Being of a certain age, I remember using and still have a copy of Barrett’s Familiar Quotations. Flipping through the pages is somehow different than typing keys for a Google search. One can find oneself falling down a rabbit hole, lost in the images.
Recently, I turned to the quotations about dreams. There is Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from Hamlet “to sleep, perchance to dream.” There is Joe Darion’s poem made famous in The Man of La Mancha, “To dream the impossible dream, to reach the unreachable star.” There is Isaac Watts’ beautiful rendering of Psalm 90, “They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” There is the pain of Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” And there are the stirring words of Martin Luther King Jr, “I have a dream.”
There is in all of those ideas an ambivalence about dreams. Dreams are both the energy of life that gives drive and hope, and the fantasies of the night that ought to be pushed away in favor reality. Dreams are both the hope and the pain of human life.
For us as Christians, there is only one dream: the dream of what life can be, the dream of a community of peace and justice, the dream of a world set right. It is a dream that began in the heart and mind of the Almighty, came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, and continues to drive our community further and further.
On the first Sunday of October, some portion of the Christian community pauses to rest in that dream. We join this week in the celebration of World Communion Sunday. Even the name speaks to its dreamlike quality. The fact is, not all Christians will join us. The fact is, many countries do not even allow Christians to mark the day. Our table is not complete, but in hope we come to this table, a table gathering that will begin in the islands of the Pacific long before we meet. Slowly as the day dawns, the table will grow, until the invitation is heard in this place, and we come to the table and we dream with the one who gives us hope everyday.
In the musical South Pacific, Bloody Mary, the matronly islander, sings to Lt. Cable about the importance of dreams for a life of joy: “You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?” Indeed. How can you have a dream come true if you don’t have a dream?
I hope you will come to dream with us this week as we join with our brothers and sisters in different lands, in different traditions, and with different customs as we consider the dream of a single community in which every person knows their worth, and every child is protected; a community in which peace will reign, and justice flow down like water; a community of one body, “until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly table.”
Pastor Tom
