Dreamers [All Saints' Sunday B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a
Dreamers
We are dreamers. That is what we
are. We are dreamers. We carry the old dreams in our blood like a primal
inheritance. We pass them down the
generations like precious heirlooms. We
baptize our children in water haunted by impossible dreams and invincible hope.
We dream dreams in a world intent on
shattering dreams; we cling to hope in a world that is forever trying to steal
that hope. We dream dreams – that is
what we do – because we are dreamers. And
we don’t stop dreaming until the dream comes true.
It would be easy to look at the passages from Isaiah and Revelation
today and be discouraged. It was, after
all, about twenty-six hundred years ago when the prophet Isaiah dreamed his
dream. Twenty-six centuries have passed;
twenty-six centuries is a long time. It
is a long time to keep having the same dream.
It is a long time to hold on to some slippery kind of hope. It is a long time to defy the steady stream
of voices that tell us to give up, to give up on the dream, to accept the
reality, to concede that the way it is is just the way it is.
Twenty-six hundred years later and the prophet’s dream has not come
true. There is still war, division, and
violence. Death has yet to be swallowed
up; it still hangs over us like a heavy shroud.
Tears still burn the eyes of those who suffer and mourn. Isaiah dreamed of a better world. He died before the dream came true. Twenty-six hundred years later and we are
still waiting.
It was an impossible dream that he dared to dream. His nation was crumbling. The promise of a homeland had come
undone. Devastation surrounded the
prophet and his audience. Death was
darkening every corner. There was no
hope and yet he hoped. There was no
reason to dream and yet he still dreamed of a better future, an impossible
future.
About seven hundred years after the prophet Isaiah dreamed his dream, another
man, called John the Revelator, caught the same vision. He dared to dream the same impossible dream,
the dream his ancestors died dreaming.
The young Church to whom he wrote from his island prison was being
captured, oppressed, and killed. They
were powerless people in the midst of the most powerful empire in the world. There was no hope and yet he hoped. There was no reason to dream and yet John
still dreamed of a better future, an impossible future.
Like the great prophets of old, he dreamed of a day when God would wipe
away every tear. He dreamed of a day
when death would be no more; mourning and crying and pain would be no more. He dreamed of “on earth as it is in Heaven.” And like Isaiah, John died before the dream
came true.
And here we are, centuries later: we are still waiting. We are still dreaming of the impossible. We are still desperately holding onto
hope. On earth as in Heaven is still not
here yet. Not while schools and houses
of worship are the settings for mass shootings.
Not in a world in which hatred divides and violence threatens and human
dignity is too often denied. Too many
people in this world are living their nightmares. There is still too much mourning. There is still too much crying. There is still too much pain. Death still casts its dark shroud over the
peoples of this world. We are still
waiting on the dream in a world that is plagued by too many nightmares. But we
don’t stop dreaming; we are dreamers.
That doesn’t mean we deny the realities of this world. That doesn’t mean we ignore the injustices
that are taking place today in our city, our nation, our world. That doesn’t mean we close our eyes to the pain
that ravages so many of our sisters and brothers. We are dreamers but that does not give us the
license to sleepwalk through this life. Because
the power of evil is still on the move. The
insidious creep of fear builds walls around the love Jesus commands us to let
loose in this world. The forces of death
still cast a frightening shadow. We do not
deny, we cannot deny the harsh realities of this life. Instead we defy them in Jesus’ name.
We dare to dream with the prophets and the saints, with Isaiah and John,
because this dream is our inheritance. And
the God who inspired the dream is the same God who makes dreams come true. We hang our hope on the God of Creation, on
the God of Easter Sunday. The God who
made all things will one day make all things new. And so we keep dreaming that dream. The God who overcame death with resurrection
life will overcome death once and for all.
And so we hang on to our hope.
We dare to dream because we dream God’s dream. We dream in the words of Jesus: “on earth as
it is in Heaven.” We dare to dream
because we believe in a God whose love makes dreams come true. We dare to dream because we have seen God do
the impossible and so the impossible must be possible. We dare to dream because we are Easter
people. We are Easter people and so we
sing Alleluias at the grave. We are
Easter people and so we recognize that death does not have the final word; we
believe that even though the dreamers die, the dream lives on. We are Easter people. And so of course we dare to dream. How could we not?
I like what biblical scholar David Lose says. He says, “God’s
promise of resurrection isn’t an invitation to deny death – the death rate in
my community is the same as yours: one per person and 100%. But God’s promise
of resurrection does grant us both the permission and power to defy it: to defy death’s ability to overshadow and distort
our lives, to deny death’s threat that there is nothing else, to deny those who
believe [that] because they have the ability to inflict death they are the most
powerful people on earth…. [T]he Easter story… promises that death does not
have the last word, and therefore that we are free to live now, to struggle
now, to sacrifice now, to encourage others never to give up now, to live out of
love rather than hate now, and to have their actions directed by hope rather
than fear…now!”[1]
We are dreamers. That is what we
are. We are dreamers. We carry the old dreams in our blood like a primal
inheritance. We pass them down the
generations like precious heirlooms. We
baptize our children in water haunted by impossible dreams and invincible hope.
We dream dreams in a world intent on
shattering dreams; we cling to hope in a world that is forever trying to steal
that hope. We pray “on earth as it is in
Heaven” even though Heaven often feels forever away. We dream dreams – that is what we do – because
we are dreamers – dreamers who dream the dream of a God who does the impossible. And so we don’t stop believing, we don’t stop
working, we don’t stop dreaming until the dream comes true.
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