 Rev. Jeff Nelson |
Visions and Dreams
Sermon:
Scripture: |
|
I. Eighteenth century England. The traumas of urbanization and industrial revolution had left the country in a massive shift. Alcoholism was a plague upon the land. Poverty degraded the lives of millions. The church seemed far removed from these tragedies. Remote, privileged, cold. It was into this moment that a priest in the Church of England named John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed.” When the people stopped going to church, he took the church to the people. He began preaching in the fields and at the coal mines. He invited the workers, the poor and the forgotten into small groups where they could find the fellowship and support to make it through the struggles of this changing society. Wesley helped to ignite a dramatic revival which swept through England and transformed the hearts and minds of millions. This movement became known as Methodism. The Wesleyan revival showed the resilience of the church, yes. It also showed something else. What had strangely warmed Wesley’s heart? The Spirit that dreams. The Spirit that gives visions. II. In the late 19th century, a young Belgian priest volunteered for a missionary assignment in the Hawaiian Islands. Doesn’t sound half bad, does it? Except at that time, Hawaii was far from the tropical tourist paradise we now think of it as being. Westerners first arrived in the Hawaiian Islands only late in the 18th century, finding a native population of about 300,000. Within a hundred years, the ravages of disease had reduced this number to 50,000. Among the many diseases, the most dreaded scourge was leprosy. Unable to offer a remedy and helpless to control its spread, the authorities responded by exiling all those afflicted with the disease to a leper colony on the remote island of Molokai. Conditions on the island were horrific. Patients were literally dumped on the surf and left to make their way ashore, seek shelter in caves and cling to life as best they could. It was to this island and to these people that Damien felt called to go. From the beginning, Father Damien sought to instill in the members of the “parish” a sense of self worth and dignity. His first task was to restore dignity to death. Where previously the deceased were tossed into shallow graves to be consumed by pigs and dogs, he designed a clean, fenced-in cemetery and established a proper burial society. He constructed a church and worked alongside the people building clean new homes. Within several years of his arrival, the island was utterly transformed; no longer a way-station to death, it had become a proud and joyful community. As part of his effort to uplift the self-esteem of his flock, Damien realized from the beginning that he must not shrink from contact with the people. Despite the horrid physical effects of the disease, he insisted on intimate contact with them. One day he recognized the unmistakable symptoms of disease on himself. Now he was truly one with his people, literally confined, as they were, to the island of Molokai. Damien, priest to the lepers, had become Damien, the leper priest. He served the lepers of Molokai until his death in April of 1889. What had given Father Damien the ability to see life when everyone else saw death? The Spirit that dreams. The Spirit that gives visions. III. In January of 2002, Walt Kallestad appeared to “have it all.” He was senior pastor of the Community Church of Joy just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. For more than twenty years, Kallestad had poured himself into building the congregation from a struggling, 200-member church into a mega-church of over 12,000. That all changed on January 7, 2002. That was when Walt Kallestad’s heart gave out. He suffered a massive heart attack that required six-way bypass surgery. Now, three years later, Kallestad realizes that his heart attack was symbolic of what was happening in the congregation he had helped to build. “I was burned out, overworked, overwhelmed and near death, but didn’t know it…and so was my church.” Recovery from the surgery forced Kallestad to take a year-long leave of absence, affording him lots of time to reflect on the spiritual emptiness he was experiencing and the growing realization that the mega-church he had helped to create was “missing the mark.” Sure, they had a lot of programs, but did they have community? Sure, they had a ton of classes where people could learn about God, but were people ever really getting to know God? Why did his church have so many staff members but so few lay leaders? Why were so few people moving beyond being seekers and becoming disciples? Kallestad was beginning to wonder if he had been doing church all wrong. One of many sleepless nights finally found Walt on his knees, praying, “God, I’m going to fast and pray constantly. Help me. I’ll go anywhere in the world. I’ll do anything. God, show me what you’re saying to the church.” To make a long story short, several things suddenly fell into place and Kallestad found himself in Sheffield, England in the office of Mark Breen, pastor and team leader of St. Thomas’s Church. St. Tom’s was a church of about 2,000 members, most of them under the age of the 40, meeting almost exclusively in small groups. St. Tom’s met only once a month for a large corporate worship, while the rest of the month, hundreds of small groups met in each other’s homes.
St. Tom’s appeared to be
everything the Community Church of Joy was not. In this
church of small groups, a church of a hundred churches,
Kallestad saw people living into their faith in ways his
church’s seeker-sensitive, entertainment-driven church was
not even approaching. Within 36 hours he became convinced
that his mega-church needed a mega-change from “bigger and
more” to “smaller and deeper.” So Kallestad went back to
Arizona, healed in both body and spirit, and has slowly
begun to dismantle his 12,000 member mega-church – an almost
unthinkable thing to do in an American culture that always
contends that bigger is better. He is moving his people into
small clusters with passionate and hospitable lay leaders
where genuine faith can be explored and deeper discipleship
can be experienced. What was it that gave Walt Kallestad the
hope to rethink his entire ministry? The Spirit that dreams.
The Spirit that gives visions. IV. The pages of church history are filled with the stories of people and movements that have done amazing, courageous and inspiring things. But the outside eye often asks the question, “Are these people crazy? What gives them the reason to believe the things they believe? What is the matter with them, anyway? Are they drunk? What is it that makes them do the things they do?”
What gave Paul the willingness
to speak up
What gives Bono the courage to
stand up,
Why did the mothers of those who
disappeared in Chile keep showing up,
The same reason that Harriet
Tubman risked her life when she got fed up,
Throughout our entire history,
one power and one presence has helped So what is it that has helped the saints speak up, stand up, build up, show up, stay prayed up, get locked up, keep peace and justice on the up and up, keep this world cleaned up and people fired up? One power. One presence. The Spirit that dreams. The Spirit that gives visions. V. Today we celebrate Pentecost, the day of the great pouring out of the Holy Spirit. It is the story that animates our time together tonight. And what a story it is! Remember the scene that opens the story. Jesus had died, risen and then ascended into heaven—all within the last fifty days. Talk about an emotional rollercoaster! But now he is gone again and once more the disciples feel left behind. It seems as if the story is over. What did the future have in store for them? Nobody knew for sure. Perhaps their dream of a different kind of church, a different way of living and a different world to live in was just that, a dream. Then suddenly it all changed. A new spirit blew in and transformed everything it touched. People were filled with this spirit, and folk starting speaking languages they never knew before. There were people from all over the known world, and every single one of them was touched by this spirit. From every corner of the globe, people suddenly could not keep quiet about what God was doing in their midst. It was such a crazy scene that people thought they must have been drunk. It was then that Peter jumped up and seized the moment. He began to preach. And preach he did. He preached the sermon of his life. Then Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the
last days, God says, Peter told the crowd assembled there that this miracle they were witnessing was the work of the Holy Spirit, and when it touched folk, there would be dreams to be dreamed and visions to be envisioned. VI. The church, when it is being “the church,” when it is living out the truth of its Pentecostal faith (yes, because of this day of Pentecost even United Methodists are Pentecostals), will be a place that boldly envisions new possibilities, new ways of living and, yes, even an entirely new world to live in. The church has always been and must always be the place that lives out the true meaning of George Bernard Shaw’s quote, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream of things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” It is that same Holy Spirit that descended on the group of disciples some two thousand years ago that must embolden the church of today to say unapologetically:
Why not, I ask you? Why not? “In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young will see visions, your old will dream dreams.” When the Holy Spirit is resting upon a place and upon a people, the place becomes, and the people become, dreamers and visionaries. But more than that, the Holy Spirit dares us to live into the dream, to live as if it is possible, as if our dreams can actually become reality. VII. The Book of Proverbs says that “without a vision, the people perish.” So on this celebration of Pentecost, on the day we experience the Holy Spirit that dares us to dream and calls us to new visions, let me leave with a vision for the Sunday Night Alive community.
Friends, let us boldly live into the dreams and visions that the Holy Spirit is bringing to life here. Sure these dreams are big. But so is the God who gives them to us.
Note: I discovered the story of Father Damien in a wonderful book called All Saints written by Robert Ellsberg. Ellsberg’s book is different than most other books on the church’s prophets and witnesses. While saints are often associated with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, Ellsberg has filled out the list with Protestant leaders like John Wesley and Martin Luther, writers like Henri Nouwen, Jacques Ellul and Soren Kierkegaard. He includes contemporary witnesses to the faith like Martin Luther King, Jr., Dag Hammarskjold, Cesar Chavez and Albert Schweitzer. He even goes on to add several “non-Christian” witnesses, like Gandhi, Steven Biko, Baal Shem Tov and Chief Seattle, all of whom, with their lives and teachings, emulated the very truth of our gospel. It is a great read, and I would recommend it highly. The story about Walt Kallestad came from Lee Sparks’ article entitled “The Mega Church That’s Reinventing Itself,” printed in the May/June 2005 edition of Rev. Magazine.
|