Click to hear this sermon  sermon100117

I read about three performing dolphins who managed to escape their holding pen in Key Largo, and swim out into the open sea.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Christians: Begin With the End in Mind- Deut. 8: 6-10; I Peter 2: 4-10- January 17,2010 -Cicero United Methodist Church- Everett J. Bassett

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I read about three performing dolphins who managed to escape their holding pen in Key Largo, and swim out into the open sea. They joined in with the other dolphins there, and it seemed it might be difficult to distinguish them and capture them. But it turned out to be no problem at all, because every day at 10, 2, and 4 they performed the tricks they had been taught in captivity. So they were easily spotted and recaptured.

We, too, are creatures of habit, and, as I began to say last week, that can be a bad thing, or it can be a good thing, depending on what we cultivate. Tonight, in one of our Bible studies, we'll begin talking about Christian disciplines that help us to cultivate habits that uphold a spiritually vital life. And in my sermons this winter, I'm looking at Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he makes the claim that we can live with principle and effectiveness by cultivating good habits.

Last week, I looked at the first of Covey's seven habits from a biblical perspective: Be Proactive. The second is also a great biblical principle; it's "Begin With the End in Mind." This second habit, then, has something to do with having a goal in life - moving toward a vision. The vision of heaven is certainly the ultimate goal of the Christian life, but there are also wonderful sustaining visions this side of the valley of death.

It is no exaggeration to say that our lives are what they are today because of people with vision. Thomas Watson, the dynamic CEO of IBM during its greatest days, started out as a small-volume time-clock manufacturer. Later, after his success, someone asked him when it was that he first envisioned building up a great world-wide company. And he looked as if he didn't get the question, and finally said, "Right at the beginning." When Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida, was opened, someone turned to Walt Disney's widow and said, "It's too bad Walt isn't here to see this." And Ms. Disney replied, "Don't worry about that. He saw it long before we did."

History is made by great visionaries like Watson or Disney, who see a new life, a new nation, a new world, a new possibility - long before others can even picture it.

And, as I said, the faith of the Bible is full of such visionaries. Certainly Old Testament faith grew up around one of the greatest visionary leaders of all time, Moses. Scholars don't necessary assert anymore that the actual words of the Book of Deuteronomy were written or spoken by Moses himself, but they were surely inspired by the bedrock tradition that Moses could see the Promised Land decades and miles before the children of Israel were anyplace near it. The words I read from Deuteronomy 8 are part of that tradition: "The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills ... " Moses talks about "wheat and barley and vines and figs and pomegranates .. ," and on and on -- to people who were looking at sand and more sand, and had no realistic basis to imagine that Moses' vision could ever come true. But it did!

A few weeks back, during Advent, we listened to the words of prophets that were just as farfetched. In a time of despair and powerlessness, prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel talked about the return to Jerusalem, and the rebuilding of Jewish life, and even of a new peaceful world. And nobody in their right mind would believe it. And yet those visions sustained the people, and much of what they saw came to be.

Then the New Testament begins with the story of John the Baptist, proposing the vision of one who would come in the Holy Spirit to be the Anointed One from God. And he lived to see his vision realized, when Jesus came, proclaiming yet another great vision, the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven. And that is the vision we still keep before us. As people of faith, we have this incredible heritage of visionary leadership, right up to the people who envisioned this place of worship, and this great church here at Cicero UMC.

So, we surely appreciate the visionary legacy that is part of our heritage, and this sermon is about continuing it forward with great visions of our own. But a funny thing happened on the way to this sermon. I looked at the preaching schedule, and this week's chapter of Covey's book: "Begin with the End in Mind." And I thought, "That's perfect. It will be all about looking forward with vision. Sunday before we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday - "I have a dream", and so on. Perfect! The day of our Church Conference, which is about our vision for our church - this couldn't work out better. So then I sat down to re-read the chapter in Covey's book.

And I looked for this teaching on 'vision.' And I read, and I read ... and I read. And the chapter seemed to be about something else. And I thought, "What's going on here?" And I discovered, to my surprise, that it wasn't until the last few pages of the chapter that what I expected about vision actually was discussed. Most of the chapter, it turns out, talked not especially about looking ahead - but about looking inside. In fact, here's the quote Covey uses to begin the chapter, from Oliver Wendell Holmes: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Covey seemed to spend most of his time not talking about keeping your eye on the horizon, but rather about finding your center - knowing where you are grounded, having a mission statement that guides you through life, and principles from which a vision can flow.

And that forced me to step back and re-think my idea of vision. In those great biblical examples I gave, the vision was not some magical poetic script coming out of nowhere; it was more like a great dream arising from within people whose lives were grounded in faith and built on prayer. Moses could see the Promised Land because he had spent time with God on the mountaintop. Isaiah could see the great visions of swords beaten into plows because he had been in the temple at prayer. Jesus spent time with God in wilderness-prayer before he came out preaching the kingdom of God.

And that makes living with vision a whole different process, and I guess that hadn't occurred to me for a while. We can have all kinds of visions; to be a movie star; to win the lottery; to dance your way to fame and fortune. When I was a teenager, my vision was to play centerfield for the Mets. But that vision was not grounded in anything that was central and real within me, so it never compelled me to actually work toward the goal. As it turns out, the direction of my life followed a different vision that was much more grounded in who I am, and what God was calling me to be, and so I worked toward it. And that, I believe, is the key to having a great dream to follow in your life. Move into prayer first; build a foundation of faith; commune closely with God. And out of that communion comes the voice that calls you to the vision, and compels you to pursue it with passion and joy.

There are great examples of that. There is what we read in the First Letter of Peter. A great dream is held up there for God's people - that we would be living stones in a great spiritual house. That we would be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. It's a vision so outlandish that it creates something out of nothing: "Once you were no people," said Peter. "But now you are God's people." And the whole promise, the whole possibility, is possible because it is built on a great cornerstone - Jesus Christ himself. Without that cornerstone, the building could not stand. Those are the visions that make it. Someone said that the test of a great vision is that after you hear it, the only possible response is, "Where do I sign up?" And that's what Jesus' vision of a kingdom of peace and salvation and hope has done throughout the history of the church.

It's why Martin Luther King's great dream still speaks to us: it is grounded in faith, brings hope and new possibility in the world, and names what we know deep inside must happen for this world to be right and fair. Where do we sign up? millions have asked.

It's what excites me about this church, and its growing ministry. So many churches strive for the power and life of a place like this. I see a vision of a mighty mission station, with huge impact for the love of God in this community, in Central New York, in our new expanding United Methodist Conference, and around the world. A place where people see and hear something about God that is so compelling they must sign up. That's the way I feel about this ministry. And as long as we stay rooted in prayer, built on the cornerstone of our Savior Jesus, I believe God envisions even more than we can begin to imagine. If we start anywhere else - if we start to follow our own visions, or someone else's - we won't get there. It will never be compelling enough for enough people. If we follow the vision God sends us in prayer and understanding who we are and Whose we are, then amazing things will happen. I'm convinced we can't even dream it big enough.

And I believe God has a great vision for your life - each of you here. When is the last time you realized something great and compelling for your life? It may be a while, because in the day-to-day grind, with the many challenges and problems we face just to survive, we lose sight of the fact that God has made us for something amazing. But God doesn't. God looks at us and sees great possibilities. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people." Living stones in a spiritual house. Another great dreamer, Mahatma Gandhi, said that 'the difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would solve ... the world's problems.' And that, I believe, is exactly what God is up to. But, oddly, enough, that's not a call to run off looking at every horizon. It's a call to listen deep inside for the voice of God. And then to sign on to the great project God is carrying out through people of vision and power; people like you and me. The kingdom of God is here, said Jesus. Where do we sign up?