Sermon (September 11) "In Your Wildest Dreams: Your Red Sea"

     As we have been focusing on the life of Moses, we have been thinking about what it means to go after our wildest dreams.  And we have seen that to go after our wildest dreams, we first need a burning bush, that moment when we are given a glimpse of the preferred future that God has in mind for us and how we might help to make that happen.

     The second thing we need is a Passover moment to help us see the big dream that God has in mind for the whole world.  The Passover story tells us about the blood that was sprinkled on the door posts of the homes of the Israelites to help them escape from the Egyptians.  More importantly, it reminds us of the blood of Jesus when he suffered and died on a cross to offer forgiveness of sins and newness of life.  God wants us to live out our wildest dreams so that we can participate in God’s big dream of redeeming the world from sin and death.

     The third thing we need in pursing our wildest dreams are Red Sea moments to help us stop from time to time and offer our praise and worship to the One who has rescued and saved us.  Red Sea moments are those times in our lives where we can’t help but to break into song and dance in celebration of what God has done in our lives.

     At a church I was serving, we held a formal dinner/dance night at the church complete with a professional photographer, an MC, a live band, and a large area for a dance floor.  We didn’t know what kind of response we would get, but we ended up filling the place with people of all ages.

     Guess who were the best dancers?  Our senior citizens!  And they seemed to have the most fun of all the age groups.  All of this is to say that I know that Methodists can dance!  I have seen it with my own eyes!

     But even if you don’t like to dance or feel like you have two left feet, (not that this describes me or anything,) all of us can allow our hearts to dance with joy and thanksgiving in response to what God has done and continues to do in our lives.

     And men, notice that it’s the women who led in the dancing which isn’t surprising since women have played a very prominent role in the exodus story.  Remember, it was the midwives who went against Pharaoh and protected the Hebrew infants from being killed.

     Women play a very prominent role throughout the bible.  The women were the ones who found the tomb empty on that first Easter morning.  And Mary Magdalene is known as the first apostle since she was the first person to tell the good news about Jesus’ resurrection. 

     Moments after the Israelites had crossed over the Red Sea, the women lead the way again and they begin the celebration with dancing.  Can you imagine what that time of celebration must have been like?  The people of God had been in slavery for 400 years and thanks to God parting the Red Sea, they were now on the road to freedom.  That time of dancing, singing, and celebration was a long time in coming.  It must have been an incredible time of worship for the people of God.

     One of the things that I appreciate about this story is that it helps us to see that along our journey in life, it’s good to stop from time to time to offer our thanks and praise to God.  Notice that even though the Israelites escaped from the Egyptians, they still had a long way to go until they would make it into Canaan and the Promised Land.  But they still took time to worship. 

     It’s good to chase after your dreams and to work hard along the way but in the words of Ferris Buehler, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”  Worship and celebrating God’s presence helps us to not miss out on life and the gift of the present moment.

     This is why we worship here in church on a weekly basis.  It helps us to reflect on God’s presence in our lives.  Together, we offer our gratitude and our worship for what God has done and continues to do. 

     I have a friend who has served as my mentor ever since I began in the pastoral ministry.  He has taught me so much about being a follower of Jesus.  And every year when it’s his birthday, I send him a card and I include a personal note of gratitude for how he has been a blessing in my life.  I know he knows my appreciation, but I never get tired of reminding him.

     I think the same is true about worship.  Worship is how we thank God again and again for all that he has done in our lives.

     Christian author, Anne Lamott was able to find her way to faith by attending a worship service.  She was "raised to be an atheist" by parents who considered themselves too sophisticated to be religious and who equated Christianity with belief in extra-terrestrials.  She says she believed in God as a child, but had she been asked to choose a denomination in which to come to faith it would never have been the Presbyterian Church.  Because of her loyalty to her father, Presbyterians would have ranked "just above snake-handlers" on her list of preferred church families.

     Yet in 1984 God used tiny St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, California, to turn her life around.  Lamott tells the story memorably in her book Traveling Mercies.  She was 30 years old, living on a houseboat in Sausalito, trying to write in the daytime and drinking herself into oblivion every night. On Sunday mornings, when she was "hungover or coming down off a cocaine binge," she would wander over to the local flea market. One Sunday she noticed gospel music coming from a church across the street -- St. Andrew Presbyterian.

     "I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time," she writes, "standing in the doorway to listen to the songs." The sanctuary was drab and run-down, but it had "a congregation of 30 people or so, radiating kindness and warmth."

     Thanks to the sounds of gospel music coming from that little Presbyterian church on Sunday mornings, Anne Lamott has been able to go after her wildest dream of becoming an author and telling others about her journey of faith.

       Several years ago, I was serving a little rural church and my organist wanted to meet with me one day.  She came to my house and I could tell that something really, really good had happened to her.  She was smiling and excited about what she was about to tell me. 

     And I said, “Janet.  What’s going on?  This sounds like it’s going to be really good news that you’re going to share with me.”  And she said, “Robert, the most wonderful thing has happened.   I have experienced God’s love in a new way.  I feel a closeness to Jesus Christ like I have never felt before.  Here, I had been attending church all my life, and I have never really had this close of a personal relationship with God.”

     Without even taking a breath, she kept right on going.  “Robert, my life is so different.  Playing the organ in church is so different now.  These past couple of weeks have been incredible.”

     “How has it been different?” I asked.

     “I now see worship in a whole new light.  It’s about offering God my thanks and praise because of how he has changed my life.  All of the sudden, these hymns that I play in church are coming alive for me.  I see things in a whole new light now.  And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m even listening to your sermons more.  I’m just so hungry for the Word of God in my life.

     I said, “Wait a minute.  What did you just say about my sermons?”

     And for my remaining couple of years at that church, there was no doubt that Janet was a changed person.  She truly did see things in a whole new light, including worship.  And it wasn’t just about Sunday morning worship at church.  She was now spending every day in a time of prayer and scripture, sharing her faith with others, and serving in ministry.

     As we pursue our wildest dreams, we all need Red Sea moments, where we stop to worship and praise God for his presence with us along our journey.  Worship takes on a whole new meaning when we stop from time to time to reflect on how God has been faithful along the way.

      Going after a dream worth pursuing can be a long and difficult journey.  It’s not going to be easy.  As one title of a song puts it, “I’m Gonna Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.”  Miriam and the people of Israel went crazy with joy when they arrived safely at the other side of the Red Sea.  Just think of what they had been through as a people: all of those years of slavery, the ten plagues, and in what looked like a hopeless situation, God used Moses to part the Red Sea to rescue them from the oncoming Egyptians.

     That’s why they worshipped.  That’s why they played the tambourine.  That’s why they danced like there was no tomorrow.  They knew that before they could continue, they needed to express their heartfelt thanks for how God had brought them to that point in their journey.

     Can you imagine if they hadn’t worshipped at that point?  What if Moses would have told the people, “Put that tambourine down.  We don’t have time for that!  We still have forty years ahead of us until we make it into the Promised Land.”  Think of how demoralizing that would have been to the people.  

     Worship is what helps us to not go crazy.  Worship is what allows us to say, “Wow!  I’ve made it this far.  I may not be where I want to be yet.  But here I am.  Thank you God!”  Worship is how we catch our breath and reflect on where we have been so that we can move on to what lies ahead.

     Every year in May, the United Methodist clergy of our West Ohio Conference gather for our annual meeting.  It’s a time that I get to reconnect with colleagues and friends who serve churches all over a large portion of Ohio.  While ministry and serving a church can be filled with many joyful and uplifting moments, as you are aware, there are also many challenges and difficulties as well.  Many of the pastors I talk to at these meetings are tired, wounded, and feeling discouraged.

     But it’s always amazing to me how even though many pastors arrive at these meetings tired and even discouraged, that we always seem to leave from those meetings inspired and ready to take on the world again.  And one of the reasons for this transformation is because our gatherings always include inspiring worship. 

     A day or two after the clergy session this past May, here’s what a couple of pastors posted on their facebook pages:  One pastor wrote, “Enjoyed my time at the West Ohio Clergy Session.  Got to swap stories with my friends.  Celebrated a retirement of one our pastors, and listened to a great sermon.  A nice time with my tribe.”

     Another pastor wrote, “Had a great day with colleagues from my district.  I am hopeful for God’s church lived among the people called Methodist.”

     As I read those posts and several others that talked about how they felt encouraged through our time together, I was reminded of how important worship is in our journey of faith.  If we don’t stop to worship and celebrate God’s goodness and faithfulness, we will find it difficult to keep going after our wildest dreams.  Worship is the fuel that makes dreams come true.

     In addition to being encouraged and renewed, worship also has a way of shaping and molding and even challenging us to help us reach our dreams. 

     Today, on this tenth anniversary of 9/11, we remember how our world has changed since that terrible tragedy.  We are not the same, are we?  In some ways, those events brought us closer as a country, but in other ways it has created fear and uncertainty.

     The appointed gospel reading for today is a challenging one for us on this special anniversary.  It’s the story of when Peter approaches Jesus and asks him how many times he should forgive someone.  And Peter attempts to answer his own question.  “As many as seven times?”  And Peter could have said 3 or 4 times because that’s a lot of times to forgive someone.  But he goes with seven which sounds like a ridiculous amount of times to forgive someone.

     But notice that when Jesus does the math, he gets a different answer.  He says, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”   Jesus is making a point that what we may think is gracious is nowhere near as gracious as God wants us to be.  

     Sometimes we get forgiveness confused with justice. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, justice is holding the terrorists who did such a horrible thing accountable for their actions.  Justice means consequences. 

     Forgiveness means not allowing someone’s actions to turn us into bitter and unloving people.  Jeff Greenway, the pastor of Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church has a couple of quotes about forgiveness that I think are important for us to remember on this day.

     The first one is from a Chinese proverb.  “He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.” 

     And the second quote goes like this: “Walling ourselves off in anger and unforgiveness is like us eating rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” 

      When we refuse to forgive, we fail to be the people God has called us to be.  When Jesus hung on a cross and people continued to hurl insults at him, he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

    To the very end, Jesus offered forgiveness and love and he calls us to do the same as difficult as it may be.  Justice and forgiveness can coexist.

     In my previous church, a member of the congregation lost her brother in the 9/11 attacks. He worked in one of the Twin Towers.  This church member loves the Lord, her church, her country, is very patriotic, and believes in justice. But she also is a woman of tremendous faith.

     She hasn’t allowed this terrible terrorist act to turn her into bitter person. Instead, a year after her brother died, she and her family traveled to an impoverished community in Mexico to build a home for a needy family in loving memory of her brother. This is how she responded to 9/11.  Instead of anger and bitterness, she used her energy to go after a new dream of serving others.

     I can’t help but to think of her today and what she must be feeling on this tenth anniversary. How can she not have feelings of anger and bitterness?   It’s a difficult day for all of us.  But even more importantly, she is a follower of Jesus who is seeking to pursue her dream of a world where all people have a place to live and have enough food to eat.

     Worship helps us to celebrate God’s presence in our lives as we pursue our wildest dreams, but it also has a way of shaping and molding us to be the people God has called us to be.

     So as you go after your wildest dream, remember to stop from time to time to worship.  Celebrate how God has seen you through the tough times.  Allow God to challenge and transform you from the inside out.

     And continue to go after your wildest dream in making this world a better place.

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