DREAMS AND VISIONS JMB

Joel 2;28-32, Acts 2;1-4 BSPC
June 3, 1979 Cols, OH
Pentecost -— Communion Meditation

| "Your old men shall dream dreams, nd your young men

one o feels Oro - \ce\~
shall see vistons."| So observed snpénmunnneinGepel 2,300 years
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ago. | ses true of course. \ Young people do Oateadision

Wovle and unfocused
The young are idealistic, full of wignc? a: °

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“Tie hoper\Yintettered by the realities of pragmatism,

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expedience, the market economy and the frailty of the 2amirt
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ego, the young wonder why people can't be fair to ons another

or why nations can't stop fighting, or why we can't build

fewer nuclear weapons next year and concentrate on feeding

hungry people instead. \ rt is no coincidence that most of

the major social changes in the world have been preceded

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by the agitation, pressure, demonstration a
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CQ ferrite eine aoe \ ang they are at it again:

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back in Washington with their idealist**dreams and simple

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questions about the fact that we'll sgon_be knee deep in

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nuclear waste material which will remain lethal to human

life several thousand years longer than the containers in
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which it is stored will last. y wer

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6 be Youna is w Warr G@ Wisim ok Lat ut -
Tiree ines and when the late President Kennedy

told us not to ask what the nation could do for us, but what

we could do for the nation, the young knew what he was
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talking about It was an @mmmm about peace and

freedom, and its brain child was one of the most idealistic
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projects any nation ever attempted - The Peace Cor aX When
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the tally of the 1960's is finally Gounted, that, I think,
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will be the most tragic loss of all. \ Idealism and the
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d@mupeme of the young were ruthlessly crushed somewhere between
Saigon and the Watergate Hearings -— and have not been seen
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or heard from since \ There is something sad and unhealthy
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about a culture whose young people have forgotten how to Wawa

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that's true, too, I Keep

discoverin Some of the most hopeful, most visionary and

most courageous folk I am privileged to know are well beyond

—_

retirement vee think immediately of Maggie Kubn, totally
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fearless, total committed to peace, justice, and totally

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optimistic about the possibilities for the future.| The

elderly, it appears, do not ordinarily give up on the human

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condition | In fact, quite the opposite seems to be the

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case: (a renewal of hopefulness and an open ended optimism.

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I wonder if the prophet Joel's concentration on youth

and old age, and his neglect of the inbetween years is

accidental.\ We regard the time between 25 and 65 as the

shank of Life\ Compared to gearing up and gearing down, the
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important things all happen in the middle - or so we seem to

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think. |ana I wonder if Joel's excluding middle age from the

“dreaming ~ visioning" phenomena is purely coincidental \ I
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have decided that it is nok. I'm of the opinion that he knew

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about the eternal reality of the human condition here, as well.

The fact is that middle aged people don't do as much

dreaming as their brothers and sisters at either end of the
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spectrum, \The fact is that middle age people are too busy

managing the world to dream much about the future. | w.aare

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years mean earning a living and raising children, and pro-

viding for their education, and by force of will making the
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gears of industry turn and the business of the world proceed.

It is not a time for idealism \ Realism is the important

wordla: [ee eee Sn 5 a Pre, \ In

middle years we are so realistic that cynicism begins to

invade the corners of life;\and then pessimism and whatever

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dreams and visions we may have had ahout a better world and
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a fuller life are traded in for survival and a paid-up
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mortgage and monthly dividends.

Our concern here is that hope for the future, the a: Loh

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of young people and the visions of old people
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EP, \ the philosophers and psychologists
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understand tnat.\ Marxist thecretician Ernst Bloch writes:

"Where there is hope, there is religion.') And Erich Fromn,

“hope is an intrinsic element of the structure of Lite) of

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—' Theolggian Hans
Schwarz put it simply, (Hope is as necessary for human

life as oxygen.” )(see Ted Peters, Futures Human and Divine,

p. 84)

From the beginning the Christian faith has been very hope-

ful about the future realistic about the human condition =~

in fact, so realistic that some find our _thealogies of

sin depressing, yet fundamentally and essentially hopeful,
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optimistic. \ Christians have been the most notorious

dreamers in history. | Christians have been at the very

center of that procession, from one generation to the next,

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that believe¥s that life can be better in the future than

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it is in the present. (te Christian Church has been the most

hopelessly hopeful grouping of human beings in all of history.
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And the reason is Pentecost. | One day Jong ago, a group
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of Jesus' friends experienced the power and presence of God

in the world in a very real way. | And the church has known

from that time on, that because God is in the picture some
very good and interesting possibilities will be found in the
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future.

Let's look for a moment at the texts ~ the Biblical

sources for the ideas we've been considering.

——

The prophet Joel did his writing between _400 and 343 B.C.
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The cowerrigee! Jews who had been in Babylonian exile had
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returned, resettled and had been living in Jerusalem for

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several generations.| They had created the life style which

would become the religion of Sudaism.| But things were not

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looking good, in spite of their faithfulness | A severe

drought and a plague of locusts had just wiped out the
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entire crop and a nation to the north was consolidating

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troops near the border. \ The realists among them surely were

ringing their hands, Ny

Joel wrote about a renewal of personal religion, deeper \y

than the mere practice of the temple rituals | And then he

held up his vision of the day when God's spirit - literally, ©

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his breath, would be poured out on all the people. People sf

would know the reality of God\ His reign would be experienced
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and felt by all people | Part of it would be the dreaming
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of young people and the visions of the elderly. In

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addition the prophet drew on some very vivid symbols out

of the past, fire and smoke and blood to express the power

and mystery of God's presence. | ws oa

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The scholars think that text from Joel was, in all festive

probability, the text read on the day of Pentecost in Shot paeiZ

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Something happened to those peopte,| We have an unfor-
tunate tendency to concentrate on the highly symbolic

language with which Fomeone tried later to describe what

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it was like | Snething very powerful:\ something very real

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and confirming and supporting and literally inspiring which
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means enfused with spirit or breath of God if you will.

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They knew that God in fact, was real: \that his reign was

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in torce:\that he was actively present in the word. | They

understood something new and they understood what they had

to do next -— namely tell other people about it.
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British Theologian Leslie Newbegin explains it

beautifully. {"The apostles did not say ‘Let's get going:
now we must preach the Gospel’. Not a hint of that: What
happened was an explosion of love and joy and hope. The
miracle of God's kingdom had broken in and someone had to

explain is." Gecture to UPCUSA, G.A. Kansas City, 5/22/79)

That's what Pentecost is about - an explosion of love —
———————————————

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joy - hope, so real that the ones who first experienced it

—_—

could only explain it in terms of the spirit of God: \ the
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breath, life — the vital essence of God himself filling the

life of the world.

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Very simply - it is the ground of our hope. fr is the

ground of the only hope I can see, frankly. \ rt is reason to
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celebrate the dreams and visions of young and old: and in

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middle years to pull back from the draining realism of our

self-imposed busWness to see a better future for our chilid-

ren and their children after them.

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Where? Where in the world da you see anything to support

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such an unrealistic optimism —

I confess that I see it here: fin the fellowship of this

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congregation.| I can't explain it any more precisely than

the man who chose images of wind and fire, but there are

experiences of corporate worship here that bear the reality
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of God for me,

Or Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, where volunteers

from all over the world converge to work quietly for peace
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and reconciliation: fto engage in hope that the world can

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be better, that Love is better than nate.|_ There is no

reason for that apart from the very spirit of God himself.

Or here again, as thirteen young people with dreams

of their own and optimism as yet umsullied by adult prag-
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matism, dare to stand up and call Jesus Christ their Lord

and promise to follow him.

Can you think, all things considered, of anything more

hopeful than that; jany better_promise for the world; any

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Pentecost drama more full of God's spirit?

The bread we eat and the cup we drink today - are

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reminders of our Lord's death; \but this day daoreene reminders
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more of his presence — in the world - and his promise that we
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will not be alone, ever again;\that the future — for all of
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us together and each of us personally - will be full of
teve, Wirn: lot be Lu \\ aamkinue - aie us
4 rf t oT Nis Solrd 2 dea Yet Our Yo— ”

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OQ God, breathe on us. Breathe into our lives ere Hennes of ARVs
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love and joy and hope. Deliver us from the routine staleness dren a.

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of our lives. Enlarge our expectations. Give us courage
to hope and to work for a better world. Grant us to know,
as the apostles knew long ago, the reality of your presence.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

fiber wid lepe a a Lig
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