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Here Comes This Dreamer:
by the Rev. Kerry Mueller |
| Rob Dahlstrom (for Ed Johnson): I
call upon the people who have joined our congregation since our last
recognition of members to join me here at the front of the sanctuary.
Will you bring your orders of service, please.
New Members Recognized Today (Names of 12 members were read) Kerry Mueller: The life's blood of any congregation lies in new members; those who recognize the value of the church community in their lives and unite with it in the programs and activities, the worship and duties that are vital to its exisence. Rob Dahlstrom: We welcome you into membership of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring. We need our courage and your skill and your dedication, as you, being human, need our supporting fellowhsip. May you find here both happiness and wisdom for daily living. We would place our hands in yours and have you share our hopes and aspirations. Congregation: We weclome you into membership. We welcome your commitment to our shared ideals. We encourage you to participate fully in the life of this church. We honor the paths of faith that brought you here, and look forward to the journey we will share with you in coming days and years. We extend to you the right hand of fellowship. New Members: We join this congregation, not to seek an escape from duty, nor a refuge from the struggles of this world, but to add our portion, great or sall to the common riches of humanity. We, like you, cherish the freedom of the liberal church to work out our own beliefs in an atmosphere of trust and challenge. Now we accept the responsibilities of membership and participation. We anticipate the mutual support of a loving community. Kerry Mueller: Welcome to Membership. May you find a home here among these good people. May you find in this community the comfort and challenge, the inspiration and support to help you be the persons you would be. And from this religious community may you be nurtured and challenged to truly bless the world. |
| LIST BOARD MEMBERS' NAMES
Kerry Mueller: Will the members of the 2000 Board of Trustees please come forward. Will the members of the congregation please stand as you are able, and join with me in our pledge to our new leaders: Kerry and Congregation: We honor you as our leaders for this year, pledging to you our support and loyalty as you have pledged yours in accepting the responsibility of leadership. Kerry, Congregation and Officers: Let us advance together, united in our seeking of justice, wisdom and joy in the lives of all people. May our spirits be renewed, our faith be strengthened, and our actions be made more courageous by our commitment to seek and serve together. Kerry: May this congregation prosper with the help of these new leaders and these new members, as well as with the dedication of every member and friend. May you soon create a happy and healthy relationship with your next minister, and may you take your place on the wider stage as a blessing to the world. Amen. |
[1 full minute]
Amen
Responsive Reading #728 Blessed Are Those, John Buehrens
Special Music
Rev. Kerry Mueller
Today we explore the dream, the dream of justice equity and compassion, the dream of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the dream of peace. This is a good day to celebrate the dream, this day on which we celebrate our newest members and our most recent generation of church leaders. For we are now the keepers of the dream. But the dream, and the dreamer, is an ancient story in human history.
"Here comes this dreamer," say Joseph's brothers, speaking about their youngest brother in this morning's reading. "Here comes this dreamer. Let us kill him." This is an old story. Even in Biblical times it was an old story. Brother killing brother goes all the way back to the first Biblical brothers, Cain and Abel. And the book of Genesis is filled with stories of strife between brothers. The sons of Abraham are rivals with different mothers -- Ishmael whose mother is the slave woman, Hagar, and Isaac whose mother is the wife, Sarah. Each boy is the founder a family, an entire race, races at odds even to this day. Joseph's father, Jacob, had cheated his brother out of the family inheritance, and was estranged from him for years. Nor is fratricide a story found only in the Bible. Rome was founded by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, the ones saved by the wolf mother. They began building together. When Romulus was building a magical wall to protect the city, Remus jumped over the wall. This was not only an insult to Romulus; it was a threat to the efficacy of his magic. In a fury, Romulus rose up and slew his brother. (I once had a Latin student who said that it's a good thing Romulus won, or we'd have to call that city "Reme"). This was the beginning of a long history of Roman civil strife. The stories pile up, one upon another. Each story adds something to a description of the human race. Sometimes it seems that human civilization is built upon the myths of fraternal conflict and murder.
So maybe we don't have to ask why Joseph's brothers plotted to kill him in the first place. Maybe it's just built in. You can see what touches them off in the story. Joseph was the youngest, the son of Jacob's old age. He was their father's favorite. Jacob had made a special coat for Joseph -- one with sleeves, or perhaps with many colors -- the meaning of the Hebrew is unclear. In any case it was splendid, and a mark of favor. Joseph enjoyed his position as the favorite. Perhaps he gloated and exploited his special status. On at least one occasion went behind his brothers' back to give the father a bad report about them. But what galled them most, what finally pushed them over the edge to plot against him, was that he was not satisfied with the status quo. Joseph was a dreamer. He had strange dreams, dreams laden with meaning, dreams of sheaves of grain and sun and stars and moons bowing to him -- and he did not hesitate to tell others about them. Not surprisingly, these dreams seemed to favor Joseph at the expense of his brothers. Their resentment grew. They found themselves unable to speak peaceably to him. And so when they had a chance, those brothers plotted against Joseph and they said, "We shall see what will become of his dreams."
As it happened, the brothers did not kill him outright. Brother Reuben has a soft spot for him, and persuaded the others to merely throw him into a pit, and then sell him into slavery. They took that special coat back home to Jacob, torn and covered in blood as a sign that Joseph was gone for good. Indeed, being a slave in Egypt should have been the end of Joseph. But, against all expectation -- including false accusations, and a time in prison -- Joseph did well. Because he was a good manager, and especially because of his ability to interpret dreams, Joseph overcame all obstacles and rose to a high position, as a special assistant to Pharaoh. There he continued to interpret dreams. He knew what was coming, and what was necessary to prepare for the future. And so, when a widespread famine struck the land, the Egyptians were well prepared. Their Y2K actually happened. People came from afar to buy grain from the Egyptians. Joseph was even able to provide for his own family, when they came to Egypt, not suspecting who they were buying from. After a dramatic reunion with the brother they thought long dead, the brothers and even old Jacob came to live in Egypt. Although the brothers had meant it for evil, according to the Bible story, God meant it for good.
Joseph the dreamer begins as a threat, and ends as a savior to his family. What is it about the dreamer? The dream pulls us on to great things, but so often so we find the dreamer intolerable. Why do we see only the threat and not the savior in the dreamer? Why do we not see the value of the dream? Why do we resist, and resist with hatred and violence? It happens again and again.
Martin Luther King was a dreamer. He had a dream. He told us his dream. "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." Like Joseph, he knew what was needed for this nation to thrive. Martin Luther King lived towards his dream. He led a nation towards his dream. And some found his dream intolerable. He was shot down in cold blood.
As were the dreamer peacemakers Gandhi, and Anwar Sadat and Yitzak Rabin.
I need to make a small detour here. You may have noticed that all my examples have been men. The dream lives in women, too. On the human stage, the great dramatic roles so far have gone mainly to men. When the dream lives in women, those women are often ignored or suppressed or destroyed before they come to great public attention. In the middle ages, many women dreamers -- women whose stories, whose very names are lost -- were burned at the stake as witches. In more recent times, women have held supporting roles in pursuit of the dream. Silver Spring member Stephanie Hall has records of her great grandmother, who was a courageous marcher for abolition and women's votes. Stephanie has those records only because her great grandfather was a famous man. We remember Rosa Parks, not as a powerful leader of millions, but as a courageous exemplar. It was her refusal to give up her seat to a white person that touched off the Montgomery bus boycott and thrust the young Martin Luther King into the leadership role which was to make him a carrier of the dream. We may not remember the name of Mother Pollard. She was a dignified old woman who struggled through the boycott, walking miles despite the infirmities of age. When she was urged to drop out of the boycott on account of her age, she refused. We may not know her name, but we remember her words: "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." Many of us remember Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb who was clubbed to death by a white supremacist thug in Selma, but do we recall the name of Viola Liuzzo? She was another Unitarian Universalist, a Detroit housewife. The dream sent her to Selma in support of the movement. While transporting demonstrators in her car, she too was shot and killed in cold blood. (Garrow 413) Another dreamer dead.
Dreamers die, but the dream does not. The dream that empowered these people, the dream that energized them and drove them to live lives of courage and powerful deeds, that dream lives on. Little by little we make some progress towards living out the dream. The dream is the force of divinity in our lives.
You may see God as wholly other, a personal being "out there" influencing human life. Or you may see God as a more impersonal entity, a kind of cosmic magnet, luring us on to goodness. Perhaps you experience God as wholly within. Or maybe all of this God talk is language useless or worse to you. But whatever terminology you prefer, whatever your view of God, I invite you to see the godliness, the ultimate goodness, within the dreamer.
The dreamer is a parable of God. I borrow this idea from Christian theologian Sallie McFague who has developed what she calls Parabolic Christology. Parabolic Christology is a mouthful, a lot of fancy technical theological language for what is simply a view of Jesus, Jesus as a parable of God. This is to me a strikingly attractive idea. A parable is a story that throws us a curve -- literally. A parabola is a curve, after all. And a parable has a surprise in it. A parable uses some ordinary, familiar incident, like a prodigal son, and weaves a thread of similarities to some extraordinary and unfamiliar event, like the Kingdom of God. A parable is an extended metaphor -- it finds a similarity between dissimilar things. (McFague 45) Speaking of Jesus, McFague says that Jesus is not the same as God. Rather, Jesus is both like and unlike God. Jesus is a parable of God. The story of his life is a surprising story about God. Jesus is one particular person -- and valued in his particularity. But he is not the only metaphor of God. "Hence," says McFague, "openness to other manifestations and expressions of divine reality is not only encouraged, but mandated." (McFague 52)
There are many manifestations and expressions of divine reality. This sounds sort of obvious to me, but coming from a Christian, it is strong and surprising stuff. Divinity is found in the human world again and again. Every dreamer is a parable of God. Every dreamer pushes us a little closer to divinity, to that cosmic magnet luring us to goodness. Every dreamer stretches our idea of ourselves. This isn't easy. It isn't easy for the dreamer and it isn't easy for us. It is not comfortable for ancient enemies to live together in peace. It isn't comfortable for Hindus and Moslems to be told they should live together in peace. It is not comfortable for Arabs and Jews to be led to live together in peace. It is not comfortable for American blacks and whites to be exhorted to live together in peace. It is not comfortable for us to think about living in peace with people unlike ourselves -- think of those for whom "unlike" might mean their fundamentalist neighbors their devoutly atheist neighbors, or their gay and lesbian neighbors or their white, middle class heterosexual, never-had-a day's-problem-in-their-life neighbors. It is not comfortable. Often it seems intolerable to move towards divinity. We resist. But the dreamers keep telling us these things, keep reminding us of peace and tolerance and justice, equity and compassion, and the inherent worth and dignity of every person. And all too often the response is, "Here comes this dreamer. Let us kill him. We shall see what will become of his dream."
The dreamer knows this too. The dreamer is not the perfect person, the dreamer is not fearless. It is a painful struggle to take up the dream. No one takes it up lightly, knowing that it may lead to rejection and even death. Jesus, the night before his crucifixion asked God to remove the cup of death from his lips. (Matthew 26: 39) James Reeb had a deep heart-to-heart conversation with his wife about where his duty lay -- with the needs of their family or with the embodiment of the dream.
It was not easy for Martin Luther King, either. As a young preacher in Montgomery Alabama, as an outsider not yet caught up in the local system, King found himself as the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the MIA, the organization that guided the Montgomery bus boycott. It was wearying work, and he knew it was dangerous. Here is a story from Stephen B. Oates' book, Let the Trumpet Sound, the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (pp. 84-85)
One night he came home from an MIA meeting. Exhausted, he crawled into bed and tried to sleep, knowing that he had to get up early to "keep things going." The phone rang. Steeling himself, he picked up the receiver. On the other end was a furious voice, "an ugly voice," and it cut through King like a dagger, "...., if you aren't out of this town in three days, we gonna blow your brains out and blow up this house." There was a click.King rose and walked the floor. He thought about all the things he had studied in college, the philosophical and theological discourses on sin and evil, and realized that he couldn't take it any more: the threats, this awful fear. He went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Yes, he had to quit. There was no other choice. He watched the coffee perk, poured a cup, and sat down at the table. He brooded on how he could step down without appearing a coward. He thought about Coretta and Yoki [his daughter] -- "the darling of my life"[he called her] -- and felt weak and terrible alone. Then he heard something say to him. "You can't call on Daddy now. You can't even call on Momma now."
He put his head in his hands and bowed over the table. "Oh, Lord", he prayed aloud. "I'm down here trying to do what is right. But oh, Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I can't face it alone."
He sat there, his head still bowed in his hands, tears burning his eyes. But then he felt something -- a presence, a stirring in himself. And it seemed that an inner voice was speaking to him with quiet assurance. "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And, lo, I will be with you even unto the end of the world." He saw lightning flash.
He heard thunder roar. It was the voice of Jesus telling him still to fight on. And, "he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone...."
He raised his head. He felt stronger now. He could face the morrow. Whatever happened, God in His wisdom meant it to be. King's trembling stopped, and he felt an inner calm he had never experienced before. He realized that "I can stand up without fear. I can face anything." And for the first time, God was profoundly real and personal to him. The idea of a personal God was no longer some "metaphysical category" he found philosophically and theologically satisfying. No, God was very close to him now, a living God who could transform "the fatigue of despair" into the buoyancy of hope" and who would never, ever, leave him alone.
Somehow in that difficult night, King found the power of the dream within himself. He found the courage to go on. In a reading in our hymnal, "A Network of Mutuality" King's own words echo that experience: "We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." That night, King found his stone of hope.
Several nights later, while King was leading a rally, his home was bombed. He raced home and found his family unhurt. Then he spoke to the crowd of upset and angry blacks gathered in front of the house.
My wife and baby are all right ... I want you to go home and put down your weapons. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence....We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out across the centuries, "Love your enemies." This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. .... Remember if I am stopped this Movement will not stop, because God is with this Movement. (Oates 86)
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dreamer. He bore the dream through fear and despair. He held fast to his stone of hope. He knew that there was divinity within the dream, within himself. He died, but the dream is still with us. Now it is up to us. It is our turn to say to the next dreamer: "Here comes this dreamer. Let us raise a stone of hope. Together we shall see what will become of these dreams." Amen, shalom, and blessed be.
Closing Words #459