Jesus' Dream
Acts 7:55-60; Rev. 22: 12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17: 20-26
I'd like to wish all of you who are mothers a very happy Mother's Day! I guess it's only natural that this past week, as the days drew closer to today's celebration, so many beautiful memories of my own mother rushed to remembrance. As I refected on today's gospel and began preparing my homily, a certain memory of her came to mind:
It’s Sunday morning, and Mom and I walk into the church of my childhood. I was only about six or seven at the time, but I was old enough to know what awaited me. Namely, an hour of staring, squirming, and daydreaming, and just waiting for that hour to pass in order for freedom to return. And so the question naturally sprung into mind. "Mom," I asked, "why do we have to come here?" Without batting an eye she responded, "Because God lives here." (Moms have built-in catechisms that are made for situations like this.) Her response didn’t exactly thrill me, but it did make me content - after all, it’s hard to argue about coming to see God. So we enter the side-door of the church, where I begin another hour-long session of staring, squirming, and daydreaming. Perhaps your experience was the same as mine when you were a child. Maybe you still stare and squirm and daydream!
It’s Sunday morning, and Mom and I walk into the church of my childhood. I was only about six or seven at the time, but I was old enough to know what awaited me. Namely, an hour of staring, squirming, and daydreaming, and just waiting for that hour to pass in order for freedom to return. And so the question naturally sprung into mind. "Mom," I asked, "why do we have to come here?" Without batting an eye she responded, "Because God lives here." (Moms have built-in catechisms that are made for situations like this.) Her response didn’t exactly thrill me, but it did make me content - after all, it’s hard to argue about coming to see God. So we enter the side-door of the church, where I begin another hour-long session of staring, squirming, and daydreaming. Perhaps your experience was the same as mine when you were a child. Maybe you still stare and squirm and daydream!
Turns out, though, we’re not the only ones who daydream in church. God’s pretty good at it too! There in that Upper Room, that first church where the Eucharist was celebrated; there with his first congregation - the Apostles, Jesus dreams. And what a beautiful dream it is. And the best part about it is, it’s about us!
His dream finds expression, as sometimes our dreams do, expressed in a prayer. First Jesus prays for those who will come to believe through the preaching of the apostles and their successors. That means us. We are those who inherit the faith of the apostles, the fruits of their preaching. He is praying for us.
Then Jesus says the most remarkable thing: "Father may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you" Could the dream get any better than that? Jesus is praying that the very love which the Father shares with the Son may be part of the life of Christian people. We are swept up into that loving relationship which is at the heart of eternity. Indeed, Jesus goes on to pray "that the love with which you loved me may be in them".
But, as we look at the history of Christianity, it is pretty clear that we have failed to live out that dream that Jesus has for us. “That they may all be one?” In the United States alone, there are more than one thousand Christian denominations. In the two thousand years of Church history, Christians have argued about everything from the authority of the Pope, indulgences, the role of Mary, to how to baptize (to immerse or just pour water over someone). Even within the Catholic Church itself, we often divide people into categories: conservative, liberal, orthodox, traditional, progressive. Somehow I don’t think this was part of Jesus’ dream.
In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, Lucy demands that Linus change TV channels and then threatens him with her fist if he doesn't. “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus. “These five fingers,” says Lucy. “Individually they're nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.'' Which channel do you want?' asks Linus. Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, “Why can't you guys get organized like that?”
And I think Jesus might say the same thing to us. “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?” Because, like Lucy observed, individually we are nothing, but just like there is power in a hand that curls its fingers together in a fist, there is power when people join together and put aside their arguments and petty differences, and come together in Christ’s name. It is nothing less than the power to transform the world: to build the Kingdom of God. To change hatred into love, and war and violence into peace. It is the power of forgiveness. It is the power of compassion. It is the power to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty. The power to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and minister to the sick.
God’s dream is no eight-hour snooze. It’s a living reality. As a people of faith, we are called to do our daydreaming wide-awake. It’s the dream God shares with us, and for good reason. We need this dream. We see headlines about war and terror, about sickness and scandal. We wonder if we’re living more in a nightmare than a daydream. But God is faithful to us, and he has given us everything we need to fulfill this dream.
Next week, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the “birthday of the Church,” the day on which, in that very upper room where Jesus dreamed his dream, he gives his disciples the means of accomplishing that dream – the Holy Spirit. And it is through the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive at Confirmation (the gift of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord) that we can create a world in which the fruits of the Spirit are evident: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, friendliness, gentleness, and self-control. In essence, through the Holy Spirit, we have the power to transform our world into a holy place, a sanctuary, a church without walls.
And so, we await the fulfillment of the dream. We yearn for the day when church capacity will match city capacity, and today’s headlines will melt into tomorrow’s footnotes. And someday, when a little boy asks, “Why do we have to go to church?” we will say that we don’t. One day we won’t have to go to church. We’ll already be there.
If only my Mom could have told me that!
