Dreamers Among Us, Pilgrim, Genesis 40-41, October 16, 2022

This was my first sermon at my MIC site, Pilgrim Lutheran Church and School in Chicago. Ministry In Context is a field placement for seminary students, intended to give them a light version of an internship. I was fortunate to be placed with Pastor Kristian Johnson, a gifted preacher, an encouraging supervisor, and continued mentor. This was the fourth part of a seven-part sermon series on Joseph. 

Children’s sermon

All of us have dreams. Sometimes those dreams are fun and happy. Sometimes they are scary and sometimes they even wake us in the middle of the night – they feel so real. Can you remember one dream that has stuck with you?

Sometimes, the Bible says, God tries to get our attention through our dreams. Remember a couple of weeks ago, Joseph had a couple of dreams and when he told his family, they weren’t very happy.

I admit, I’m not good at remembering my dreams. Sometimes I remember them for a few minutes when I wake up, but then I start thinking about school or work or making breakfast, and the memory of that dream just disappears. If God was giving me a dream, do you think God would make sure I remembered it?.

Once in a while. people have weird dreams that they don’t understand. Maybe someone has a dream that their feet are stuck to the ground and they can’t move. Or maybe they have a dream that they were swimming in deep, deep water. And the next morning, they wake up and say, “Wonder what THAT was about?” And when they tell someone, that person says, “Oh, I know!” You dreamed you were swimming in deep water, because you’re going through something kind of scary, and deep water can be scary too.

So, not only did God give Joseph dreams, God gave him the ability to understand other people’s dreams. God also gave all the people here dreams and abilities too. Not just the adults, but you, too. Different dreams, different abilities, because God knew our church would need many different dreams and abilities.

Thanks for coming up. I have a couple things for you to keep reminding you that God needs your dreams. And, on the way back to your seat or to Sunday school, can you tell one of those adults: God needs your dreams? They may need a reminder – and you’re so good at encouraging them!

Sermon, with image descriptions

Image: When we last left our hero:

As I thought about preaching my first sermon at Pilgrim at the midway point of the Joseph story, I was reminded of those multi-part action-adventure series when I was a kid. The announcer would start the weekly episode with something like “Previously …” or “When we last left our hero…” Every show ended with a cliffhanger. The hero or star faced serious danger.

So, in the spirit of that memory:

(Shift to narrator role and voice) “Previously on ‘Journeys with Joseph,’” as a youth, Joseph, his father’s favorite son, was given an ornate, beautiful cloak. After Joseph revealed that he had two dreams that his family would bow down to him, his fed-up brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. For a short time, it appeared things might go well for Joseph, as he was sold to Potiphar, the head of Pharoah’s royal guard, and Potiphar came to trust him completely. However, last Sunday ended with Joseph in prison, unjustly accused of trying to go behind Potiphar’s back with Potiphar’s wife. Yet, even as a prisoner, Joseph gained favor with the warden as a man the warden could trust. And now, back to today’s story.”

Image: Joseph in his Coat of Many Colors

Joseph was no longer a teenager or 20-something as we reach today’s part of the story. Genesis gives us hints that he is older and more mature. The passage starts out with “Some time after this.” A couple of verses later, Joseph is put in charge of the Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and baker – the ruler’s personal attendants – who have gotten on the wrong side of Pharaoh, and “they continued for some time in custody.” Joseph is imprisoned with them long enough to know they are unusually disturbed following their own dreams. And after he interprets their dreams, two full years pass. We have to imagine Joseph as no longer an impetuous teenager, lording it over his brothers, but a thoughtful man, perhaps in his early 30s.

Image: Joseph in prison

This is the older and wiser version of Joseph. Older and wiser, perhaps, but certainly not all-knowing. In fact,

• Joseph likely had no idea God was working out a future for God’s people through him.
• Joseph had no idea that his dreams, and his ability to interpret others’ dreams, were a gift from God.
• And Joseph had no idea that God was using the gifts that God had given him, as a manager, as a keen observer of people, and as a visionary and interpreter of visions, time after time, in all of the places he landed.

How about us? Do we really understand the way God equips each of us with our unique capabilities as gifts? That your ability to provide hospitality, or your ability to sing or play music, or your ability to keep your home or business finances organized – those are gifts! And God specifically equipped you to fit into this world, into your own community, and into this congregation with those gifts.

It wasn’t so many years ago that the leaders of a congregation I belonged to were stressed. Chuck, a long-time member, was moving away. This person had filled lots of roles: treasurer, chair of the finance committee, audit committee member. Congregational leaders were really down about the hole he was leaving. However, it wasn’t too long after Chuck moved away that the congregation welcomed some new members, including a woman who was a retired accountant. It has happened too often in congregations I’ve been in to be coincidental – God provides the people and the gifts that are needed. It is up to us to find them and encourage them, and assure them their presence and work among us is the Body of Christ as it should be.

Now, that’s not to say that God always has us using our gifts in the same way. My bachelor’s degree is in journalism and mass communications. So, for the first 15 years of my career, I reported for community newspapers. But life changed and I went into human services work. In 2010, I joined a new congregation, and it wasn’t too long before my gifts led me to the communications ministry and into writing liturgy. And when God called me to seminary, those gifts didn’t go away.

Earlier this month, I looked at the calendar, and realized it was 36 years from my first day on the job with my first newspaper. And what was I doing at that moment? Sitting at my laptop, writing a feature story for the seminary’s Marketing and Communications Department. God is faithful, and the gifts that God gives us are meant to be put to good use.

That holds true no matter your age, your experiences, your skills, your length of time in the congregation. What a perfect message for today, when Pilgrim is holding its ministry fair. God called you here, and God finds ways for your gifts to shine: whether you are an accountant, a writer, or, even returning to our story, a dreamer or dream interpreter.

Image: Dream cloud

Dreams and visions – they keep showing up in Joseph’s story. Joseph had two dreams as a young person that he rather smugly shared with his 11 brothers and parents. Those dreams were pretty transparent: the sheaves in the field bowing down to his sheaf, the sun, moon and 11 stars bowing down to him.

Just as an aside, I come from a large family. I’m pretty certain that if one of my youngest brothers told our family a dream like that, there would have been repercussions.

But then Joseph’s story involves another pair of dreams: dreams by the Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker that Joseph was able to interpret in prison: that the cupbearer would be restored to the Pharaoh's good graces, while the baker would lose his life. And … spoiler alert … there are more dreams to come in Joseph’s story.

The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible says the ancients saw dreams as messages given in our sleep by deities, demons, or the dead. Many people of faith continue to believe dreams are one way God communicates with us. And “visions” serve the same role when we are awake.

Image: Scripture from Joel:

Every Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the Holy Spirit setting the Church on fire with the power of the Good News of the love of Jesus Christ, we use a passage of scripture from the prophet Joel:

“I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

When the prophet spoke about people dreaming dreams and having visions, he wasn’t just talking about people in ancient times, or at the end of time. If we are open to them, I think that God gives people dreams and visions all the time. And God gives us the power to welcome and interpret those dreams and visions.

Last week, Pastor Kristian asked two questions:

• What is God’s vision for you?

• What is God’s vision for Pilgrim?

Some people would see those questions as “one-person questions.” God’s vision for me – that’s my question. And what’s God’s vision for Pilgrim – let’s leave that one for Pastor, or maybe our Church Council President.

But just as our dreamer Joseph had the gift to interpret the cupbearer and baker’s dreams, we are both dreamers and dream interpreters. Pilgrim would not have existed had people not envisioned a place to worship in this part of Chicago and made that vision a reality. Pilgrim School wouldn’t have started had Pilgrim members not dreamed of a place where their young people could grow in wisdom AND faith, and then put bricks on that dream to open the school.

So I ask you again:

• What is God's dream for you?
• What is God’s vision for Pilgrim?
• What dreams are your passions and God’s gifts stirring in you?
• What visions does Christ have for this congregation, in this community, in 2022?

I believe those dreams and visions are here, among us, today. I believe that God has given us the people and the gifts we need. I believe that Christ is calling us to be the dreamers and the dream interpreters, the ones who will share Christ’s love in new ways for such a time as this.

Amen.

Justice, NL YR3-3, Sept. 27, 2020

Grace and peace to you from our Loving Creator, and from our Savior, Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.

As many of the itinerant preachers of the early centuries did, I bring you greetings from the places where I’ve been, so greetings both from the family of Christ at Emmanuel Lutheran in Prescott Valley, which had its first in-person worship in six months last Sunday, and from the future leaders of the church gathered virtually through the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where I am a first-year full-time seminarian, at long last!

Justice is heavy on my mind this week: Justice in the grand jury outcome in the Breonna Taylor case, justice for our planet and our children’s children who will live here, and then justice in our Biblical account today: for the family of Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, and their children.

Let’s begin with Joseph’s brothers. In the preceding chapters, Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to buy food for their family, as they are deep into a famine. They reconnect with Joseph, who was enslaved because of their actions, imprisoned, then rose to greatness in service to the Pharoah. He insists the family move to Egypt, where he can provide for them in the coming years of the continuing famine.

A grateful Jacob reconnects with his favorite son, and all seems well, until Jacob dies. Then, his brothers realize, there is no reason for Joseph to continue to treat them well. This, they assume, is where Joseph will enact justice for what they did to him decades earlier. And they know they deserve whatever he does.

•     He has the power; he could have them killed.

• He can have them thrown into prison.

• He can refuse to give them more food, and they will starve.

• Or he can order them into slavery, as he was sold into slavery as a youth.

So, terrified, they concoct a story (How’s that for going right back to creating stories to cover for their misdeeds?) They told Joseph that Jacob, on his deathbed, asked that he forgive them. Then they offer themselves as slaves – not the best outcome, but better than imprisonment, starving or dying. And they wait for whatever justice Joseph gives.

Joseph didn’t command death, slavery, starvation or even imprisonment. Joseph forgave them and wiped away a lifetime of lingering pain. Joseph had the power to choose anything as justice, and Joseph chose … LOVE.

And the tears fell. And the hugging. And probably another banquet of food. Joseph was freed from the burden of hate – he had his family for life. The brothers were finally freed from the burden of fear, that Joseph would enact revenge. That’s what forgiveness does. It frees us.

Crowds of people gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, and many other places this week, as a grand jury was set to release its indictment in the case of Breonna Taylor, the young EMT who was killed in her home by a police officer, during a no-knock warrant served at the wrong address. JUSTICE FOR BREONNA, some of the signs read. Wednesday night, after no officer was charged in her murder, and one detective was charged for wanton endangerment for firing into the neighboring apartment, crowds in Louisville and elsewhere became violent. NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE, they chanted. Two Louisville officers were shot, but are expected to survive. The shooter was apprehended.

Where’s the justice for Breonna Taylor?

Thursday, I spent three hours on Zoom, meeting with 180 other national interfaith leaders and church members who are concerned about climate change. We have a decade, give or take, before there is no turning back from the damage excess carbon emissions are wreaking on this planet.

I think about my son, Michael, who was only 7 when we left Spirit of Joy – He just turned 30. I think about the sons he’s raising now: Logan is 9 and Nathan is 7. What kind of world will we give to them?

Where is the justice for Michael, for Logan and Nathan, the justice for all the children of the world?

I wish justice for Breonna and other black lives lost came as easily as forgiveness happened with Joseph and his brothers. I wish we could say we’re sorry for the harm we’ve caused this planet and make it all better. But justice isn’t nearly that easy. Our world is broken. Our relationships with each other and this planet are broken.

Here in God’s family, we have a name for that brokenness – Sin. In some cases, sin is easily wiped away by the vastness of God’s grace.

And sometimes sin can be wiped away but repairing the damage of that brokenness takes all of the energy we can muster. We need to repent – literally turn ourselves from the actions we’ve been taking, and go in the other direction.

This week has been a kick in my stomach as I realize that I can’t ignore this and think someone else will do the work of racial and climate justice.

I am terrified to look inside myself and decide how I need to change to do my part to rid the world of systemic racism. What is it that each of us needs to hear, to learn, to turn around in order to move forward toward justice for our black and brown neighbors?

It takes courage to admit we’ve taken and taken and taken without any obvious consequences, and we’ve abused this planet to the end of its ability to sustain life. We can’t wait. We’re out of time. We have to turn around.

I will say it again. Justice for God’s family, justice for God’s creation has NO easy answers. But every one of us has a part to play in creating a more just world, and we need to get started, now.

Amen.