Hopes and Dreams

Jason Armold

An Unlikely Advent • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

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We All Dream

One of the most famous words uttered in the past one hundred years has to be Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. This moment in history defined a movement—namely the American Civil Rights movement. And it served as something of a rallying cry for those involved in this initiative to move our country towards a more just and equitable future. And even today, when it is becoming clear that more remains to be done to make our society more just, inclusive, and equitable, these words remain as an anchor of hope pointing toward a future that remains possible—if just slightly out of reach.

Dreams are an important part of what makes us human. We, as human beings, are planners by nature. In fact, the most successful of human beings are those that can plan not just the next few hours of their lives but instead look forward to the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. We plan using traditional and time-honored too ls, things like planners, diaries, and calendars. Farmers use tools like Almanacs to predict the best time to plant and harvest. In fact, it is the ability to look to the future and plan accordingly that has allowed the human population to grow into the billions of people that now fill our planet.

And each of those over eight billion people on the earth are all dreamers, at least by nature. We all look forward to things that haven’t occured yet with eager anticipation. Some folks eagerly look forward to the days when they graduate from school, find a job, and settle down with someone special. Still others look forward with anticipation toward the day that they have children. Others dream about the day that they can buy a home for the first time. And still others look to the day they can stop working and start to enjoy the retirement they have been saving for.

But others dream of more pressing matters. People with no food dream of they day that they won’ t have to beg and borrow to feed themselves. People living on other people’s couches dream of the day in which they won’t have to rely on the goodwill of friends and family just to have a roof over the head. People in war-torn countries dream of the day in which they won’t have to routinely seek shelter when the air raid siren goes off warning of an incoming missile. In short then, not all dreams are created equal.

What is a Dream?

And I think at this point we need to ask ourselves an important question. And that question is this: What is a dream, anyway? Well, certainly there is the biological phenomenon we now as dreaming while we are asleep. As a former sleep medicine professional, I know a little something about this. The average person spends roughly twenty to thirty percent of their night’s sleep in REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This is an odd sort of state of consciousness. If you look at the brainwaves of the person it almost appears as if they are awake, the brain is very active unlike other states of sleep. But if you look at the rest of the body, particularly the muscles, you’ll notice that they are even less active than in normal sleep. Scientists believe this is an adaptation so that we don’t act out our dreams.

One question I used to get asked all the time by my patients was this: do my dreams have any meaning. And for a medical professional that is a difficult question. Biologically speaking, I would say the answer is no. One function of REM sleep is to help transfer items from short-term memory to long-term memory so it is natural that recent things and things long past would find their way into our dreams. But on another level, psychologists tell us that it is quite possible that we are subconsciously processing our emotions and worries in our sleep. Blessedly, most of us only remember the brief snippets of our dreams if we immediately wake out of REM sleep. The overwhelming majority of our dreams go by unnoticed and unremembered.

But then there are those waking dreams—those things that won’t let us go. These are the things we put our mental energies into, we fantasize about—we even daydream about. These are the goals or aspirations we set our mind to. In the words of the classic Disney movie Cinderella, “A dream is a wish our hearts make.”

So, in short, a dream that we have is like a wish. We wish we could retire so we could enjoy the money we set aside while we were working. We wish that we could have children to leave a legacy to. We wish that our circumstances were different. We even wish that the world were different and that people wouldn’t have to suffer the horrors of war, racism, violence, illness, poverty, and more.

Are Dreams Godly?

And I think we now have to ask the question of whether dreams are a godly thing. Do we find people dreaming in the way we’ve defined it in Scripture? Well, the answer is yes and no and making this distinction will take up the remainder of our time today.

So, on the one hand, we do indeed find people sharing the kinds of dreams of Dr. King, the poor and needy, and even the contented soon-to-be retiree. We find people looking forward to the future all over the place in Scripture. All one needs to do is look at the Psalms to see the authors of these sacred poems looking forward to a time when God would act. To a time when God would be praised by all and all oppression cease.

And in our three related Scripture passages for today, the story of Hannah, the story of Abraham and Sarah, and the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, we see a common dream: a dream for a child to pass on a godly legacy.

In each of these cases, there was something standing in the way of the men and women in our stories from fulfilling their dreams: childlessness. Implicitly or explicitly these stories tell us that these couples could not have children. In ancient times almost always the blame was laid at the woman’s feet for childlessness; fertility research would only come to bear thousands of years later when it was discovered that many time it is the man who is less fertile. But beyond this distinction, the result was the same. The dream of a child to carry on the family name, the family property, the family’s godly legacy was put in jeopardy by the fact that they were unable to bear children.

So yes, dreams like this are godly. In the grand scheme of things, how do humans fulfill their mandate from Genesis 1 to be fruitful and multiply but to have children? To dream of having children is a godly thing to do.

But the question is begged at this point: what happens when our dreams don’t come true? What happens when things don’t work out the way we think they should? Does it mean that we are somehow sinful? Does it mean that God is punishing us? Does it mean that others who have what we want are more spiritual, more deserving, more righteous than us?

NO! It does not mean that at all. Sometimes, the answer is simply no. Some times the answer is simply that it is not God’s will for this event to happen. In the case of Hannah, Sarah, and Elizabeth, it was not God’s will for them to bear children in the usual way. But why? Well, the simple answer is that in the miraculous answer to their prayers in the births of Samuel, Isaac, and John the Baptist, God’s manifest glory and power would be revealed. In this Advent season we too remember a miraculous act of God in which a child was born by miraculous means.

And at other times the answer might simply be not yet. We assume that the answer is no. We resign ourselves to live without our dreams coming true. But then, of a sudden, before we can even explain it, the dream we have wished for becomes reality; our dreams enter the waking world. These surprises remind us that God is faithful, that God’s ways are higher than ours.

The Power of Hope

But remember I said that dreams are both godly and not godly? I know that sounds like a wishy-washy answer that seems like I’m squirming out of something. But at this point I want to clarify the distinction between dreams on the one hand and hope on the other.

So, we’ve already used good old Walt Disney’s definition of a dream: “A dream is a wish your heart makes.” So, dreams are really another name for a wish. A wish in this sense is grounded in desire. We want something and fantasize about that thing becoming reality. And when and if it doesn’t we are disappointed. We might try and struggle a little bit, but more often than not we will eventually resign ourselves to the fact that the dream won’t come true.

But hope is something else entirely. You see hope is one of the three cardinal virtues of a Christian, the others being faith and love. Hope is grounded in God’s power and not our own or that of other people. Most of what we wish for is something you and I or other people are in control of. For instance, I wish that war would stop. I wish people would stop putting billions of dollars into building better weapons to kill each other and instead divert that money into healthcare and ending poverty. But all of those things depend on OTHER PEOPLE being willing to let go of power, greed, jealousy, prejudice, hate, and violence.

But hope is different. Hope is based on the eternal promises of God that never fail. Hope is based on the story that is revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. Hope, sisters and brothers is made manifest in the child born in Bethlehem some two millennia ago. Hope is found in Christ alone.

Hope is confidence that what God says will happen will happen. And hope gives us the strength to live on in the world even when our dreams are crushed. Hope is more powerful than a wish. It is more powerful than even the strongest weapon. It is an anchor for our souls when all else is shaking violently. The hope of life after death. The hope of the resurrection. The hope of eternal life in the New Heavens and New Earth. Hope is unshakeable.

We have faith, trust in God’s promises because we have hope that God will do what God said he would do. And why did God act and why WILL God act? Because God so loved the world.

Friends, it all comes down to love. God loves us. God loves the world. God loved the world so much that he gave his Son to save it, to renew it, and restore it and us as well. To give us new birth into a living hope—the hope that can ground godly dreams that motivate us to be about the Father’s business of welcoming others into the Kingdom of the Son. A living hope that even in spite of all the negativity around us we can find joy in living.

Don’t give up on your dreams. Turn them into prayers that are grounded in hope. But even if your dreams are dashed, know that there is still with God the hope of a future more wonderful and bright than we can even possibly imagine. Amen.