What Are You Dreaming?

A Sermon preached on Sunday, September 23, 2007

by Pastor Terry Davis

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT

Read the Scripture on which this sermon is based
 

What do you dream about?  What are your dreams for yourself, for your future, for your children and your grandchildren?  Do you have grand dreams and hopes for the future, or does the future seem more like a nightmare of worst possible outcomes.  What are your dreams about the future of the Church in this place, about the future of the Presbyterian Church?  The question about our dreams for the future of this Church are going to be very important in the next 18 months as we will be asked to think and dream together for the future possibilities for God’s Church in this place.  As we partner with the Presbytery in a consultation about our future members will be asked to answer one or more questionnaires, attend two retreats, and some of our members will be attending national conferences and retreats.  What kind of a Church will First Presbyterian Church be in the years ahead, what kind of leadership does the Church need to lead in the years after I retire.  Can we dream about creative ways of averting or dealing with a looming financial crisis as the unrestricted portion of our endowment fund continues to shrink? 

I am convinced that if we share our dreams and visions, our hopes and our most creative ideas with one another that God will speak to us because God has always spoken to his people through dreams and visions.  The kind of dreaming I am talking about seems very different than the dreams and visions related in the scriptures, but there is a reason that we use the same words to describe our conscious dreams and visions that we use to describe the day time visions that we may have or the nighttime dreams that we all experience.  All of what we describe as dreams and visions arises out of our unconscious mind, and it is often through the unconscious that God communicates with us.  Not every dream comes from God, but all of our dreams are messages from our unconscious.  Some of them are trivial triggered by the events of the past day, but many are important messages to which we should give close attention.  Some of these messages have their origin in God.

In our scripture from the book of Acts both Peter and Cornelius have visions, daytime dreams, and because both of them acted on their visions their lives, and perhaps the very future of the Jesus movement were changed.  Cornelius’ vision was quite straightforward, he was told that a man named Simon Peter had a message for him, and he was told to send for this Peter and where to find him.  Cornelius acted immediately to send for Peter.

Peter’s vision was much stranger and more symbolic and he was puzzled and had to think about what this meant.  While he was pondering why he had dreamed that God told him to kill and eat all of these animals that his upbringing and his religious heritage told him were unclean and disgusting  the words that came back to him from his vision were, “you must not call unclean that which I have called clean.”  The meaning came to him as people came to him and asked him to come with them and visit a righteous gentile.  Just as Peter considered the birds and beasts of prey, the reptiles and scavengers he saw in his vision to be profane and unclean so he had been raised to consider all gentiles also to be unclean.  He knew that he should never associate with gentiles, and certainly never stay with them, never eat with them, but the message now was clear; God’s message was not really about what you eat, but this was a message about diversity, about breaking through the dividing wall of hostility that separated Jew from Gentile.  It was God’s message that he had to put aside all his prejudices about gentiles and go and stay at this gentile’s home, eat his food, and talk to him about Jesus. 

This was revolutionary, but so much had already taken place in Peter’s life to prepare him for this moment.  The most important thing was that he had been with Jesus, and Jesus had never had any prejudice toward anyone.  He had talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, drank from her water jug, and led her to faith in him as Messiah.  He touched lepers who were considered the most unclean people possible.  He had few encounters with Gentiles and had told them that his ministry was directed to the lost sheep of the people of Israel, but Peter have to remember the gentile woman they met near Tyre who wanted healing for her daughter.  When Jesus said, “is it right to give the children’s food to the dogs” the disciples must have been shocked because he had just called this woman a dog.  At the time they thought that he was mocking and disrespecting her and although most of them did think of Gentiles as dogs they were usually too polite to say it out loud, especially around Jesus.  Only afterward did they come to recognize that he had not been mocking her, but mocking them and their attitudes, for after she came back with a clever reply about the dogs eating the crumbs that fall beneath the master’s table Jesus granted her request and sent her home with the assurance that her daughter was already healed.

And since the resurrection there had been other strange occurrences that had been opening doors to inclusiveness, all the international Jews coming into the movement on that great day of Pentecost, and then all the Greek speaking Jews, and then after the persecution Philip had gone and converted many of the Samaritans.  Peter himself had been one of the two who went to investigate this and when they prayed for these Samaritans they got the Holy Spirit in the same way that the 120 had been filled at Pentecost. This convinced him that this was a legitimate move of God to include the Samaritans in the Jesus movement, so now he was sort of mentally prepared to deal with the Gentiles.  The dream or vision and the men at the door just sealed what had been brewing in his unconscious.

What are your dreams for your future, and the future of your children and grandchildren?  What are your dreams for the future of this congregation?  In your wildest dreams what do you imagine God calling this Church to do and to be in the years ahead?  What new wild levels of inclusiveness do you envision for the congregation; what might God call us to do with this old building, or with the land on which it stands, or is God calling us to an entirely new location and ministry?  Peter’s dream opened doors for a radically new future for the Christian community of his time; what new dreams might God give us for the future of this corner of the Christian movement?

Scripture for this Sermon

Acts 10:1 - 23 ¹In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, as it was called.  ²He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God.  ³One afternoon at about three o’clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius.”  ⁴He stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” He answered, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.  ⁵Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter;  ⁶he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.”  ⁷When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him,  ⁸and after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa. ⁹About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray.  ¹⁰He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance.  ¹¹He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners.  ¹²In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.  ¹³Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.”  ¹⁴But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”  ¹⁵The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  ¹⁶This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. ¹⁷Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate.  ¹⁸They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there.  ¹⁹While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Look, three men are searching for you.  ²⁰Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.”  ²¹So Peter went down to the men and said, “I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for your coming?”  ²²They answered, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.”  ²³So Peter invited them in and gave them lodging. The next day he got up and went with them, and some of the believers from Joppa accompanied him.