THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
September 23, 2007 Proper 20C
The Rev. M. Anthony Seel, Jr.
St. Andrew’s Anglican Church
Daniel 2:1-16
Trusting God
Jackie Pullinger was five years old when a missionary spoke to her Sunday School class. The missionary pointed at Jackie and her twin sister, saying, "And could God want you on the Mission Field?" Jackie remembers thinking, "The answer to that question cannot be ‘no’ because, or course, God wants everyone on the Mission Field." [Chasing the Dragon, p. ]
At five years of age, she had no idea what a Mission Field was, but she told a friend that she wanted to be a missionary. It wasn’t long before everyone knew about Jackie’s sense of calling. In Boarding School, and then the Royal Academy of Music, Jackie held onto her sense of calling. As she neared graduation from music school, Jackie wrote to mission societies in Africa and not one wanted her.
Then none night she had a dream. In her dream she saw her family crowded around their dining room table. On the table was a map of Africa, and in the middle of Africa was a pink-colored country. In the dream, Jackie leaned in to see the name of the country and she discovered that it was Hong Kong.
"Aah," she said, "I never knew Hong Kong was there."
"Yes, of course, it is, didn’t you know?" replied her Aunt Dotty in a condescending tone.
After this, Jackie Pullinger contacted the Hong Kong government and a missionary society, but to no avail.
She couldn’t understand any of this, and she went to a small church nearby to pray. As she prayed, Jackie had a vision of "a woman - holding out her arms, as if requesting help - something like a refugee poster." Jackie wondered what this woman wanted.
Then she saw words like a scroll across a television screen - "What Can You Give Us?"
Jackie thought about this. What could she give? Her ability to play piano or oboe? Could she pass on to others the education that she had received? Was she called to distribute food or money or clothing? She thought about the woman in the vision and came to understand that if she were fed she’d only get hungry again. Jackie says,
"Then it came to me that what she needed was the love of Jesus; if she
received that, then when I left her she would be full and, even better, she
would be able to share it with other people." Chasing the Dragon, pp. 23- 29
What do we make of dreams and visions?
In our lesson from Daniel today, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream. He calls together his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and Chaldeans - those expert in interpreting psychic phenomena. By the way, Chaldeans is translated astrologers in the New International Version of the Bible. All of these persons are supposedly able to understand and explain dreams and visions, but Nebuchadnezzar adds a special condition to this case. He demands that his sages tell him the dream and then interpret it.
The sages were alarmed at this demand and they protested.
Daniel 2: 7b-9 (ESV)
"Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation."
The king answered and said, "I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm--
if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation."
At this, the sages protested even more vigorously.
2:10-11
The Chaldeans answered the king and said, "There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.
The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh."
Only sages protested than only the gods could do what the king was demanding.
Not long after she received the vision of a woman asking, "What Can You Give Us?" Jackie
Pullinger met up with Richard, a Christian man she knew who asked if God had given her any
specifics related to the vision that she had received. Jackie admitted that she hadn’t gotten any
answer to her prayers for details, and he invited her to a prayer meeting at his church.
Jackie reports that at the prayer meeting she heard a woman speaking quietly and this is what
she heard: "Go.
"Trust me, and I will lead you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way
which you shall go; I will guide you with my eye." [ibid., p. 30]
Jackie believed that God was directing her to go to Hong Kong, but she didn’t understand how. Richard said to her,
"If God is telling you to go; you had better get on the move."
What do we do as Christians when we have a strong leading from God to do something but few details? Richard is right - "If God is telling you to go; you had better get on the move."
God told Abraham to leave his home, and go to a land that God would show him (Genesis 1:1). "So Abrah went, as the Lord told him." Abraham, named Abram at the time, was 75 years old when God first spoke to him (Genesis 12:4).
Moses was in Midian tending sheep for his father-in-law when the Lord appeared to him in a burning bush. God said to Moses,
Exodus 3:7-8
"I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Moses was told the destination, but not the way, nonetheless, Moses was obedient.
God often speaks to His people in visions and dreams.
Nebuchadnezzar was an emotional and violent man. Hearing the protests of his sages he commanded that they all be killed. The king’s decree went out and Daniel and his companions were sought out to be killed along with the Babylonian officials.
vv. 14-16
Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon.
He declared to Arioch, the king’s captain, "Why is the decree of the king so urgent?" Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel.
And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king.
Arioch is the king’s chief executioner and he is the one who comes to take Daniel and his companions away for execution. In the face of certain death Daniel calmly requests an appointment with the king for the purpose of interpreting the king’s dream.
1. Daniel knows that it is not the gods who reveal dreams as the sages of Babylon have stated. It is the one, true God who has the power to do so.
2. Daniel knows that he has received power from God to interpret visions and dreams.
3. Daniel believes that God will give him knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation.
David was so confident of all this that he requested an appointment with the king to do what the Babyonian sages could not do. Daniel was certain that God could give him knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream; he staked his life on this.
Jackie Pullinger was just 22 when she arrived in Hong Kong. "Chasing the dragon" is the English version of a Chinese phrase meaning a form of illicit drug use. Chasing the Dragon is also the title of Jackie Pullinger’s account of her work with drug addicts, prostitutes, and other criminals in the Walled City of Hong Kong. The Walled City is a place within Hong Kong where strangers are not welcome and the police seldom enter. As Pullinger’s book explains,
It is a haven of filth, crime and sin… Thirty thousand people - maybe
twice that - live in a few cramped, dismal acres. [Backcover]
Jackie says that one name for the Walled City in Chinese is Hak Nam. Hak Nam in English means darkness.
She speaks of the her first time in the Walled City:
"I will never forget the smell and the darkness, a fetid smell of rotten
foodstuffs, excrement, offal, and general rubbish… As we
walked on between the houses their projecting upper storeys almost
touched each other above us, so that only occasionally would the
sunlight penetrate in strong shafts of brightness among the shadows."
[p. 35]
The Walled City has no sanitation, water, and few street lights (p. 36). What electricity is available is stolen from the Hong Kong public utility. The Walled City is 6 acres cordoned off where illegal drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling all flourish - all controlled by gangsters.
God sent Jackie to this mission field and prospered her work there. Hundreds of drug addicts, prostitutes and other criminals have come to faith in Jesus Christ because Jackie Pullinger’s work in Hak Nam. It all began with a missionary’s talk to some kindergarten kids and a vision. "A vision of a woman -- holding out her arms beseechingly as on a refugee poster." Then the words: "What Can You Give Us? (p. 29)" Jackie realized what she could give - the very gospel of Jesus Christ.
In a dream, Jackie saw where God wanted to send her - to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, she was invited to teach in a school in the Walled City, a Christian school. Jackie did teach there and she also started a youth club. Gang members and addicts came, some became Christians and joined her in her work.
Jackie’s financial support increased so that she could quit her school job and devote herself full time to her ministry on the streets of the Walled City. With the help of American missionaries, Jackie set up the Saint Stephen’s Society that works in Hong Kong and other parts of Southeast Asia.
In 1993, the Walled City was torn down. In the late 70s and into the 80s, over 3,000 police raids resulted in control of the Walled City being wrested from the gangs there, but the squalid living conditions remained. Today, the work of the St. Stephen’s Society happens all over Hong Kong as mission teams spread out to feed, clothe, and serve the poor. There is one church and three St. Stephen Society Rehabilitation Centers in Hong Kong. One convert went to Macao and set up a rehab. Center there.
The work of Jackie Pullinger and the St. Stephen’s Society began with a vision and a dream.
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is full of visions and dreams. In the early centuries of the Church we see saints receiving visions and dreams from God: Polycarp, Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome - this is a Who’s Who of the first five hundred years or so of the Church.
In his book, Those Controversial Gifts, Pastor George Mallone asks this question: "Why is it that God chooses to make use of dreams and visions at all?" He offers four reasons.
First, the conscious mind is "not always receptive to the Spirit of God." Through visions and dreams God can bypass the barriers that we put up that can block His message to us.
Second, images communicate many times more strongly than words. Finish this sentence: A picture is worth … (a thousand words).
Third, visions and dreams are avenues into dimensions of reality that we could not otherwise access. Through dreams and visions God can open to us dimensions of spiritual reality that we could not otherwise reach.
Fourth, visions and dreams, like stories, both reveal and conceal. One part of a vision or dream can be understand right away. Something else that wasn’t obvious at first can come into great clarity later.
[Those Controversial Gifts, pp. 64-65]
We need a fresh vision from the Lord right now. We are at one of the most challenging points that has ever faced this congregation. What we do today will affect the destiny and future of this parish like few other decisions did or could. We do need a fresh vision from the Lord and the patience to wait for it.
A fair number of years ago I went to a week-long Christian seminar. One of the concepts that the speaker talked about was the death of a vision and the birth of a new vision. He gave multiple biblical examples of this.
We are at the death of a vision place right now. Whatever we believed five years ago or more about the destiny and future of this parish must change. Now is a time for a fresh vision. We, like Daniel, must be confident that God will provide for us that new vision for our future together. Facing the prospect of his own death, Daniel trusts God. Facing into the uncertainty of the present moment, we must trust God. Like Daniel, we must trust that God will reveal His dream to us. We must trust that God will lead us forward.
Like Israel at the Exodus, we are leaving Egypt. It is time to believe that God has something better for us even though all we can see ahead is wilderness. We too must trust that God has something better for us as we look forward to the Promised Land. As Richard said to Jackie, "If God is telling you to go - you had better go."
The famous aviator Charles Lindbergh once said,
We actually live today in our dreams of yesterday;
and living in these dreams, we dream again.
[quoted in Robert Dale, To Dream Again, p. 148]
It is time for us as a congregation to dream again. Unless our dream or vision comes from God we will fail. It is time to trust God, to pray and to wait.
None of those items is easy - trusting, praying, or waiting; but this is God’s call for us today.
