August 17, 2025 – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Daniel 2.31-35

Romans 8.18-25

Through the Looking Glass

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

 

Much like last week, I’ve had to shift gears for this morning.  Through the summer we’ve been looking at sermon topics you all have suggested, principally by way of last March’s Spontaneous Sermon Sunday.  This morning we were scheduled to take a thoughtful look at the Old Testament book of Job, which one of you asked for.  However, the you who asked for Job couldn’t be in church today, and since I’m writing it at their request I’ve decided to put it off until the fall and switch gears once again.  However, unlike last week, I am not going back to the Froggatt Files for this morning’s sermon.  Instead, I’m going to dip into the United Church of Chester files.  You didn’t know I was keeping a file on you, did you?  In the past eight years, we have had three Spontaneous Sermons Sundays, and I have saved all your sermon requests:  your pointed questions, your wonderings, your earnest wrestling with difficult topics, your faithful aspirations, your hopes and dreams for the church and for the world.  So this week I reread them all, sorted them by topic, and thought I’d pick out some common themes and see if we can’t tease out a theology of our congregation this morning.  You might say I’m holding up a mirror to you all, reflecting some of your own questions and concerns – let’s see what we can view through the looking glass together.

But first, a word about hopes and dreams, because these are two important ways of connecting with God.  In Old Testament days, a dream was understood as a method of divining the heart of God.  We remember the stories of Jacob’s dreams in Genesis – he dreamed of a ladder ascending to heaven, and when we were young many of us sang about climbing Jacob’s ladder.  He also dreamed about wrestling with an angel as he approached a tense reunion with his brother whom he cheated.  And through them both, Jacob came to a better understanding of who he was, and what God was calling him to do.  In I Kings, God came to Solomon in a dream and told him he could have anything he asked for, anything at all:  Solomon asked, not for power or riches or fame, but for wisdom, which showed that he had possessed wisdom all along.  And Pat just read us Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  The king had had the most perplexing dream and it so vexed him that he offered a place in the royal court to anyone who could tell him what it meant.  Daniel revealed its meaning, that the king would abide, but future rulers would see their power and influence slowly disintegrate:  the head of the statue that dominated the king’s dream was solid gold:  that was the king himself.  But the rest of the body, representing his descendants, slowly deteriorated:  the chest and arms were silver, the midsection and thighs were bronze, the legs were iron, and it had feet of clay.  This was God’s message to Nebuchadnezzar, that the royal succession would come to a mortal end.

I often turn to Paul’s words in Romans when I think of hope, because it reminds us that hope is both real and ephemeral, often at the same time.  We cannot see hope – “Hope that is seen is not hope,” Paul writes, “for who hopes for what one already sees?”  And yet hope remains a solid foundation:  “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”  In other words, hope will one day be fulfilled and redeemed.

So what are our hopes and our dreams for ourselves and our church?  What are our wonderings, our perplexities, our joys?  Many of you wrote about the church as a physical place that leads to a metaphysical experience.  You see it as a place of meditation and prayer, a place where we can be spiritually fed and prepared for the week ahead.  There is comfort and familiarity in this house of worship for many of us.  We come in, see familiar faces, greet some of the new faces and sit together in the presence of God.  This is important to you, and it is important to me as well.  One of the many things I enjoy about Sunday morning here in this place with all of you is the chance to greet you before the service begins.  It is important for me to connect with you as we prepare to connect with God together.  And whenever I see a new face  – and every one of you whose first time here has come during my ministry knows this – I will seek you out and say hello so that we already have the beginnings of a relationship when the service begins.  The church is one of the places we can be in the company of one another at the same time we are in the company of God.

But the church as a place is only the starting point for something larger.  Many of you wrote about the importance of outreach and inclusion, and I don’t know if you learned from me or I learned from you because these are two fundamentals that I view as central not just to our church’s mission and ministry, but a key part of our corporate personality as well.  You’ve heard me speak about outreach and inclusion so much I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve tired of it, but I have always believed that mission is the lifeblood of the church.  My church in Beverly lived this out in a memorable way by bringing a bloodmobile from Mass General to the church parking lot a few times a year, allowing us to make the clear connection of community ministry as the lifeblood that circulates and maintains the heartbeat of the church.  Jesus was always about reaching out to others, especially to others who were excluded by mainstream society.  He reached out to the poor and the homeless, to tax collectors and people of questionable repute.  He reached out to the hungry and the hopeless, to the stranger and immigrant and alien.  In an age when the church wonders about its own survival and institutional legacy – and we’ll be talking more about that next week – we need to remember the ministry of Jesus.  His ministry was itinerant, he didn’t put down many roots, and he was definitely not about creating an institution – he was more about creating a community where people cared for one another and accepted one another and prayed for one another and learned to love on another, no matter what..  Indeed, Jesus reserved some of his harshest words for those who sought to place the needs of the church – in his day, the temple – over the needs of the neediest.  This is the kind of church many of you have said you want, and I am convinced that this is the kind of church that appeals to others:  a church that pays attention to the needs of our neighbors, a church that listens and responds, a church that cares, a church that loves, a church that makes a difference.

Then there are the virtues and values you wanted to hear more about, peace, and love and justice, and in particular, the Golden Rule.  It was in his Sermon on the Mount that Jesus said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” and for him it was a paraphrase of the Levitical Code that teaches “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself, [for] I am the Lord your God.”   You wanted to hear more about forgiveness and compassion which to me are tender thoughts and reach right to the heart of the gospel of Christ.  You wrote about empathy and friendship and honesty.  And really friends, this is a looking-glass into your soul, into the soul of our church, and it is a large-hearted soul that we see here.

And there is one more trait I want to share – one of you wrote it back in 2019 and it is just as relevant today as it was then, probably even more so.  “We can” – and I admire the confidence in these words, We can – “We can turn the tide of negativity and divisiveness around that are prevalent in the world today.”  It wasn’t “How can we,” but rather “We can.”  There is confidence in that statement, there is positivity, there is willingness, there is conviction.  Yes, we can, and Yes, we do.  By means of all those other virtues you value, we can turn it around.  Not all at once, but bit by bit, one individual, one soul at a time, we can make a difference and replace the negative with the positive, and division with unity.

These are your hopes.  These are our dreams.  These are the things we can do together because these are the things we want to do together, and from the vantage point as our church’s minister, these are the things we are doing together.  Can we do more?  Absolutely – and we will.  And the fact that these are the things on your heart for our church – a place for inner spirituality that prepares us for outward acts of faith, hope and love – indicates we are equipped for the journey ahead, and that God walks with us every step of the way.  This is who I see when I look out from the pulpit – take a good look in the mirror, friends, it is where you will recognize your truest selves.