Fantasies or Visions

Easter 5C; Acts 11:1-18; Rev. 21:1-6; Jn. 13:31-35; St. Paul’s; 4/24/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Fantasies or Visions”

When I was a youngster I used to daydream about playing Major League Baseball for the Yankees – roaming the outfield or snagging ground balls at second base – knowing quite fully that I lacked the skill to ever see that happen.  Later in life, as a young man, I would still have my daydreams – these brought on by former Yankee Jim Bouton, who though his arm was ruined, developed a knuckle ball and made it back to the big leagues.  If I could just master a knuckle ball – just think of what I could do – wearing pinstripes and pitching for the Yankees.

Daydreams – fantasies – things “conjured up” in our minds that “seldom kindle any real change in our consciousness” (The Rev. Martin L. Smith, Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 4/24/2016).  Fantasies can be fun, but in the end, unless we happen to be skilled writers or producers who can weave a great storyline, they do little more than entertain or keep us preoccupied or distracted.

Visions, on the other hand, can be life-changing.  They can be for us an “interruption of newness” that “reveals a vista of possibility and creativity” – a revelation that opens us to new realities – to new promises (ibid).  Visions, when considering our lives from the perspective of faith, speak to us of God’s inbreaking presence in our lives, and in the life of the world.  Visions, in these settings, are open invitations from God to participate in the coming kingdom, or communion, of heaven – invitations to participate in the unfolding of that reality in our very midst.

Today’s lessons offer us three visions – four if you count the Psalmist’s vision of the whole of creation rising up to praise God – all of them have to do with new and promising life in this world.  Along with those visions is one memorable commandment: a commandment which weaves its way through all four visions, and is foundational to our life in Christ.

Visions are challenging because they demand that we step out of our current realities and see life as it could be.  Visions are challenging “interruptions of newness” which take us out of our comfort zones – they are “interruptions of newness” that invite us to consider the Dream of God – that invite us to consider, and then act in ways conversant with God’s Dream for this world.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann points to Peter’s witness in Acts.  When challenged by Jewish followers of Jesus about his conduct in accepting gentiles into the faith, Peter recounts [to them] “step by step,” like he’s talking to a room filled with children, “his vision concerning all sorts of ‘unclean animals’ and the voice of ‘the Spirit’ that led him to ‘not make a distinction’ between clean and unclean. His narrative is about the force of God’s purpose crashing against all established social protocols to make something new possible.”  Peter “ends with a rhetorical question: ‘Who was I that I could hinder God?’” (Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 4/24/2016). 

By breaking open the doors of faith to the gentiles – to the “uncircumcised” – Peter understands how in Christ “God is reaching out to include all who have been excluded or regarded as second-class by our tribal passions. Peter, [it seems, understands] that he, [along with] all the followers of Jesus, are under a new commandment, [a commandment] that readily violates usual social arrangements (John 13:34-35).” Brueggemann puts it, “The Spirit that crosses boundaries is the presence of the risen Christ” (ibid).

To see how others in the Church understood what was taking place in the preaching of Apostle’s like Peter and Paul we need only look further to the vision from John as he lived out his exile on the island of Patmos: “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…” (Rev 21:2-3).

The author of Revelation will go on to say of the Holy City, “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (21:24-26).  The author’s vision is that of God dwelling in the Holy City with all nations coming through its many gates to receive healing and new life from God.  No distinctions.  No divisions.  No one left outside the Holy City.  The Spirit of God crossing all boundaries in a movement of “generous love” for all people (Brueggemann).

Finally we hear the vision Jesus proclaims among his followers and friends on the night he was betrayed.  Facing arrest, torture, and death, Jesus has a vision of the glory of God, as well as the glory that awaits Jesus in the days to come.  Although evil and death will apparently win the battle in the coming hours, that victory will be short-lived.  God’s power over death will be revealed in all its glory on Easter Day, and the movement that victory will spark will change the world.

The fruit of Jesus’ vision of glory finds its fulfillment in how we love one another.  Peter’s and John’s visions are a witness to the power of that love.  In two short verses of John 13 we find three sentences with the command to love one another strung together and building upon one another – all pointing to the foundation of Jesus’ vision of glory for those who choose to follow him.  Those verses are unambiguous, they are without exception, and they are undeniable in their meaning: “’I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”’ (13:34-35).

Author Barbara Berry-Bailey writes, “According to Jesus, the prime directive for us as people of God is simply this: to love one another—to love one another as Jesus loved us ... to go deep within ourselves to hear the still, small voice; to go deep within ourselves to feel the strength of those everlasting arms; to go deep within ourselves to rise to meet the challenge to love when everything else in our society tells us to strike out in fear, when everything else in our society tells us to lash out in hatred or to release anger in a violent manner” (Barbara Berry-Bailey, Synthesis Today, 4/202016).  Or as poet/priest Ernesto Cardenal puts it, “God's love is the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the light we see” (Ernesto Cardenal, Synthesis Today, 4/19/2016). 

Our love for God, our love for our neighbor, and our love for the stranger – the sojourner living among us – should be as real as the water we drink, should be as real as the air we breathe, and should be as real as the light we see.  This is God’s vision for us as proclaimed by the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Fantasy is so much easier than vision.  Daydreaming about life is so much easier than living out our lives.  As fun as the fantasy may be, I will never roam the outfield or pitch for the New York Yankees, just as I may never perfectly emulate Christ in my life.  The difference is this: that while the former, playing for the Yankees, will never happen for me, the latter, emulating Christ in my life, always has the promise of possibility – if only because of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in me.  And the same is true for each one of us.