Reflection: Dreams

January 21, 2009

The theme this week is dreams, and it’s a particularly appropriate theme for this moment in history. On Monday, we honored the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the effect that his dream and determination had on our nation. The diverse crowds gathered on the Mall Monday & Tuesday demonstrated, in Obama’s words, the reality of the “dream of a King”, the dream that was Dr. King’s dream, the dream of the King of Kings, Jesus: the dream that we would be divided no more.

Often when we’re hopeful, we talk about dreams and the power they have to change the world, for surely we have seen that! And often when we are cynical or despairing, we warn of fairytale flights of fancy—the foolish dreams that have no chance of fruition, but need to be reigned in.

We use the term “dreams” metaphorically, to describe hopes, aspirations, visions for the future. We know deep in our souls that God can breathe into our dreams, that God can show us a future that is-not-yet.

The ancients too thought that God spoke to us in dreams, and the book of Genesis tells the story of that dreamer and dream-interpreter, Joseph (of the many colored coat) who saw a warning of famine in the dreams of the Pharaoh—danger, but also a way out

Today I want to talk about the danger of dreams.

When God inspires our dreams & dwells in them, we can receive the courage to go a different path. This past week, I traveled through the South & spent an afternoon in the Civil Rights museum in Memphis, Tennessee. In the stories of the marchers, freedom riders, the organizers, and the preachers, the compelling power of a God-given dream came through.

But ever present was the danger that came along with these dreams of dignity & justice. Dreaming of – and working for!—a different world can scare what the theologian Walter Wink & the Apostle Paul call “The Powers that Be”. Because dreams are by definition not-yet reality, those who like the world the way it is are threatened by God-given dreams.

I saw this too. The Memphis Civil Rights museum was attached to the Lorraine Motel, where the powers that be struck out and tried to snuff out the dream of God’s justice—the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was murdered by an assassin’s bullet.

Big dreams can bring big violence. But even the smaller, more daily dreams incite smaller, more daily resistance. Some of use dream of raising a family, yet struggle to afford it in a world not set up for work and parenting. Some of us dream of good health and a restoration to community, but are left in pain or exhausted from just leaving the house. Or dream of a good job, but struggle to find work we can believe in, or any work at all. Some of us dream that gender won’t limit what we can do or who we can love, but face prejudice from friends, employers and even fear violence.

What dreams do you struggle to live? What dangers have you faced?

But, if there is a danger in following a dream, there is danger in ignoring a dream given by God. In the sacred text for today, “Harlem”, Langston Hughes writes of “a dream deferred.” When dreams are blocked, deferred—they rot, they drag down, the pressure builds.

It is not only external powers that bring the danger of deferred dreams, but we ourselves. If a dream is burning inside us and we do not follow it, that dream can poison our souls. The examples are trite, but oh so true: someone stuck in the wrong career, ignoring God’s vocation; someone stuck in the closet, ignoring his true self.

Although God-inspired dreams point the way to a bright future, they are perilous. They bring danger if we live them and danger in equal measure if we do not.

And so, while the way of your dreams may be dark, rough & rocky, remember that but despite even murder, Martin Luther King’s dream lived on. Despite even murder, Jesus’ dream lived on and brought us together, here, today.
Amen.

Sacred Text for "Centering Down" Reflection

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;
A direction, a strong pure purpose that will structure our confusion
and bring meaning in our chaos.
We look at ourselves in this waiting moment - the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives? -
What are the motives that order our day?
What is the end in our doings? Where are we trying to go?
Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused?
For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat in the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind –
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!

From Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman.

Isaiah 40: Reading for "Advent: Peace"

Adapted from the NRSV and RSV versions of Isaiah 40:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is over, that her iniquity is pardoned: For she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries out: “prepare ye the way of the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: And the crooked shall be made straight. And the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

The voice said, “Cry”. And I said, “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the godliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withers, the flower fades: Because the spirit of the Lord blows upon it: Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades: But the word of our God shall stand forever.

O Zion, herald of good tidings, Get up to a high mountain! O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead the mother sheep.

Advent Meditation: Peace. Isaiah 40

I love this passage from the prophet Isaiah—it appears in so many ways during advent. I picked an older translation just because there’s so much beauty in the poetry, so many other references to it. There’s the hymn “Comfort, comfort, o my people, speak of peace thus says our God.” And it’s scattered throughout Handel’s Messiah “….and all flesh shall see it together….”

It’s also theologically important- both as it was originally written, but also as a piece of text that the early church turned to to try to make sense of who Jesus was.

This passage was first written by someone in the school of Isaiah the prophet to speak Hope to the people of Israel who were in exile. Not quite in captivity, they were in “Babylon” not their homeland, living as somewhat subject people in a foreign land. And so, to these people, Isaiah is preaching Comfort: that the time of warfare, of exile is over.

Think back to the passage: The syntax is a little strange, but God is speaking here to what would be angels, heavenly beings, and commanding them to bring comfort to the people in captivity. And then the prophet hears this, hears a voice—“Prepare ye the way of the Lord—make a highway in the desert. We’re going to flatten the mountains, fill in the valleys” Why? So Israel can return home from exile--- this road is the road of return.

But all is not well; there is paradox: the prophet hears the voice, but asks “what should I cry?” All flesh is grass—we are transient, what hope is there? It’s a very existential question. The theologian Paul Tillich says that this passage is filled with rising and falling waves of darkness and light. Sure the Lord is great—but what does that mean, since we are so small? Against this transience, against humans withering like grass, stands God who is going to act in history and protect his people, like [in that ancient metaphor], a shepherd. The exile, the uprootedness, the separation from home,from God—this is ending.

But fast forward hundreds of years, and it doesn’t end. We have the book of Job—there’s suffering it says, and why doesn’t God act? Who knows… but we can’t count on God to bring us peace just because we’re good. There was the return from Babylon to Jerusalem, but the warfare is not over. A now, at the time of Jesus, Israel stands occupied, oppressed? by the Roman empire.

This section from Isaiah is kind of “ported over”, creatively re-interpreted to describe Jesus. The church sees John the Baptizer as saying “Prepare ye the way of the Lord”. And then in Jesus, the church sees that God has come; a kind of exile has ended. The end of this exile does not come in the form of a return to Jerusalem down a physical road, but in following “The Way”, as Christianity was originally called, The Way of Jesus. And so this reconciles how God can be good and strong and loving, and how yet the people of God could suffer so—the deliverance that God has promised comes in an entirely different form than expected.

What does that mean for us? We shouldn’t expect to find comfort and peace in this world—not peace “as the world gives”, not peace in the sense that there will be no warfare, no unemployment. (Though we shouldn’t for a moment give up working for that peace). Rather, the peace we can expect to find, the peace that God promises us—and it is a promise. It is a peace that comes from God amidst our suffering, available to all seekers, regardless of the chaos that still surrounds us.

Amen.

Sacred Text: Peace

From Isaiah, Chapter 2
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

Reflection: Peace

A number of years back, I spent some time working at the United Nations. I remember that part of the passage we just heard from Isaiah was inscribed on a giant wall facing the UN building: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more”.

“Swords into plowshares”! Food, not war. What a hope of peace Isaiah presents—how captivating and seductive. The Lord’s house is established, and all the nations come—they come to Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Judah, where Isaiah was writing from. They all want to learn the ways of God. And when everyone all starts listening to God, and when God himself starts arbitrating amongst nations—then we should have peace.

Peace. What a hope, that the horrors of genocide and war for power or land, that these horrors could end. But while it’s a very appealing image of peace, we should take two important warnings from it. (it’s not nice to criticize the ancient prophets, I’m going to do it anyway.)

Peace is coming, Isaiah says. It’s coming when God sits down in our capital, Jerusalem. It’s coming when all the other nations come to our capital, and acknowledge our God. Isaiah is hoping for a peace in which everyone else will acknowledge that his country is right. [To be fair, he spends plenty of time criticizing his country too] But still—to really look for peace requires us to be humble enough to admit that we might be the problem

Peace it coming, Isaiah says—It’s coming when God is sitting on the throne, judging disputes. When everyone falls in to line. Peace will come when what is right and good is clear to everyone.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but peace like that ain’t coming anytime soon. There will be disputes because even well-meaning people disagree, and then there will be disputes because a few people can screw it up for the rest of us. We should work toward the dream of peace, but again, need to have the humility to recognize that it might not work out.

So where does that leave us with peace?


In the book of John, Jesus gives a long discourse to his followers just before his death. He tells them that he is leaving them, and then says

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I’m not sure what kind of peace this is, but it is different, radically so, from the peace that is present in the vision of Isaiah.

Jesus is offering a kind of peace that available despite having your friend & teacher tortured and murdered, despite having to flee from persecution. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. He telling his followers that there is a kind of peace they can have, even in the presence of war and violence. Even in the presence of economic crisis.

This is a peace that is not given as the world gives. Physical peace & justice (no war, basic living standards) is important, but Jesus is pointing us toward a psychological and spiritual peace. A peace that comes from connecting with God, from “storing up treasures in heaven” that cannot be destroyed by the discord here in earth.

I’m not quite sure how to get that peace, but it has something to do with practice—the practice of prayer, our spiritual formation in community—and it has something to do with the presence of God in our lives.

May that peace be with us, this day and every day forward.

Amen.