Isaiah 35:1-10
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=isaiah+35%3A1-10
Luke 1:47-55
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=Luke+1%3A46-55
James 5:7-10
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=James+5%3A7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=matthew+11%3A2-11
What is your dream? Do you have a dream? Most people start out in their lives with dreams. Usually it’s a dream for a better life - a bigger house, a new car, higher education for the children, a beautiful home. Some people dream of starting a new business, or of bringing their family together, or of a life without pain. Our dreams can change over time - we might look at a dream from our past, and wonder what we were thinking. We may have dreams now that we never even thought of when we were younger. We might dream bigger, or smaller; we might share our dreams with others or keep them to ourselves. What is your dream?
I hope that you have a dream. Some people don’t. Dreams are, after all, somewhat tricky. They require us to be vulnerable, to hope for something, to risk disappointment. Some dreams don’t come true, after all. Sometimes it’s because the circumstances never worked out, sometimes because our frail humanity got in the way of achieving them, sometimes because they were the wrong dreams. Sometimes, no matter how hard you wish for something, and have grand visions and work really hard, sometimes, even then, your dream doesn’t come true. And that can be really disillusioning.
, on the other hand, as the songwriter Peter Gabriel said in his song, "Mercy Street," everything you see, all the things around us, "were once just a dream in somebody’s head." So, there is a point to dreaming after all. Dreaming makes the world a better place. Without them, we would have nothing.
Well, today we begin the third week of Advent, and although your current dreams probably centre around what you want for Christmas and "visions of sugar-plums dance in [your] heads," there is a common dream that we are all waiting for. There is a dream that we all hope will come true. It is God’s dream.
Yes, God has a dream for the world, one that God began dreaming when the world was first made. And God’s dream is that the world would be a different place, that it would be a better place. Right now, as I’m sure you know, the world is not such a great place to be. There is fighting everywhere - from wars, to terrorists, to gangs, to little girls getting shot on buses, to teenagers being stabbed at school. Not so great. There is greed everywhere - food goes to waste in North America, particularly at holiday parties, while people starve in Africa; people demand cut-rate prices for goods here, which means that people work at slave-labour in China and India. Not so great. There is discrimination everywhere - based on the colour of a person’s skin, to the way they speak English, to the amount of money they have, to what gender they are, to what their sexual orientation is. Not so great. There is evil everywhere, perpetrated by one group of people against another, and every single one of us here is implicated in that, in one way or another. This is not the way we are meant to be. This is not the way the world is meant to be. This is not what God has dreamed for us.
God’s dream is so much bigger and better than what we have envisioned for ourselves that we can only express it using the metaphors of poetry. And today, in our Scripture readings, the poets Isaiah and Luke give us tantalizing glimpses of what God’s dream for the world. Isaiah begins with the beautiful imagery of a desert nourished by water. Now, I’ve never been to a desert - not like the Arizona desert, or the Sahara, but I have been to the wilderness of Judea, and it’s pretty desolate. There’s dry, dusty sand everywhere, and the only things growing are measly little shrubs that don’t account for hardly anything at all. So I can understand why Isaiah’s vision of water in the desert would be so powerful to people. He talks about flowers blooming all over, and water springing up everywhere, clean, fresh water. Just imagine that, life everywhere. It’s as if all the parking lots in all the malls in Toronto were to suddenly burst into bloom, as if the cracks in the pavement would start sprouting luscious greenery and trees would take over the empty strip malls and grow fruit and provide shade in the middle of our terrible summers. The air would be clean and refreshing, instead of brown and polluted. Can you imagine how beautiful that would be?
But Isaiah doesn’t just stop with nature. Isaiah knows that God’s dream isn’t just limited to the environment around us. Isaiah goes on to talk about how God’s dream for the world involves people. Those who are ill, those whose hands are weak, whose knees are unsteady, those who are hard of hearing, who can’t see very well, we might even say those whose hips are bad, or whose backs ache, or whose mental faculties are breaking down, all those people will be made whole again. This is God’s dream for the world - that people’s bodies no longer betray them, that people’s bodies give them joy and make them happy; that the weak and unsteady and frail will dance like deer, or maybe like teenagers at a party. Can you imagine this dream?
In Isaiah’s vision of God’s new world, people don’t get lost. They don’t get caught between the lesser of two evils, they don’t get torn by trying to do what’s right, they don’t get misled by people trying to corrupt them, they don’t get taken advantage of by others. Instead, they travel along "the Holy Way" of life. They know where they are going, they know who they are, and they are protected by God.
Luke, too, talks about God’s dream for the people of this world. For Luke, God’s dream for us is that we are all equal, that those who are most oppressed in the world, those who are marginalised and vilified, that those people will be given places of honour while those who have spent their lifetime thinking themselves better than others will realize that they are not. God’s dream is that all people will have enough - that those who starve will be fed, and that nobody will waste food. God’s dream is that those in society who "aren’t worth it" will realize that they are worth it, that God considers them worth it. This is God’s dream for us. It’s a beautiful dream.
And it’s coming true. It’s not completely true yet, obviously, and that’s why we still have the season of Advent every year, because we’re still waiting for God’s dream to become a reality. But the work has begun. Two thousand years ago, when a tiny baby was born to a poor couple, when the Son of God was born as the lowest of the low, God’s dream was coming true. And as this baby grew to be Jesus, and as Jesus walked through Israel healing people, welcoming outcasts, and forgiving sinners, God’s dream was coming true. As Jesus died on the cross to show people that love overcomes everything, God’s dream was coming true. And today, two thousand years later, as we sit and listen to what God wants for the world, and as we take part in that vision, God’s dream is coming true.
It will take time. Our Advent waiting isn’t over. It will take time for God’s dream to come fully true, but we know, we KNOW, that since it is God who dreams, it will come to pass. So, as James said in our second reading for today, "Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.. . . Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord." God has a wonderful dream for us, the Lord is coming to make that dream come true, and that dream is making the world a new place. Thanks be to God!
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