Sermon 07.07.2024: A Dream Interpreted

Do you remember your dreams? I try to pause when waking and think about my dreams, because I know they will scamper away the minute I get busy with my day. 

Having a dream is one thing. Interpreting its meaning is another. And turning a dream into reality is a whole different level. What are your dreams? Where is God in your interpretation of them and your implementation of them? 

Scripture

Daniel 2:24-49

Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will give the king the interpretation.” 

Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king and said to him: “I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who can tell the king the interpretation.” The king said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to tell me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?” Daniel answered the king, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or diviners can show to the king the mystery that the king is asking, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed were these: To you, O king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and the revealer of mysteries disclosed to you what is to be. But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me because of any wisdom that I have more than any other living being, but in order that the interpretation may be known to the king and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind.

“You were looking, O king, and lo! there was a great statue. This statue was huge, its brilliance extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked on, a stone was cut out, not by human hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, were all broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. “This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings—to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the might, and the glory, into whose hand he has given human beings, wherever they live, the wild animals of the field, and the birds of the air, and whom he has established as ruler over them all—you are the head of gold. After you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over the whole earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; just as iron crushes and smashes everything, it shall crush and shatter all these. As you saw the feet and toes partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but some of the strength of iron shall be in it, as you saw the iron mixed with the clay. As the toes of the feet were part iron and part clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with clay, so will they mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall this kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever; just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God has informed the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation trustworthy.”

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, worshiped Daniel, and commanded that a grain offering and incense be offered to him. The king said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery!” Then the king promoted Daniel, gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king’s court.

Sermon Text

What is your relationship to your dreams? Do you remember them? 

I try to remember mine. I try to stop when waking, before I open my eyes and the day intrudes. Because if I get out of bed and start brewing the coffee before I think about my dreams, they are long gone. 

The poet David Whyte speaks about this in his poem 

What to Remember When Waking 

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began, 

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans. 

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep. 

Sometimes my dreams make sense. I can follow a thread of what my brain and my heart have been working through and the ways things show up in my dreams. Sometimes it is more of a mystery. The other night, I dreamed that I bleached—I mean BLEACHED—my own hair at home. Feel free to make sense of that one for me. Last night I dreamed I was on the choir tour and Michael said I had to play the organ because John had somewhere else to be for that concert. I don’t know exactly what corner of my life has something I feel completely unprepared and unequipped to face, but it showed up in that dream, that’s for sure. 

My preferred dreams are when Sean Connery chats with me in the produce aisle. Actually, that dream happened to a friend of mine and I’ve been jealous of it since I heard about it. In truth, I’d be happy if any of the actors who have played James Bond showed up in a tuxedo at a grocery store. I would sleep through my alarm. 

Why do we dream? Dreams are hard to study in a lab setting, but scientists think dreams serve the following purposes [1]: 

—they help with offline memory reprocessing, in which the brain consolidates learning and memory tasks and supports and records waking consciousness 

—they prepare us for possible future threats 

—they give us cognitive simulation of real-life experiences, 

—they help develop cognitive capabilities 

—they are a unique state of consciousness that incorporates experience of the present, processing of the past, and preparation for the future 

—dreams are a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions can be brought together by the dreaming ego, notions that would be unsettling while awake, serving the need for psychological balance and equilibrium 

Dreams are common in scripture. Jacob wrestles with God in a dream one night and ends up with a real-life limp. In the Book of Acts, Peter has a dream about how the church is supposed to be more inclusive than he had thought it should be. The magi are warned by a dream to return home by another way and avoid king Herod after they visit the baby Jesus. In scripture, dreams are a common way God communicates with people. 

And who am I to tell God how to do their job, but I think it’s not a foolproof communication strategy. Dreams don’t have witnesses, so we have to trust the dreamer to communicate the message correctly. And we’ve already discussed how quickly dreams fade upon waking. And even if we trust the dreamer, how does one know they’ve interpreted the dream correctly? 

Are you sure that’s what God told you to do?, we might ask a friend who reports that they dreamed God wants them to drop out of college a month before graduation. Does God not want you to have that degree you’re so close to getting, maybe as a back up plan? 

Dreams may seem clearer to the people who dream them than they do to the rest of us. 

There have been occasions where my dreams were clear and I knew immediately upon waking what they meant. Many years ago, not long after Justin and I got married, I was trying to figure out what I was going to be when I grew up. I’d turned down graduate programs in History. I was thinking about maybe law school or getting a teaching certification. I was actively searching and praying and discerning for my future path. A number of people at the church where we were members asked me if I’d considered applying to be the youth director. 

I didn’t just say ‘no’ to them, but each time I said some version of ‘are you crazy? Why would I want to spend time with youth? I have just barely recovered from being a youth’. 

And then I had a dream where I heard a loud voice calling my name. I was in a dorm of some kind and I went out in the hall and at the end of the hall was God. God looked like one of those Monty Python cartoon pictures of God from the Holy Grail movie and God yelled, “Marci! Are you listening?”

And I woke up and immediately applied to be the youth director of our church and now here I am, wondering what else I possibly ever thought I could do with my life. 

But I’ve had other dreams that I needed help understanding. And I’m thankful for the friends, and therapists in my life who have given me good counsel and asked the questions that helped me sort them out. 

And this is where we find King Nebuchadnezzar. He’s been having these vivid dreams and he knows they mean something but he can’t figure it out. He can’t sleep and he’s losing it. He tells his magicians that they not only have to interpret his dreams, but also they have to know what the dream is without him even telling them. And if they can’t read the king’s mind and then explain the dreams, they will be killed. I guess that’s one way to know how good your magicians and enchanters are. 

Right before the passage Victor read, Daniel and his friends pray to God for mercy and that night Daniel has a dream that gives him the answer so he’s able to tell the king what it means. 

And to the king’s credit, he recognizes good interpretation, no matter where it comes from. As the story goes on, we’ll see he’ll need reminders of this more than one time. But in this moment, he gets it.

++++ 

I worry a lot of people’s dreams and ambitions are not being interpreted well in our world. People seeking power are saying that their dreams involve only success and wellbeing for themselves, and they have surrounded themselves with people who agree with them, rather than people who might ask, “wouldn’t your wellbeing improve if the lives of everyone else got better too?”

Are we getting good interpretation of our dreams? 

And are we allowing the dreams of people who have different experiences than we do, to come to fruition? 

Langston Hughes a 20th century African American poet wrote at least a few poems about dreams. Here’s one of them: 

Dreams by Langston Hughes 

Hold fast to dreams 

For if dreams die, 

Life is a broken-winged bird 

That can not fly. 

Hold fast to dreams 

For when dreams go, 

Life is a barren field 

Frozen in the snow. 

Having to hold fast to dreams is something the African American community has had lots of practice in. Hughes lived through the Jim Crow era. His poem is written from a place of deep and difficult experience. And yet it is a poem of hope. Dreams can give us life in difficult times, reminding us to focus our hopes on what we can’t quite see yet. 

As we hear the stories of Daniel and his friends this month, notice their hope and faith in situations where despair and resignation would be understandable. Our ancestors in scripture, and in our actual family trees, have stories to tell us about faithfulness in difficult moments. 

This week I invite you to notice your dreams. And to notice where the dreams of others are being voiced. 

I began this sermon with a poem by David Whyte. That poem continues with these lines: 

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance. 

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged. 

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?….. 

from The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press 

May our dreams give us connection to the urgency that calls us to our one love. Dream on, friends. 

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378#causes