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.

Download a recording of the message (right click and save for later listening.)

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.