The
Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
I love to dream. Don’t you? Some dreams are so vivid until you try to tell them, and then they just disappear. Some seem so real, and yet when you tell them, they are the craziest things you have ever heard. Some dreams are frightening, like that dream that you are falling.
We have a friend who is a pastor who has a recurring dream of sitting on the sanctuary platform just before preaching and realizing, suddenly, that he is totally naked. When he finally reaches the safety and cover of the pulpit, he discovers each time that a glass window has been installed in the front of the pulpit!
I love to dream. And I love to try to interpret my own dreams, though this seldom occurs.
But one night… Stone Philips, the NBC anchor, was looking down on a beautiful lake reporting tragedy. The water sparkled blue-green. Through the middle of those calm waters came a boat. I recognized it immediately as a Ski Nautique, a boat designed for tournament water skiing. A rope stretched from the stern of the boat, but instead of a skier, the boat pulled a “SeaDoo.” Now, the camera zoomed-in, bringing the SeaDoo in focus, and I could see also, alongside the boat, a beautiful stallion swimming in the clear water. It was a massive horse, brown, with a black mane. There was no saddle, but two young boys rode bareback.
I did not see the crash, but Stone Philips reported that the two boys, riding on the back of that gorgeous creature had been tragically killed when they were overrun by the SeaDoo, which careened recklessly behind the boat. The picture went blank.
I don’t know whether I dreamed this dream more than once, but the dream was vivid and disturbing. Not long after I had it, a close friend from seminary stopped by to visit. Following graduation and a devastating divorce, James had moved to Jackson, Wyoming for two years, and then to Jerusalem for another. During that time, he had read a lot about dreams. His own dreams had been troubling., and through a counselor, he had been able to unlock the symbols, to decode his secret visions, and to interpret, for himself, their meanings.
“So tell me what my dream means,” I said. Standing there in the kitchen of our first home, in Clemson, SC, while James made a Mediterranean meal of tabouli and fried falafil I talked, and he helped me to interpret. “Well, what does the lake mean to you?” was his first question. Those of you who know my passion for the water, know that this was an easy question to answer! “Why that boat? What is special about a Correct Craft, Ski Nautique?” The first commandment was written for me, because of our Nautique – if I have an idol, this is it!
As the falafil patties crackled in the frying pan, he told me that large, wild animals frequently showed up in people’s dreams, and he spoke of their symbolic meaning. “What of the SeaDoo?” he quizzed. “They are a cursed invention” I raged! “Good for nothing but destroying smooth, skiable water!”
As we talked, my dream came together. James knew that for two years I had wrestled with a decision about going back to school to get a Ph.D. He knew that I had recently been accepted to one school, and had initially accepted the offer for a fellowship. I told him, though, that after accepting the offer, I had been unable to sleep or eat for days, that my usually analytical brain had been severely short-circuited by the most gut-wrenching uncertainty that I had ever known, and that I had called back and given my spot to someone else. This was the meaning of my dream: The lake was my undisturbed world. The boat, my perfect life. The horse and the two innocent boys were the idea of, and all of the untapped potential of, the doctoral degree in which I had placed so much hope. The wicked SeaDoo meant the destruction of that potential.
I have no doubt that the interpretation was right. The dream had been a fascinating and frustrating conversation within myself, locked up in the mystery of subconscious symbols.
The cover of the May 7th edition of Newsweek magazine is entitled “God and the Brain.” That lead article investigates a new field called “neurotheology,” which is the study of the physiology of the brain (what actually happens in there) during periods of intense spiritual experience. On the one hand, this work gives certain credibility to religious experience. No longer to be dismissed simply as naïve emotional experience, “the fact that spiritual contemplation affects brain activity gives the experience a [biological] reality that psychologists and neuroscientists had long denied” (p.54). On the other hand, the skeptics see this biology as further proof that “God” is no objective reality at all, only a highly-evolved, hard-wired neurological event.
Is “God” simply a biologically determined projection of our own experiences? Is God just a “dream”? Or, is the brain’s structure, its ability to “hear God,” a biological proof of the existence of God? A believer once claimed that God had spoken to him in a dream. The skeptic demurred, “You just dreamed that God spoke?” Which is it? Does God speak to us in dreams?
In today’s text, we read of two very different men who had two very different dreams. What happened to them neurologically, we do not know. What we do know is that both men were prompted by the life-changing movement of God’s spirit, and they, and their world, were changed by their dreams.
First, let’s look at Peter. As a faithful Jew, Peter had kept the Mosaic Law to the letter. He had been scrupulous even in keeping all of the many dietary regulations. So the vision of a sheet filled with “unclean” animals, all of which he was to eat, rightly appeared obscene to his Jewish mind. What was Peter to learn from this Dream of God?
When he met Cornelius, the scripture says that Peter knew the meaning of his dream with certainty: God shows no partiality. We cannot appreciate how radical this was. For a Jew of the first century to recognize that God’s grace was not the elite, exclusive claim of Judaism alone, that even Gentiles might be welcomed into the Kingdom was absolute blasphemy.
Yet because of a dream, a dream verified by personal experience, Peter was empowered to risk conflict with family, the alienation of friends and colleagues, and the “excommunication” of religion, in order to defend the “infinite worth of all persons as children of God” (part of the mission statement of Park Road Baptist Church).
Today, many Christians have narrowed their focus, like Peter, by the legalisms of religion. Christianity, as a religion, is no more guarded against its own narrow-minded arrogance than was first-century Judaism. In a new legalism, many have bound God, restricted a Gracious Lord, to acts that are within our own understanding of grace. But the scripture speaks plainly: “’I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy,’ says the Lord” (Exodus 33.19).
Peter’s dream, when rightly understood, has terrifying implications. Peter’s whole life revolved around the scriptures, which he viewed as God-inspired, God-given, without error. The scripture was to be followed, literally, in order to please God. And yet a dream had radically changed his understanding of that scripture, in one instant.
If Peter’s dream only justifies a new exclusivity, an exclusivity guarded this time by a “Christian” interpretation of the scriptures, then we have missed the humbling power of the Word of God. What Peter’s dream means is that the Grace of God is broader than any human understanding can ever fully define. As Christians, the scriptures must be our basis for ethical living, but we must always approach their interpretation with great humility.
Three weekends ago I stood with Amy and our two boys in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. I had forgotten how awe-inspiring that room is. As I stood there, I read again Lincoln’s now-famous words, and I was moved:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal (“The Gettysburg Address”).
For many people in Lincoln’s day the scripture did not affirm that all people were created equal. Quite the contrary. So, to claim this was to speak “against” the scripture. Against God. To fight a battle against the scourge of American Slavery was to fight against the so-called objective truth of God as revealed in scripture. Today, nearly all people, recognize that claiming slavery as scripturally ordained is a dreadful perversion the Word of God. But in our sinfulness, we are never through excluding. Narrowing. Limiting. Binding God. Today, do you need to see Peter’s vision? Whom do you need to include into the grace of God through the warmth of your own touch, or your own forgiveness, or your own offer of fellowship?
The second dream is quite different from Peter’s. Cornelius was an Italian. A Roman Centurion stationed in Israel. Though he was a Gentile, the scripture says that Cornelius was a devout believer in God. In his dream, he saw an angel who instructed him to send for a Jew named Peter.
When his
delegation had brought Peter to his house, Cornelius’s dream, too, was clear.
If Peter’s dream had been a challenge to broaden one’s vision of God,
Cornelius’s dream worked in the opposite direction. If Peter’s dream said that
God shows no partiality, the dream of Cornelius affirmed that God does,
however, work in very particular ways. If Peter needed a faith that was
more inclusive, Cornelius was challenged to more clearly define his
faith, a defining which might be understood as a more exclusive claim of
faith. Such was Cornelius’s conversion to faith in Christ.
Many modern Christians need to dream Peter’s dream again. There is no doubt. But there are also many Christians in today’s confusing world of pluralism and inclusion who need Cornelius’s angel to bring them, also, to someone who can introduce them to Jesus. You see, Cornelius believed in God. And he practiced faith, perhaps more faithfully than many of the Jews whose lives he guarded. But he needed more. He needed a faith that was more refined, defined, sharpened in a way that would give his life more focus.
Maybe even some of you who have ventured into the broad waters of an inclusive and appropriately liberal theology, need to be brought in faith, without apology, to the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ. To claim that God shows no partiality, that God’s grace is available for all, need not be a conflict with the Christian claim that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world” (2 Corinthians 5.19).
At the recent
meeting of the Alliance of Baptists, I was speaking with a good friend about
this tension that I sometimes feel. I want to be open, inclusive,
accepting of people of other faiths, even of people of no faith, yet I want to
claim my own faith. My very wise friend said, “Russ, you want Jews to be able
to tell you their story, right? And Hindus and Muslims and atheists.” “That’s
right,” I agreed. “So, if you can’t tell your own story, then haven’t you
really showed a lack of respect for their
story? If true dialogue is what you are interested in, then you must be willing to speak your
own truth, even as you allow others to share their truth.”
Being “a Christian” is an exclusive claim. To shape one’s life through a faith centered in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ is, specifically, to claim not to be Jewish, or Hindu, or atheist. Liberal Christians have given up entirely too much in reaction to a narrow and judgmental Fundamentalism. But, we must not give up our identity, because our identity -- as followers of Christ -- is what gives our claims of an all-inclusive love its real power.
To be Christian, then, is an admittedly exclusive claim that we should make boldly, but without arrogance, without assumption, without judgment. To claim our own faith, our own story, and to tell that story in appropriate ways to the world, without apology, is to witness to the difference our own dreams have made in our lives. It is also the way that we pay the greatest respect to the faith of another.
Someone once said that the Gospel has the power to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. It is my prayer today that you will be afflicted, affected, corrected by this Gospel, wherever you stand. That whether you are comfortable in conservatism or liberalism, in broad-minded acceptance or narrow-minded condemnation, that the power of the Gospel will change you. The truth is that most of us are probably a strange mix of both, and we need the dream of Peter in some areas of our lives, and the dream of Cornelius in others.
If the Church is to live, again, in the 21st century, it will only be because we dare to Dream of God, and to allow these visions to change our lives.
May it be so. Amen!
O God of Great Dreams,
Whose mercy is “like the wideness of the sea…”
forgive our arrogance
When we narrow the scope of your mercy
To our level of
Comfort or understanding.
Open our minds,
Widen our hearts
That we, too, might accept unconditionally
And offer your love, even to those who seem un-loveable.
O God of Great Dreams
Loving and living and forgiving in very particular ways
Forgive our embarrassment,
Or our timidity,
Or our lack of insight – whichever it may be
That makes us reluctant witnesses
to our own story of Grace in Christ Jesus.
Purify our hearts, O God,
That even in the dreams of night sleep
We might hear your voice
And in the light of day,
We might have the courage
to be changed by what we have seen.
Speak to us, O God of Great Dreams
In our waking and sleeping,
In our conscious and unconscious moments
That you might make of us all that you desire.
O God of Great Dream,
Be now our Vision…
That we might love even as you love
Be now our Vision
Amen.