Hi there! We hope you've managed to dig out after Saturday's snow storm and that you are warm and well and hopeful! If you missed last week's EcclesiaGram - good! We didn't get around to sending it. We'll use as our excuse Steve's trip to Holy Cross Monastery for a three-day silent retreat. This seems to be dream week here in Ecclesiaville. We dream about you spreading the word about us by forwarding this note to a friend or liking us on Facebook, joining us for Friday vespers, or lend a hand with a donation to the Our House fund . . . Just below, we share a bit of our dream for Hope United Church of Christ and, further on down, Steve offers a reflection about dreams, the Bible, and you. |
Dreaming of a church where all are welcome
 As you know, Ecclesia is on its way to becoming a member of the United Church of Christ. Currently, we're a "church in covenant development" and sponsored by North Congregational United Church of Christ in Middletown, NY (It's the church which made it possible for Steve to be ordained and launch our ministry.). Our expectation is that Ecclesia will be come a member in full standing at the end of April.
What does this mean? It means that for certain things - worship for example - we'll express ourselves as Hope United Church of Christ, just as Ecclesia expresses itself as Our House and the Hope Center and just as Ecclesia will express itself as a center for peace and justice, and a variety of other endeavors to which we feel called. The video (below) very nicely captures what we love most about the UCC - it works very hard to include everyone, especially those whom others have turned away. That truth extends to what you don't see in the video, something that's equally important - there is room in the UCC for a wide range of theological and Christological understandings. In other words, we UCC folks do our best to keep Church dogma and doctrine from getting in the way of our relationship with God, Jesus and one another ( Click here for more on the United Church of Christ.). That's not to say that the UCC always in every way lives up to its full potential. It's an institution after all and institutions, like people, do not always fully live their dreams. What is important is that the dream is rooted in Jesus' prayer for us in John 17:21 - "that they may be one." It is a dream worth chasing. Next week, we'll talk a bit about our dream for Hope UCC. |
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Speaking of dreams . . .
There's a wide body of literature about how God speaks to us through our dreams. Well, not all of them. There are dreams that come from our individual subconscious. There are dreams that come from our "collective unconscious", handed down through the ages. And, then there are the dreams that come from God. The Bible tells of some crucial, life-changing dreams:
- It was during a dream that God revealed to Abraham the history of the descendants he would have and the 400 year Egyptian captivity (Genesis 15).
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Jacob dreamed of a ladder ascending up to heaven with angels going up and down (Genesis 28).
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Joseph dreamed he would someday rule over all his brothers and even his father (Genesis 37). Later, in Genesis 41, Joseph correctly interpreted the Pharaoh's dream.
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Daniel understood the interpretation of dreams and was able to escape death by explaining to Nebuchadnezzar the dream he had and the unfolding of the king's future (Daniel 2).
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Joseph was told to accept Mary as his wife because the child she was having was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18-25, the reading for next Sunday).
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The wise men from the East were divinely warned in a dream to return to their own country by a different route and not return to tell Herod the location of the baby Jesus. Then Joseph had a dream telling him to take his family and flee to Egypt ( Matthew 2).
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Pilate's wife sent word to her husband not to have anything to do with Jesus because she "suffered many things today in a dream because of Him" (Matthew 27:19).
Now, I realize that the focus of next week's reading is supposed to be about the coming birth of Jesus and maybe even Joseph's amazing faith. But, I obviously got hung up on dreams. It's not just because I've spent a lot of time with folks who think they're important. I think they're important because I keep asking myself, "If God spoke to Abram, and Joseph, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Mrs. Pilate through dreams, might our Stillspeaking God also be talking to you and me through our dreams?"
Of course, I believe the answer is "Yes." God will use whatever means that God can muster to break through to us, to connect with God's beloved. I figure that we're so busy, so caught up with the nitty-gritty of life and all the distractions that go with it that our asleep time is the only time when we "shut up and listen" for what God has to say unless, of course we have a practice of sitting in silence or meditation. A friend of mine calls dreams "Unopened Letters from God" and has written a book by that title. Thoughtful, thought-provoking and straightforward, Bob uses some great stories to illustrate his points all the while inviting the reader into the mystery. You might want to check it out. If you do, you'll read the good news - "the dream maker keeps sending dreams until we get the message." It's just something to think about this last week in Advent. Maybe this is not just a time of preparing our hearts anew for the coming of God. Maybe it is also a time when God - as God always seems to be - waiting for us, singing "Dream a Little Dream of Me." |
