Do you think this might be the year for dreaming? Each of us knows that Christmas is coming soon, and when it does, it’s going to look much different than in years past. Perhaps this is the year to dream.
Maybe it’s the year to gather around the fireplace with a steaming hot beverage and delectable cookies, huddled against the cold, and with our immediate household, recount days of old. We might remember last Thanksgiving or last Christmas, or the one before that, or even a holiday twenty years ago, when the room was filled with laughter and audible sounds of joy.
In those days, all thirty people could line up at the serving table and fight over the last piece of pie. We could hold gatherings throughout the season, as many as we wanted, with as many people as we chose to invite. Those were the days, and we were glad indeed.
As we anticipate the great celebration of the Incarnation in less than two weeks, this year we know it will be different. So, maybe this is the year for dreaming. This is the year to sit still with our memories and relive them, moment by moment. If we can’t actually replicate them this year, we can dream about them. This could be the year for dreaming.
These days, I confess that most of my dreams are riddled with some measure of anxiety. One of my latest anxiety dreams involves being in a large crowd of people, none of whom is wearing a mask. Sound familiar? Perhaps you have your own anxiety dreams: arriving at the final exam for a class that you completely forgot you had registered for or being on stage to play the piano concerto you never memorized. These are not the dreams we want to recall.
But let’s try to summon up the dreams that we remember with particular fondness. Let’s dream, this Advent and into Christmas, about the days that have brought us joy and happiness in the past.
We are so often discouraged from dreaming. Have you ever been labeled a daydreamer? I remember many days in my youth of sitting on a backyard swing and dreaming away, with no worries about the time or how productive I was. But to do so as an adult in the modern age is seen as a royal waste of time.
Dreaming is for lazy people. Dreaming is for those who fail to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a real living. Dreaming is for fools. Dreaming does nothing to stimulate productivity and efficiency. Dreaming is, well, we might as well own up to it: dreaming is for those who put their trust in God.
From the witness of Scripture, it would seem that God rather favors dreams. Think of the number of people in the Bible with whom God appears in dreams: Jacob, Joseph, and Solomon, among others. Some, like the prophet Daniel, interpret dreams. And of course, the evangelist Matthew loves dreams. Joseph learns of Jesus’ birth in a dream. Because of a dream, the magi decide to return to their native land by way of a different route after visiting the infant Jesus. And Joseph leads his family to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath after a warning in a dream.
But if you have a dream these days and take it too seriously, people will look at you as if you have lost your mind. Dreams are the realm of the fantastical. Dreams are mere fiction. Dreams are precisely where we lose our control.
The psalmist, though, understands the importance of dreams. The author of Psalm 126, either writing in the midst of the Babylonian exile or looking back on that exile, likens good fortune, joy, and laughter to a state of dreaming.
It’s unclear whether the psalmist is dreaming about a past liberation from exile or is dreaming about a liberation in the future. And this ambiguity is exactly what dreaming is like.
For a dream uncomfortably straddles the past, present, and future. Often our dreams at night can be traced to little kernels of events during the day. They conceptualize a reality beyond our grasp, something outside of time. When a dream is glorious, we wake up disappointed, because we still want to be in the realm of the dream.
But the psalmist dreams about a restoration of fortune, of rejoicing, and of God’s great actions on behalf of humankind. This dream enters into the experience of being exiled from Jerusalem for decades, with all its heartache and sorrow. This dream is also the basis for hope in God’s great actions in the future. This dream only makes sense because of something God has already done. God has already done great things. God has already made his people joyful. God has already shown his great goodness. And so the psalmist dares to dream again.
The psalm pivots halfway through from a dreamlike state to a request. The psalmist has spent time around the fire with a hot cup of cocoa, reminiscing about the glorious days of old, but outside the warm room, there is the present reality of a dark, bitter winter. The psalmist is dreaming because he desires for things to be different than the way they are.
The psalmist knows that in the past God has proven trustworthy by his actions. The psalmist is convinced that those who are weeping as they go into the field with bags and bags of lifeless seeds will, nevertheless, return one day singing with joy, and struggling to carry their bags stuffed full of sheaves.
The psalmist dreams because dreaming reimagines the present and the future in terms of the past. The psalmist dreams as the dreams compel him to petition God. The psalmist does not shy away from God. The psalmist is direct and honest. “Turn our captivity, O Lord: as the rivers in the south.” “Restore our fortunes, O Lord.” The psalmist knows that God has done wonderful things before, and the psalmist believes that God will do them again.
It could be that the reason we are so often discouraged from dreaming is because many have lost their imaginations. Everyone is so literal these days, and metaphor and poetry have been relegated to obscurity. It could also be that dreaming is frowned upon because some have simply lost hope that the future can be other than some ill twist of fate already etched in stone.
But we, who have been given so much reason to hope, know that we can dream. We know that we must dream. Our entire liturgical tradition beckons us to dream constantly. We are forever remembering what God has done for us, those things that bring us profound joy. And while we recognize that the present needs some work, or a lot of work, we dare to dream that God will restore our fortunes again. In the midst of sinning and our failures, we remember God’s mercy, as if in a dream, and we dream in the trust that God will work wonders among us again. We dream so that things will be better. And we know that they can be.
Our dreams compel us, like the psalmist, to plead with God. Our dreams urge us to be direct with God and tell him all about our dreams. Dreaming with God is a sign of our trust in him.
We dream about nine months ago, before we were locked down in a pandemic. We recall how good God was to us then, and we remember that God is still being good to us now. And we dream about an even better future.
We dream about a time, perhaps further back than we’d care to admit, when we weren’t fighting so much with our neighbors or other nations or even within the Church. And we remember that those days, if in a dream, were happy. If we dream, then we know how to call upon God, who will doubtless restore our fortunes again.
As we see truth dismantled all around us, we remember, as in a dream, that God became flesh in a human person in a tiny Palestinian village over two thousand years ago. We dream about that time when Truth walked the earth and revealed the very face of God. And while we often miss that face in the chaos around us, we dream that Jesus will come again and fill the world with his justice.
We dream because we are certain that things are not the way they should be. We dream because, at times in the past, God revealed his greatness among us. We dream because our present and our future can be different by the grace of God. And we dream because we know that God will indeed do great things for us.
Right now, we might be bracing for a lonely or disappointing Christmas. We might be utterly discouraged about entering into another lockdown. And because of that, we must dream. We must dream about picking up our bags of seed to go into the fields and sow. At the moment, we are weeping, and we have good cause to weep. But we still dream. We dream because we’ve seen it happen in the past.
We dream that, one day in the future, we see ourselves returning home from the field. And the look on our faces is not weeping but laughing and joyous singing, because on our backs are sacks chock full of sheaves. And we once again remember how good God has been to us.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 13, 2020