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Sermon on 11/12/05
Based on Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28 (Luke 1:47-55). Once upon a time, a people had a dream. At one time, they were a proud and strong people, a nation they believed to be favored by God, with mighty walls and pious rulers. They believed that God would exalt them and make them great conquerors, and that from their throne on the mountain of Zion, the nations of the world would come to seek the wisdom and justice of their kings, lay down their weapons and give their alms in honor of the Chosen People and the Lord who blessed them. What great tales they had of victory! After the Lord delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, He delivered the land of Canaan into the hands of the hero Joshua. Against the pressing might of the Philistines came David, the greatest king the world had ever known, slaying the mighty giant Goliath with naught but a stone. Then, almost without warning, this strong and proud nation fell before the might of invaders from the East. Their throne was overturned, the house of the Lord laid to ruin, and the people dragged off into slavery. They were being taken in chains from the mountain of Zion and from their privileged status as the Chosen People of God. The depth of their fall was exactly proportional to the height of their ambition… Thinking themselves the most blessed of all the earth, they became the most lowly. Thinking that all the earth would come to them, they were scattered amongst the empires of the world. Rot and corruption had set into their perfect kingdom. The hungry went without food, the poor without shelter and clothing, the sick were cast out and the widows and orphans left without anyone to advocate on their behalf. The mount of Zion became the footstool of the wealthy and decadent. In their luxury they forgot the downtrodden… Indeed, those they trod down themselves… and forgot their Lord. Their Promised Land only offered promise to the land baron, the religious hierarchy, the politicians and the aristocratic thieves. Here on the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, within the walls of Babylon, the people hung up their harps and quieted their voices in silent penitence. Where was their joy? Where were their voices? Where was their God? And it was here, in this strange land, that the Dream was planted into the spirits of the people. They began to see where they went wrong and how they brought this punishment upon themselves. In their arrogance, the nations of the world came against them and dished out to them what they invincibly dished out to everyone else. That first dream was wrong, a nightmare. The people forgot that once they were slaves themselves, and God reminded them of this. But the pain of this bondage was like the pain of pregnant labor. It gave birth to a beautiful new Dream. They wondered of a new world without the never ending bloodshed of nation against nation and people against people. They dreamt of a world where no one would be dragged off in chains, where no child would be put to the millstone and no woman to humiliation and violation. The Dream picked up steam, and they took it further. They dreamed of a world in which the crippled could walk, the blind could see, and they even had the audacity to dream of a world in which death itself had no power. They saw their wrong: it was not the mighty conquerors that the world would bow down to, but rather, a tired and weary planet would seek the wisdom of the people who fed their hungry, clothed their naked, cared for their sick, released the captives, advocated for justice and lived in peace. Their dream was not to rebuild a kingdom, but to live a new way of life in justice, humility, reconciliation, charity and most importantly, Love. The dream of this people became the most powerful Dream ever dreamt by humanity. It knows no skin color or ethnicity, no gender or orientation, no boundary of water or government. Around the world, the Dream is still being dreamt, to the hope of the meek and to the chagrin of the mighty. 42 years ago, a man retold this dream on the steps of the great empire of our day: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."The Asian child working in the sweatshop lays his head down at night and dreams this Dream. Our faithful Christian brothers and sisters in Latin America dream this Dream as the bullets of their own governments lay them down to eternal rest. It is the dream of the homeless man sleeping in a box in the alley behind a glass and steel oil tower, and the dream of the lonely widow forgotten in the nursery. It is the dream of the alcoholic who sees their life reflected in a bottle of booze. It was the dream of five famous women who fought for the vote and the dream of a Baptist minister from Saskatchewan who fought for universal health care, saying "Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise." It is the dream of the peacemaker shot down for preaching brotherhood and compassion, of the charity worker who receives no reward and asks for none, of the meek and the mourning and the persecuted of the world. It is the dream of anyone who has ever lost a loved one, the dream of anyone who dreamt for a better world, without suffering, without pain, without tears. At Pentecost, the Disciples preached the words of the old dreamer, the old Prophet, “your sons and daughters shall prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” They were proclaiming the awesome, unbelievable truth… The Dream is God’s Dream, and He has made it come true. The Dream came true. That long-ago Dream dreamt by a band of Hebrew slaves became incarnate in the womb of an impoverished peasant girl. The slaves quieted their voices, but when the peasant girl learned of what God was Dreaming, her voice cried out the song of the Dream: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."When the Child she bore reached adulthood and prepared to fulfill the Dream of this good and true and beautiful world, He repeated the Dream written by the Dreamer Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”… And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”We have a Dream today. For Advent is a Dream… We remember with expectation when the Dream became a reality through the Love of God, and we anticipate when the Dream will ultimately be fulfilled and this new world is created. When the angels trumpeted the arrival of the Dream in human flesh, the minds of the world’s dreamers were set on fire: That night when in Judean skiesAs Christians, we are Advent people, people of the Dream. We live by this Dream, sharing it in solidarity with the meek of the earth. We go beyond anticipating the day when the Dream will come true… We know already that it has come true! 2000 years ago in that cold cave in Bethlehem, the Dream came true, and so we work as well as wait. We work to share the Dream by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, taking up the cause of the marginalized and disenfranchised and the poor, and by living in peace with one another and bringing healing to the whole world. In the words of one of my favorite dreamers, Bono from U2: “Dream up the kind of world you want to live in, dream out loud, at high volume.” Amen.
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