December 2, 2007
Advent 1
Isaiah 2:1-5
23The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning
Philippians 1:3-6
456I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying
with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in
the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one
who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus
Christ.
...who began a good work
“Somewhere, over the rainbow,
Skies are blue;
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.”
I have
been infatuated with that place over the rainbow for as long as I can remember
– not because of the Munchkins and their tragically anxious visitors (Tin Man,
Scarecrow, the Lion and Dorothy), nor even because of my early crush on Glenda,
the Good Witch – but more because of the allure of that compelling, hopeful
promise: that there the dreams that you
dare to dream really do come true.
Don’t
get me wrong; not since kindergarten have I literally put everything inside the
embrace of that expectation. Even back
then I understood that some things were simply fantasies – wishful thinking –
moreso than dreams; and while fun to think about for their season, the brevity
of their appeal betrayed their very different substance. I surely would have tired of looking at
skeletons all day if I really had
obtained X-ray vision, and it’s really better that Jazen Wood didn’t fall in
love with me as I had hoped at the time; although I still think it would be
cool to fly.
But
dreams – those imaginations that stuck with me over time about who I might
become, about what I might eventually do, and about life on very different
terms – I never really doubted could
come true, on one side of the rainbow or another.
And then I
discovered something surprising: that
dreams – real dreams that become deep hope – didn’t stay tucked away, hidden in
my heart. Oh, I may not have talked
about them to anybody else, but they had a way of leaking out in the form of
energy and direction and bias and choice.
My dreams had a way of pulling me, rather than the other way
around. What I hoped for, I worked for.
The content of my dreams became the shape of my endeavor.
Perhaps
that is why the prophets took such pains to share their dreams: so that seeing them, others might live
towards them – be pulled by them – as well.
Like the dream of a time when adversaries would “beat their swords
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; when nation would not lift up
sword against nation, neither would they learn war any more.
Not every dream, of course, is born of grandeur. There are those dreams that have their roots
in pride and ego and selfish ambition – dreams of power or vengeance or glory
at another’s expense. But while such
grainy aspirations painfully often have their season, it is only a season. What we are promised in scripture is that
dreams born of God’s own imagination and sown in both the heart of humankind’s
better nature and, indeed, the very groaning of creation itself will ultimately
see its realization; that as the Apostle Paul promised, “the one who began a
good work in you will be faithful to complete it.”
And so in
these embryonic days of Advent’s season of hope, what is the good work that God
has begun in you and this church that is still only beginning to become? What is it that you and we dream about for
this church’s future? Or to put it into
the prophet’s vocabulary, what is the “word” that you “see”?
1) Voices from the congregation
2) Quiet moments during which people
complete their dream cards
3) Conversational moments during
which people share their dreams with pew neighbors
4) "He Who Began a good
Work..."