Dreams
– Unique Human Character.
If
there is one thing almost all of us do, it is dream. Some times people criticize us for it, “he is
just a dreamer,” and some times praise us for it, “What would we have done if
Thomas Edison hadn’t dreamed of lighting a room with electricity rather than
natural gas or candles?” If there is a
unique characteristic of humanity, it is probably dreaming. Our dreams set us apart from all God’s other
creatures.
If
you ever watched a pet dog sleeping on the floor or ground with their legs and feet
twitching as if they were running you might object to my claim. I watched my
old dog chase squirrels most of my childhood and one day he got it just right
and finally caught a squirrel in the open between two trees. When I watched his
twitching legs I imagined he was dreaming about that squirrel he once caught,
chasing a memory.
But
our special dreams set us apart. We do more than dream about the past. We dream
while we are wide awake. We see an injustice or some other thing we don’t care
for and dream about what the world might be like if those things were not in it.
We may even feel anguish or frustration
because so much of what we see is out of whack with our idea of how things
ought to be. My mother used to say that kind of stuff made her want to chew
nails. The technical word for that frustration is cognitive dissonance - the
conflict between what is and what we think ought to be. It powers the dreams of
changing the world to make it a little closer to God-like.
Unfortunately
that conflict between what is and what ought to be can be the problem with
dreams. We run the risk of becoming Don Quixote, the crazy old Spaniard who
jousted with windmills.
The Problem with Dreams – Their Tragic Nature
The tragedy of dreams is that usually
it takes us a long time to gain the wisdom to put things in perspective and see
the really important dreams. We may spend scores of years focused on something until
one day we finally realize our priorities are skewed and time wasted. We may
feel our age hanging over us, thinking now we know what to do but have very
little time to do it. Sometimes we may feel all we have left are dreams of hope
that our youth guided by the Holy Spirit find the vision with enough time to do
something about it.
I can relate to Solomon’s woe
in Ecclesiastes. : In 12:1-7, old Solomon looks over the wreckage of his life and
wonders where wisdom got him. He lamented,
Eccl. 12:1 “Remember your creator in the days of your
youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will
say, “I have no pleasure in them”; 2 before ... the day when ... the strong men are bent, and
the women who grind cease working because they are few, and … before the silver
cord is snapped, … the golden bowl is broken,…the pitcher is broken at the
fountain,… the wheel broken at the cistern,
and the dust returns to the earth as it was, - - - and --- (our) breath
returns to God who gave it.
Solomon’s forlorn words of despair and resignation make
Ecclesiastes a hard book to read. He struggled for the wisdom to see beyond the
veil of death but near the end of his days all he could say was, “the poor and
the rich, the proud and the humble, the profligate and the righteous, those who
toil day-in and day-out and the slacker, they all have the same reward” –
death. Everything about his youthful dreams told him that the righteous must
find a just reward, but his lifetime of experience showed him over and over the
conflict that the rich and the poor enter the same ground together. He
concluded in a very Jewish view that everything but God was futility and vanity.
(Sadducees vs Pharisees)
Paul’s Dream
Paul
understood Solomon’s lament and Christ’s answer. Solomon’s world was the old
world that Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection fractured forever. The Christ
Event cracked in the fabric of reality and the Kingdom of God is emerging from
it. Paul said we are trapped between the dying old world and the emerging new Kingdom
of God that is already here but not fully. That happens upon Christ’s return in
the consummation of the New Jerusalem.
The
power of the Christ Event fractured and mortally wounded the old world. This
event is so momentous that Paul could only describe it in terms of the pain of
childbirth. He said, “The whole world is groaning in labor pains and the whole world of the children of God are awaiting the
fulfillment of our dream.” Paul knew the crucifixion and resurrection changed
everything about God’s relation to the world and this Holy Spirit reveals our
new dream.
Paul
said (Rom 8:16,23), “When we cry, “Abba!
Father!” (the very cry is) 16…that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are
children of God, even while we groan awaiting the fulfillment of our dream: our
adoption and the redemption of our bodies.. Paul is describing the birthing of
the Church.
Joel’s Dream (in Acts)
When the Holy Spirit
descended upon Peter and the assembled congregation of all believers in the
world, about 120 persons, Luke says tongues of fire danced on heads and
everyone understood what the others said in their own language. Can you imagine
what it was like? Have you ever felt
that Spirit, it is as real today as then. Peter was so moved he could only resort
to my favorite powerful words of the prophet Joel to describe the revelation of
the Holy Spirit working on them.
‘God
declares In the last days (it will be, God declares),
that
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and
your young men shall see visions,
and
your old men shall dream dreams.
18 Even upon my
slaves, both men and women,
in
those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and
they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show
portents in the heaven above
and
signs on the earth below,
blood,
and fire, and smoky mist.
20 The sun shall
be turned to darkness
and
the moon to blood,
before
the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.’
Peter
makes it clear that the gift of the Holy Spirit from Jesus guides all who make
that last call on the name of the Lord for the dream of new life. Pentecost
points the church towards its future – the New Jerusalem. It is the day the
Spirit blew that Good News into the world through the Church– the promise of a
home with God.
Pentecost – The Day The Dream Begins
If Paul felt the image of childbirth best describes the nature of the
Christ Event as the emergence of the Kingdom of God and announcement of its
future fulfillment, we ought to ask what was born on the Day of Pentecost?
Do you know what Pentecost means? It is the Greek word for the
Hebrew word, Shavuot, the religious festival celebrating The Lord giving the
Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Jesus said he did not come to do away with the law
but to fulfill it. The Holy Spirit descended to Peter and those 120 people fulfilling
Jesus’ prophesy. They carried the Gospel onward and we are now 2.2 billion
strong. Do you see it now? Pentecost has the same importance to the whole world
as Shavuot has to the Hebrew.
Solomon lamented that birth always points to an end. Christ points
to The New Beginning. Do you remember
our sermon on New Jerusalem in Revelation? On that final day the need for the
Church ceases because God has redeemed everyone who desires and has come to
live with us on Earth at home together. Pentecost is the day of birth of the real dream. A home
with Emanuel – God is with us.
This dream is faith in the work of Christ in the Church started on
that first Pentecost. I think I first glimpsed this when I was not yet 18 tears
old but sadly only understood it today as I wrote this sermon. I had graduated
from high school in May, 1965, and began Georgia Tech in June. One of my
longtime buddies from high school started with me. We both ran track and played
on our varsity soccer team and sat in most of the same classes. He was from
Ozark AL, a sleepy south Alabama town of about 10,000. His Dad was the mayor
and surprising at the time was chairman of the Advancement Committee on Civil
Rights.
He drove down from Atlanta many weekends that summer to see his
girlfriend in Dothan. Mid-summer I got a phone call with the bad news. On the
way home, he went to sleep at the wheel, ran off the road and crashed in a
fatal accident.
I made the drive down for the funeral. It was so bad they kept the
coffin closed. It was especially hard on his parents and younger sisters. As we
walked behind the casket to the cemetery for the committal we passed the AME
Zion Church where the youth choir stood on the front steps of the church
proudly singing the old spiritual “In That Great Getting’ up Morning.” It was
so moving that I still recall it 48 years later. This spiritual captures the
essence of our dream born on Pentecost. Here it is in an edited, abbreviated
version:
I’m gonna tell you ‘bout the coming of judgment, fare
thee well, fare thee well.
There is a better day a coming,
In that great getting’ up morning, fare thee well,
fare thee well.
Oh preacher! Fold your bible for the last souls gathered,
fare thee well, fare thee well.
Yes, for the last souls gathered, fare thee well,
fare thee well.
Blow your trumpet Gabriel, Blow your trumpet.
Lord, how loud shall I blow it?
Blow it right calm and easy, do not alarm all my
people
Tell them all to come to the judgment, fare thee
well, fare thee well.
Then you see that fork of lightening,
Then you hear that rumblin’ thunder,
Then you see dem stars fallin’
Then you see the world on fire,
Then you see dem poor sinners rising,
See ‘en marching home for New heaven, fare thee
well, fare thee well.
Fare well poor sinners,
In that great getting’ up morning, fare thee well,
fare the well
That great getting’ up morning is the faith and hope of the
Church. The dream in our hearts is that we have the fire in our belly, and our
youth have the vision of faith understood on that first Day of Pentecost. Come
Holy Spirit, come Heavenly Dove, fill our hearts with your tongues of fire as
we the Church await the Lord’s great and
glorious day, continually proclaiming the God’s grace in the Good News to the
world that 21 “everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
In that
great getting’ up morning, fare well poor sinners, fare thee well, fare thee
well.
AMEN.
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