Dream Power

A Sermon Preached by

Rev. Paul Debenport

June 13, 2010

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“There’s just so much you need to know to know enough.”  That’s the first line of a country ballad about a murder trial.  And there’s definitely “so much we need to know to know enough” for today’s primary text about God’s dealings with Joseph and his family.  We have to know the

sacred history of this covenant family, beginning with Joseph’s great-grandparents, Abraham  

and Sarah.  So let us be called to worship with God’s call in Genesis 17 _{[1-5; 15-17; 21-22]}:

When Abram was ninety-nine year old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I

 am God Almighty…. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.  You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  …  As for Sarah you’re your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.  I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her.  I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her.”  … then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?  Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”  …  God said, “…your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac.  I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.” …  And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.

Let us worship God Almighty.  Let us sing God’s praise.

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“I have a dream,” God Almighty proclaimed to the elderly Abraham and Sarah, “I will create and bless your family to be a light to the nations.”  And both Abraham and Sarah convulsed with laughter at the impossibility of it all.  But then they did have a son, Isaac, which means laughter.  And God’s dream lived on through him.  And Isaac married Rebekah, and they had twins, Esau and Jacob.  Jacob—who kicked his way out of the womb as the second-born—later deceived his father and brother to be number one.  But, surprisingly, ruthless Jacob, the deceiver, after wrestling mightily with God, was eventually blessed by God.  And through Jacob God’s dream lived on.  Then Jacob married Rachel, and though he had many children, none were by Rachel, until, in their old age, Rachel and Jacob had Joseph, who became the favored one, the most loved one, the spoiled one, the “last-becomes-first-one.”  Joseph became God’s dreamer, through whom God’s dream would live on.

But would it?  Or would God’s dream be murdered by the dream killers?

Hear God’s Word from selected verses of Genesis 37: 1—34:

This is the story of the family of Jacob.  Joseph, being seventeen years was shepherding the flock with his brothers…and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.  Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.  But when his brothers saw that their father loved Joseph more than all his brothers, they hated him….  Once Joseph had a dream,…and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I had a dream [that] the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”  But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father… said to him,, … “Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?”  So his brothers were jealous of him…and conspired to kill him.  They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer.  Let us kill him …; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams. … Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill

our brother?  Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites.  So they sold him for twenty

pieces of silver.  And they took Joseph to Egypt.  The brothers took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood, and later showed it to Jacob. 

Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son… .

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

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          Dream power.  Dreams, human and divine, have great positive power, but also can be seen as a great threat.  Always, the battle is between the dream and the killers of the dream.  That’s certainly true of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s proclamation we all know so well:  “I have a dream that all God’s children, black and white, Jews and gentiles, protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, free at last!”  For in less than 24 hours after the second time he preached the dream, the “dream killers” did their work, and a bullet tore through his jaw and neck, and he fell dying in a pool of blood.[1]  Then and even today, with the dramatic rise in hate groups in our country, with religious zealots blowing-up themselves and innocent others, and with religious and ethnic tension escalating both here and between many countries and faiths, King’s dream seem to die with him.  But is the dream dead?  Is God’s dream for humankind dead?  And the key question, what does it mean to us as people of faith to trust in God even when dreams—God’s dream and ours—seems to die? 

This is exactly what this extended narrative about God’s dealings with Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers is about.  “It is about the power of the dream, and the threat to `business-as-usual’ of the dreamer.  It is about the battle between the dream and the killers of the dream.”[2]  It is the salvation story of the mysterious, hidden, providential workings of God, the Maker of the Dream.  But also it’s about the incredibly powerful resistance to God’s dream by the evil in us humans.

          What I find so striking about this narrative, all thirteen chapters of it, is how utterly realistic it is about the human condition in general, as well as how realistic it is about how destructive dysfunctional families can become.  But even more striking in this story is how God can and will work with us, even against us, to redeem our more murderous impulses and actions, so that the dream—God’s dream, God’s covenant, God’s saving will—will be done. 

          But the threat to God’s dream is real, is to be taken seriously, and is very much a part of our lives today, from the global level to the personal, family level.  Did you recognize the eternal triangle in this family?  Did you see yourself or your family in it?  We’re all there, at one or more points in the triangle at various points in our lives at varying levels of intensity.  We can be:  Jacob, who loved Joseph too much and his other children too little; or Joseph, who was loved too much, too inappropriately, such that he lorded his special status over his brothers, tattling to Daddy their every transgression; or the brothers themselves who were so resentful and hateful that they wanted to murder Joseph, and so greedy that they did sell him into slavery, and so calloused that they broke their father’s heart. 

          But there’s more to the brothers’ rebellion than their hatred of Joseph.  Theirs is also a rebellion again God, the Dream Maker.  Since the Hebrew phrase here “Joseph the Dreamer” more precisely means “Joseph, the one empowered to prophetic dreams,”—God’s dreams—they recognized the divine truth of the dream, but saw it not as God’s loving, saving will, but rather, as a personal threat.[3]  So they did their best to stop the dreamer and kill the dream. 

This is where today’s text leaves us:  with the suffering in slavery of Joseph and with the Father’s heart totally broken.  In other words, hopelessness reigns.  For now, God’s dream for this family, for God’s covenant people, and for all humankind, seems dead.

          Which is also how it seemed a few thousand years later when the killers of the dream couldn’t stand the loving truth of Jesus and nailed him to a cross.  “Surely the dream is dead now,” they boasted.  And it surely seemed that way, as often it seems that way to us, when our dreams and God’s dream of peace and goodwill on earth are crushed and seemingly die.  But like Joseph, when we feel exiled and alone and without hope, and like Jacob when our hearts are broken by deep grief, when our dreams and God’s dream are crushed and are seemingly dead, God’s works in mysterious, hidden ways to redeem it all.  Such that, again like Joseph and Jacob, we do not give up.  We do not give up on dream power, on God—the maker of dreams and of dreams come true.

          What does it mean to trust in God, the maker of dreams?  It means never giving up.  It means that the story is not over when it feels over.  Even when it is over, it is not over.  God will find ways even to overcome our destructive ways.  God’s dream, God’s covenant to be our God and us to be God’s people is forever.  From generation to generation, God, the maker of the dream, keeps God’s promises and gives us good hope.  Therefore, never underestimate “Dream Power.”  Never underestimate the power of God, the maker and keeper of dreams.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.