16 May

Dear friends

This coming Sunday, we will end our worship with the beautiful hymn 710, “I have a dream, a man once said.” The words, of course, echo Martin Luther King Jr’s famous speech. Yet they speak powerfully into our worship context and resonate deeply with John’s vision in Revelation 21 (our 2nd reading for Sunday):

“I have a dream,” a man once said,

“where all is perfect peace;

where men and women, black and white,

stand hand in hand, and all unite

in freedom and in love.”

But in this world of bitter strife

the dream can often fade;

reality seems dark as night,

we catch but glimpses of the light

Christ sheds on humankind.

So dream the dreams and sing the songs,

but never be content:

for thoughts and words don’t ease the pain;

unless there’s action, all is vain;

faith proves itself in deeds.

I wonder how many dreamers we still have among us. It is difficult to hold onto a new dream when everything around us seems to shout against it. When pressures from every side close in on our imaginations, not with visions of peace, but with images of violence and oppression.

Our Sunday worship won’t focus primarily on Revelation. Our main text will be Peter’s account of how the Holy Spirit led him to share fellowship with a Gentile man in Joppa. Still, the two readings belong together. The vision in Revelation offers a picture of the world as it could be: whole, healed, and at peace. Acts 11 shows us what it looks like when that dream begins to take shape in real life. Peter’s visit is the outworking, the messy and uncertain realisation of that ultimate hope. His actions belong to that fragile space between despair and renewal. In the words of the hymn, “unless there’s action, all is vain.”

In his book of prayers with the provocative title Prayers for Privileged People, the Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann offers a prayer about dreams. It captures something very close to Revelation’s vision of what our world might one day become:

Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)

Dreams and Nightmares

Last night as I lay sleeping,

I had a dream so fair …

I dreamed of the Holy City, 

well-ordered and just.

I dreamed of a garden of paradise,

well-being all around and a good water supply.

I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness,

and caring embrace for all those in need.

I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.

Last night as I lay sleeping … 

I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven.

I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding

and maimed children. 

I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved,

of the homeless left unnoticed,

of the dead left ungrieved.

I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages

and wars great and small.

When I awoke, I found you still to be God,

presiding over the day and night

with serene sovereignty,

for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you

our best dreams

and our worst nightmares,

asking that your healing mercy should override threats, 

that your goodness will make our

nightmares less toxic

and our dreams more real. 

Marius Louw