There’s One in Every Family

There’s One in Every Family

Genesis 37:1-28

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Rev. Jeanne Thomas

Dreamers. They’re the ones who seem to have their heads stuck in the clouds and are always thinking up new ways of being and doing. And quite frankly, they annoy those of us pragmatists who like to know exactly where we are and where we’re headed.

There may even be one in your family. You know—the one who’s out of step with the rest of your siblings and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to talk any sense into them.

The dreamer may even be you.

In Jacob’s family, the dreamer was Joseph. He never helped in the fields, was coddled by his father, and liked to strut around in front of his brothers in a coat with a regal design and long sleeves, “the amazing technicolor dreamcoat” sung about in the musical about Joseph’s life. And now he has the audacity to share his dream of ruling over them, even though he’s the 11^th in line out of 12 sons.

When you’re son #11, even if you’re also the first-born of your father’s favorite wife, Rachel, you’re not supposed to jump ahead to the top of the family hierarchy. You’re not supposed to tattle on your older brothers. You’re not supposed to pretend you’re better and flaunt an extravagant gift that only you received. You’re supposed to stay quiet and wear hand-me-downs. I’m the youngest of 3 children, and believe me, those unspoken rules were made quite clear to me, and at a very early age.

But Joseph violated family systems theory and the Presbyterian motto of doing things decently and in order. And it provoked such strong resentment in his brothers that they wanted to kill the dream—and kill Joseph. They throw him into a pit instead, since there’s no blood involved and they can’t be accused of murder. Then when Ishmaelite traders pass by, they sell him for a few shekels of silver, cut up the despised coat and dip it in blood, and present it to their father, Jacob. Some family story, huh?

Well, like all stories in the Bible, it’s there for a reason. Like his ancestors before him, God gives Joseph a vision of the future and of his unique place in it. And he holds onto that dream through years of slavery, deception, hardship, and solitude, and it keeps his faith alive.

But the problem with dreams is that even when they are clear to us, they may seem bizarre and ridiculous to everyone else.

As a physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes practiced medicine at the time ether was first discovered. In order to know how his patients felt under its influence, he had a dose administered to himself.

As he was going under, in a dreamy state, a profound thought came to him. He believed that he had suddenly grasped the key to all the mysteries of the universe. When he regained consciousness, however, he was unable to remember what the insight was. He was certain his dream would hold great importance for humanity, so he decided to try once again.

This time he had a stenographer present to record his great thought. The ether was administered, and sure enough, just before falling asleep, the insight reappeared. He mumbled the words, the stenographer recorded them, and he went to sleep confident that he had succeeded. Upon awakening, he turned eagerly to the stenographer and asked her to read his profound words of wisdom. And she read back to him: “The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine.”^{^[i]}

As Joseph quickly discovered, it can be difficult to explain to others just how realistic and profound our dreams can be. In one, he told them, he and his brothers are binding sheaves in the field, and his sheaf stands up while the brothers’ sheaves bow down to him. In the second, the sun, moon and 11 stars bow down to Joseph. But understandably, the brothers didn’t want to believe a dream in which they might serve their younger brother. And they thought Joseph was arrogant and pretentious for even telling them about it in the first place, and hated him for it.

But that’s the effect one person’s dream can have on people. Forty-five years ago this coming Saturday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial and told a quarter-million people of his dream. A dream about all people being created equal. A dream of brotherhood and sisterhood, of justice, and transformation. A dream that expressed the hope that one day every valley would be exalted, every hill and mountain would be made low, the rough places would be made plain, the crooked places made straight, and the glory of the Lord would be revealed and all flesh would see it together.

But people hated him for his dream…people who, out of their own fear or insecurity or ignorance were unable or unwilling to embrace the dream he had. He threatened their own vision of the way the world should be ordered. And they killed the dream, or so they thought, just as Joseph’s brothers thought they had done thousands of years before.

But the one truth about dreams is that if God is behind the dream, a dream can become reality. Even though King was killed for his dream, the civil rights movement took hold, and King’s dream began to take shape and come to fruition, and continues to be fulfilled today.

That’s the difference a dream can make. And as Marian Anderson has said, “when we stop having dreams, we may as well stop altogether.”^{^[ii]} Some dreams may come in the night and need interpreting. Others may come in broad daylight and emerge out of our past and present experiences. But, however they materialize, dreams are the intrusion of God into our settled world, and can change the course of history.

Years later, while imprisoned in Egypt, Pharoah learned of Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams and asked him to analyze an especially confusing and disturbing dream of his own. Joseph tells him that famine will strike and he must prepare the nation for survival. And the Pharoah pulls Joseph out of prison and puts him in charge of all of Egypt, second in power only to Pharoah himself, and Joseph’s dream is realized as well, as he saves the lives of his brothers and of all the people of Israel.

What are your dreams? Do you still have any? Walter Brueggemann says we who are children of the Enlightenment don’t linger over such elusive experiences as dreams.^{^[iii]}We don’t like unexplained experiences because we can’t control them.

But I believe each of us does have a dream, even if we don’t articulate it. Or at least, we once did. We had a dream when we were children, trying to envision our future. We had a dream when we went to college, or took our first job. We had a dream when we were first married, or had our first child. We had a dream when we bought our first house, joined our first church, joined this community of faith. And sometimes we give up on that dream and get tired of pursuing it, or cynicism sets in and we can no longer see a way for our dream to materialize. And for many of us, our dreams get reshaped into something far less than we initially imagined. As Thoreau once put it, “The young man gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon…and at length the middle aged man decides to build a wood shed with them.”

I hope our dreams haven’t been relegated to building a wood shed. I hope we can be like Dara Torres, the 41-year old Olympic swimmer who won her 3rd silver medal last night and was flanked on either side at the medal ceremony by two women whose combined ages were less than hers. She was later asked in a television interview what she would say about her experience to her 2-year-old daughter when she was old enough to understand what her mother accomplished. “You don’t have to put an age limit on your dreams,” was her reply.

I hope we continue to dream dreams and have visions of a future that we can help shape and direct. For as Anne Lamott reminds us, “When God is going to do something amazing, God always starts with an impossibility.”^{^[iv]} And when we are willing to listen to what God is telling us, and put energy and conviction behind it, impossibilities become possible.

Did you read the book or see the movie Seabiscuit? It’s the amazing, true story of three broken-down, disillusioned men whose dream made history.

The story occurs in the early 1930s, when millionaire Charles Howard copes with the death of his son by immersing himself in horse racing. He meets Tom Smith, a seemingly washed-up race horse trainer unable to adapt to a modern world. But he seems to have something special, and Howard hires him as head trainer for his racing stable. While scouting for new horses, Smith spots Seabiscuit, a small, gangly colt who, despite being the grandson of the legendary champion, Man O’ War, has descended to the lowest ranks of the race circuit. But Smith sees potential in the horse and convinces Howard to buy him.

At first, Seabiscuit refuses to let anyone ride him until one day Red Pollard, a down-on-his-luck jockey, wanders into the Howard Stable. Like Smith, Red has a gift working with difficult horses and he and Seabiscuit immediately take to each other. Under Smith’s training, Red and Seabiscuit begin winning races and breaking records. And ultimately, Seabiscuit goes on to beat War Admiral, the greatest race horse of the time.

Seabiscuit became a national hero, but even more than that, he symbolized the American dream for those whose dreams were smashed by the Depression. And he gave people hope and faith in themselves and in the power of dreams to come true.^{^[v]}

Joseph’s dream came true, but not before he was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, falsely accused of adultery, and forgotten by fellow inmates. It is an anguished story that reminds us of another dreamer—and one of Joseph’s descendents—Jesus Christ. He, too pleaded with God in the pit of despair in the Garden. He, too was sold for a few shekels of silver and falsely accused and forgotten.

But, of course, it wasn’t just Jesus who had a dream, but God did, too. The Word became flesh – and gave US life in the process. And we are continuing to live out those promises of God even now…because we, too now know those promises are secure.

Proverbs 29:18 says that without vision, the people will perish. As a family of faith, my prayer for each of us is that there isn’t just one dreamer here among us, but that we would become a family of dreamers, with our heads stuck in the clouds, knowing that with God, anything and everything is possible. Amen.

Gracious God, you have given us a dream we know will come true, because you have given us a Savior. Help us now to keep the dream alive through our faithful discipleship in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.