“Field of Dreams”

Acts 2:1-21

May 30, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

I do not think that I have told you that I grew up in a neighborhood full of ten boys and three girls, not counting my sister. I do not know if I could have asked for a better neighborhood to grow up in. All of us were about the same age, within two or three years of each other. None of us were born in that neighborhood. All of our parents bought houses on Laurie Circle in our early years. And so for a time, we were all together. When I was five and she was four, Tanya Curtis and I had chicken pox together. I always thought that Tanya and I would end up married to one another. After all, having chicken pox together created quite a bond.

In our neighborhood, whatever the sports season happened to be was the sport that we played. In the fall, we played football in my yard and in the Exums’ yard. Together, with a flower bed between them, the yards made a full length football field. In the winter, we played basketball behind Freddy Young’s house. He had one of those driveways that went down a hill and whose garage went under the house. Just before it did, there was a great, flat, slab of concrete and a basketball goal on one end of it. So on afternoons after school and on Saturdays and Sundays, all of us would be at Freddy’s house playing basketball. In the spring and in the summer we would gather behind John Headrick’s house. His back yard along with two others made a great baseball field complete with two fences. On the other side of one of those fences was a basset hound who loved to eat baseballs. In the evenings, when the sun had set, we often played a game called jailbreak which really was a glorified version of hide and go seek. The difference was that you played it with teams and when someone in your team was captured, one of your teammates could run into home base, scream at the top of his lungs, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jailbreak.” If he was not tagged before he got to ten, the team in jail could run for safety. Ah, yes, I have some fond memories of growing up in this neighborhood. The only problem was that of the ten boys, four of us were named John. So, when someone’s mother called out and said, ‘John, come home for supper’ four of us had to leave.

By now you know I am a baseball fan. I make no apologies for it. I love watching it, but more than that, I love playing it. And so, on those hot summer afternoons when we gathered in John Headrick’s back yard for our games, with a bat in my hand, I was the great Atlanta Brave, Dale Murphy, coming up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning, down by a three runs, and hitting the home run that wins the game. Or if I was out in the field, I was the great Ozzie Smith, scooping up the grounder, jumping up in mid-air, to make the throw, just in time, to make the play at first base. It was my dream to be a professional baseball player one day. And so, in that backyard in my neighborhood, I imagined living that life. Can I ask you this, this morning, church? What has happened to our dreams? And just as important a question as that, What has happened to the dreamers?”

I watched again my favorite baseball movie last night, looking for a particular scene in it. Maybe you have seen Field of Dreams, too. It is the story of Ray Cansella, an Iowan farmer, who hears a voice, and sees a vision of a baseball field in the middle of his crop. He does the unthinkable. He plows down a good portion of his crop and builds the field. That was the scene that I was looking for and was going to show you tonight. But I saw and heard something else in the movie. I have probably watched the movie a couple of dozen times, but I had missed the dialogue between Ray and his wife as they are contemplating building the field. Speaking of his father, Ray says this, “I never forgave him for getting old. By the time he was as old as I am now, he was ancient. He must have had dreams, but he didn’t do anything about them. As far as I know, he may have heard voices, too, but he didn’t do anything about them.”

Friends, the movie Field of Dreams somehow moved beyond its motion picture roots and into a metaphor for life. This quirky little film about the farmer who seemed to lose his ever loving mind, has become a symbol of hope for thousands of people who seem to be suffering from dream deficiency. And so for a year or two after the movie came out, and even today, people talk about their Field of Dreams in their jobs, for their families, and for their lives. But there seems to me to be something missing. I almost never hear it these days, a field of dreams for the church! Now, let me ask my question again. What has happened to our dreams? And what has happened to the dreamers?

Well, you might say that what happened in our scripture lesson for this morning is a dream come true for the church. There are a couple of versions of the story of what happened when God sent His Holy Spirit into the lives of the disciples and the first followers of Jesus. One is quiet and peaceful. That is John’s account of what happened. It occurs in a house in Jerusalem. Some of the disciples are there; how many or which ones, I do not know. The door is locked because they are scared. Jesus had been put to death, and now the word is that he is alive again.

What is going to happen to us is the question on those disciples’ hearts. Suddenly Christ is with them, he says to them, “Peace be with you.” The disciples do not flinch or respond; they are not sure who is now with them. Then Jesus shows them his hands and his side. They recognize him and collectively say, “It is the Lord.” Next Jesus offers them peace again, gives them the commission to continue His work, and then breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit and that is all that there is. That is it!

The other version is loud and boisterous. If you like this sort of thing, then you will enjoy Luke’s telling of how the Holy Spirit came into the lives of the first believers. He is the host at the large and loud celebration of the birth of the church. It, too, takes place in Jerusalem where there were one hundred and twenty people in the house and thousands of people in the streets for the festival of Pentecost. In those days, Pentecost was a Jewish festival that happened fifty days after Passover and one that celebrated two things. First, it was a celebration and a commemoration of the Ten Commandments being given to Moses, and ultimately to the people, at the foot of Mt. Sinai. It was also a time when good Jewish families brought their first fruit barley harvest to the Temple in Jerusalem, to dedicate it to the Lord. So there are one hundred and twenty people in the house and thousands of people in the city on the streets when suddenly it happens. Luke tries to describe an indescribable event by saying that it was as if a violent wind swept through the house. Then he says that tongues, as of fire, rested on each of them. I do not mind telling you that reading words like as if and as of fire really mean that it is an indescribable, inexpressible, and astonishing event. Luke tells us that one of the immediate effects of the Spirit’s presence in the room and in the city was that people from all over the place (and he gives us a long list of the places) who normally spoke different languages, were able to understand one another. This is not speaking in tongues. This is speaking in their own languages. I do not mind telling you that preaching about that would make a wonderful Day of Pentecost sermon. Everyone speaking in the same language and understanding each other would be a great sermon. But it is not the one that I want to preach this morning.

Luke finds it difficult to describe what the Spirit’s coming looked and felt like, so you will understand that those who were also there, who experienced the Spirit personally and who heard the voices, had trouble explaining it. They tried. I imagine that there were some who shrugged their shoulders not having an answer at all. The ones whose answer to the whole scene makes its way into our lesson is a flimsy response. Do you remember what some in the crowd said? When the question was asked, “What does this mean?” some in the crowd, sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” Interpreted that means that they thought that those speaking were drunk.

So you see what happens when you try to explain the unexplainable. Simon Peter gets what has happened. Perhaps for the first time in his following of Jesus he understands what is really happening. Poor Peter, so many times when Jesus was alive, he did not understand his teachings, but now he does. And so he stands up, Luke tells us with the other disciples, and he speaks up, and he says, “Indeed these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” With the prophesy of Joel at his fingertips, he preaches and he says, “God has given us the Holy Spirit.” When the sermon was over, three thousand people confessed their faith in Jesus and were baptized. It was a marvelous thing and a great scene.

I just have to ask us this, this morning, what does it mean for us these days? What I would like for us to think about this morning is not how the Spirit first came into that room and into those hearts. I do not even want us to try to explain what the Spirit looks like or feels like, though I like the camp revival preacher who preached these words, “Brethren, I feel I feel. I feel. I feel. Feel. I feel. I can’t tell you how I feel, but oh! I feel. I feel.” I want us to think for a few minutes this morning about what the Spirit does to us.

I will testify for the preachers in the world this morning by telling you that there have been times that I have stood behind a pulpit like this, with pitiful words to say, and some how the Spirit takes over. I love it when I am planning to say something, but when the Spirit takes me somewhere completely different. I will tell you that you cannot appreciate a church that has the Spirit of God inside of it until you have been in one that does not have any Spirit in it. I have served that church. Most preachers have served a church like it! The Spirit takes preachers and ordinary people and takes us to places that we might not have gone otherwise. The Spirit does something else. Peter knew it and preached about it when he proclaimed the words of the prophet Joel, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Let me go back to the question that I asked at the beginning of our sermon, “What has happened to our dreams; what has happened to the dreamers? Perhaps what the Spirit dares to help us do is to dream. If we dare to dream for ourselves, for our lives, our families, our houses, why don’t we dare to dream a dream for God’s church?

Today is the Day of Pentecost. This is a day for remembering where the church came from, how it came to be, and for asking what on earth the church is for and where in heaven’s name the church is headed. Last Friday, Margaret Srygley and I went to help bury Lewis Norman. Since the drive to the cemetery took us to Sherwood, we had a chance to visit on the way. Margaret told me about the family that had won the lottery and had accepted an immediate payoff of 110 million dollars. What I thought was going to happen was that Margaret was going to tell me how she and Todd might spend such a payoff. Instead she talked about the church. She said, “Of course we would tithe and give eleven million dollars to the church.” Then she asked, “Can you imagine what the church could do with eleven million dollars?” I do not mind admitting that my first vision was a little small. My first thought was to pay off the building debt. $279,000 is small potatoes when you have eleven million dollars. Margaret had some ideas. She dreamed of expanding the Child Care Center, of course. She dreamed of buying property all around the church, building a gym with a climbing wall, owning the parking lot where we park just most of the time. I dreamed of full time positions for our staff, complete with a full time Associate Pastor. I dreamed of building a steeple big enough that you could see it from Cantrell Road. Now please understand me. I never want this church to be a mega church with thousands in worship services. I like the size of it, though I would like for the chairs and the pews to be a little more full. Part of the magic of the church is its size.

The Srygleys did not win the lottery and so we do not have eleven million dollars. Perhaps we have something more valuable than that, a group of dedicated people who love their church and want to make a difference in the world. Listen again to the complaint about Ray’s father, “He must have had dreams, but he didn’t do anything about them.” Listen again to my question. What has happened to the dream and the dreamers? When the Spirit comes, said the old prophet, the people will dream dreams and see visions. Help me answer this question for our church, friends, what does God want us to do with His church? Let us pray.