Sermon: Passion for the Impossible (Genesis 37:1-28), Aug 20, 2017

Passion for the Impossible 

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

When my Vietnamese friend, Tu Anh, asked me, “Do you have a dream? What is your dream?” at a cheesecake restaurant a year ago, I was surprised to find myself feeling unsure of what answers I could give to her simple questions. The kind of dream she was asking about was obviously not daydreaming. I understood she was asking about what I would want from myself. What future goals are working as a positive force in my life now, giving me a healthy lift and moving me forward?

When we ask ourselves, “What dream is leading my life?” we may find that this wondering question can unsettle us, prompting ourselves to reexamine our lives. Since that time with my friend, I continued the conversation with myself. I slowly begin to realize that “What is your dream?” can be a theological question. There’s a critical difference that makes the act of dreaming different from just setting the next goal in life. If it is a theological question, we should be able to define what it means to dream: who dreams and what do we dream, in our lives and in Christian community?

Today’s Hebrew Bible story is about a dream. Joseph dreams. Of course he dreams. This boy was born to dream - not to work, not to shepherd. Dreams run through the whole of Joseph’s story. 

You might remember Joseph’s first dream: the sheaves bow down, the sun, the moon, and the stars bow down. And Joseph’s father wonders, “Shall I bow down, too?” It was the first dream that Joseph told his father and his brothers. All creation bowing down to him means new political power; it anticipates the end of the present order. 

When Joseph tells this dream to his father and his brothers, the brothers are not happy at all. If you had a young brother and he came to you and told you about his dream, similar to Joseph’s, you might have a good laugh with him. He’s young. It’s just a dream. What seriousness can you find in your younger brother’s dream? However, in the Bible, dreaming is given serious consideration, because dreaming is a gift from God. Dreaming is God’s hidden way to reveal God’s plan. In the Bible, dreaming is the act of giving power to those who dream, and through the dreamers, to the people they care for. Dreaming is powerful. 

To make the situation more interesting and harder, our story’s three main characters - Joseph, his father, and his brothers (as a group) - are in a triangle of love and hate. Joseph is loved too much. Jacob loves his favourite, Joseph, too much. The brothers feel loved too little. Jacob has given his son, Joseph, a very special robe, a beautiful long robe with special sleeves. It stands out. It proclaims a regal status. It is Jacob’s announcement that this son is the wave of the future. This “coat of many colours” is like God’s gift of clothes in the garden. Delightfully, this description of “many colours” invites us to imagine the beauty of Josep’s special robe.

I like to drive outside of the city, and I especially like to see the different colours of grass and wildflowers mix on the left and right sides of the open road. Pink, purple, green, lemon. The colours are not flashy, yet they are noble. I imagine that this young boy, Jacob, 17 years old, wears his Pride robe with the beautiful mix of the colours of the garden, and seeks his brothers, as Jacob tells him to go find and help them. 

Unfortunately, very unfortunately, the story tells us that the brothers “hated” him. They say to one another as they see Joseph approaching, “Here comes this dreamer- let us kill him, and see what will become his dreams.” The part of this story we read today ends with Joseph being rescued by the passing foreign traders, to be sold as a slave in Egypt. We know that, however, this tragic turn is not the end. Joseph will experience an incredible journey in the new country. He will overcome many challenges through the work of dreaming and finally become the new ruler. Irony: the same act of dreaming that has put him in great danger when the story begins will make God’s promises fulfilled in exile. 

I want to ask what today’s story, then, tells us about dreaming? Why is “What is your dream?” a theological question? 

What we learn from our story is that the act of dreaming is, ultimately, God’s unsettling work through us. Everything else depends on the dream. Without the dream, there would be no trouble, no conflict, no grief, no loss, but at the same time no Joseph, no exile, no promise, no future. 

If having a dream bears a critical difference from setting life’s next goal - SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely - what is that critical difference? 

When I was young, probably 10 or 11 years old, I remember I wrote down the three things I wished to do before I die: teaching, writing my autobiography, and, this one I clearly remember: “Being granted an audience with the Pope.”In my small world of childhood, where all close family connections were Roman Catholic, “Being granted an audience with the Pope" sounded like a very mystical, honourable thing to do. Indeed, that opportunity is a rarely given chance. but these three dreams are not unsettling. The act of dreaming our Bible teaches us is a life-changing one, not for oneself but for others, for the world.  

I shared with you before my journey from 2007: Struggle to Be the Sun Again, which started when I first realized that I became the moon, the shadow of another’s light, as a young mother without a job, in Korean patriarchal society and the Christian church. Especially if you are the young mother, without a job, with a baby, and wife of the ordained husband, the weight of oppression can be very repressive. I didn’t even notice that my personality was slowly changing to a depressed, dependent one until I first encountered the poem, written by a Japanese woman in the 1990’s, which I found in a Korean feminist theologian, Hyun Kyung's book: Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women's Theologies. 

“Originally woman was the Sun. 

She was an authentic person. 

But now woman is the moon. 

She lives by depending on another, 

and she shines by reflecting another’s light. 

Her face has a sickly pallor. 

We must now regain our hidden Sun.”

Upon reading it, I dreamed to start a totally new kind of journey to live my new realization. 

“I am more than, larger than, how I am defined by the social, institutional, patriarchal restrictions.” 

I invited Min Goo to share in my journey, and Min Goo invited me to come to Canada in order for our potential to grow. Through the journey, I learned that it was an example of God’s liberating love being realized, revealed and coming out for me. This new dream unsettled me, lifted me, took me on a new path. Yet, it was not the end. 

A new turning point came with the realization that I had been quite successful with my endeavours, yet I have not really done anything beyond seeking success. 
I hadn’t fully challenged myself to embrace “dreaming”, the powerful, political act of dreaming to unsettle the world. Had I truly dreamed to work for the benefit of others and not for my interest? All people need, all of us need God’s liberating love to release us from being captivated, imprisoned by restrictions, even though the names of the restrictions may be different for each of us. 

I am not a dreamer, we are not dreamers until we realize in the Bible, dreaming is the unsettling work of God that works through us. Because I had forgotten the importance of dreaming, I lacked focus, I lacked a sense of purpose, and I was tentative when my friend asked, “Do you have a dream?, What is your dream?” 

Friendship Kitchen was my first answer to the important work of dreaming. 

If I were given a pen to rewrite today’s story, I would change all characters in the story to be dreamers. All the people in the story. Joseph, his 12 brothers, their father Jacob, the foreign traders who rescued Joseph but sold him in Egypt for 20 pieces of silver. 

All people need God’s liberating love to release us from fear so we can dream, and those dreams can anything. How do we know what kind of dreaming we need, if we want to become the wave of God’s future? 

I believe the key is that the act of dreaming is “Unsettling” toward “The Impossible”

I loved when I first read Nam-soon Kang, another female Korean theologian, Nam-soon Kang, state: “Religion is the passion of the Impossible” in her class. 

What is the Impossible? These seem to be Impossible in our ordinary world. 

Unconditional love. 

Absolute justice. 

Unconditional welcome. 

Unconditional hospitality. 

Unconditional forgiveness. 

When you try to open a new on-line transaction or account, you constantly see the advice: “Be sure to create a strong password.” To make one, you need to mix certain numbers of characters, capital letters, lower-case letters, numbers, symbols, etc. Similarly, even though we cannot know all of the unsettling love that God powerfully works through all people, if we work together, if we always strive to learn from each other, to hold each other’s wild spaces and deep, challenging strength, the act of dreaming together can become a "stronger", powerful, unsettling work, leaning toward the Impossible. We may never arrive at perfection. We can only embark upon “continual journeying”. And that’s exactly where we are called to do: become a passionate friend to each other, whom we can turn to, in trust, and love and support, and ask, "What is your dream?