Introduction
“What’s your dream!?”
This not so well known line from the blockbuster movie Pretty Woman, shouted at both the beginning and the end of the film, came to mind this week when I read about an online global sweepstakes platform called Omaze that raises money for everything from local homeless organizations to the United Nations Children’s Fund to planting trees in the Amazon rainforest to providing clean water to communities in Kenya or Haiti.
If you have a dream of doing something spectacular Omaze could make it happen.
Perhaps you dream of having lunch with superstars George Clooney and his wife Amal. That was a prize. Or maybe having a double date with Emily Blunt and John Krasinski is your dream. Or maybe you’re like me and you dream of playing soccer with U.S. Woman’s National Soccer Team Captain Alex Morgan, and be her VIP in Tokyo for a match against Japan.
Omaze can make those dreams come true.
Or maybe you have a dream car in mind. Well if that dream car is a Tesla powered refurbished 1966 VW bus then you have a chance for that dream to come true.
Omaze links worthy organizations with dreamy prizes, then it runs a sweepstakes that raises money for charity, delivering a dream prize to a lucky winner. You can buy entries for as little as two bucks, and since 2012, Omaze has raised over $130 million for more than 350 charities. (Do note that this for-profit company takes a percentage of the overall sweepstakes donations.)
Omaze’s motto is: Dream the world better.
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So, what’s your dream, because during Advent and Christmas our culture impresses the imploration to dream—to dream of the things we want under the tree on Christmas morning, to dream of finding love (thank you Hallmark Channel), to dream of war being over and peace on earth, goodwill to all. No doubt all of us have dreams at Christmas, and no doubt we all share the dream that life as we know it will get back to normal as soon as possible.
The prophet Isaiah had dreams too and he was trying to share those dreams with a people who had lost the ability to dream. Last week Isaiah gave us a vision that no matter what God would always be with God’s children. Now in our text for today Isaiah brings a word of how that presence will make real the dream of one day the world being better.
Move 1
For 39 chapters Isaiah brings prophetic words of warning to Israel, calling the people to seek justice and put their faith in God because for too long they had been rebellious to God’s ways. As a result, he predicted that all the treasures of the king “shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord” (39:6). And we know the nation was conquered by Babylon, and the people were carried off into exile.
But this period of defeat and loss was not the end of the story and in the 40th chapter Isaiah shares his dream of God speaking to a group of heavenly beings, saying to them, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term” (Isaiah 40:1-2). Isaiah dreamed the world better by sharing his vision of God’s heavenly words, and God was saying the people of Israel had paid a great price for their sins of injustice and unfaithfulness but this time was now over because God’s grace and forgiveness had been poured out. And when God forgives, the slate is wiped clean. For them, and for us.
Then, again, a voice cries out in the heavenly council: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (vv. 3-5).
A great desert wilderness stood between Babylon and Jerusalem, and this voice called for the creation of a pathway for God, one in which the people could travel home. This way in the desert is God’s way of restoration created for God’s people because defeat was being replaced by victory, sin by forgiveness, and loss by restoration.
Years later, Luke spoke of the word of God coming to John the Baptist in the wilderness: “He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘ Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” (Luke 3:3-4). Baptism of repentance. Forgiveness of sins. The way of John is also the pathway of restoration, and it belongs to God. John, like Isaiah, dared to dream the world better.
Move 2
So where do we need restoration today? The Apostle Paul looked forward to the day when all creation “will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21), knowing full well what he is talking about. We look around and see the fouling of air, land, and water. We look at our relationships and see brokenness between friends, colleagues, spouses, and family members. We look inside ourselves and see the downward slide of our morals and our aspirations.
Ecological, relational, ethical and spiritual are all areas of life needing the dream of a better world that Isaiah and Luke delivered with the words, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” So many crooked areas of life need to be straightened out, and we know that we cannot do it alone because as Isaiah tells us, “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8).
I love this prophecy… The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah knows that we humans are like grass that withers away, but the word of our God is eternal. And when we open ourselves to the power of God’s word, when we let it touch us and transform us, when we use them to dream the world better, we are straightened out from our crooked ways, we are restored, and restoration of the world begins anew.
God spoke God’s word through the prophet Isaiah, and all the other prophets; God spoke through the proclamation of messengers such as John the Baptist, Peter, and Paul. And God spoke most powerfully through the teachings of Jesus, the Word of God in human form (John 1:14).
In the chaos of 21st-century crookedness and decay, we need these divine words more than ever because they are where our dreams for a better world begin because they are words of hope, peace, joy, and love.
Move 3
In his “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “We will not be satisfied until justice runs down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” quoting the prophet Amos. The crowd responded to these dream filled words with hope filled joy. But biographer Taylor Branch reports that King could not bring himself to deliver the next line of his prepared speech—caught up in the emotion of it all.
Which is when some there on the platform with King urged him on. Among them, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who called out as though she were in church, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin.”
Branch explains how King composed himself and then continued; how he began to prophetically preach the Word, and how the words “went beyond the limitations of language and culture.”
Dr. King’s “Dream” message took him from Amos to Isaiah, and he ended with the words, “I have a dream that one day, every valley shall be exalted.” These words dreamed the world better. Prophetic, honest, faithful words do that. And they can, because they have, come from anyone—anyone, that is, who is willing to let God’s words that go “beyond the limitations of language and culture” flow through them.
Conclusion
So what’s your dream? I implore you to ask yourself that question in this Advent season and then give words to your dream; share those words because this is the truth… Words create reality.
The words of Isaiah dreamed the world better, and then Jesus Christ made those words real. Jesus is, for us, the Word of God made flesh, and we can be thankful that though “The grass withers, the flower fades; the word of our God will stand forever.” The word of our God will stand forever. And that word tells us, again and again, that Jesus forgives our sins, wipes our slates clean, straightens us out, and gives us hope, peace, joy, and love. All we have to do is prepare him room, receive him, believe in him, and walk with him.
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When the birth of Jesus is celebrated again this Christmas, remember the words of Isaiah: “Here is your God!” Jesus joins Isaiah in bringing us back from exile, wherever we may be wandering in a far-off land.
Jesus does the work of restoration, forgiving us and giving us new life. He makes the rough places smooth and the crooked ways straight. Isaiah dreamed the world better, and Jesus—the Word of God made flesh— brings those dreams to life.
So may we, this Advent and Christmas, dream the world better, and speak of our dreams with the word of God made flesh. What’s your dream? Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, December 6, 2020, Advent 2
Peacemaking God, we turn to you in prayer on this second Sunday of Advent, praying for peace for the earth groans under the weight of so much that is crocked and in need of your restoration.
Our human trail is too often measured by its destruction. The love you share for all of your creation atrophies in our hands, and becomes something that so easily slips from our grasp.
What we long for is grace and peace for we know these blessings lift the weight of the world.
Forgive us, O God, for thinking of peace on earth only as a Christmas postscript—that it can only be felt for a day, given the right about of gifts, food, or family around us. Remind us in the midst of your grace that your incarnation comes for all, no matter where we are in life, and that it comes always, and forever because indeed, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the world of God will stand forever.”
So we pray you break through our limited thinking and dismantle our hardened crust of cynicism and disbelief with your dream filled Word made flesh.
Open before us the glorious splendor of the Christmas story, in all of its prophetic fullness, showing us once again the life giving promises of hope, peace, joy, and love.
Suspend our sophistication that we so often bring to this season, long enough to enable us to dream the world as a place where miracles do happen, where a Savior is indeed born in a stable, where peace is possible, where promises of abundance for all are fulfilled, and where there is no longer any reason for fear anywhere on earth.
And so, O God, may your Word become flesh anew in today’s world, in us and through us your faithful church.
May it once again come to dwell among us, assuring us that no fear or sorrow, sin or suffering can ever separate us from your love, and that no enemy of your purposes will ever ultimately prevail.
Hear now we ask, the prayers we offer to you in the peaceful calm of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who taught us to pray saying, “Our …”