Prophetic Dreaming (Or, In Defence of Dreams)

A sermon preached at 4 Corners Festival, Sunday 5 February 2023

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Even if you have never heard of the book, 50 Speeches That Made the Modern World, you’ll be able to tell me whose face is on the cover. Who else could it be, but Martin Luther King?

Even sixty years on from his “I Have a Dream” speech, King’s oratory continues to challenge and inspire us today. 

But, you know, not all who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 were enamoured by King’s dreaming. For Malcolm X, the more militant American Civil Rights campaigner, the march on Washington was little more than a feel-good exercise. 

He later described the event as a “farce” and a “circus”. And he derided King for dreaming while black Americans were living a nightmare.

Does his cynicism surprise you?

Perhaps.

But I wonder does part of you secretly agree with his derision of dreams.

In these challenging days, do you think dreaming is just a bit naïve?

More pointedly, do you think the 4 Corners Festival, with all its talk of visions for Belfast, is just another feel-good exercise? Have we been indulging in fanciful dreaming, while all around is the nightmare of a broken economy, broken public services, broken politics?

Looking at the very real challenges facing our city, our country, and our world, dreaming can seem like an indulgence, a luxury we cannot afford.

But, you know, this is nothing new. This scarcity of dreaming was a reality in the days of the prophet Joel too. Though the verses we have read together sound hopeful and uplifting, in actual fact, this is a rare moment of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy narrative.

The fact is, Joel was living in what can only be described as a nightmare. He faced hardships that we can only imagine. In the opening chapter of his book, we discover that the land has been ravaged by plague upon plague of locusts.

We get a sense of the unprecedented nature of the devastation in the first few verses, as Joel asks those who live in the land: 

 “Has anything like this ever happened in your days
    or in the days of your ancestors?”

And he goes on to describe how locust after locust comes until even the very last crumb is eaten.

It’s the sort of scene we might imagine only in the most exaggerated dystopic disaster film. Utter devastation, complete destruction. And, with it, a desert of broken dreams. 

Yet, from this darkness hope emerges. Joel foretells that a day is coming when God will redeem His people and the land will be restored:

“In those days,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.”

From a poverty of dreaming, will come an abundance of dreams. From under the dark shadow of the past, will emerge bright visions of God’s good future.

And I say God’s future because this is what Joel means by dreams. He is not interested in Walter Mitty-style daydreaming. Joel’s concern is for prophetic dreaming. Not a flight of fancy away from reality, but dreaming that faces up to reality, and enables us to see God’s future above the mire of this present age.

Joel’s concern is about cultivating in this age a holy imagination that enables us to see what we cannot see on our own. It is about seeing the world not as it is, but as it ought to be.

Now, make no mistake, this sort of dreaming will always be met with cynicism. Because learning to see this way requires a great liberation of the imagination. It demands breaking free from the habits of mind that trick us into believing that this is just the way things are.

There is a wonderful example of this need to learn again how to see in the Book of Acts.

In chapter two we are told of the Day of Pentecost, when Peter and the other apostles begin to speak of the wonders of God in multiple tongues.

And the crowd’s response? Some were “amazed and perplexed”, but others reacted cynically. Making fun of them they said, “They have had too much wine.”

Now, normally we interpret this as a reaction to the profusion of tongues spoken by the apostles. And I don’t contest that reading for a moment. But might it also be true that the accusation of drunkenness is also a reaction to the audacity of Peter’s vision? Because the wonders of God Peter is proclaiming are the wonders of Jesus Christ – this crucified Messiah, whom God has raised to life. For it is Christ who is the guarantor of God’s dream, it is Christ who has conquered sin and death and who is about his work of making all things new.

Talk about a feel-good exercise! What Peter is describing is off the charts!

But notice how Peter responds to the cynicism of the crowd. He quotes the prophet Joel. The very words we have read together. “We’re not drunk,” he says. “We’re only dreaming!”

You see, left to ourselves, we are unlikely to make this shift in perspective. When faced with crisis or hardship or despondency, it can be hard for us to see beyond the moment. But with the Spirit, a new way of seeing is not just possible, it is inevitable. Suddenly, we are able to look to the future and see not death and disappointment, but resurrection.

I love the way Joel illustrates this transformation in seeing.

He singles out the old men as the dreamers.

Now, I have always wondered why he does that. It can’t be that he is making some distinction in gender or age (he has already made clear that the Spirit will bring about a great democratisation of dreaming in men and women, old and young).

No, I think the point Joel is making is that even the old men will dream. Because who are the old men, if not the old cynics? The ones who have been around the block. The wizened ones who have seen it all before.

Joel is saying that even they will dream.

So, what about us? 

Might even we dream?

In this age of scepticism and deconstruction, cynicism, and disillusionment, might we too learn to see the world as it ought to be?

Because the days Joel anticipated have arrived. Those days are now these days. It is for us to dream.

Recently, I have been reading a new book by the philosopher James Smith called How to Inhabit Time. Taking his lead from the American writer Annie Dillard, Smith reminds us that God’s Spirit is no less available to us today than in the days of the apostles.

In Dillard’s words: “The absolute is available to everyone in every age. There was never a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”

Well, if this is the reality we inhabit, if we are truly living in the days foretold by Joel, then our task is obvious. Our role is to discern the Spirit. As the great 18th-century American theologian Jonathan Edwards once put it: “The task of every generation is to discover in which direction the Sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.”

And so, we must be attentive and attuned to the Spirit’s leading, so we might learn to dream God’s dream for this place. For Belfast. For Northern Ireland and, indeed, the whole island of Ireland.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am aware of the challenge of dreaming in the context of a troubled past. How can we envision a new future when our history seems to have such a hold on us?

But what I love about Smith’s book is that he does not shy away from this challenge. He recognises that prophetic dreaming does not ignore the past, but graciously uses our past to contribute to God’s good future.

“Our past,” writes Smith, “is not what we leave behind, it is what we carry … We are called to live forward, given our history, hearing both its possibilities and its entanglements … Faithfulness,” he concludes, “is not loyalty to a past but answering a call to shalom [to peace] given (and despite) our past.”

What a challenge this is for the churches in Northern Ireland.

As witnesses to the gospel of Jesus, don’t we need to do a better job of showing the world what mercy looks like?

Our track record has not been great. Too often we have been more loyal to our past than we have been faithful to God’s future.

But it is our responsibility to live boldly into this future. It is our burden to show people what redemption looks like. It is our role to dramatize for the world the amazing grace of God in a story that only we can tell.

And this story is ours to tell not despite where we have been, but because of it.

Smith puts it like this:

“Grace wants to unleash our history for a future with God that could only be ours —living into the version of ourselves that the world needs.”

God wants you–– God wants me–– God wants us to live into the version of ourselves that the world needs.

And so, today I ask: What version of Northern Ireland does the world need?

What are the seeds in our shared story that God might want us to sew for a good future that can only be ours?

Imagine for a moment how God might use our troubled history to demonstrate the power of His grace. 

That’s what this week at the 4 Corners Festival has really been about. It has not been a feel-good exercise. No, we have been doing what our political leaders seem to have forgotten. We have been dreaming. We have been allowing space for God to grow in us a holy imagination that allows us to see the world more as it ought to be.

And, you know, I for one am glad to have been a part of it. Because I have had enough of cynicism. I want an end to this poverty of dreaming. 

Joel doesn’t speak of poverty; he sings of abundance! And yet today, it seems we are living on the borrowed capital of yesterday’s dreams.

Twenty-five years after the people of this land dared to dream of an end to violence, it can seem as though our dreams are spent. At least, that’s how it appears if we tune our ears to the interminable drama of orange and green.

And so, we the people, have been taught to be more circumspect in our dreaming.

Heaven forbid we should dream of leaders who work for the common good, of ambulances that arrive on time, of an end to homelessness on our streets, of a public sector that trusts, values, and empowers its workers. It seems that in this famine of the imagination, it is too audacious even to dream that we might have a functioning government soon.

My youngest child turns six next month. I consider it more than tragic to acknowledge that for over two-thirds of his life there has been no working executive at Stormont.

I don’t want my children to grow up in a world without dreams.

I don’t want them to learn from our generation how to tighten the belt of hope. 

I don’t want them to be so troubled by the world that they mistake a prophetic vision of God’s future for a feel-good exercise.

That’s what Malcolm X saw sixty years ago in Washington. But John Lewis, the late senator and civil rights veteran, saw something quite different. And it’s his vision that I want to leave you with.

Speaking to the BBC on the fiftieth anniversary of King’s dream, Lewis recalled how he and Dr King arrived in Washington to see hundreds of thousands of people already walking ahead of them.

“We were supposed to be leading the march,” he told the reporter, “but the people were already marching. It was like saying, ‘There go my people. Let me catch up with them.’”

What Lewis saw was the great democratisation of dreaming Joel foretold, the Spirit of God poured out on all people. 

As we mark 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement, it is my hope that we would once again take hold of this truth. Because make no mistake, the living God has a new story to tell in this place – and we all have a part to play.

So, let us not be carried along by the spirit of the age. Let us, instead, keep in step with the Spirit of God.

And as we follow Him, in boldness, humility, and trust, may we model for our children what it is to hope, what it is to imagine, and what it is to dream.

And, you never know. We might even remind our leaders of these things too, so that they might one day look at us and say, “There go our people. Let us catch up with them.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Find out more about the 4 Corners Festival here.