Dare to Dream: Dreaming the Dream - Gen 28: 10-17

I am not a big fan of New Years Resolutions. I know some people who faithfully make them every year, but I also know people who break them every year. I think that happens for several reasons. Sometimes we aren’t realistic about our goals - they aren’t achievable. Other times we get bored as we work towards them because it seems to take such a long time. And still other times it’s because we haven’t invited other people into those goals in order to hold us accountable. 

While the world around us may use language about New Years Resolutions and whether they are kept are not, within the church we use a bit different language - are we dreaming and chasing after God’s dreams. Or do we share in the vision on God. But I have to say from my years of serving the church, even though we use different language, all to often the same thing happens to chasing after the vision of God as New Years resolutions - we don’t know how to hold each other accountable, or we get bored, and we push it to the side, instead going back to what we know best, what we are comfortable with. 

But here’s the thing about chasing after the vision and dreams of God - I want to be a part of that. Because I’m not going to be on this earth forever. However many days I am blessed with, I want to be part of God’s Kingdom, which is on the move. I want to spend my days sharing the love of Jesus with a hurting world. Because that is what is worth living for. 

One of my favorite letters in the New Testament is the book of James. James 4 says this, Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. We don’t know how many tomorrows we have, so we only really get to choose if we are going to live into God’s vision today. If we choose not to, James writes, Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. (James 4: 14, 17). I don’t know if we ever stop to consider that - if we know that we are to be concerning ourselves with the things that are important to God, and we actively choose not to, that’s sin, my friends. We are not being obedient to the leading of God in our lives. 

Jacob was not in a good situation. He was literally on the run from his own family after he stole the blessing that was to be his brother’s right out from under him by tricking his father. While Esau was simply obeying Isaac by going to catch him wild game and prepare his favorite dish for him, Jacob disguised himself as Esau, dressing up in hairy clothing and lying to his father when he asked if he was truly Esau and took the blessing. He had previously tricked his bother out of his birth right, and his brother was understandably angry. So Jacob is traveling over 750 miles to Haran, land of his mother’s relatives.

750 miles is not anything to bulk at, even today, but at least we have cars and trains and plane, Jacob did not. So he was making the slow and dangerous journey, only with time to get caught up in his thoughts about what his life is like currently and where he happens to be going. 

Along the way night fell and Jacob prepared to stop his restless wondering and mind. And as he rested, he slept and dreamed this amazing dream about a ladder and angels of God ascending and descending on it. During that dream the Lord spoke to him, reminding him who God has been in the life of his family, the family he is currently running away from, and that Jacob is part of that promise.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes it is when we push our restlessness aside that he are more open to the movement of God in our lives. I am not one to say that every single dream that we have has meaning, but I do know that if people are brought to my mind through a dream, I will pray for them. 

I also firmly believe that sometimes in scripture, God does powerfully speak through dreams. God spoke to Jacob in this passage. In Acts, we find the Lord speaking to Ananias in a vision telling him to do that which he would never have considered before - reach out to Saul, this one who used to persecute Christians like him. Similarly, Saul had received a vision that a man named Ananias would come and be the one to heal his sight by the laying on of hands. Last week we heard of the Wise Men being warned in a dream not to return to Herod. God speaks in a variety of ways, the real question is if we, as God’s servants are listening. 

I think that God chooses to speak through dreams sometimes because as we rest, all preconceived notions are pushed to the side. We aren’t insisting that God can only speak one particular one. We are more open, in some ways, to the movement of the Spirit. 

There are also Holy Places where God speaks, or rather places that are made Holy when God speaks upon them. Jacob, once he woke up proclaimed, “how awesome is this place!”. The Celtic Christians had a special term for such places, where God speaks and we notice, thin places. A place where Heaven and Earth meets. Places where we open ourselves up to the movement of God in profound ways. 

But we don’t just listen to and obey God in the thin places. We are called to chase after the dreams of God every day. And sometimes, as we set aside our dreams for God’s dreams, things change. For four years I volunteered as a chaplain at universities. And I could almost guarantee that around mid-terms the first semester countless students and I would be having very similar conversations - they spent their lives thinking they would be ___________, but now they are feeling pulled to do _____________. Those blanks were filled in with a variety of things, as students saw their childhood dreams change. 

Dreams change for churches as well. Or rather the way God is leading us to live into the vision changes. We are all called to make disciples of Jesus Christ and transform this world, but how we do that today isn’t the same way we did it fifty years ago, or ten years ago, or maybe even last year. We need to open ourselves to the movement of God that allows us to dream God’s dreams and ask how God wants us to bear witness in this community at this particular time in a  way that can deeply connect with the hearts of folks who do not yet know Jesus. 

We are never too small or too large of a church to chase after God’s dreams. It’s not about the size of the congregation, it’s about whether our dreaming is too small. If we are limiting God because we aren’t willing to risk something new or we insist that we need to keep doing something one particular way because we always have. 

It is my hope and prayer that during the start of this new year and this sermon series in particular that we open ourselves anew to the dreams of God. The scary dreams. The dreams that are too big for us to even imagine on our own. Let us open our Spirit, so that we can once again be people who chase after the visions and dreams that are from God alone. Amen.