I would like to state, for the record, that I absolutely love the theme the planning committee came up with for our Music Gala which is being held on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 to raise money for the restoration of our Hook and Hastings pipe organ. The theme, “Pipe Dreams,” is short, to the point, easy to remember and absolutely appropriate and relevant to our purpose of sprucing up as well as doing some major reparations to the organ in order to enhance the music ministry here at Holy Communion. It will be a big task—some might even say a daunting one—but, then, what other kind of task would you pursue with Pipe Dreams?

Of course, I’m a wordsmith, so I had to go sleuthing to find out the exact definition of “pipe dream” and here it is: a plan, desire, or idea that will not likely work; a near impossibility. And I thought all over again, how appropriate a theme for a congregation’s fund-raising campaign! And, I might add, how appropriate a description of our whole life and mission in Christ as well! Because in all we do—in all we think to plan and in all we dare to dream—we do it armed first and foremost with something that St. Paul once called “foolish” in the eyes of his Greek neighbors and a “stumbling block” in the eyes of his Jewish friends.

That something—or someone—is, of course, Jesus Christ himself, God’s own pipe dream for the world: through the life and death and resurrection of a simple carpenter from Nazareth, God’s plan to transform life and death for us all forever. Where symbols for death become signs of life and where the promise of life rises up from places of death—how foolish, how unlikely, how impossible—how Christian! “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25) St. Paul writes—and, we might add, God’s pipe dream is more real, more attainable than human reality. In Christ, God asks us all to sign on to the near impossibility of God’s saving love for each one of us as nothing less than a dream-come-true for all of us—God’s work come alive in the world, one mind, one heart at a time. In Christ, God comes and asks each of us: Do you share my dream? Will you share my work?

Starting with a Hook and Hastings organ, or a Food Bank, with a friend-raiser, a Giving Tree gift or a Thanksgiving meal—one repair, one gift, one person, one meal, one dollar at a time, we dare to believe that, through these things, in service to the Gospel, we are all of us God’s own living pipe dreams for the world. With all who we are, with all that we do—whether with a kind word, a compassionate gesture, a loving glance or a forgiving embrace—through us, we believe, God’s pipe dream for the world is being accomplished.
And God’s will is being done.

--Pastor Kari