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Live Frugally on Surprise and Dream Big
A sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephanie J. Nagley, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland, at North Bethesda United Methodist Church, Bethesda, Maryland – July 3, 2005
Baseball returned to Washington this summer and we’ve had quite a surprise. They weren’t supposed to be winners. No one expected them to be leading the division – well, maybe in April or May before the really good teams warmed up – but they shouldn’t be leading in July. No one expected that we would wake up this morning and have a team that was five and half games ahead of the Atlanta Braves.
The writer Alice Walker said, “Expect nothing; live frugally on surprise.” And here we are surprised out of our socks with a winning team.
I think even the players are surprised. They aren’t the best players in the league, certainly not the highest paid. By all the statistics they shouldn’t be pulling this off. What accounts for their success?
Maybe it’s just this. They expect to win but how the win happens is anybody’s guess. And keep us guessing they do. After another one run heart stopping win over the Pirates on Friday night relief pitcher Hector Carrasco said it best, “That’s how we do it.” “Everbody has fun here.”
Live frugally on surprise. Dream big and let go of expectations. That may be the key to finding ourselves living amazing lives.
Think about Jesus’ words to his followers in those terms of dreaming versus expectations. When we dream we give ourselves to the Spirit. We dream fanciful things without a clue how those dreams will come to fruition.
When we live by our expectations we are often disappointed because we predetermine what the outcome will look like. [1] We may dream about settling down with our true love and just what that life will look like. Well, any of you who have found your one true love knows that things didn’t quite turn out the way you thought. And, I hope, for most of us we’ve been delighted with surprise.
A writer may dream of putting onto paper the best work of his or her life. But if that writer gets caught up in how that work is received, if the quality of that work is measured by whether it receives the Pulitzer Prize, the creativity will be squashed.
A parent will dream of the best life for her children, but if she pre-determines what that life will look like, and makes all the plans for how that life will emerge, the child’s true self, the child’s spirit, will die.
Expectations are about our egos and the egos’ expectations always have a particular outcome in mind. [2] The ego tells us how the dream is to come true. Our dreams must come out just the way of our expectations or else we think we have failed.
But none of us can predict how the future will unfold. And when we try to control the journey of our dreams we become prisoners of failure, instead of prisoners of hope. Predetermining the way our dreams should unfold “…ties stones around our souls…” and we drown.
Dreams call for a leap of faith, trusting that the Spirit will not let us fall, so that we can go about our days with verve and energy. When we allow ourselves to dream we are operating out of our souls, our gifts, and the creative drive that is God given.
I think that what Jesus meant when he said ‘go ahead, take up your cross, and join me in this dream of a ‘friendly world, under a friendly sky’ ‘. I think that’s why he called his burden easy and his yoke light. I think he lived by a dream and not by expectations.
Letting go of expectations may sound strange to us. It may sound as though we are giving up, but that’s not what we’re doing. When we take that easy yoke, that light burden, we are charging ahead toward that kingdom dream of Jesus. We’re freeing ourselves to a passionate pursuit, to the pursuit of the heart and letting that journey bring what it will, take us where it may, lead us into places of surprise and astonishment.
Two hundred and twenty nine years ago tomorrow we celebrate the declaration of a dream. Two hundred and twenty nine years ago some people, people like you and me, sat in a room and put their signatures to a document that declared, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal...” Two hundred and twenty nine years ago, people like you and me, dreamed this country into existence.
Those men, wiping the sweat from their brow on a hot and humid July day had no clue where that dream would take them and us. They just knew it had to be so. They had no plan for the how this country would be governed. They didn’t know what the next step would be except that there would probably be a little bit of protest from King George.
Those men didn’t know that one day the words of the Declaration of Independence “all men created equal” would get other people to dreaming. People would enter into thoughtful conversations and some heated arguments about whether or not “all men” being equal meant people of color, and women, people both gay and straight, people with disabilities, immigrants, and people of all ages.
This country is founded on a dream, the dream of freedom. And as much as we like to separate politics from religion, that two hundred and twenty nine year old dream was about as religious as you can get. That dream is religious in the sense that it is about how we let our spirits be guided by God’s vision of who we are as the children of God, that we are meant to let our spirits soar and to constantly be creating a better world for all the people of this earth, and a better earth for the people.
Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of South Africa, once quoted the words of Zechariah, saying that we are the “prisoner of hope”. Jim Wallis, in his book God’s Politics, writes about the day he saw those words in action.
He was at an ecumenical service in South Africa when the South African Security Police broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during Tutu’s sermon. Desmond Tutu stopped his preaching and looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of the cathedral. The intruders were there to record whatever prophetic words Tutu might utter so that they could arrest him.
He met their eyes with a steady gaze and then, Wallis writes, “with the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny” he had ever witnessed, Desmond Tutu told the representatives of apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come join the winning side!” And he said it with a “…smile on his face and his customary warmth but he said it with boldness and the clarity…” of someone who wouldn’t let the dream of freedom be imprisoned by fear.
The crowd was electrified and also emboldened. They shouted praises of God and began to dance. They danced out of the cathedral to an awaiting military and police force. The forces of apartheid didn’t know what to do – they hadn’t expected to be greeted by dancing worshipers. “Not knowing what to do they backed up and provided a space for the people of faith to dance for freedom into the streets of South Africa.” [3]
We are people who dream and in that sense we are best when we allow ourselves to be the prisoners of hope. We don’t always know where that dreaming will take us. But our best chance of having the dream come true is to let go of the expectations and let the dream take us where it will. That letting go, it seems to me, lightens the load considerably and allows God’s Spirit in us to soar, to dance even in the presence of those who wish to steal our dreams away.
Two hundred and twenty nine years ago people like you and me had a dream. Whether we stand on the right or left, live in a blue state or a red, we are first and foremost people of a dream; we are first and foremost the people of God. Our faith leads us naturally to care about freedom, to care about people who are marginalized, to care about ending the violence of racism and all the others isms that exist, to commit ourselves to peace, to dream into existence the values of love, justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught when he said ‘take my yoke upon you and learn from me and you will find rest for your souls.” [4]
[1] Sarah Ban Breathnach (back to article)
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy (back to article)
[2] Breathnach (back to article)
[3] Wallis (back to article)
[4] Wallis (back to article)
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