God’s Dream for You

20th century poet and social activist, Langston Hughes has a poem that says “Hold fast to dreams, for life without dreams is like a bird with a broken wing, that cannot fly … hold fast to dreams …”

Lately I’ve been reading again through the Gospel of Matthew. And it’s clear when I read it … God has a dream – a dream that is the source and the reality for why the world is here at all.

Lots of people ask the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

I’ll tell you why … it’s because God shaped and created this universe, forming us from the dust of the earth – breathing life into us. God has a dream for this world! God has a dream for every man, woman and child that walks the face of the earth. God has a dream for you, and a dream for me – a dream for all God’s children.

God has a dream for this thing we do called church … in all of its struggles and challenges … but I’m not worried about the church, because God has a dream for it! And that dream of God has the capacity and the power and the energy … to give life to the dead!

Now, I say all that, in part because I believe that is what’s behind Matthew’s Great Commission we read today.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit … and teaching them to obey all things that I have commanded you”

In other words … Immerse humanity in the deep reality of God, and then teach them to live the gospel, and in so doing, they will become agents and instruments of God’s dream, which can help us end … our nightmare …

So anyway, I’ve been reading Matthew, and I saw some things I hadn’t seen before, and I’m here to tell you, I believe Matthew is the gospel of God’s dream. Matthew is about radical discipleship – follow in the footsteps of Jesus!

Right at the beginning of the gospel, the writer zeroes in on Joseph the carpenter, the adopted father of Jesus.

And I think by doing that, Matthew is inviting us to remember “the Joseph” of the Book of Genesis. And that Joseph, back in the Old Testament, is a dreamer … like Joseph the carpenter.

The Joseph of Genesis is bewitched by dream after dream – some that brought him low and others that allowed him to rise to such a position of power he’s able to save the Hebrew people. Joseph was a dreamer, and it gave him the capacity to dream – to see things beyond the way they are.

In modern times Bobby Kennedy echoed that idea with these words: “Some people see things the way they are … and ask why. I dream of things that have never been, and ask “why not?”

In Matthew, God’s dream and vision for human life and creation, is what the gospel is all about. God does have a dream. We are not helpless or alone. There is a God.

Richard Holloway, the former Anglican Primate of Scotland, says this in a book; he’s talking about the Gospel of Matthew, he says, “In the sermon on the mount in particular, and in the gospel in general, we get something of God’s dream for a transformed creation. And Matthew reminds us, the dream is costly. Dreams are cruelly disposed of by the world, but the dream lives on. Nothing can kill it for long, and Jesus goes on breaking out of all of the tombs into which we dare to confine him.”

God has a dream. The world conspired to kill it … and on the third day he rose again …

That’s what we have been summoned to declare. That’s what we have been called to live. That’s what Jesus calls us to do when he says, “Follow me! Follow me and be my disciples. Follow me and show others the way! Follow me and I will make you fish for people. Follow me and I will make you more than you ever thought you could be. Follow me and I will show you a life, not even death can take away from you.

That’s what Jesus was talking about when we read his words in Matthew … “Go and make disciples!”

He’s saying “go” and make people in the world who live in the way I have shown you how to live.

That’s what he’s talking about … people who will love like Jesus, people who will forgive like Jesus, people who will give like Jesus, do justice like Jesus – love mercy, walk humbly with God, like Jesus; people who will turn this world upside down so that it can end … right side up.

That’s our calling … to be disciples “like Jesus” … to enter into a new life born of God’s dream …

And when that happens, it will be awesome …

I want to tell you a story …

Over forty years ago, not too long after my grandfather had built our family cottage on Six Mile Lake, we discovered we had a problem. All those mice who were populating the fields and woods decided they didn’t like the snow and rain, the snakes and owls that fed on them, the work of having to scrabble in the ground to make a home … they thought our cottage looked pretty good – a nice comfortable place to stay with plenty of food and water and a solid roof over their heads.

We tried to get rid of those mice. My grandfather would set traps baited with warm cheese or peanut butter. He caught a few, but for every mouse he killed, six more seemed to find their way in. Not only that, but my older sister was on the side of the mice. She complained and cried every time he killed a mouse. She wanted him to use non-violent means to rid the cottage of mice.

Nothing worked … and then one day, my parents were talking to a friend of theirs who had two cats and a dog. He said, “Look, the one cat we have is getting beaten up by the other cat and the dog, and I’m willing to give you that cat.”

My dad said, “Wait a minute, I don’t need a cat who’s already losing a fight.”

But, nonetheless, my Dad asked, “What’s the cat’s name?”

He said, “His name is Sammy.”

Now Sammy doesn’t sound like a great name for a cat needed to exterminate mice. It should have had a name like “Killer” or something.

But we were desperate, so we got the cat. We brought Sammy to our house.

Now you could see why this cat was getting beat up by the other animals. He had some hair missing and a little piece of one ear had been chewed off. This was a really needy cat. This was a cat with issues …

When you started petting him on his head, he would start dribbling out of the side of his mouth he was so happy. And he would follow you everywhere. You couldn’t get ride of him. You would sit down and he’d be up on your lap in a minute. And we had a dog whose name was Blackie, and Sammy made friends with the dog. They became great friends. The truth is, Sammy wasn’t a very good cat. He was a bit of a misfit …

And then, we took Sammy up to the cottage. And that first night we were at the cottage, I had to get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. And there was a lot of moonlight shining in through the big windows at the front of the cottage, and I could see Sammy crouched down in the living room – you know the way cats get hunched down when they’re hunting. The cat's tail was twitching and I thought, I’m going to wait and see what this cat does … and he was down like this, and he was moving stealthily – he wasn’t dribbling now. He would take one smooth step, and then another and by stealth he crept up on a mouse, and then he pounced … and Mickey Mouse bit the dust.

And I’m here to tell you, from that night on, Sammy was prowling and hunting that cottage for mice every night. It was incredible. Every morning we would get up and it was like walking through a graveyard, there were so many bodies all over the place.

I remember one morning I got up and put my foot in my shoe and I said, “What is this?” There was a mouse in my shoe, and my mom said, “Sammy gave you a gift!”

Anyway, Sammy eventually wiped out every mouse in that cottage, and there weren’t any more mice coming in. I don’t know if mice have cell phones or they put a big skull and crossbones on the outside of dangerous homes, but the word must have gone out, because those mice didn’t come back!

Now, let’s think about this. As long as Sammy was living an existence that was contrary to his nature – contrary to what God had put him on this earth to be, he was dysfunctional … and drooled; but when Sammy lived into the purpose for which God had put him on this earth – to hunt mice – Sammy was not just an ordinary cat, he was a super-cat!

My grandmother used to sing a hymn – it was about the Apostle Paul. And one of the lines in that hymn went like this “It is no secret what God can do, what he did for Paul, he’ll do for you ...”

My friends, I’m here to suggest, “It is no secret what God can do, what God did for Sammy, God will do for you!”

We can’t run away from who we are. Our destiny chooses us.

I invite you to reach deep inside yourself to discover who you are, and what you were born to do!

And then … live into the dream – God’s dream for your life! And what God did for Sammy … God will do for you!