Dreams and Visions
1 Kings 3:5-12; Matt. 13:31-33
So I had this strange dream one night last week: we had moved to Kansas.
I have no idea where that came from, except perhaps the Benadryl I had taken before I went to sleep.
I mean really, Kansas? I’ve only been to Kansas once in my life. I don’t know anybody who lives there. As far as I know, it really is all black and white, just like in the Wizard of Oz. I have no clue why I dreamed that we’d moved to Kansas.
But I do know this: the dream was so realistic that when I woke up I sat straight up in bed and looked around the room to see where I was. I breathed a deep sigh of relief to discover that I was still in Arlington!
Dreams are funny things. I heard a basketball coach once asked after a big upset if ever in his wildest dreams he thought his team would win. He responded, “my wildest dreams are not about basketball.”
Scripture is full of dreams and visions, and sometimes the Bible seems more accessible to a Freudian than to a theologian.
It’s like the woman who woke up on Valentine’s Day and told her husband that she’d dreamed he got her a fabulous diamond necklace. “What do you think it means?” she asked him.
“You’ll find out tonight,” he said mysteriously.
So that evening he hands her a gift-wrapped package that she tears open with great expectation, and discovers a book called The Meaning of Dreams.
As the Rolling Stones put it, “you don’t always get what you want.”
Sometimes, in the matter of dreams and visions, it’s a question of where you look for the meaning. Like the Sunday School teacher who couldn’t get the supply cupboard opened because she didn’t have the combination to its lock. She went and found the pastor who took the lock in her hands, gazed heavenward for a moment and then confidently twirled the tumbler around a couple of times and the lock sprang open. Seeing the amazed look on the teacher’s face, the pastor simply said, “the combination is written on the ceiling.”
“If you try, sometimes, you get what you need.”
Perhaps that’s the great surprise in the story of Solomon. Imagine if God came to you in a dream and said, “tell me what you want and I will give it to you.”
Put yourself in Solomon’s place: what would you ask for? What would be your wildest dream? What would be your vision?
A home in Kansas? A great victory? A diamond necklace? The key to every lock?
Obviously, this is a story-telling trope that has been used in many cultures, and is used by the writer of Kings to great effect in explaining the wisdom of Solomon. Only here, instead of a genie with three wishes, it’s God, and Solomon is wise enough to know the difference.
Indeed, his very choice reveals his deepest gift: wisdom to discern the call of God to a life of faithful service.
Solomon does not choose a life of ease and comfort; he is worldly enough to know that’s not how life works for most folks and, moreover, he is wise enough to know that’s not how a life of faithfulness works for anyone. Faithful life is not comfortable, it is not predictable, it is not easy.
The great heresy of so much of what passes for Christianity in the United States these days lies precisely in the promise of ease and comfort and best lives now.
Paul, in the familiar lectionary passage we did not read this morning, asks what can separate us from the love of God that we know in Christ Jesus. His answer, “nothing, nothing at all – neither height nor depth, nor even death itself.” We read that passage from Romans with great comfort, as we should. But we ought also note as we read it that Paul takes for granted the suffering of the present moment as being part and parcel of a faithful life.
Christianity is not about my best life now or your best life now, it is about a relationship with God that draws us into and points us toward the kingdom of God.
Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, the gospels tell us, and what a strange kingdom … what strange preaching. “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed …”
I’m pretty certain that if Jesus had grown up in the part of the world where I grew up he would have said, instead, “the kingdom of God is like kudzu! It doesn’t necessarily come from around here, and it’s a bit hard to figure out exactly what it is for, but it spreads like crazy and pretty soon it’s going to cover everything!”
Jesus understood that this kingdom talk was difficult, so he continuously added metaphors and parables to help folks grasp the meaning of a way of living that pointed beyond the typical dreams and visions that folks had about lives of wealth and power, of diamonds and victories, of kings and kingdoms.
“The kingdom of God is like yeast.” I always get a rise out of that image. Sorry. But, in a sense, that is what Jesus wanted folks to grasp. There is a rising up that comes with the kingdom. The lowly, those who have been trampled down, the oppressed will be lifted up and empowered.
The kingdom is like that. It doesn’t make much sense on the terms with which we are familiar. So much so that Jesus says it’s like the merchant who sells everything to buy one fine pearl. You can say, “well that must have been one nice pearl,” and you’d be right. But it’s also one lousy business investment practice. If the pearl market crashes, then what?
But the economy of the kingdom does not crash, and it is not measured according to our merit, our accomplishments, our bank accounts but rather according to the love and mercy of God which are beyond measure.
Thus Jesus can say, “the kingdom is like a net cast into the sea.” It catches everything, including you and me.
This is the vision that Jesus casts and that he invites his followers to live into. A commonwealth unlike any they – or we – have ever fully experienced.
To be sure, Jesus also said that the kingdom is among us; right here as close as our very breath. We have touched it in part, but it also dances out ahead of us as a vision that beckons, that calls us always forward toward fulfillment that is to come. We are called to recast that vision, to reimagine it for our time. For where there is no vision, the people perish. If we fail to dream, then what do we have to live into?
Last Sunday evening down at Lafayette Park, my friend Noah sang what I’ve long considered a kind of hoary old folk song: Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.
Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war[1]
As Noah sang, a crowd of tourists gathered to watch and listen to this small band of folks gathered there in front of the White House offering a prayer for peace. I don’t know what they thought. Some may have thought, “bunch of naïve fools,” others may have thought, “nice voice,” still others may have thought, “right on,” and some may have thought, “cool, protesters, now my DC tourist experience is complete.”
To a great extent, it does not matter what others think of the dream and visions that we give voice to here. God calls us to witness to a vision of a commonwealth of belovedness marked by compassion, justice and peace. God calls us to dream kingdom dreams.
Last week I was looking through some old building plans for this church and I came across a proposal to expand this sanctuary. It was a grand vision that included transepts and chapel space and large new entry way and narthex. That vision will never be realized, but I am happy to stand in the same path as the dreamers who came before us here. Their dreams are still being realized through us, even if not exactly according to the plans they drew up. It is good to know that there have always been visions here for they pull us into the future – the future of God’s imagining that we try to catch glimpses of in our own dreams and visions.
What dreams and visions has God put before you, and what plan are you making in response?
Whether or not all goes according to our plans, may we together, as a foretaste of the kingdom, live into the dreams and visions that God puts before us here. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
2:45 PM
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