Our God is an Awesome God

Genesis 28:10-19a
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
5th Sunday after Pentecost
July 17, 2011
Year A
Our God is an Awesome God


When Barry Merritt was a little boy, he fondly remembers playing baseball. Those were the days when his coach would take them all out on a picnic, and they would all have a good time. The coach would ask them, how many of you want to grow up and become a part of the major leagues, and play baseball in the big time. Every single had went up, every child had a dream of being something more than what they were, every child had something to aspire for and to hope for. When he grew up, he didn’t become a major league player – but he did become a coach. He had his own team, he was entrusted to pass on his dreams to the next generation. He did the things that his coach did. He had picnics for the boys, he asked the question that he had been asked – how many of you want to become major league players when you grow up? How many of you think you have what it takes to play professionally. Not one hand went up. Not one of the children had any hope or any dreams of being anything more than what they were. Barry had to stop and ask himself what went wrong? Who had stolen the dreams of these young people? More importantly, how do you give hope and encouragement to someone, who doesn’t have a dream of being anything more than what they are today?
It is our dreams that define us. Our dreams that call us forward. Our dreams that inspire us to move forward. The dream to play ball professionally is still a big one. I think of how many young men in Englewood who love to play basketball. Who if you ask them what they want to grow up to be – they tell you that they want to be a basketball player. A basketball player and a lawyer. If it keeps them in school, it keeps them motivated, it inspires them to do the right thing – then it is a wonderful dream. You never want to say anything to them to take away their dream. The good news for us today is that no matter how much the world change, no matter how much we change, the power of our dreams never change. If it is God that gave us that dream, then there is nothing in the world that can take it away. God gives us our dreams for a reason. It is in our dreams that God makes a promise to us. Promises for our future, for the future of the kingdom of God. A dream is the image of something that is not present yet, but is coming.
Genesis is another story of a young man and a dream. A pretty typical young man by today’s standards. He was always competing with his twin brother, always in some kind of trouble. He came from a religious family, but didn’t have much use for this God himself. But this time he has gotten into enough trouble that the dream may be in danger. He has been fighting so much with his brother, that his mother sends him away to a safe place – back to her family down home. During his escape he has a strange dream. A dream of angels descending and ascending into heaven. God speaks to him, reminds him of the promises of the past, and the promises of the future. Reminds him that the world is dependent on his dreams, his hope, his future. He changes his life, and learns to include God in everything that he does. That all that he does is dependent on the presence of God with him. For him to experience the love of God, this must be an awesome place. He sets a stone so that the place would be remembered. What he misses is that this is not an awesome place. But an awesome God. The presence of God with us is not a place or a thing, it is a relationship. Anyplace with God is awesome. Any dream that we have that includes God is an awesome. Because the God we worship is an awesome God. A god that is incomparable, unexplainable, and without rival.

Jacob called it Bethel, Jesus called it the kingdom of God. What do you call it? When you reach that point in your life when you feel the presence of God? And you know that God is with you?

In chapter 13 of Matthew jesus gives several parables that describe what the kingdom of God is like. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a field, a field of wheat with a bunch of tares. That is an interesting comparison. Jesus was a carpenter, not a farmer, so what did he know about planting seeds? And the people that Matthew would have wrote this story for were city dwellers, they too would not have understand planting. But this was written to address something going on in the church. People were starting to judge others. The bible teaches us right from wrong, good from bad. What do you do when you are doing to right thing, and you see other people doing the wrong thing. Is it time for you to judge them and what they are doing?

Is God always going to be with us, going to support us. Is everthing that we do right? We know that answer to that question no. Sometimes I do and sometimes not. But the real question for the disciples is how do you respond to people who you think are wrong? What happens when you disagree with their dreams? How do you respond? Do you respond? Do we ever have a right to judge someone else’s dream?

There were two stories in the news that resonate with this point. First there is the story of the 16 year old who just married a 60 year old. The met on the internet and talked for 4 months and decided that they were a match made in heaven. When you look at the girl, she has boobs out to here, wears short dresses, and is constantly smooching on this man. Hardly appropriate for a 16 year old. Her parents say that she is a devout Christian and feels that this marriage is the right thing to do. It makes you ask – what kind of church does she go to. More importantly, what kind of church does her parents go to that they would allow such a thing. Is she still a child of God? do we have a right to take away her dream?

And then there is the Casey Anthony case. She was just released and protestor were angry, feeling that she got away with murdering her daughter. Is she a child of God? Does God have a plan for her life? Was she guilty? Jesus says that none of that is our place to judge.

A group of pastors experienced that first hand in Rwanda as they witnessed whole congregations being killed. As their life was threatened, they ask their superiors what to do. They were told that that God no longer needed them. They were watching everyone getting killed around them, and their turn was coming too. God did not need them that was why this was happening. In the war between the Tutsis and hutu’s. there were tutsi and their bosses were hutus. Some were the wheat and some were the weeds.

That seems a little extreme, but when we judge other people as good and bad, right and wrong, us and them that is what we do. When we think we need to get rid of the wrong people in church that is whag we do.

There is good and bad in us all. But there is also a part of God. And only god knows the difference in us. If God can save a scoundrel like Jacob, then surely God has use for all of us, you and me.
Our God is an awesome God, God has some awesome plans for us, God has some awesome dreams for us.
Anyone who is a part of God, has a dream from God. If God gives you a dream God will make sure that it comes to fruition. For God’s sake not yours.

If you can think it, you caught it, God bought it, You sought it, I got it. God will give you the vision to see, the faith to believe, and the will to do some awesome plans. amen.