Daniel in Exile

Here is a recording of the message given at Carson City’s First Presbyterian church on May 25, 2014. We examine how to be God’s dream.

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Based on Daniel chapter 2.

We are in the middle of the dream season, May with Moms and Proms, June with Dads and Grads, visions of beauty all grown up in a fairy land of music and soft lights. Graduation of eagar faces ready to make real dreams of making a difference, or making at least making a living. And parents remembering the dream come true of parenthood and family. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, where we pause to remember those who died so we can pursue our dreams, a time of memory and mourning and thoughts of what could have been are mingled with what was.

Who do you share your dreams with? Some told me they don’t dream at all. Others told me that they tell weird dreams or dreams with celebrities to their co-workers, but the scary ones, just one, or none.

So the day’s barely begun, but I’m sure I’m in trouble and I am sure I don’t know why. Finally, my wife lets me know why I’m getting glared at, “I’m just mad at you because you were mean to me in my dream.” I think she is a follower of Havelock Ellis, “Dreams are real while they last…can we say more of life?”

On the other side, there’s Maria Matthiessen who during the podcast of This America Life in November informs us that telling someone your dreams is one of the 7 banned conversation topics. Something not to be done. It is boring and no one cares.

I don’t know if our Mrs. Matthiessen knew about King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel chapter 2. It was not boring. People did care, it was a matter of life or death for some of them, including our hero, Daniel. Yet, come to think of it, the King didn’t tell anyone his dream. Maybe Mrs. Matthiessen is on to something after all. Telling no one his dream and demanding they interpet it or be torn limb from limb is anything but boring.

Who do you tell your dreams to is an intimate and revealing question. But how about the King’s challenge to Daniel, all the wise counselors, and to us, Who do you let tell you your dream? A prophet? A pastor? A president? The valaditorian? The commencement speaker? Your parents? Your spouse? Your fiancee?

Dreams are not just something that happens while we sleep at night to set our mood when we wake in the morning, they are what we hope for ourselves, for our children, for our community, for our country, for our world. We pray every Sunday, “thy kingdom come”, what do we mean? Come like Russia into Urkranie replacing the flags and the currency? Come like European powers into the new world making colonies of continents forcing natives to become like foreigners. To be exiles in their own land. That kingdom?

Maybe realm is better, a gentler word, thy realm be established. Boundaries less defined and extended organically by will not war, built on fellowship and not fear.

How about, just consider as a spirit experiment, that God’s dream for humanity comes true, where God’s Will is done on earth as in heaven. Where God’s hopes are realized and desires accomplished. May God’s dream for you come true for you. May you be what God’s is dreaming of.

Daniel agrees with the King, with all the wise ones of the court, no one can tell someone what their own dream is, much less what it means. Only God can tell us what our dream is, the king confesses this, calling Daniel’s God our God, the God of gods, the Lord of Kings, and a revealer of mysteries.

Daniel in Exile, through his story, through crazy kings, and insane laws. Daniel calmly lives God’s dream. Following God’s law when it was easier to follow the crowd, worshipping God only when other powers threatened, and praying faithfully when it meant death to do so.

If you live God’s dream, you are, like Daniel, in exile, this place is not quite right, you’re not quite right, because you see, you’re in a dream, God’s dream. Maybe that is why Daniel is always so calm, with threats to his freedom and life everywhere. He knew it was all just a dream, a dream of God’s.

George Bernard Shaw said, “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world, unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves, all progress therefore depends on unreasonable people.”

I say that resonable people adapt themselves to the world, faithful people attempt to adapt themselves to God’s dream for the world. Spiritual progress therefore depends on on people who wake daily to God’s dream.

We can get up every morning and say to all we meet, and all the world, “I know it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t reasonable, it’s nothing you’ve done but I love you because of a dream God had.”

Live in Exile. Live God’s dream.

Are Dreams Real?

from Matthew 1:18-25

(Click to listen to this message.)Dreams are the only time I get to be with my brother Ric. He will have been gone 30 years ago next month. Every now and then, he visits me in my dreams. He is real then. The fights are long past and only the familiar remains. I can feel his love and his kindness and wake up comforted.

Are dreams real? Did Ric really come to visit me? Or was it just a dream? How do we know something is real? Havelock Ellis points out that “Dreams are real while they last, can we say more of life?” As the riddle about a tree falling in a deserted forest, that asks if there is a sound if there is no one there to hear it points out, reality is biased toward what is observed. If no one experiences an event…did it happen, and how many witnesses does it take to make a reality? Some of you are way ahead of me, we have recording devices and scientific methods to determine what happens even without observations. Sure. I’m a big fan of tech and science…but somewhere along a line someone will observe the recording, publish the theory, open the box with the cat. Until that happens…

Can your outlook, your thinking, your perception change reality? Well it depends. There is a thought experiment proposed by David Foster Wallace in a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, we have video with a bit of it with added graphics here…

 << Video since removed >>>

What is your default dream setting? Joseph had a dream. Marry Mary, settle down in his hometown, do some carpentry, raise a family. Maybe some volunteer work. Go to Jerusalem for Passover. A nice quiet respectable life. But Mary turns up pregnant. There can only be one explanation, and he wasn’t the answer to that question. There was only one thing to do, return the pregnant girl and get a new one.

Then he had a dream. Now here is a tough Bible question. At least for us sophisticated post-industrial scientific American Christians…did an angel REALLY visit Joseph? If you say “Yes!” then dreams are real. For the angel came to Joseph in a dream. I know a mystery wrapped in an enigma tied with a riddle.

Today Dreams are dismissed. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures, Joseph of the Old Testament, Joseph brothers call him “The Dreamer” because he had dreams of being more powerful than his older brothers…yet by faithfulness and God’s grace he lived into his dream. Martin Luther King told the nation about his dream and moved a nation to greater justice and equality. Nelson Mandela dreamed of a South Africa that was at peace with itself. In a Long Walk to Freedom, wrote “A Winner is a Dreamer Who Never Gives Up.” He lived his dream and it took decades in prison for reality to catch up his dream.

A dream changed Joseph default setting of pregnant woman needs to be quietly shunned to one of most honored of women, a favor instead of a curse, a joy instead of sorrow. Private shame to Savior of the world.

You can choose your dream now and every day. How? Start with the Lord’s Prayer, you know the part that goes “Thy kingdom come…” Mediate, consider, and if you dare quietly pray… Thy dream come, for kingdom of God is more like the dream God has for humanity than an area of land of God’s control. God’s is more interested in how much area he has in your hearts and minds…your dreams.

I submit to you that the measure of reality of Ric visiting me in a dream, the reality of who you are standing in line with at the checkout, the reality of an angel in a dream thousands of years ago, is measured not by ectoplasm detectors, NSA records of metadata, nor biblical archeology and scholarship. The measure of whether something is real, is the effect that it has. If I am brought peace and feel love when Ric visits in dream and am patient and kind to others in turn, that’s real. If I can build up community instead of tear down individuals in a checkout line that’s real. If angel changes man who quietly puts away a pregnant fiancee in need of love and care into one who sacrifices to make scandalous respectable, protecting the vulnerable, and caring for a child not your own…it doesn’t get any realer than that.

God’s dream about humanity is already real in Jesus, we just have to choose to live it.

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(Here is a recording of this message to download.)