How many know the 1975 song, “Dream Weaver” by Gary Wright? Wright apparently took the idea for the song from John Lennon, who in his song “God” saw himself as the “dream weaver” of the 1960s, “breaking away from the influences and dogmas that informed his life.”*
Lennon in fact spent his life trying to “break free” of the childhood traumas and psychological demons that plagued him, as well as cultural conventions. That “liberation” theme came out frequently in his music, and in his life. Lennon was continually searching for ways to break the chains that bound him. In voicing that longing, he became an icon for all those with similar liberation “dreams.”
Our scriptures in advent abound and resound with liberation themes. Each story is soaked in reverberations of hope and dreams of a new life free from poverty, oppression, and hardship but also from sin, guilt, and a difficult past.
As frequently is the case in Scripture, every new and amazing gift of freedom from God begins with a dream and culminates with a forging ahead in faith, a trusting in God’s promise.
Abraham was visited by God in a dream and given a covenant and a mission. But Abraham needed to trust God enough to leave his country and pioneer west.
Jacob’s son Joseph was visited by God in dreams that would define his life to come. But despite all adversity, Joseph had to trust in God and keep following that dream to fruition, countering political problems and power dynamics.
Jacob was visited by God in a dream, but he would need to forge ahead, trusting that God would be with him no matter where he went and what he needed to do.
Now, in our scriptures for today, we encounter Joseph, the human father of Jesus, whose four significant dreams would cast the future for his family and protection for the world’s Messiah.
Joseph’s story may seem more insignificant to us than Mary’s, as she was the carrier of the Messiah in her womb. But without Joseph, we would have no Christmas story. It was Joseph’s trust in his visions and dreams as messages from God that wrapped a coat of protection around the holy family and Jesus’ future.
In Joseph’s first dream, God is urging him to take Mary for his wife, assuring him that it’s the right thing to do and that the child will be a holy child of God. Without this dream, Joseph likely would have kindly divorced Mary, and what could have become of her makes us shudder. She could have been stoned in an honors’ killing, or at best, disowned by her family and cast into the street without protection for the rest of her life.
Joseph’s second dream warned him to flee with his new family to Egypt for protection against Herod’s wrath. Jesus’ early life as the Lamb of God was spent “on the lamb,” as he escaped Herod’s bloody edict. Without Joseph’s trust in a dream and his willingness to gather up his family from their ancestral home and trek for miles into a new and foreign place, Jesus may have been killed before his ministry could begin.
After Herod’s death, another dream advised Joseph to return to Israel with his family. Still a fourth dream warned him of the still possible danger of keeping the young messiah in Judah and gave him the idea of raising his young son in rural Galilee, out from under the eye of both Judah’s Archelaus and Roman jurisdiction.
Joseph’s quiet trust in God’s providence and his willingness to step out and move his family four different times cast him in the role of faithful follower and a worthy son of Abraham. He lived out the faith of his forefathers. Joseph may not have known exactly what his son would become and do, but he trusted God enough to keep him safe and ensure God’s plan would come to fruition.
Supernal dreams are followed by substantial street action. Joseph was a man of both trust in what he could not understand and willingness to follow God’s directives anywhere he was advised to go.
Can we say the same today?
Advent is a time when we continue to look for signs, when we re-boot our own faith and trust in what we cannot understand and cannot know. It’s a time when we search for God’s presence and voice in our own lives and in our own dreams. It is a time when we pray for the courage to step out and follow Jesus, even as God breaks us free of our inhibitions, fears, doubts, and patterns of complacence that keep us rooted to the past and our own chains.
Do you believe in dreams?
Some would say today that dreams are mere psychological activities of the brain on an unconscious level. But some psycho-neuro-linguists today would tell you, similar to those dream masters in Jesus’ day, that our unconscious allows us to make connections in ways and on frequencies that we ignore in conscious life.
In ancient times, dreams were seen as a means of communication between God and humankind. A dream was a kind of protrusion of God into the created world through human consciousness. When our minds are less “awake” we are more impressionable, less guarded, less bound by the parameters of our own logic and our own boxes, more apt to trust in our intuitive side, our visions and signs, non-verbal communication, our ability to break free of our physical limitations.
Paul Ricoeur calls our dream state a state of teleology, in which we anticipate what we may become and have the ability to choose alternative futures. When our defenses are down, we can more clearly see. When our dreams are down, we are blind and immobilized.
How many of you have had a dream in which you discovered something about yourself or a situation you were in that you couldn’t see awake? How many have thought of a great idea or solved a problem during sleep that you found impossible to solve when awake? How many of you have seen a new way forward and felt a greater peace about the future during dreaming without the stress of consciousness?
We know that dreams are the impetus for action. We dream a future before we forge a future.
Preacher-Pastor-Prophet Martin Luther King Jr knew this all too well. His famous speech, “I Have a Dream” rallied millions of people to a hopeful changed future. It still does. Why? Because whenever you can dream something, you can find a way to make it possible.
All change in this world begins with a dream.
God is still speaking to us in our dreaming.
God is the ultimate dream weaver. Not John Lennon. Not Gary Wright. God knew first how to break conventions, break down stress and fear, help us to envision a future of promise, encourage us to move ahead into unknown places. God weaves for us a “dream” and a hope of a new kind of world. And God calls us into action to follow that dream no matter where it takes us.
So, the question for all of us this advent must be, “What do you see in your dreams?”
Have you ever seen someone weave? Each group of threads are combined and connected in various patterns and ways, so that no two fabrics are ever quite the same. God is like that with us. God directs the patterns of our dreams whenever we meditate, whenever we pray, whenever we allow God access to our lives, yes, even in our sleep. And God weaves for us a new dream, a new path to follow, a new vision to embrace.
What dreams and messages from God are calling you? How is God calling you to pay attention? Where is God is leading you in your life and in the life of your church?
What dreams will inspire you to follow Jesus into a new and unknown world to do new and exciting things in His Name?
This advent, as we prepare more and more for the savior’s birth, we all need to listen to our dreams, to allow ourselves to dream, to hope, and to pray that God may speak to us in a way that will inspire us to act, to move, and to follow in new and phenomenal ways.
This is how breaks the chains of the past. This is how God makes new paths for the future.
Before you wake to God’s possibilities, to new faith, and to new life, you must first be willing to listen. You must first be willing to dream.
*See Wikipedia entry for the song.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
Joseph’s Story (Luke 2:1-7)
Minor Text
Joseph’s Dreams (Genesis 37)
Daniel’s Dreams (Daniel 2 and 7)
The Lord’s Prophecy According to Joel (2)
Psalm 2: God’s Praise to His Anointed
Psalm 24: The Lord’s Blessing
Psalm 80: The Lord’s Restoration
Psalm 16: Like a Dream the Lord Will Save
Psalm 138: The Lord’s Purpose
Psalm 139: You Know Me Lord
The Emmanuel Prophesied by Isaiah (7:10-25)
Joseph’s Visitation (Matthew 1:18-25)
Peter’s Dream (Acts 10)