COMFORTING NIGHTMARES/TROUBLING DREAMS
Scripture Readings:
Isaiah 65:17-25 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
A few weeks ago our whole family
went to the movies. It was a Saturday
night, and, surprisingly, we had to wait in a rather long line to get our tickets. We were going to see Dan in Real Life, Steve Carell’s nice, gentle movie about a widower
with three children who falls in love again.
I was so pleased to see long lines of folks waiting to see this lovely
little film, ready to have hearts warmed and spirits uplifted. But when we made our way to our theatre to
find a seat, it was nearly empty. The
crowds weren’t going to see Dan in Real
Life. Out of curiosity, I went back
out into the hallway to follow the crowds around the corner into another theatre. You know what movie they were all going to
see? Saw
IV: the fourth in a series of grisly horror movies
about torture and self-mutilation. So
much for uplifted spirits and warmed hearts.
Ever feel like the culture
around you is crazy? Ever feel like you
just don’t get it? Well, I just don’t
get it about these horror movies that are making huge amounts of money nowadays. I mean, I’m not immune to the charms of a
good scare. I remember sitting in the
movie theatre years ago, jumping out of my seat when that alien burst out of
John Hurt’s chest. But many of the horror films today are so
violent, misogynistic, and mean-spirited that some film critics are taking to
calling them “torture porn.”
Why do people like these
movies? Do you get it?
Some sociologists think this
sudden interest in horror movies is one way of dealing with 9-11, with the
nightmarish experiences of that day.
Others think it’s simply another way our culture numbs itself to the big
problems around us: global warming, terrorism, war, globalization, growing
economic stratification. These are
comforting nightmares, compared to facing the real problems we don’t want to face. Horror movies tell us there is evil out there
and we simply can’t do anything about it.
All we can do is save ourselves.
And that’s how we find comfort in these nightmares – they let us off the
hook.
What I’d like to do
is get on my high religious horse at this point and talk about all those
heathens with their violence and despair, except, in the last 25 years, what
has been the number one best-selling Christian publication? The Left
Behind series that entertains and supposedly uplifts its readers by
imagining a horribly violent end to the earth and most everybody living here.
My sister-in-law and her husband
recently went on a tour of the Holy Land led by Hal Lindsey, noted author of
the Late Great Planet Earth. Hal is one of those Left Behind types, fascinated by the apocalypse and has spent much
of his ministry and imagination trying to figure out how exactly the world is
going to come to a horribly violent end.
On the Holy Land tour he led, there was very little talk about the
problems of the Middle East today, about the people living, starving, and dying
there. But he did bring the whole group out
to some desert and claim that THIS was where the Final Battle would take
place. “Right over there is where the rivers of blood will run.” And then they all took pictures of themselves
smiling and posing with Hal by the site of the end of the world.
Apocalypto-tourism. Comforting nightmares. We’re prone to it too, we religious types, to
this trap of thinking there’s nothing we can do it about it, to the desire of
being let off the hook.
I wonder if those
Jewish exiles in Babylon liked to go to horror movies. Well, of course there weren’t movies back
then, 2600 years ago. But I wonder if
they had their own Left Behind kind
of philosophy, about how things were so bad there was nothing they could do
about it. If so, then in the midst of
their comforting nightmares Isaiah brought them a troubling dream, a dream that
assured them that there WAS something they could do about it, a dream of restoration
and risk.
“For I am about to create new
heavens and a new earth…”
This is a mind-boggling promise for
God to make to us, to people like you and me.
New earth, yeah, we understand that, we want that, we ache for that – a
new earth of joy and justice, of peace and prosperity, free of violence, full
of love – yeah, we want that, we pray for that every day.
But God does us one better – God
is promising a new heavens here as well.
God is promising us a new covenant, not like the old one we broke. That’s all behind us now. God says that is gone and forgotten. No, God is promising a new covenant, a new arrangement
of Godly powers, a new structuring of Godly attention – “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will
hear!” A new heavens that will make
the new earth possible.
And that sounds wonderful, like a
wonderful dream God is having. But when
God dreams, God dreams about us, about our lives, about what really goes on
here on earth:
“… no more
shall the sound of weeping be heard… or the cry of distress. No more shall there be… an infant that lives
but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
God sees what it’s really like
here, how much sorrow and sadness we face, how the young and the old, the most
vulnerable, are lost to us because of the danger and violence of this
earth. And that’s where God’s dream begins
to trouble us. It’s real, maybe too real
– painfully real. So real that we’d
prefer a comforting nightmare to God’s troubling dream.
“They shall
build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit…
my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, or bear
children for calamity…”
And here’s the other troubling aspect: God intends to put us to work: building and
planting, working and laboring. The new heavens
God is dreaming about invites us to
work in covenant with God for that new earth to come. Now we have to get to work. Now we have to take a risk. Now we’re back on the hook. And that’s another reason why some of those
Jewish exiles, and some of us too, prefer our comforting nightmares to God’s
troubling dream.
I can remember a
moment shortly after Dee and I became engaged to be married, as we began
dreaming of a future together, when I suddenly began to hurt. This pain swept over me. It hurt so much I burst out in tears. I felt it even as a physical pain – my chest
was pressing out like it was threatening to split open.
It took me a long while to
figure out what was going on. You
probably already know. I was being
stretched, stretched to make a bigger promise than I had ever made, stretched
to embrace a bigger future than I had ever dreamt of before. At
that moment I understood what Paul was talking about: “When I
was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a
child. When I became an adult, I put
away childish things.” Love was
transforming me into someone new, someone more capable of making and keeping
promises, someone more able to dream big dreams. It hurt because I was becoming an adult.
Restoration and risk, that’s
what God’s dream demands of us. God
leads us to a new future, and at the same time transforms us into someone who
can work for and live into that future.
Are you ready to dream with God?
On
the orders of their superiors, two white guards beat Nelson Mandela every day
in the prison yard of Robben Island off the coast of South Africa. And every day, as they were beating them, he
began to sing. On the fourteenth day,
the guards stopped beating him long enough to ask, “How can you sing?” Mandela
winced and smiled, saying, “Because my
spirit is not my body.” Nothing
could stop Mandela’s spirit from singing.
Not even exile, imprisonment, and torture could stop him from dreaming
God’s dream. And one way you can tell
that it’s God’s dream is because it catches on.
From that day forward Mandela’s guards would only pretend to beat
him. Maybe they were beginning to dream
as well. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox…” and
the prisoner and his jailors shall dream together.
In
1994, when he was inaugurated as President of South Africa, Mandela called up
two white men. To the surprise of the
crowd, he puts his arms around them.
They were his former guards, but all Mandela said was, “These men are my friends.” The three of them invited a whole nation to
dream God’s dream.
Are you ready to dream with God?
Between services today most of us
were down in Fellowship Hall to do some Christmas shopping. But this is a shopping trip unlike any
others. As we’re walking by the aisles,
buying bake sale items, picking out SERRV gifts, making donations, we’re
dreaming God’s dream. And this is a
dream rooted in the real life experience of human beings
n We’re not just supporting the Emergency Shelter of the Fox
Valley. Today we’re dreaming with God of
a warm and safe place to sleep for the homeless man stretched out in Jones
Park;
n We’re not just supporting Samaritan Counseling
Center. We’re dreaming with God for
understanding and joy to touch the woman in Menasha who is dealing with a
divorce and single parenting and is just about at the end of her rope;
n We’re not just supporting LEAVEN. We dreaming with God of the family in Grand
Chute who sent their kids out Trick or Treating this year not so much because
it was Halloween but because they didn’t have anything in the house for them to
eat;
n We’re not just supporting Habitat for Humanity. We’re dreaming with God of the new immigrant
family who can’t afford the housing prices of this community but is more than
willing to invest their own sweat equity in a new home;
n We’re not just supporting the Mexico Mission Trip. We’re dreaming with God of the family among
the Raramuri people of Mexico who don’t want to leave their land and their
country and would welcome us as mission partners to help them build a Habitat
home down there;
n We’re not just supporting Back Bay Mission. We’re dreaming with God of the folks in
Biloxi, Mississippi who, after the nation has turned their eyes away from them,
still don’t have a place to live;
n We’re not just supporting a Russian orphanage. We’re dreaming with God of the one out of
every one hundred children in Kurgan, Siberia whose parents are so desperately
poor that they send their beloved children to an orphanage;
n We’re not just supporting our Kenyan Partnership. Today we’re dreaming with God of a better
future for the children who have died from water-borne diseases in Kenya; we
call those dreams our Kenyan Partnership;
n We’re not just supporting SERRV. Today we’re dreaming with God for artisans
and farmers around the world to receive fair wages for their labors,
encouragement for those who treat the earth with respect, support for those who
are also dreaming with God about new heavens that make a new earth possible.
That’s what we’re doing today:
we’re dreaming with God, a dream that troubles our own complacency and troubles
the present order of this world. And as
we shop this morning, there will be no Frosty
the Snowman blaring out; no Percy Faith singers in smooth, close harmony of
O Little Town of Bethlehem.
The song you hear may be Nelson
Mandela’s song, a song of the spirit which will not be beaten down.
The song you hear may be the old
Gospel writer who echoed those despairing Thessalonians by singing “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my
work’s in vain…” But that old gospel writer didn’t end
there. She sang on: “But
then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again!
There is a balm in Gilead.”
But this is no sleeping balm. This isn’t a soporific, a warm glass of milk,
a glass of red wine, a jigger of Nyquil.
God isn’t inviting you to sleep off your discouragement. God is inviting you to work it off, to exercise
it off, to sweat it out like a fever.
When you dream God’s dream you get to work!
And as you work, you may feel a
pressure in your chest, something asking you to stretch, to grow, to dream a
bigger dream than you’ve ever had before; what you feel is a song struggling to
come out, Mandela’s song, the gospel writer’s song, Jesus’ song, a song of
joyous thanksgiving to the God who makes all things new:
LET ALL THINGS NOW LIVING
A SONG OF THANKSGIVING
TO GOD OUR CREATOR
TRIUMPHANTLY RAISE!
Let
us stand and sing.
Sermon
preached by Reverend Stephen P. Savides at First Congregational United Church
of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on November 18, 2007.