We Have a Dream!

(Standing on a plastic chair under the 12th street bridge, January 30, 2011)
We stand here today together under a bridge of our great city.

A city with a grand history, two grand rivers, and some days, grand views of grand mountains on both sides of this fertile valley.

A city with a holy name- Sacramento. A sacred city, set apart for God’s purpose. And a city that is broken- part of a broken world with broken people, all of us, breaking the heart of God.

Sacramento is a city divided. By race, by culture, by money, by rivers…and freeways.

By people, like you and me, with divided hearts. Each one of us knows that the world is broken, and that our choices, yours and mine, have contributed to that brokenness.

The good news is that the One who made us is putting us, and our city, and the world, back together!

The One who knows us inside and out…and loves us anyway! Loves us enough to be broken himself, on a cross, so that the world can be put back together! And it’s happening!

God’s dream of healing everything will be reality some day, and that dream has become ours.
So, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., We have a dream today…deeply rooted in God’s dream for all.

We have a dream that one day we will rise up and live out the true meaning of these words,
“All people are created equal and are dearly loved by God.”

We have a dream that one day by the shores of this great river home-owners, home-leasers, and home-lessers will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood.

We have a dream today.

We have a dream that one day those locked up by an unjust prison system, locked out of future opportunity, and those locked up in a prison of their own addictions, will be set free to live and love and serve the One who fashioned each of them with his own hands and in His own image!

We have a dream that one day in this neighborhood, the children of Norteños and the children of Sureños, and all the other eños, will take off their colors, lay down their weapons, and join hands at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ!

We have a dream today!

We have a dream that one day church-goers would stop their self-righteous self-salvation projects that isolate and insulate themselves from the pain of others, and that the followers of Jesus Christ would come down off their high horse, get their butts off their pews, roll up their sleeves, and get to work loving their neighbors in Jesus’ name!

We have a dream that this part of Christ’s body, Bridge of Life, will be an oasis, a place of peace and rest from the storm, and a training ground, sending those who love Jesus out into a hurting world.

We have a dream that one day “every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight,
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together!”

Amen!