10-17-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

DO YOU DREAM IN COLOR?

   Do you dream in color?  Recent research reveals that people can dream in color and, although there is no absolute proof, most people do report seeing color in their dreams.  Thus, the answer to our question is probably as varying as the number of people who are asked.  Still, dreaming in color makes one’s dreams seem more vivid and real and alive.  Do you dream in color?  I believe I do.

     Actually, I’ve been having some really bizarre dreams since I went on this medication for a recent heart rhythm issue.  For example, several weeks ago, I dreamed that I was pregnant.  I was huge!  You see, not only was I pregnant, I was actually pregnant with twins.  The time came for their delivery and our own Dr. David Kirkpatrick was my obstetrician.  And Dr. Kirkpatrick was absolutely wonderful to me.  He had a terrific bedside manner.  I dreamed he told me that the delivery would be a whole lot less painful if I just went to sleep.  Then I dreamed that I went to sleep, and when I woke up – still in the dream – I had a beautiful set of twins in my arms.  My dream was vivid and real and alive…and in living color.

     I did a little research on what a dream about being pregnant means.  Do you know what I found?  People who dream about being pregnant generally are pregnant…or at least they are about to be.  Am I a freak of nature, or am I losing my mind?  Or, can we simply chalk it up to the medication?  I’ll let you decide.

     What are dreams?  Dreams are essentially the involuntary conjuring up of images, sounds, ideas and feelings during sleep.  We have no control over them, but they can seem to us to be frighteningly real at times, can they not?  What’s going on in our minds when we dream?  An Irish research psychologist by the name of Joe Griffin postulates what he calls the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming.  According to the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming, there are three basic principles of dreaming.  They are:

1.      Dreams are metaphorical interpretations of waking expectations.

2.      Expectations that produce emotional responses during the day that are not acted upon become dreams when we sleep.

3.      Dreaming is a way of dealing with emotional arousal by completing the expectations in our dreams that we did not complete when we were awake thereby freeing our brains to respond afresh to each new day.

    Perhaps we could say that dreams are a coping mechanism designed to represent frustrated or unfulfilled expectations.  The things that upset us during the day that we failed to deal with, or the things we hope for or long for most, tend to rear their ugly heads when we sleep.  They come back to haunt us in our dreams.  That, in a nutshell, is the expectation fulfillment theory   of dreaming.

     We all have frustrations, and we all have hopes and dreams, do we not?  Where do you turn when you’re utterly frustrated with the way life is going?  And what is that for which you hope and dream the most?  In the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells a parable about a woman who was utterly frustrated with the way life was going.  Her most fervent hope was for justice.  Let me explain.

     Jesus begins his parable by saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking would have known immediately that this judge was not a Jew.  All ordinary Jewish disputes were taken before the elders of the synagogue, not to the public courts.  If, however, under Jewish law a matter was taken to arbitration, one judge could not constitute a court.  There were always three judges: one chosen by the plaintiff, one chosen by the defendant, and one appointed by the elders.  Thus, the people listening to Jesus’ story knew the judge was not a Jew.  This simply was not the way legal disputes were handled in the Jewish faith.   

     There were judges in those days, however.  The judge of whom Jesus spoke would have been a paid magistrate appointed either by King Herod or by the Roman government. These appointed judges were notoriously unscrupulous.  I mean, if a plaintiff did not have the requisite influence or money to bribe his way to a verdict, he had precious little hope of ever getting his case settled.  These judges were so unscrupulous that the people of the day actually made a pun out of their titles.  Officially, these judges were called Dayyaneh Gezeroth, which meant “judges of punishments.”  The people, however, called them Dayyaneh Gezeloth, which meant, “robber judges.”  Of course, if you wanted justice in their courtrooms, you might not want to say that to their faces.

     Are you with me so far?  “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  This judge was one unscrupulous man.  Jesus then adds, “In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’”  We understand what the judge was like.  Now let’s take a look at the widow.

    It is actually quite difficult for us in the year 2010 to comprehend what it was like to be a widow in Jesus’ time.  This was not a society in which everyone was entitled to their day in court.  The irony of Jesus’ parable in the first place is that a widow would have had no rights,   and she certainly would not have had access to a judge in a formal procedure of law.  So her crying out for justice would have been seen by Jesus’ audience as a bit of a parody.  An article entitled, “The Status of Women in the Hebrew Scriptures” describes what her situation might have been like.  It says:

Women’s behavior was extremely limited in ancient times, much as the women of Afghanistan were during the recent Taliban oppression.  In Jesus day, for example:

·         Unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.

·         Married women were not allowed to leave the home of their husband.

·         They were normally restricted to roles of little or no authority.

·         They could not testify in court.

·         They could not appear in public venues.

·         They were not allowed to talk to strangers.

·         And they had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.

   Sounds like the men who made those rules had some issues with jealousy, doesn’t it?  In any case, do you see the widow’s problem?  She had absolutely no status in society.  Yet someone had wronged her in some kind of way – we do not know exactly how – and she is in search of justice from an unscrupulous judge.  A woman who wasn’t really allowed to go to court is asking for help from a judge who could care less about justice.  It’s quite a quandary, is it not?

     The judge refused to hear her case for quite some time.  Finally he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”  Incidentally, the words translated, “wear me out by continually coming,” can be translated another way.  They can also mean, “lest she give me a black eye.”  The judge may have been exasperated by the widow’s persistence, but he may have also been afraid of being the victim of violence.

    Jesus uses this story to prove a point about God.  If even an unjust judge finally acquiesced to a widow’s persistent badgering, how much more will God grant justice to his chosen ones whom he loves?  The lesson on the surface here is clear, I think.  The lesson is, persistence pays.  All of us have deep desires in our hearts, and all of us long to have them fulfilled. Often we turn to God to have them fulfilled, do we not?  We turn to God in prayer.  The lesson Jesus seems to teach here is that if we badger God about something long and hard enough, God will ultimately acquiesce as well, because he loves us.  And there’s nothing wrong with that lesson.  I know I’ve built a sermon on that theme in the past myself.  So if you came here today looking for something you could take to heart, there it is.  Persistence pays.  Perhaps we could even say, “Persistence in prayer pays.”

    It seems to me, however, that there is a deeper meaning to this story.  Let’s look at it contextually.  At the end of the 17^th chapter of Luke, in the passage immediately preceding the passage we read earlier, Jesus is talking about what we call the Parousia, known also as the Second Coming, or the Eschaton, or the end of days.  Jesus talks about what that will be like.  Then our pas-sage in chapter 18 begins by saying, “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and to not lose heart.”  Then Jesus tells the parable about the widow and the unjust judge.  And he concludes our passage with these words: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

    Ladies and gentlemen, this passage isn’t only about persistence in prayer.  Jesus seems to be aware of what we call the delayed Parousia.  In other words, the end of time is coming, but it is not coming immediately.  Jesus will return, but his return may be delayed.  Jesus is encouraging his disciples to keep heart and to pray always in the midst of this delay.  And he seems to have    a charge for us here as well.  When Jesus finally does return, will he find faith on earth?  Will  we still be faithful to God in spite of the fact that Christ has not yet returned?  Will we still be striving to make the kingdom of God on earth a reality, or will we have given up hope in pure frustration?

     That’s what the parable of the widow and the unjust judge is really meant to illustrate.  Can we remain tenacious for justice – can we still pine for the kingdom of God – in spite of the fact that it seems so far away?  This is a pertinent message in our day and age.  We live in a time of instant gratification.  We don’t want to save up to put a down payment on a house, we want to  be able to buy it now.  We don’t want to wait until we’re married to live together, we want to live together now.  We don’t want to work for years upon end in order to achieve success, we want to have it now. 

    I think the perfect illustration of this is revealed in our hour-long television dramas.  Think of the shows that are on T.V. these days.  There’s Bones, there’s N.C.I.S., there’s The Closer, there’s Law and Order S.V.U.  I’ve always been partial to Magnum, P.I. and The Rockford Files, but I guess I’m dating myself.  In any case, all of these shows are able to solve incredibly complex crimes in the course of an hour.  Talk about instant gratification!  Now I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I hate more than to be engrossed in a show for 60 minutes, to wonder how they’re going to resolve the problem, and then see the words, “To be continued,” flash across the screen.  We want the issue resolved and we want it resolved right now!

   The quick-fix, romantic obsession of our culture will always be tempted to expect our relation-ship with God to be fulfilling, to be successful, and to always have a positive outcome.  We’re not good at patience.  We’re not good at persistence.  We’re not good when things don’t seem to go our way.  We are called to be tenacious, like the widow was before the unjust judge.  We are called to be unrelenting, and not just about our own creature comforts.  We are called to be persistent about justice and peace and harmony.  We are called to be diligent about the things of God.

     In short, I think we need to dream.  I dream of a world where the color of a person’s skin is no longer an issue, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where no one is exploited for reasons of sexuality, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where parents stay together to raise their children, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where children and adults respect their elders – and one another – for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people love God and neighbor, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people greet one another with a smile, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people are there for one another when the chips are down, for that is what the kingdom   of God looks like.  We need to dream big, and pray hard, and trust God to guide us in order to make those dreams become a reality.  To join in the work of the kingdom of God on earth be-cause you know in your heart that that’s what God is calling you to do is a major part of what it means to be a Christian.        

     It’s like the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming we spoke of earlier.  We long for something so badly that – until it comes to pass – it starts to haunt our very dreams.  That’s    how badly the widow longed for justice from the unjust judge.  And that’s how badly Christ wants us to desire the kingdom of God on earth.  We want it so badly that it fills our minds during the day and our dreams at night.  We want it so badly that we even dream in color.   

   Jesus asked a question at the end of his parable in Luke.  He asked, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  As long as people who are immersed in dark nights of suffering and frustration dream – rather than despair – I think he will.  So I ask you again, “Do you dream in color?”  Amen.

 

10-10-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MEISTER ECKHART

 

     Twenty years ago on a Saturday night I was just about to head upstairs to get ready for bed when I heard the rumbling of a car with a bad exhaust system pulling up in my driveway.  The man who came to the door was passing through town, but he and his family were exhausted.    He wanted to know if I could put him up in a motel for the night.  I had a fund at my disposal with which I could do such things, so I called the motel and booked him a room.  Then he told me that his family was hungry.  Since there was nothing open at that time of night, I gave him    a loaf of bread, a block of cheese and some sandwich meat.  About the only thing I couldn’t   give him was a gallon of milk, since our son, Rob, would need that in his bottle in the morning.  The man thanked me and went on his way.  Several months later, he showed up at my church.  The Boy Scouts were meeting there that night and he found them first, so the scoutmaster led him to my office.  Again he needed food and gasoline, so I wrote him a voucher and sent him   on his way.  Later, the scoutmaster came to my office and asked, “What did that guy want?”  I said, “Oh, I’ve seen him before.  He just wanted a little food and gasoline.”  Then the scoutmaster asked, “Did you see what he was driving?”  I said, “No.”  The scoutmaster said, “He was driving a brand new Lincoln Town Car with the dealer’s tag still in the window!”  Ah,   some people have a profound sense of entitlement, do they not?

    Twenty years ago, people used to ask for 20 or 25 dollars.  Five or six years ago, they started asking for 100 to 150 dollars.  Now people ask for four or five hundred dollars without even batting an eye.  Not long ago a woman came into my office and said she needed help to pay off a delinquent gas bill so National Fuel would turn her gas back on for the winter.  I said, “How much money do you need?”  She said, “$2407.00.”  I helped her a little, but I did not pay for    all of it.  Some people have a profound sense of entitlement.  And most of us wouldn’t mind helping if people would at least show a little gratitude.

   About 10 years ago, I led a senior high school mission trip to rural Tennessee.  We did Habitat for Humanity-type work on a trailer home.  We put a railing on a large front porch that had been built by another group.  We crawled under the trailer and shored up the floorboards from underneath.  Some of the kids climbed on the roof and spread tar to keep it from leaking.  We put in a new kitchen floor.  Then we built a small back porch, but we ran out of time before we could build the steps.  I went into the trailer to tell the woman we were leaving because it was time for us to head back home and she said to me, “What’s the matter?  You can’t build steps?”  I said, “You know what?  I’m a minister, not a carpenter.  No, I can’t build steps.”  When the kids heard about it, they were incensed.  When we bend over backwards to do something for someone else, we just want them to show us a little gratitude.

     A similar thing happened to Jesus in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  Jesus was approached by 10 lepers who cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priest.  While they were on the way, they discovered that they had been healed.  One of them, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus, fell on his face, and thanked him.  Jesus said, “Is there no one to give thanks to God except this foreigner?  Go your way.  Your faith has made you well.”  Jesus appreciated the gratitude.  We can presume that the other nine were still healed, in spite of their ingratitude.  The lesson here is clear.  We, too, are still called to help the needy whether they are grateful for it or not.  We do what we feel called to do as Christians, even if they’re not being completely honest with us.  I figure we do what we feel called to do and if they’re pulling the wool over our eyes, they’ll have to answer for that some day.  But the question I have for you now is this.  Which of the lepers are we most like?  God is the source of all that we have and all that we are.  Are we grateful to God for all that we have, or are we constantly in search of more?

     Gratitude is the hinge upon which the Christian faith turns.  The Christian church has always taught that God first loved us.  God sent his only Son that we might have the hope of salvation.  We are not faithful in order to gain salvation; rather, we are faithful because we have already received salvation.  And that’s why we take part in the life of the church.  We join the church and we worship God because we believe we can do more for the kingdom of God as a congregation than we can as individuals.  I guess the question here is this.  Is there really such a thing as spiritual but not religious?  Can we truly express our gratitude to God when we are not a part of the institutional church?

     Listen to this.  Many years ago, there was a man who just quit going to church.  After month or two, the minister decided to go and pay that man a visit.  The man welcomed the minister into his home, and the two of them sat in front of a large fire.  They didn’t say a word for the longest time.  They just watched the flames.  Then the minister took a pair of tongs and removed a glowing ember.  He set it on the side of the hearth.  The ember flickered brightly, then it just glowed, and then it died.  The man smiled, nodded his head and said, “Reverend, thanks for the powerful sermon.  I’ll be back in church next Sunday.” 

   Ladies and gentlemen, are we willing to be a part of the community of believers, or do we think we can make it on our own?  Are we willing to express our gratitude to God, or are we constantly in search of more?  Meister Eckhart was a 13^th century spiritual writer.  He once   said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

     A local minister recently said to his congregation at the end of a worship service, “Go home and write down something you want God to do for you.  Then just wait and see what happens.”  I would reverse his charge.  I would say, “Go home and write down everything God has already done for you.”  If you do that, I suspect you will find yourselves moved to express your gratitude.  And you’ll be well on your way to becoming the kind of Christian Jesus had in mind all along.  Amen.