From the Pastor, Dennis Plourde
|
|
Being a congregation of growing believers, God calls us, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, to be a continuing Christian influence of grace, peace and joy, to offer God's salvation, healing and hope to our community. |
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Our Vision
Proverbs 29:18; Acts 10:1-16 |
Have you ever had a strange or confusing dream?
A dream that stayed with you making you wonder what it meant and making you
wish for someone to interpret what it meant? When we would walk from Santa
Monica to Venice on the boardwalk we would note the number of fortunetellers
who promised to interpret dreams and tell your future. More each time we took
the walk! We want to know tomorrow but no one can tell us anything beyond
today. We long for a Joseph or Daniel to interpret our dreams. Someone who
can explain our dreams and visions.
Dreams and visions have long been a part of
Biblical history. We note that in the inter-testamental period there were no
dreams or visions for over 400 years. Silence from God was the norm in this
period. There were no dreams or visions. There was no direction for the
people of God. No forward vision.
Visions are always forward looking. The past
is easy. It is the future we are unsure of… where do we go from here? We will
be spending the month of June looking at the vision statement that you adopted
at your annual meeting (it is our statement, I would have voted for it had I
been here!). We will examine the question: "What is our vision?"
I want to begin with the Proverb that we read
this morning. Most of us are probably more familiar with the translation from
the King James Version: "Where there is no vision the people perish."
Or as a modern day proverb says: "If you aim at nothing you
usually hit it." What are our dreams and goals for the coming year –
to get out of bed each morning! I recall being at a conference in the
mid-1970's and as we were in a small group the leader asked us this question,
"Where do you want to be in ten years?" As we went around the circle
each of us had some idea of where we would like to be in ten years. We were
all satisfied with our answers. The follow-up question was not one that we
were prepared for. "What are you doing now to make your vision a
reality?" She went on to say that our dreams and visions for the future
are important but it is also important that we begin planning NOW to make the
future a reality. Now I remember the answer that all of us gave (we have
remained friends and kept in touch) to where we wanted to be in ten years.
None of us ended up where we thought we would be – but, the work and
planning that we did to attain that goal prepared us for even more challenging
and satisfying work! It reminded me that a vision is a fluid process –
it is not written in concrete.
Do you remember typewriters? And the correcting
of typing errors? No matter how careful you were you knew that a mistake had
been made. You could not erase and type over without letting people know you
had goofed. Today with computers and word processing programs mistakes can
easily be corrected and no one knows that you typed the wrong letter, word,
etc. They make our lives more fluid – making changes easier. Visions
are fluid – they are not meant to be chiseled in stone but written in
sand.
Now let's turn to the Scripture passage in
Acts: two men, two visions. Cornelius and Peter are both devout men of God.
One is a Jew, the other a Gentile. Both of these men are seeking God's
direction for their lives. Neither one is probably expecting to be in contact
with the other. The angel of the Lord comes to Cornelius and gives him
specific instructions, concrete directions to Peter. He shares his vision
with his servants and sends them off to find this man and bring him back as
God has instructed.
Peter is hungry. He goes to the rooftop and
waits for lunch to be ready (where do aromas go? UP!) As he is waiting to
eat he has this vision of food. Not just any food but food he is not allowed,
under the law, to eat. He does not see a hamburger, but a bacon double
cheeseburger. He would not put meat and cheese together and you can forget the
bacon! Three times he has this vision of "unclean" foods. (Ever wonder if
Peter was a slow learner?) Three times, take and eat.
Why would God call Peter to break the law? If
we read one more verse we discover that "…Peter was greatly puzzled
about what to make of the vision that he had seen…"
|
I want to share some differences that I noted in
the two visions. First, Cornelius is visited by an angel (fear – the
usual Biblical response to angel visits) and he is given very specific
directions. Send for Peter who is staying in Joppa, at the home of Simon the
tanner who lives by the sea. I imagine if they had house numbers Cornelius
would have been given the exact number of the house. The words are very
specific. There is no way that Cornelius can misinterpret the meaning of the
encounter.
Peter, on the other hand, sees a vision. He has
an unexplained dream. He sees foods that are contrary to his upbringing. He
has been a good Jewish boy as far as the dietary laws are concerned. There is
no direction, no indication of men coming from Cornelius to get him. He is
left to puzzle out what this means. I am not sure if we realize how
disturbing this would be to Peter. He is being asked to break regulations
that he has kept his whole life. His world is being turned upside down
again! "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
As he is puzzling over this the men knock on the
door, ask for Peter and the Spirit prompts him to respond and to go with
them. Peter the Jew is off to begin a ministry with a Gentile man, family
and region. Before Paul begins his ministry to the Gentiles Peter is heading
for Caesarea to proclaim the message of Christ to the Gentiles.
In our vision God calls us to be a people of
faith, community and love. The invitation is for you to come and join us as
we work in formulating our vision – living out our vision in our daily
lives. We know that as God calls, God equips us for the task we are called to
do. God has a job for us. This is our vision – being a congregation of
the people of God committed to seek and to serve as we are called.
Our vision statement calls us to influence the
world (or our part of it) with grace, peace and joy. Who does not want these
three in their lives? We want the forgiveness that grace offers, the peace
that passes all understanding and the joy that fills us with a hope that even
in darkness the morning dawn will come. Now this is open to a variety of ways
to be fulfilled. Which is how it should be, flexible and fluid.
There are those who are good at the blueprints,
others who can take the blueprints and bring them to life. Then there are
those of us who have to see things before we can understand how they are
assembled, etc. I am real good at taking things apart. From my earliest days
I have been able to take things apart without much trouble at all. However,
when it comes to putting them back together that is another whole story. Now,
I am improving (Diane is nodding her head), but she still hears a cry for help
every now and then. I get something apart and have no idea how to get it back
together. She has rescued me many times from disaster by being able to get
things back together after I have disassembled them!
We come to this community with differing gifts,
but each gift can be used to bring about the vision of being a people who
offer grace, peace and joy to a broken and fallen world.
The invitation is for you to come and journey
with us. The symbols of this table help define the second part of the vision
statement, "to offer God's salvation, healing and hope…" They are present at
this table. We have been redeemed by Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Our
salvation has been paid for. We have been healed by his stripes. He took for
us the punishment we deserved and in doing so has offered us the hope of a new
tomorrow. We are filled with the knowledge that in Christ all is well.
There is hope for each new day.
Our vision is that others will find Christ
through us and the ministries that we engage in as a community of believers.
As we live out the vision of First Baptist Church, as we put aside petty
differences and join hands to change the world, we live out our vision
statement. We are one in Christ. The Table calls us, reminds us that it is
the defining statement of who we are: our vision.
Being a congregation of growing believers,
God calls us, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, to be a continuing
influence of grace, peace and joy, to offer God's salvation, healing and hope
to our community.
Join us on the journey. Join us at this
Table of our Lord.
|
|
