
meet him in our text today, he’s been on the run, avoiding meeting up with Esau
again. In his travels, he has a vision of a great ladder, reaching to heaven,
with God’s messengers going up and down between heaven and earth. And he hears
the voice of God, drawing him into the promise that was made first to Abraham,
the covenant. God promises to be with Jacob, and his offspring, saying that
they will be like the dust of the earth. And God says to him, “Know that I am
with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this
land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” And
when Jacob wakes, he says, “Surely God is in this place – and I did not realize
it! How awesome is this place!” He decides that if God will be with him, he’ll
claim God as his God, as his fore-parents had. He marks the place by pouring
oil on the stone where Jacob laid his head in sleep. But despite this dream
that Jacob has, it isn’t yet that the deepest changes begin in his life. It’s
just a first step. A baby step, even: an acknowledgment of God’s presence. But
it is enough, of course, on which God builds something wonderful for Jacob, for
Israel, for us.
That’s
where I want us to start today. Maybe some of you are already dreamers. But I
think many of us, myself included, spend so much time trying to deal with
reality that we forget to dream. We forget that God promises again and again
that anything is possible. And so when we try to dream with God, we dream such
small, tiny things, when God wants to give us such an abundance, such a future,
such love, beyond our imagining. We need to practice a bit, and remember how to
dream, and to dream big, to dream with God. So we’re going to do just that – practice.
I’m going to ask you to try a little bit of journaling this week. On a scrap
paper, or in a diary or a plain notebook or on a keyboard or on some app on
your phone – however works for you. I want you to try to pay attention and
remember, as much as possible, what you dream about this week – dreams that
come to you in sleep – and the things you find yourself daydreaming about.
Whether they’re crazy, or unrealistic, or illogical, or seemingly impossible, I
just want you to write it down. For now,
that’s all. Just keep track. And perhaps we, like Jacob, can just take one
small step this week: remind ourselves that God is always present, always here,
in our sleeping and in our waking. It’s a good place to start. God can build on
it. God can dream on it. Amen.
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