These Dreams!

This week was vacation week on Monday my wife was away with a friend at her cancer appointment.

I told the kids we would go to the mall in Nashua.

Something we had never done that I thought might be fun.

My son had a dream that he bought an action figure from the star wars show “Rebels”.

He told me he didn’t know if the toy existed but he had seen it in his dream.

Sure enough they had the exact toy he saw in his dream.

One time my daughter lost her I-touch.

She had a dream that it was in the seat cushion of a chair in our house.

Sure enough it was right there.

I am actually surrounded by dreamers.

My wife is always having very strong vivid dreams.

In fact, I sometimes get in trouble for things I do, or don’t do, in her dreams.

Which is really unfair because I have a hard enough time doing the things I am supposed to do in real life, and now I have to behave in her dreams too.

Over the years because of my wife I have changed my thoughts on dreams.

I am not as quick to dismiss them as unimportant.

Dreams are significant pathways to our deepest fears, hopes, and thoughts.

According to clinical psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber “Dreams are the bridge that allows movement back and forth between what we think we know and what we really know.”

But according to the story of Joseph they are more than that even they are pathways to God communicating with us.

Dreams are ways that God gives us important information.

In today’s part of the story it is God who sends Pharaoh a dream about a famine that is coming, and about how to avoid it.

It is odd because all the things about Pharaoh’s dream speak to him from Egyptian gods.

The Nile for the people of Egypt was an important spiritual place.

The Nile was life itself.

Out of the river comes gods.

Cows were considered gods in Egypt.

Pharaoh’s dream was not merely his subconscious talking to him.

It was his gods telling him something.

What he would find out was that it was the God who was really talking.

On top of this Pharaoh by Egyptian standards was considered a god.

So when other gods speak Pharaoh should be able to tell what they are telling him.

But he can’t understand it.

He is disturbed.

Finally, Joseph tells him that it is not little gods telling him something, but God.

The one true God, the God of the universe who made the Nile and cows.

That God was telling Pharaoh something very important.

That God was sending a message that Pharaoh needed to hear in order to save his people.

God talked to Pharaoh in a dream.

I was just thinking that we probably don’t talk about this enough in our spiritual life together.

We don’t share our dreams.

We don’t share what we think God is saying to us through those dreams.

I know I don’t because when that does happen to me, and it has happened to me, I don’t want people to think I am crazy.

I can tell you that at least once a year I have a dream about not being prepared on Sunday morning.

I have a dream that I can’t find the pulpit, or I show up to church not expecting to preach and someone looks at me and says, “Well aren’t you going to say something.”

Part of it is my own fears about weather what I have to say is good enough or well thought out enough.

Also, it is my own anxiety about being prepared.

But maybe it is something more?

Maybe God is telling me something about the importance of what I say.

Maybe God is telling me that preaching is a sacred duty that needs to be taken seriously with good preparation and with something good to say.

You see I think we dismiss our dreams too easily if we don’t look for the possibility to what God is telling us.

Those dreams that we wake up and say, “Wow that was weird.”

Perhaps has more to it than meets the eye.

Dreams can make us look at situations differently help us to uncover what is really going on beneath the surface.

Some dreams are more obvious.

Shortly after my Dad died I had a dream about him.

It was on the 9^th hole of the golf course we would golf together at.

That hole curves to the right, but straight ahead there is a rock.

He was sitting on that rock.

He told me, “I am good. Tell your mother.”

I want to share with you a dream I had once that really affected me.

I was in my first call as a pastor.

I had been at the church for about two years.

I wasn’t really happy there.

I was thinking of leaving.

One night I had a dream that I was floating above the narthex of the church watching people come in to worship.

Everything was black and white.

An angel appeared and told me that everything was about to change.

She then took me through the doors of the narthex into the sanctuary.

As soon as she opened the door the Church became colorful.

I looked and saw every kind of person singing and dancing (in a Lutheran kind of way) giving praise to God.

Black, white, Hispanic, middle eastern, African, German, Swedish, carribean, people in wheel chairs, old people, young people, middle aged, gay, straight.

It was a wonderful beautiful worship the kind you think happens in heaven.

It could be argued that it was just a projection of the type of congregation I hoped we would someday be.

But I took it as a sign from God that I was meant to stay there longer.

Things were happening to make that vision possible.

I don’t know if it ever looked exactly like that (there was no dancing for example) but it did come close at times.

I believe that dream was God speaking to me.

I believe that God speaks to you in your dreams too.

I hope we can be attentive to what God is saying.

I hope we can share those dreams together.

Now let me offer some advice about interpreting dreams.

That is important.

Because we could make our dreams say whatever they want.

One, like Pharaoh seeks out others to help you understand what you saw, or experienced.

The next morning I told Vicki about my dream and we together worked on what it might mean.

Two, this piece of advice comes from my wife.

Dream interpretation doesn’t necessarily mean that everything in that dream will mean something.

We don’t have to go out and buy a dream dictionary.

What is most important is how you felt during that dream.

What emotions did it bring up?

Fear, joy, love, hope, sadness.

Start with your emotions.

I woke up from my dream filled with joy at what I had seen and had more hope that it could be possible.

Finally, our dreams have to be in context of what we already know about God.

God speaks to us in our dreams when we can hear God’s voice that tells us about important things that show God’s love to us.

In Pharaoh’s dream Joseph could see that God would not want people to die during a famine.

Joseph knew God’s steadfast love.

The God that Joseph knew was a God that was there for him all those years he spent in prison.

At worship on Wednesday my son Charlie said, “It was like God had been planning for this for fifty years.”

Indeed the God of steadfast love that Joseph has come to know is the context for him being able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.

And just like God spoke to Pharaoh through a dream.

God can speak to us.

Our dreams can help us understand our past; discern what to do in the future, how to live now.

Most of all we can see in our dreams God’s hand loving guiding us towards God’s future.

Amen

To God Be The Glory!

It happens sometime that what I think I am going to preach on in at the start of the week is not what I end up preaching on.

This week was one of those weeks.

I was going to talk about doing our best even when it is not what we want to be doing.

Even when our dreams are not met there is something really important about doing our best at whatever job we happen to be doing.

I was going to talk about Joseph and how he provides a good example to us about doing our best at whatever task we find ourselves.

I read a lot of Biblical commentaries this week commenting on Joseph’s character.

How he had grown up and learned to obey the Lord.

How through this difficult time of being a slave Joseph learned how to have courage and integrity.

It is not a bad message.

If you left here this morning thinking about the job you hate and how there is honor in doing it well that would be a good message.

But the more I read this part of the story of Joseph.

And on Wednesday night at worship when I listened to people talk about what they got out of the story I realized something I was missing that was really important.

It is not Joseph at all that was doing any of those things.

It was God.

A careful reading of the story shows that God is really behind it all.

Consider what it says, “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man.”

Not, “Joseph being a man of good character and hard work became a successful man.”

It was because of God.

God is mentioned 7 times in this chapter of Genesis.

God gets all the credit for any success that Joseph might have had.

It was God who made Joseph what he was.

It was God that blessed the Egyptian’s house because of Joseph.

It was God the whole time that was with Joseph in prison.

God is the subject of this story not Joseph’s character.

I wonder how much of what happens to us in life do we take credit for when it is really God’s hand at work.

I wonder if Joseph knows that it is God who is with him during this time.

This is the thing about God’s work in our lives it is usually invisible to us.

We can’t see it all the time.

It is obscured to us because we believe that if God is with us than nothing bad should ever happen to us.

But if we consider Joseph’s life so far we see it is not like that.

Lots of bad things have happened to him.

He was sold into slavery by his brothers.

He was falsely accused of trying to have an affair with his master’s wife.

He was thrown in prison.

One could ask the question, if God is with Joseph why didn’t God stop all these bad things from happening?

Lots of times in our lives when we have hit a dead end, or taken a wrong turn, we wonder why God allowed that to happen.

I offer no explanations for that, and neither does the story of Joseph (at least not at this point).

What the story tells us is that even when our dreams don’t come true in the way we expect.

Even when there are turns in the road, even when there are dead ends, God is with us.

God is working in those times in ways that we might not recognize or understand.

But the worst thing we could do in those times is think that turning our lives around is based on what we can do.

That what is needed from us is more effort, better character, stronger courage.

The best thing we can do is turn over to God our lives and move ahead one day at a time.

The reverse is also true.

In good times we can’t take credit for what we have done, how we have prospered, what we have accomplished.

God gets the glory for anything that might have gone well.

Here is why this is important to me.

I really believe that we are all the same.

People are people.

Success is the product of something that none of us can bottle up.

No one has the solution.

And none of us is better than other people.

But if you listen to people who are “successful” talk it is all about them.

What they did.

How they persevered.

How they overcame.

How they worked hard.

Let me say something very clearly.

We shouldn’t get points for working hard.

Working hard is part of life, because life is hard.

Just because you work hard that doesn’t make you better than someone else.

It just means you did the basics.

My parents worked hard.

And our family did not become super rich, or famous.

So working hard doesn’t make you special.

Let me give you an example.

Everyone talks about Larry Bird how hard he worked.

He was the first one in and the last one out of the gym.

It is commendable, (and of course it helps to work hard) but there are probably tons of people who worked just as hard as he did and didn’t become one of the top 5 best players in the NBA.

Bird was gifted with things that no one else had.

Where did that gift come from?

I would say God.

Why Larry Bird and not someone else?

I don’t know.

I am not God.

But let me bring it down to our congregation.

I was out to eat lunch with two of our members.

They said, “Wow, it is amazing that our congregation is growing. Not many other congregations can say that.”

It is amazing and here is the thing I have no idea why.

There are other congregations that are growing but they grow because they are different, creative, and new.

They are led by extremely talented leaders.

We don’t have that going for us.

All I can say is, “To God be the glory!”

And that would be my answer is that God gets the credit.

If I preach a good sermon it is not because I know something that is great.

It is because God put that into me to preach, God gave me those words to say.

And the Holy Spirit moved among us that day.

On the second week of lent I think that is a great thing to hear, because lent is about realizing that our life belongs to God.

That in all things good and bad, in all times and places, in our best moments and at our most desperate, we give our thanks and praise to God.

We give our thanks for God who gives us courage to live through hard times.

We give our thanks to God who blesses even our meek efforts.

We give thank to God who picks us up when we are disheartened.

Thanks be to God who has given us the gifts to do the work in front of us.

Thanks be to God for blessing us.

Thanks be to God for being with us in all things.

God gets all the credit, to God be the glory.      

Amen

Sibling Rivalry!

We often think of the Bible is about big theological concepts.

We think it is about the meaning of God, the meaning of existence.

And certainly there are theological concepts in the Bible.

But really what most of the Bible is about is family.

The Bible is a story about a really big family that struggles to live together, and love each other.

The Bible is about how God’s promises come true despite all of the complications that come with family.

This Lent we are going to be hearing and talking about one of the central Biblical stories about family.

Our Sunday school is going to be learning about the story of Joseph, and I thought it would be interesting and fun for us as a congregation to also hear that story in worship.

It will be the texts that I preach on this lent.

It is important from the start to understand what is going on in this story.

God made a promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

And most of Genesis is the story of the obstacles that make it difficult for that promise to come true.

What we hear this morning is that Joseph is the favorite of 12 sons of Jacob, who was Abraham’s grandson.

My reading of the story is that Joseph is a spoiled brat.

He likes to brag to his brothers about how great he is going to be, and he often tattles on them to their father.

Anyone who has had a sibling can identify with these things.

Within a family there is often sibling rivalry.

Siblings often tattle on their brother or sister.

They will often feel superior to the other.

In our house when one of our children are in trouble the other one seems to take great pleasure that their sibling is in trouble and they are not.

Sometimes they even brag about how good their behavior is compared to the other.

Sibling rivalry is part of life for those of us who have a sister or brother.

According to an article I read in Psychology today, “While few adult siblings have severed their ties completely, approximately one-third of them describe their relationship as rivalrous or distant.

They don't get along with their sibling or have little in common, spend limited time together, and use words like "competitive," "humiliating," and "hurtful" to depict their childhoods.”

So that is what is so great about the Bible is that it helps us understand God by telling us stories we can identify with because they are about real life.

We can understand why Joseph’s brothers “hated” him.

Joseph’s story is a human story.

Today we see that it starts in a human way.

With a rivalry with between brothers, it starts with sin.

It is appropriate that we begin our Lenten journey here with sin.

In the start of this story there is plenty of sin to go around.

First, we have Jacob.

Jacob should know better than to favor one son over the others.

Sibling rivalry is often caused by parents who show favoritism to one child over another.

It is caused by a parent’s inability to recognize that all of our children are gifts of God.

Each of them come with unique gifts and talents and as parents we have to be careful not to try and make our children feel that they are less than their siblings.

We have to uphold the wonder and beauty of each.

We have to celebrate their accomplishments of each as they have the ability.

Perhaps the worst thing a parent can say to their child is “why can’t you be like your brother/sister.”

Jacob is guilty of playing favorites and stoking the sibling rivalry.

Second, is Joseph.

Like I said earlier he is a bratty kid.

He goes around telling his brothers about his dreams of greatness, telling on them to their father.

I can imagine showing off his wonderful coat.

He fails to recognize that being a sibling also means having some sense of humility.

Perhaps one of the best things our siblings can do for us is to teach us how to get along with other people.

They teach us that we are not the center of the universe.

They can teach us how to be humble and gracious as we allow others the spotlight.

Joseph is young and has not learned this.

And of course, the brothers.

I don’t really even need to talk about them.

No matter how much of brat he is Joseph does not deserve to be sold into slavery.

There is no excuse to lie and tell your father that your brother is dead.

That is the point it is hard for us to allow our siblings to have success.

But Joseph’s brothers go an extra mile in how much they let their hate for him overtake their actions.

There is plenty of sin in this story.

And we see right away that this sin is putting in danger God’s promise.

What will it mean for one of the brothers to be sold into foreign hands.

This is a big problem.

What will it mean for Jacob?

What will happen to Joseph?

What will happen to the brothers?

God can’t allow the brothers to prosper after what they did to Joseph?

Will Jacob recover after losing his favorite son?

Will Joseph survive in a foreign land?

The Promise of God is a promise of a family together being God’s people.

This story puts all that in jeopardy.

Isn’t that always the issue?

How will our sin, our petty jealousy, our immaturity, our mishandling of the things God has put in our hands, mess up God’s promises?

That is where our story begins.

Because we are in many ways like Joseph we have dreams of grandeur in our head.

We are seeing signs all around of how much we are special.

But we are unable to see beyond that.

In my last congregation there were two sisters who didn’t like each other.

I was told on my very first Sunday at the congregation that the two sisters did not talk.

They hated each other.

I was wondering how that was going to affect the ministry of that congregation.

I was wondering how I would navigate that relationship.

I don’t remember why they were fighting.

And I don’t remember it ever being a real problem, except that one of them didn’t come to church very often.

But when I first heard of it I didn’t know how this would affect the church family.

That is what we are talking about this morning.

How our sin gets in the way.

How it is always a question mark in the scheme of things.

And perhaps the biggest problem is that we don’t see it.

Jacob wasn’t aware of how his behavior was affecting his sons.

Joseph seems unaware that his dreams made his brothers hate him more.

The brothers don’t seem bothered by what they did to Joseph.

How would this story look different if the characters knew about how their sin affects others?

That is what lent can do for all of us.

It gives us time to take stock of how our sin hurts other people.

It gives us time to think about how we can mend the family of God by not being blind to the havoc our sin takes on others.

How can we repair the relationships of those we have done wrong?

How can we find a way to a kinder and gentler interaction with our family?

Families can be difficult.

The Bible is story about family.

About the ways we hurt each other.

This lent let us take time to consider how we have hurt one another and make amends to each other for it.

Let us put aside sibling rivalry to love each other, to celebrate each others gifts, to humbly allow others to shine in the spotlight.

Let us put aside our jealousy, our blindness to the needs of others, our immaturity, and our dreams of grandeur so that we can be part of God’s family that lives in God’s promises.

Amen