Tornado Dreams - Tornado God

Easter 6C - John 14:23-29 - St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 5/01/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Tornado Dreams - Tornado God”

Sometimes, in her dreams, the young woman is visited by tornadoes: Whirling and chaotic, spinning and screaming, overturning and scattering, dark and boiling.  Tornado dreams.  Unsettling dreams.  Nerve-racking dreams.  Dreams that for the longest time frighten her. 

Soon, it seems, the tornadoes visit every night.  Not just one tornado – and not even two, but her dreams are filled with something like schools of tornadoes, sweeping all around.  At first she thinks in her dreams that she will be destroyed by their terrifying force.  But then she begins to notice that the tornadoes can never quite reach her in her dreams.  She finds herself in a wonderfully made glass dome with the tornadoes constantly bouncing off the curve of the dome and heading off in some new direction away. 

Then one day the young woman brings up the tornado dreams with her spiritual director –a priest with a great deal of Jungian training.  The director explains that however counter-intuitive it might seem – however illogical it may seem, tornado dreams are often messengers of change rather than harbingers of danger.  The more they look at the young woman’s life, the more the dreams begin to make sense – unsettling as they are.  She soon finds herself in a new town and a new job, and within the next year in a new marriage and a new home.  Suddenly the tornado dreams shed new light.

Now don’t get me wrong – I imagine the first reaction to tornado dreams for any of us – even knowing what the wise spiritual director shared – would probably be a rather anxious, “Good grief, what now!”  While such dreams may not signal imminent physical danger to the dreamer they do often promise the sort of changes that can seem overwhelmingly chaotic at first – and who likes change anyway?  The challenge with tornado dreams is to look for and sense the promise that waits within or behind their swirling turbulence.

I wonder if Jesus and his disciples ever experienced tornado dreams.  Maybe their dreams would be of sandstorms and dust-devils racing through the outlying wilderness of Judea.  Our gospel stories in the final weeks of Easter throw us back in time to the night before Jesus’ death.  Huddled together in the Upper Room, Jesus and his disciples break bread together.  Jesus washes their feet, and offers a long, hopefully comforting prayer for those whom he’ll soon leave behind.  It is a time of tremendous change.  It’s a storm-tossed moment in all their lives.  By now Jesus must surely understand his time of death is near.  The disciples, having had an on-the-job crash course in prophetic preaching, must fear the worst as well.  Will the authorities take Jesus?  Will they be arrested too?  What will tomorrow bring?  Their hearts are troubled, and Jesus seeks to offer hope.  I wonder if Jesus and his disciples ever experienced tornado dreams.

Jesus makes three promises to his disciples in today’s portion from John’s gospel. 

First, Jesus promises their inclusion in the fullness of God’s love.  “My Father will love them,” says Jesus, “and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  And like the disciples, we who follow Christ have our home in God as well.

Second, Jesus also offers the promise of God’s peace in their hearts.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.”  These words seem so simple, yet they are words that come out of the depth of Jesus’ relationship with God – that arise from his intimate knowledge of God’s love – and from the deep love Jesus holds for each of his friends.  This is shalom: the promising wholeness of God’s healing and life-giving presence in their lives - in our lives.  And so as simple as are the words, they are far from simplistic – they carry with them the full weight of God’s presence and love.

And finally, Jesus promises the gift of the Advocate – the Holy Spirit – the power of God to lead us into the love of God, and the power to surround us and fill us with the peace of God.  The Holy Spirit – counselor, helper, advocate, comforter, and guide – the One who walks beside us – the One who remains with us as Emmanuel – as God with us – the One who teaches us wisdom – who opens our hearts – who leads us along the way – the One who gives us the mind of Christ and the heart of God.

The Holy Spirit – given to the disciples in a closed room behind locked doors so long ago – and given to each of us in our Baptisms and strengthened each time we come together to pray and make Eucharist.  The Holy Spirit who comes with both wind and fire – who transforms our hearts and who sends us in so many new directions – the Holy Spirit – our own Tornado God who gives us dreams to dream, ministry to carry out, life to live, and the heart and soul to follow Jesus.

And let me tell you something, my friends.  If we come to church – if we go into your closet at home to pray – if we seek the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives we are opening ourselves to that Tornado God and all that comes from such invitations to and from the Holy One! And the more any of us open ourselves to God – the more the winds will blow and the wilder the ride will be.  Because the promises Jesus makes in today’s lesson are promises that we will find our home in the fullness of God’s love, and in the fullness of God’s work in this world.

The love of God that Jesus promises will enfold us is the same love the world fears – because it is a love that stands with the broken-hearted and offers comfort in its truest form and the truest definition of comfort – that offers strength and compassion to all who are in need.  It’s an active, “love me, love my world” sort of love.

The peace of God that Jesus promises is a peace that comes from doing the work of God in a world that doesn’t want that work to be done.  Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I am a man of peace.  I believe in peace.  But I do not want peace that you find in stone; I do not want peace that you find in the grave; but I do want the peace which you find embedded in the human breast, which is exposed to the arrows of the whole world, but which is protected from harm by the power of Almighty God” (Synthesis Comm., emphasis mine).

The promise of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives is the most challenging promise of all – because the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ presence in our lives at its most dangerous best.  The Holy Spirit’s rushing wind blows away any images of sweet Jesus, meek and mild; and would sweep us away into the storm clouds of God’s transforming love if we would only let it do so.  The work of God’s Holy Spirit will always be unsettling – and Scripture bears this out.

Abram: pulled from his home and family and sent to the middle of nowhere.  Moses: driven into the desert with a pack of former slaves tagging behind – all of them grumbling all the way.  “The Spirit is fire and flame, a restless wind, a turbulent sea, an Upsetter, a Supplanter. [It’s] forever choosing...Isaac over Esau, Joseph over the older brothers, the prodigal son over the dutiful brother, the Samaritan heretic over the Jewish priests and Levites...a woman with an alabaster jar of ointment over the elegant leaders of Jerusalem, [Lydia, a gentile woman and follower of God over the leaders of the city,] Magdalene over the Twelve to announce the Resurrection...befuddled [fisher folk and tax collectors to proclaim the gospel,] an enemy of the church – [Saul of Tarsus] – to become [Paul - our patron saint], the apostle to the Gentiles” (Anthony T. Padovano, quoted in Synthesis).

I wonder did they all have tornado dreams?  Or were they just touched by, surrounded by, enfolded within the wild winds of the Tornado God – the God who calls each of us by name and calls each of us to new life and to the service of the Good News of God’s love?  “I never said that you would not be tempest tossed, work-weary or discomforted,” God once said in a vision to St. Julian of Norwich, “only that you shall not be overcome.”

And that, my friends if we let it, will be enough.