Sermon 5.4.14
Time has a way of fading the details of our memories. But what I remember about it was a meal in a familiar spot. O’ Charley’s in Brentwood. One of those rounded corner booths had our son Noah corralled but certainly not restrained. He was young and energetic and untamed. At one point during the course of our rather rambunctious meal, Noah sat in a contorted posture with legs and arms and body parts all sprawled on the curved bench and he looked to me and said, “Sit like me daddy.”
Rather than try to explain the finer points of table manners in that moment I decided to take the easier way out and said, “Little buddy, Daddy’s too big to sit like that.” To which Noah, without batting an eye said, “Daddy, one day when you get small will you be able to sit like me?”
I remember even in the moment being enamored with that thought. “One day, when I get small…”
When we were small
At what point do we stop dreaming? At what age do the childish visions of risk and adventure suffocate and die within us?
What sneaks in and steals our childlike idealism in the middle of the night? And do we realize when it happens or is it so slow and subtle that we don’t really notice until “impossible” has become an all too familiar part of our everyday vocabulary?
Why is it that children (those in our world with the smallest stature and the least power) are more willing to see above the fray toward endless possibilities? Is it because experience has not yet taught hard lessons about the consequences of pressing the limits? Is it because they are not yet burdened by the importance of responsibilities or the frailty of aching bodies?
There was a time when each of us was small, when sticks were swords able to vanquish evil foes, when a red wagon was really a horse drawn carriage ready to sweep us off to far away, unknown lands. There was time when imagination ran wild, when we dared to believe that there was good in every person we met. There was time when tree limbs beckoned to be climbed and the sand on the seashore represented and endless canvas of creativity. There was time when we were small…
When we got big
And then it happened…
On one level it was indeed inevitable. We all eventually get big. Limbs lengthen. Torsos get taller…and then eventually wider. Hair starts growing in unexpected and unwanted places.
But with the new vantage point that an extra foot or two provides we began to see roadblocks were there had once been only wide-open roads. We became mesmerized by things far too ordinary and accustomed to things that once made us ask “why?” or even “how?”.
Who is this thief in the night that creeps in as we grow and takes away our dreams, our imagination, our vision, our idealism, our sense of great mission and purpose?
Fear
Is it fear? Perhaps our vision is overwhelmed by the reality of experienced evil. Evil that is done to us. Evil that we do to others. We have become keenly aware that the world is not entirely safe. Our dreams are sifted by the strainer of our own fears and then cast aside for the sake of security.
We may be bored but at least we are comfortable and safe. This is our naïve assumption until the harsh reality of a broken world exposes that even when we are cautious, we are not immune to suffering or loss or pain. We can’t be careful enough. Our attempts to quarantine ourselves from disaster are in vain. For a wounded and now flailing world spinning out of control like an angry tornado is able to exact destruction even within our carefully crafted storm shelters.
This fear shrinks our sense of adventure and mission when cars and houses and gadgets become the substance of our dreams; when owning is all the vision we can muster because after all making a purchase is relatively safe endeavor.
Now that we are big we must become small enough to muster the kind of courage that does not allow fear to paralyze us. We must be small enough launch out on daring adventures, believing that the vision and mission are worth the risk. We won’t let the scars of past disappointments and wounds steal away the fearless spirit that once inhabited our smaller bodies.
People Pleasing
But perhaps fear is not the only thief at work. Was it people pleasing that stole our optimism and robbed us of our willingness to push the limits? If so it’s high time that we realized how fickle the masses can be, how quick to turn, how diluted their loyalty. One minute they want to make sacrifices to you is if you were deity, the next they are throwing stones at you and leaving you for dead. Ask Paul, he knows.
Our dreams are placed on the anvil of public opinion as the hammer of conformity beats out of us the willingness to think outside the box, beyond the status quo. Sometimes the thief comes in the form of disapproving words or smug looks. At other times the embarrassing proposition of possible failure is enough to strip us of real vision and mission and purpose, afraid of putting ourselves out there and then not succeeding, scared of what they will say.
But when we were small we saw people through a different lens. Their subtle acts of disapproval were mostly lost on us. Unaware of their condescension we were having too much fun to really care, far more consumed with the next possibility than with whether everyone liked the idea or not.
But it wasn’t as if we didn’t notice the people around us, more that we just didn’t really mind if they looked on us with patronizing or dismissive eyes. When we were small our egos weren’t so frail or puffed up that we demanded respect or reverence. We knew we were small and we were ok with that. And because we were small we were able to dream big.
Now that we are big we must become small enough to invite people to dream with us and to not take it personally when they don’t oblige. We must pursue those around us with love believing that the dreams and mission that God has placed upon our hearts are capable not only of changing the world but of changing those we live among, just as we ourselves are being changed. And we must be willing to shake the dust off of our feet or out of our clothes in order to not be held hostage by those who refuse to put their faith in anything beyond themselves or what they have always known.
Familiarity
Or maybe it was familiarity that robbed us. We’ve heard it all before and this steals from us of the wonder we once had at every turn. When we got big, so did our intellect and it crowded out the mystery and left us believing that anything beyond our ability to understand must be irrelevant or even suspect. New ideas, new possibilities, new endeavors and adventures are seen as childish by our grown up eyes and quickly traded for the predictable. But we must again become small enough to believe that although something we dreamed once has not happened yet, this does not mean that it will not happen still. We must be relentless in our vision of the way things could be, re-envisioning new methods while remaining true to the mission.
But the thief familiarity comes in many forms. Now that we are big we have seen so many hurting people, so much despair, so much hopelessness that we have become almost intentionally blind to it or worse used to it. We are either overwhelmed by the feebleness of our efforts when compared to the magnitude of it all, or we have become deadened by the constant guilt of doing relatively nothing at all about it. But we must dare to dream of solutions that are bigger than we are. We must become small enough to believe that while we want to be caught up in the adventure of bringing hope into hopeless places, we do not for a minute get caught in the trap of thinking that the burden of redemption rests solely, or even primarily, on our shoulders. We fight dragons with sticks but we do so among armies of warriors with the backing of the King.
Saul to Paul
As a church we have been making our way through The Story. This morning we find ourselves in chapter 29 which tells of a man who was first known by the name Saul. You’ll notice that the chapter is called “Paul’s Mission.” It becomes apparent from the start that something changes.
Saul was big. He was important. He was respected. He had things figured out. And you might say it seemed as if Saul was more interested in stopping things than he was in getting things started.
And then Saul had a life-changing encounter with the risen Jesus. Saul went from seeing everything to seeing nothing. He went from standing tall to kneeling in awe. And he went from being called Saul, which in Hebrew means, “asked of God,” to Paul, which in Greek means…”small.”
Saul became “small.”
And when Saul became small he began to dream, to vision, to imagine the possibilities. When Saul became small he understood and responded to a sense of mission and calling and purpose.
The kind of mission and vision that inspired a nearly thousand-mile journey. And then another. And then a third on foot, or the back of a donkey or in the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea in a primitive sail boat. To places that he had never been before among people that he had never met.
When Saul became small it produced in him the kind of reckless abandon that was ready to enter a theater teeming with an agitated mob shouting “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
When Saul became small he looked a Jewish sorcerer in the eye and didn’t back down. When he became small he was stripped, beaten with rods, severely flogged
When Saul became small it launched him out into the kind of mission and vision that prompted cellblock hymn singing while in the stockades.
When Saul became small he turned “tent making” or leatherworking into a missionary endeavor. Coworkers eventually became fellow missionaries and patrons left with far more than material goods.
When Saul became small he became passionately committed to a scandalous gospel that was an affront to the economy, to the political agendas, to the religious agendas (both pagan and Jewish) and mostly an affront to the status quo in general.
When Saul became small he planted churches literally all over the known world. He continued the vision and mission shared by Jesus in taking the good news to the ends of the earth. All the while he wrote letters to these churches, some thirteen of which are included in the most distributed book of all time, the Bible.
Bigger than US/In over our head
When Saul became small he wrote things like
“For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.11 Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.”
1 Corinthians 15: 9-11
Paul understood himself to be caught up in the swell of a redemptive story, of a vision and mission so big, so unthinkable, so impossible that it could have only been dreamed up and ultimately accomplished by God.
If we are to become small, if we are to dream these kind of dreams, then from beginning to end the vision and mission must be, inspired by the living God, confirmed by Him, empowered by Him and for His glory alone.
For ultimately dreams like these are not about us but solely about the God who does the unthinkable, unthinkably inviting our participation.
If it is a vision about us it is likely far too tame, far too colorless and ultimately temporary. If it is a participation in His ongoing mission and vision then we will find ourselves in way over our heads.
Collective Mission
On the other hand while the emphasis has been upon getting small, there are no doubt those among us who already think themselves too small to ever be a part of something so grand. After all there was only one Paul.
Be sure that the dreams and vision and mission of God are not reserved for the select few while the majority remain committed to ordinary, mundane living.
To this point, Paul also wrote in one of his letters…
“Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it.”
1 Corinthians 12:27
This is not ultimately about what YOU will do. This is about what we will do. And more this is about what He will do…has done…is doing.
When we get small we come to see that we are all of us caught up in His mission, in His dreaming and our God does not dream tame dreams. This is a collective kind of vision, one that spans cultures and countries and places and times. We are caught up in something greater than ourselves.
To this end Paul writes…
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service…
1 Corinthians 3:5-9
We are coworkers… collaborators, fellow dreamers. And these dreams are not just fanciful ideas but commissions and callings. When those who are small dream it rarely has them gazing wide-eyed out of windows in still pondering. No the dreams of those who are small lead to running full speed through the house, or the yard or the neighborhood or the church building. Perhaps in the days when we played like that, God was in fact preparing us for something. Each one of us. As a body. With different gifts, and tasks and passions. Working together for the same purpose.
The mission that our God has commissioned us into of ushering His Kingdom on earth just as it is in heaven, leads us to respond in varying ways and places and callings. Some will travel long and far as Paul was compelled to do. For the ends of the earth have seemingly expanded and while travel has gotten considerably easier the Gospel is no less compelling or offensive in our own day than it was in the days of Paul and the apostles. Others will simply venture across the street to knock on the door of a neighbor, or to the ends of the office complex to sit in someone’s office or to the corners of the school campus. This may be the most difficult response of all because at times it seems far more difficult for us to stay on a mission than it is for us to go on one.
But the people of our city are in desperate need as well. Some live in neighborhoods that we rarely, if ever, frequent, others live next door in Wildwood Estates where the need may seem less apparent but is no less real.
As we become small our big dreams will have us painting and laughing and cleaning and sharing and writing and baking and selling and giving, according to our gifts and circumstances and passions.
“If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
1 Corinthians 12:17-18
Motivated By Love
Still no matter the gift, no matter the specific vision or mission. Regardless of how big or small the task may seem the primary motivation for all of us remains the same. We are inspired by the same thing.
For Christ’s love compels us.
For “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I have to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
And this is perhaps where our childish ways end. For our big dreams are not ultimately compelled by selfish desires for fun or fame or by an unquenchable thirst for more but by unconditioned, unhindered extravagant and senseless love. We dream big because we love much. We dream big because we have been loved much. And our actions, though at times risky or scandalous, can never be void of love.
The call to become small
Today is Senior Sunday. Those who were once small among us have now begun to get big.
Be sure this is not the commencement address that inspiringly beckons for you to go out there and make something of yourself…
This is the call of the Gospel that says in light of what God has already made you, go…
– guided and empowered by the Spirit
– for His glory
– in collaboration with others
– as a participant in something that is far greater than just you and not ultimately about you
It is our prayer that we as your family, as your church will continue to be small enough to not only teach you how to dream big but to model it. When you return home we intend that you will find us responding all the more to the mission and vision that has been set before us. And we look forward with eager anticipation to hearing the stories of what God is dreaming and doing in the places that He is about to take you.
So for all of us, whether we are headed soon off to college or whether we are simply going back to work or school…the calling and the commission are the same.
Go…Be small but dream big.
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