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Christmas-size Dreams
2007Christmas Eve Sermon
by Lynn Turner, Associate Pastor
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
It is
Christmas Eve, 2007. We are here together tonight for various reasons…
o
Perhaps this is
a tradition for you..to be at First Baptist Church on Christmas Eve…Christmas
would just not be the same if you could not be here…
o
Perhaps you are
here, visiting with family…home for the holidays and wanted to be in church
together on this Christmas eve…
o
Perhaps you are
here tonight because deep down inside, in the midst of the hurriedness and
hecticness of this season, you needed to set aside some space to reflect and
connect with God. You had been meaning to do that all of Advent…time has gotten
away from you and for at least this one hour…you will be still.
o
Perhaps you are
here because you are hurting…you needed to be with others on this special
night…the loss is great, the news of poor health is discouraging…you are
seeking hope and comfort and you just don’t have the strength to do it on your
own…
Whatever
your reason is for being here…it is good to be together…
Growing
up as a child, we did not have Christmas Eve services at my church. Our family
tradition was to gather at an extended family home, eat potluck, open one gift
that we had been given from someone who drew our name... go home... get on the
Christmas pj’s, read two stories and go to bed early. We would read “Twas the
night before Christmas and the Luke 2 passage.”
Christmas
brings with it dreams, visions… memories… traditions all seemingly triggered by
the things we see, and hear, and smell.
The
lights that adorn our homes… the beautiful decorations… the smell of gingerbread
cooking in the oven, the sounds of the Christmas carols… traditions that define
for us what Christmas is all about… going to Grandmother’s house on Christmas
day… reading the Christmas story on Christmas morning… watching movies in the
afternoon or playing games as a family… whatever the traditions are in your
home… They bring memories of Christmases past.
Thomas
Kinkaid the famous artist says, “Traditions tell a story of what is important,
what we as families value, and are, and over time shape our souls, transform our
hearts and link our past with our present.”
Undoubtedly, every single person in this room has a Christmas tradition that has
shaped how you celebrate the season…or at the very least… brings back memories
of this time of year.
Of course
life happens in between Christmases…some things happen that change our
tradition…
o
We have a loss
of a family member and sitting at the dinner table is not quite the same…
o
We have been
transferred to another job…Christmas is somewhere new and different and not the
same…
o
Families have
changed…divorce has happened…broken relationships with family members ..
o
Someone will not
be home this year for Christmas…it will be…different…it will not be the same
So while traditions shape us
and connect us…we always need to be ready for change… and in that
sense…Christmas is new every year…a time for dreaming new dreams…
In the music of the season, in the excitement of the children,
somewhere we sense that more is possible than seems apparent to the naked eye.
That very sense is an invitation to see beyond the immediate to what might be
possible.
Dreams
and visions are quite common in scripture. In the research that I have done
personally, dreams are mentioned 122 times in the
entire Bible. Visions are mentioned 101 times.
God certainly used dreams and visions to express His heart.
We often
reflect on the miracles of the Gospel passages on Christmas Eve…the angels that
appeared to the Shepherds, the Wise men who followed the star, the miracle birth
of God’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary.
But the
passage in Isaiah reminds us that 700 years before any of this took place, God
had placed in the heart of Isaiah a new dream… a God given dream… a Christmas
size dream. He wrote these words:
A shoot
will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The
Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD –
3 and he
will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but
with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The
wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
Even as
Isaiah’s dream fills our imaginations, we can marvel in the fact that the
Gospel story assures us that his dream was fulfilled 700 years later! By the
power of God’s spirit that Isaiah dreamed…the dream became reality and “the
knowledge of the Lord filled the earth as the waters cover the sea.” (vs 9)
What are
you dreaming for this Christmas?
If you
are a child you might be dreaming of that favorite toy, bike, doll, video
game…if you are a teenager, you might have visions of waking up and seeing under
the tree that new... ipod, xbox, cell phone, Nintendo Wii, pc or mac… if you are
an adult… perhaps you are dreaming of a new home… new car… a new job… all your
bills paid…less stress in your life… good health… something that would make your
life a little bit easier… a little more enjoyable.
These are
not the dreams I am talking about tonight… these do not describe the kind of
dream that Isaiah saw… because the dream of Isaiah is a Christmas size dream.
What is a Christmas size dream?
… it is a
dream of the heart… it is not something we can easily define…it begins with
images of “small”… seemingly insignificant…a shoot will come from the stump of
Jesse…
Roots,
stumps, spindly green shoots, tender new branches - none of these images are
big, flashy, or impressive in any worldly way.
Christmas
size dreams are small, simple signs of life and hope and God’s divine presence
in the midst of us… His people.
It's
increasingly hard to sell small as anything good to our twenty-first century
consumer-crazed culture. Those few items we do want to be physically small (Ipods,
PCs, cell phones) are only good because they pack a big technology wallop.
In one of
the latest new editions of Webster's Dictionary, yet another pop-culture term
has been credentialized: bling-bling. Have you heard of “bling bling”?
I was
browsing in a shop on Cary Street last week that has nothing but beads…thousands
and thousands of beads…there was a rack in the middle of the store that said,
“Bling Beads”…
Bling-bling, for those of you who don't have teenagers, refers to big, gaudy,
bright baubles with which one decorates oneself and one's life. Huge chunky gold
jewelry, over-sized and obviously fake gems, sequins, rhinestone-encrusted,
over-the-top glitz of all kinds, qualify as bling-bling. Bling-bling exists for
one reason and one reason only: to be noticed.
Been to
Starbuck’s lately? The smallest coffee you can order is a Tall.
Tall is
small. Grande, which is both Italian and Spanish for large, is medium.
You can
“Biggie Size” your order at the fast food places…you get the “BIG GULP” at your
local 7-11… now the Super Big Gulp…
It is
hard for us to think in terms of small anymore…but Isaiah did… he recognized
that Christmas size dreams always start small… it gives them room to grow and
sprout and become big… big in the eyes of God.”
A shoot
will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
and he
will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
….in his
dream he says, “And a little child shall lead them.”
God has a
way of bringing us back down to earth…helping us to focus on what is really
important… after all, Christmas isn’t about Bling Bling… the things you see with
your eyes or hear with your ears... even though we have made it that way.
It is
about the still small voice of God within each of us that regardless of how many
Christmases you have walked through… each year your heart is open to seeing it
anew for the first time and being still long enough to see the dreams that God
has for your life… they are Christmas size dreams… dreams from God’s heart to
your heart.
The
people of Israel were dreaming for a new King to get them out of their mess…
their misery… a king to restore them to the throne of power.
Isaiah
was dreaming for a king that would transform the world.
In some
ways we are just Like the Israelites…dreaming of a king that would bring peace…
We say:
Wouldn’t
it be nice if there wasn’t so much killing going on right now in Iraq? Wouldn’t
it be nice if the Muslims and Christians in the Sudan miraculously started to
live together in peace? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no death squads in
Columbia and people weren’t shooting each other? Wouldn’t it be nice if there
were peace on earth?
Or, if
you can’t have peace between nations, wouldn’t it be nice to have peace within
our families? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a whole week together as husband and
wife, or mom or dad and child and not have a fight? Wouldn’t it be nice if your
children did not fight with each other? Wouldn’t it be nice to gather for
Christmas as family and not have any blow-ups? Wouldn’t it be nice if tempers
didn’t flare so quickly, like a match that suddenly ignites? If you can’t have
peace in Iraq, maybe we could have peace at home and in our families. That would
be nice.
Or, if
that isn’t possible, wouldn’t it be nice to have peace within myself? Wouldn’t
it be nice if I weren’t so harsh with myself? Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t
explode at myself in anger? Wouldn’t it be nice if this gnawing restlessness
inside my soul would go away? If I can’t have peace between nations or peace
within the family, maybe I could at least have some peace within me?
God is
saying to you and me this night… Listen…
You can’t
control the peace of the world, you can’t even control the peace of your family…
what you can do is recognize that I have sent you the Prince of Peace… in the
form of a child who was born in a stable.
The dream
Isaiah saw begins within the hearts of each of us… God says I have sent to YOU…
do you hear the message of the angel? “For unto YOU is born this day in the city
of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
Dream of
Peace on earth? O yes… Dream of peace in my family? O yes… But Christmas-size
your dream… and that means starting small…. within your own heart.
A
Christmas size dream starts small and a Christmas size dream is all about
transformation.
Dream not
of bigger and better… dream of a changed heart…a changed world… a world in which
the wolf would lie down with the lamb… the leopard with the kid…the calf with
the lion…a world that takes us back to what God intended for us in the first
place all the way back to the Garden of Eden…a restored relationship that was
characterized by peace, tranquility and love.
Who had
thought to ask for such a thing?
And yet
this is what God had to give!
Have you
been dreaming this Christmas for just another nice Christmas with family and
friends? Just another Christmas where some dreams come true…just another
Christmas where we celebrate the child born in the manger?
What if
this Christmas morning…you woke up dreaming that THIS Christmas…God’s coming
would transform you?
What
needs to happen in your heart this Christmas eve that would allow God to birth
in you a new dream… a Christmas size dream?
Is it
possible that this baby, Jesus, God Incarnate, all powerful God… wants to be
born anew in your heart tonight?
Just one
small baby.
Just one
small, poor, insignificant "shoot" from that old tree stump of Jesse.
It
happened in Bethlehem, in a simple stable, in the quiet, in the dark. But when
that final divine addition fell upon the earth, everything was changed… Isaiah’s
Christmas-sized dream had come true.
As
Christmas approaches, let's remember this: God gives us more than we could have
ever expected.
Not a God
above us; not a God below us; not a God beside us; but God AMONG us, a God WITH
us, a God WITHIN us.
God as
one of us.
In 2001,
a song composed by Glenn Rudolph, The
Dream Isaiah Saw
was commissioned by the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh. The text is taken from a poem
by Thomas Troeger paraphrasing Isaiah's vision of universal peace and harmony.
Rudolph was at work on the piece when the tragic events of September 11
unfolded. He said he had to put it away for a while before he could come back to
finish it. But the backdrop to that world changing event gives added meaning to
this music, considering the appropriateness of the text, and The Dream Isaiah
Saw was dedicated to those who lost their lives in that tragedy.
Musically, the piece is constructed around percussion that represents the
presence of God… gradually taking control in an out of control world. The choral
parts gradually come into synchrony with the percussion, representing the
realization of Isaiah's vision.
Before
the choir sings, I will read the words of the text and want you to focus
particularly on the refrain…
Lions
and oxen will sleep on the hay,
Leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
Wolves
will be pastured with cows in the glade,
Blood
will not darken the earth that God made.
Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw;
Life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace
will pervade more than forest and field;
God
will transfigure the Violence concealed
Deep
in the heart and in systems of gain,
Ripe
for the judgment the Lord will ordain.
Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw;
Justice purifying law.
Natured reordered to match God’s intent,
Nations obeying the call to repent,
All of
creation completely restored,
Filled
with the knowledge and love of the Lord.
Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw;
Knowledge, Wisdom, Worship, awe.
as you listen…feel the
presence of God in this room through the beating of the drums… the very
heartbeat of God… stirring around in your soul tonight… saying to you and me…
open your heart once again to the Little Child whose bed is straw… let him take
new lodging in your heart this Christmas. And when the choir is finished… sit in
stillness for just a moment…
God, Thank you for your
presence with us in this room tonight. On this night of your miraculous birth…be
born anew in our hearts. Comfort our hearts with your dreams…Christmas size
dreams… dreams from within our hearts that can neither be seen nor heard, but
dreams that transform us to be what you have called us to be. Thank you for
Jesus… sent to us… full of grace, full of mercy, the Light of the world.” Amen.
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