“Maybe we could walk on water.” [1]

Matthew 14: 22-33

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 25, 2024

This short journey across the lake was supposed to be easy. An opportunity to catch their breath. Get away from the crowds for a minute. Rest their weary feet a bit and let the wind and water do the work. 

It had been A WEEK. It started with Jesus in a boat, out on the lake, teaching. Everywhere they went these days, the crowds followed. They came from the cities, the farms, the villages along the lake. And every time Jesus tried to catch a breath, there they were again. On this particular occasion, he had tried to sit down to rest along the lake’s edge, but so many came to speak with him that he eventually climbed into a boat, maybe hoping to get some space. But the crowd was undeterred. They stayed there along the water’s edge, crowding up to the water, hoping for….what? Something. 

And then Jesus began to teach. If you want to call it that. He spoke in riddles - nope, PARABLES was what he called them. Stories about wheat and weeds, pearls that would break the bank, mustard seeds that turned into giant bushes, buried treasure, and yeast hidden in dough. What could it all mean? Who knows. But every story started out the same way, “The kingdom of God was like this, the kingdom of God was like that.” 

And what was the point, anyway? Were all these stories just meant to placate the people? To soothe them to sleep while the world burned around them? Who knows. 

What was obvious was that the kingdom of God was not here. Not now. Because this land that they lived in was carefully divided, carefully marked and God was most certainly not the king in charge. Jesus’s core group of friends, fishermen who called the north side of the lake home, knew all too well about who was in charge. Their fishing waters straddled the border between two kingdoms - one ruled by Herod Antipas and another ruled by his brother Phillip. Both of them were given the land by their late father, Herod the Great. These were the kings whose names they knew. These were the men who decided how much of their catch had to be paid to the Empire in taxes. These were the men who made the decisions that governed their everyday lives. These were the kingdoms the disciples and their families called home. 

Eventually, Jesus took a break from speaking in riddles in his boat out there on the lake. And so the disciples hopped in with him, rowing across the clear, smooth water to the other side. And then they took a day’s journey on foot to Nazareth. Most of Jesus’s crew were foreigners here, but this was Jesus’s first home. And so the disciples rested in the shade outside the Nazreth synagogue while Jesus went in to teach. They figured it would probably just be a repeat of his performance on the boat - wheat, weeds, pearls, mustard seeds, buried treasure, yeast. “The kingdom of God, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God.”

So when Jesus came out of his hometown synagogue looking a bit off-kilter, they were surprised. The locals followed him out, accosting him: “Who do you think you are to come in here and teach these things? Who gave you the authority to work miracles? Aren’t you Joseph’s son? And Mary? Who died and made you king?”

Up and back on their feet. The time in the shade had been nice but recess was over. As they left Nazareth, a group of John’s disciples arrived unexpectedly bearing terrible news. Whispers of King Herod’s disgusting behavior at a party. The details didn’t make much sense but the end result was clear: Jesus’s cousin John, the one who prepared the way, was dead. Executed. The threat to the Empire neutralized. Game over. 

When Jesus heard about John, he retreated again. To the water, his happy place. When you’re on the water, it’s difficult for people to bother you. Sometimes they’d just go out there and sit in the middle of the lake. Just to get some space. Out there. Between kingdoms. 

By the time Jesus got to the other side, the crowds were already there. They had taken the long way around but they made good time. The disciples were surprised when he had enough energy to help those who were sick. They knew what he really wanted to do was keep going up onto the mountain (another good place to escape).

But the people kept coming. By the time the sun started to set, everyone was hungry. The disciples tapped Jesus on the shoulder: “It’s late. People are hungry. You need to send them back into their towns and eat dinner.”

Jesus had other ideas. “There’s no need to send them away. Feed them.” 

Was he starting to lose a grip on reality? Had all the stress of the past week been too much? The disciples looked around but saw only five loaves of bread and two fish. Nowhere near enough to feed this many people. 

And yet - Jesus took the meager offering into his hands - closed his eyes and prayed quietly. Those who were closest to him made out the words, “Your kingdom come, your will be done -” They knew this one and joined in. “On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread…..”

The bread was passed. Elders told the children stories about their ancestors: Manna in the desert. Water from a rock. Bellies were filled. 

And now - now, FINALLY - they would catch a break. Jesus told his friends to return to the boat and head over to their home base. Capernaum - in another kingdom on the other side of the lake. Jesus said he was going to stay behind for a bit to pray and would catch up with them in a few days. 

But this quick trip across the lake was turning out to be anything but relaxing. By the time the disciples reached the middle of the lake, 3 or 4 miles from dry land, the wind had kicked up to the point where things were getting scary. A chaotic end to a chaotic week. Stuck out here in international waters, between kingdoms, far from the shore with nothing but their fear to keep them company. 

On and on the wind blew. Time crawled by. Jesus’s friends huddled together for warmth as the boat rocked and the waters roiled. A quiet prayer could be heard beneath the wind: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.” [1] 

But dawn was a ways off and the disciples were still stuck in no man’s land. Plenty of time to wonder just how they got themselves into this mess in the first place. Plenty of time to realize just how much their hope had dwindled and how unsure they were of the ground beneath their feet. 

It was then, deep in the night, during the fourth watch, that time just before dawn when you start to lose hold of reality - THAT was when it happened. You know how it is at that time of night. You can’t quite tell up from down. And even the steadiest among us have been known to slip a bit. We hear things, SEE things….

And that was when the disciples saw a figure moving towards them across the water. Now I know this makes no sense because fishermen, of all people, are smart enough to know that’s not how water works. You don’t walk on top of it. I’m just telling you this story as it was told to me. 

Exhausted, windswept, and confused, the disciples screamed in terror. It had been a rough week, sure, but a ghost? COME ON. 

And then they heard a voice they knew all too well. Jesus. Jesus, who was supposed to be back on the other side of the lake taking some time for himself. Jesus’s voice reverberated over the water, “Take heart! I am here. Don’t be afraid.” 

Before anyone had time to think about how to respond, Peter was in it. “Lord, if that’s really you, tell me to come to you.” And the voice said, “Come on then.” In an instant, Peter was in the water. Well, not IN the water, ON the water. Walking ON the water towards the figure at sea. 

And for a moment, the other disciples couldn’t hear the wind at all. Or feel the boat rocking violently on the waves. For a moment, time stretched out to eternity while simultaneously standing stock still. They saw Peter, impossibly standing on top of the water. And in their hearts they also saw the Spirit of God, the Ruach, the breath moving over the chaos of the waters at creation. They saw Jesus, extending a hand. And at the same time, they saw Moses stretching his hand over the sea, parting the waters. Making a pathway to freedom for those who had lived in slavery for so long. 

They heard Jesus speaking to Peter in broad daylight, closer to the shore, “Push out into deep water. Cast out your nets one more time. Trust me. You’ll see.” And they saw Peter accept the invitation to come and fish for people. 

And they saw something else, a bit murkier because it had not yet come to pass, but, sure enough, it was Peter once again. This time it was early morning and they were closer to shore. Peter was in a boat and someone who looked familiar stood on the shoreline. “Children, have you caught anything yet today? Cast your nets out again, this time on the right side of your boat. And you’ll find something there.”

And then Peter, in an instant, in the water this time. Not walking on it but swimming to shore. Running into the arms of this man who looked and sounded so familiar. Sobbing like a child. And once again, a story they already knew so well. Jesus. With bread and fish. “Take, eat,”  he said. “The kingdom of God is like this….”

And for a moment  - it may have been a second, it may have been eternity - as the disciples looked on, Peter stood on the waves with Jesus. The very embodiment of faith. The manifestation of trust. The actual incarnation of hope.

Between kingdoms. In the already but not yet. One brief, shining moment of liberation. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

NOTES

[1] Sermon title borrowed from an article by Robert Williamson, Jr.. I am indebted to him for his interpretation of this passage which inspired my reimagining of this well-known story. Williamson says, “Taken together, these two stories [feeding the 5,000 and Jesus walking on water] demonstrate the radical nature of the kingdom of heaven, which stands over and against the coercive power of the Empire.” You can read the article at robertwilliamsonjr.com/maybe-we-could-walk-on-water

[2] Psalm 46. 

"Jesus Sought Me"

 “Jesus Sought Me”

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 11, 2024

The season of Lent has arrived. It’s a season that some people have feelings about. If you grew up in a tradition that didn’t observe Lent, you may be wondering what the heck is going on. If you grew up in a tradition that did observe Lent you might have fond or not-so-fond memories. The UCC isn’t a tradition that has broad consensus around how Lent is practiced. While I think most UCC churches observe the season in some form or fashion, I think different churches put a different emphasis on HOW it is observed. There are certainly individuals in the UCC who faithfully choose a fast each Lent or add in a new spiritual practice during Lent. And there are other folks who have never taken on a fast or new practice. And still others who think that sounds interesting but haven’t figured out how they would do it just yet. 

The observance of Lent is one of the oldest traditions in the Christian Church. We think it is almost as old as the Church itself. In the early Church, new Christians confessed their faith on the evening of Holy Saturday and were baptized on Easter morning. The season of Lent grew out of this practice as a time of learning and growth for those Catechumens to prepare themselves for this event on Easter morning. And so, the tradition  of Lent as a season of learning, growth, perhaps adding in new practices to your daily life is as old as Lent itself. 

Catechumens in the early Church were also expected to prepare themselves for baptism by confessing their sins and repenting (that is, turning their lives in a different direction). The idea was that you needed to be ritually pure before your baptism on Easter morning. And so, the tradition of fasting or giving things up for Lent is also as old as Lent itself. 

Adding something in or taking something away sounds relatively simple, but what about when we’re not sure what we might want to add or subtract? What about those years when we’re so busy that we’re halfway through Lent before we realize it’s begun? Or the years when we’re just so deeply exhausted that the idea of changing anything in our life’s precarious balance is just impossible? Or years when we aren’t so sure we actually want to deepen our faith? Maybe we’re mad at God or mad at Jesus’s followers or just deeply disconnected from the Spirit. 

Well, dear ones, I’m here to tell you that it is OKAY. While the 40 days of Lent is there as a meaningful invitation to place a more intentional focus on your spirituality, there are many reasons why it might not be for you this year - or any year. 

One of the reasons I say it’s okay is that I actually do believe God is still active in our world. Or, as we love to say in the UCC, “God is stillspeaking.” And THAT means that God is still very much awake and present, even when we’re mad, or distracted, or exhausted, or confused, or disconnected. We don’t have to do anything at all and God will continue to seek us. 

While there are certainly significant limitations to a personified image of God, it does seem to be one of the ways many of us relate to the Divine. Whether your God is a kind grandmother, big dude in the sky, or a still, small voice within, we often think and speak of God as a “who” and not necessarily a “what.” And that “who-ness” of God makes it easier for us to think and talk about having a relationship with God. 

In any relationship, especially lifelong ones, there are going to be seasons of ups and downs, closer and distant, growth and stagnation. That is simply the nature of being in relationship with another. Every single one of us is going to go through seasons in our relationship with God, too. That’s normal. I don’t think there’s any way around it. If we think the relationship is utterly stagnant, then I don’t think it could really be much of a relationship, can it? Relationships require response and are dynamic by their very definition. 

If you find yourself in a season of distance, confusion, anger, frustration, I have what I hope is some good news to share: regardless of how we orient ourselves to the Divine - regardless of how our relationship with the Holy is at this point int time - God is steadily there, a constant force of love, still seeking us. 

This Lent we will be journeying through Lent with Simon Peter. One of Jesus’s closest companions in life, he became one of the most important leaders in the early Church. His original name, Simon, means something like “hearing” or “obedient” in Aramaic. And Simon certainly did hear (and sometimes obey). Like in today’s passage. Simon heard Jesus when he said, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.” And although he was skeptical (“Master, we’ve worked all night and caught nothing”) he even obeyed (“But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets.”) 

Like others in the BIble who received new names as recognition of profound spiritual experiences, Simon receives an additional name from Jesus: Peter, the Rock, also sometimes rendered in the Aramaic version, which is Cephas. 

An apt nickname: Simon Peter was like a rock in several ways. Jesus said he was to be called Peter because he planned to build his Church on this firm foundation. And Peter could be sturdy, firm, unwavering. He was a constant presence in the Gospels - he was there for all the big moments. He wasn’t just a part of the inner circle, he was the leader of the inner circle. Peter was steady like a rock. You can see why Jesus wanted him to be foundational in taking the Movement forward. 

But Peter could also be rough around the edges like a rock. He could be a little dense like a rock. He could be a bit TOO immovable like a rock. And Peter’s words could sometimes hurt others - just like sticks and stones and broken bones. 

Peter’s imperfect messiness is what so many of us love about him, right? His relationship with Jesus had its ups and downs. He didn’t always get it right. And maybe that’s why he tried to shrug Jesus off in this initial encounter. He was willing to dip his toe into the waters and see if this Jesus guy can help him and his co-workers catch some fish. But when Jesus delivers, he does a complete 180, “Leave me, Lord! For I’m a sinner!” 

Of course, being a sinner doesn’t exactly deter Jesus. He always seems to understand that everyone is going to be a little bit sinner and a little bit saint. Sometimes all on the same day. We all have regrets. We are all works in progress. We are all sometimes steady and very often rough to the touch. 

But Jesus knows exactly what to do with messy, imperfect people: he seeks us, names us, befriends us, calls us - again and again and again and again. 

Jesus takes it further than just being unbothered by Simon Peter’s confession of sin. He both comforts him (“Don’t be afraid.”) and issues an invitation: “From now on, you’ll be fishing for people.” In other words, “I see you in all your messy humanity and I want you to come with me. I believe that you can follow in my footsteps and that you can share God’s love with other people just as I’m doing with you right now.”

We are going to be learning a lot from wandering alongside Simon Peter during Lent. And I think our first lesson can be learned right here. Simon and his friends accept Jesus’s invitation. They leave everything behind and follow him. What else did they have planned for the day? Or the week? Or the month? We aren’t told. But we all know how complicated - how seemingly-impossible - it would be to just pick up and go like that. Their response is astounding, really. That they accepted Jesus’s invitation like that is so unexpected. 

Peter probably wasn’t looking for Jesus when he went to work that day. He got up early, fumbled towards the coffee pot, and put one leg into his pants at a time - just like he had done every single day of his adult life. My guess is that when he stepped onto his fishing boat that day, his mind was probably focused on things like how to pay the bills and remembering to help his dad fix that broken piece of equipment over the weekend. He was probably just laughing and joking with his brother and buddies, maybe even using some coarse language as some of us do when we tell good stories. And when he put his hand to his eyes to look back towards the shore, I don’t think he was looking for Jesus. He was probably just looking for a place to dock and wash his nets.

Peter wasn’t looking for Jesus. But Jesus was looking for him. 

And Simon Peter was willing to be found. 

That’s no small thing, you know. Being willing to be found. 

We hide from each other, from ourselves, from God All. The. Time. Because sometimes being found means receiving hard truths. Sometimes being found means accepting love when we’re not sure how to do that. Sometimes being found means we are issued an invitation - and our response is requested. 

And so, perhaps if you haven’t yet picked a Lenten practice yet but you’ve been thinking about it, maybe this story is an invitation for you. Maybe being a bit like Peter and his friends is a Lenten practice all on it’s own. Maybe this year we’ll just keep showing up and allowing ourselves to be found. Maybe this year we’ll bring a little more intention to my days, shielding our eyes against distractions and making sure we don’t miss Jesus on the shoreline, right under our noses. Maybe this year some of us will do nothing much at all except remember that Jesus is still seeking us, even when we’re a bit messier than we’d prefer. 

Maybe this year we’ll remember that spiritual practices like fasting and prayer are wonderful AND that the work of faith isn’t ours to do alone. Jesus is still seeking us, even when we’re not doing much of anything at all - just going about our daily lives. 

And maybe this year, like Peter, we won’t even be seeking Jesus at all. But when Christ seeks us, maybe this year we’ll allow ourselves to be found. 

“Here, There, Everywhere”

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 11, 2024

Just yesterday I said it again. “There wasn’t a class on this in seminary.” (In this particular instance, “this” being a slow-running toilet. But there also were not classes on lots of other things like officiating a wedding, or revising bylaws, or writing grant applications, or teaching confirmation class….you get the point. Seminary is 90+ hours of necessities for being a pastor with a few electives thrown in. One of the most unique electives I took was on church architecture. Now, you might think that was focused on things like how to manage a capital campaign and a building renovation but it was, in fact, a “worship arts” elective. 

How is architecture “worship arts”? Well, when churches are built there is a lot of intentionality about what the new structure will communicate theologically. The high, sweeping lines of a Gothic cathedral communicate something very different about God than the simple, smaller scale of a Colonial New England sanctuary. 

Church architects often talk about immanence and transcendence when imagining new spaces. These two ways of understanding God’s nature have often been seen at odds. Those who experience God as immanent will say that God is a part of our everyday physical and material world. God is present here and now. We can see God right in front of us.

On the other side, we have this idea that God is transcendent. God is beyond, above, outside of our human experience. God is more than we can know or understand. God exists on another plane entirely. And those two competing ideas about God’s nature get expressed in church architecture. In fact, if you look around our sanctuary you’ll probably see some things that evoke an immanent God and others a transcendent God. I actually think our worship space is a bit of a mix. 

God’s immanence and transcendence both have a place in our tradition. Certainly, there are Biblical stories that support both understandings of the Holy. For example, just look at the flow of the liturgical year. We started back in Advent – and the stories in the lectionary are all doom and gloom and apocalyptic end-of-the-world extravaganzas. God is mystical, all-powerful, above and beyond human understanding. But then we move into the Christmas season. We sing “love came down at Christmas,” and celebrate the birth of Emmanuel – God with us – in the form of not just any human, but a very average one born in a humble setting. It is easy to see and feel the immanence of God in the story of Jesus’s birth. 

As we move through the season of Epiphany we see Jesus doing really average, ordinary things….reading scripture in the house of worship he grew up in, being baptized by his cousin, going to a wedding. But even these immanent, everyday things have a glow of the holy about them: Jesus’s scripture reading is infused with such power that people take notice, the heavens open and a mighty voice comes out of the sky when Jesus is baptized, and Jesus performs a miracle at the wedding – turning water into wine. 

It seems like you could easily paint a picture of God whichever way you’d like – here and now or above and beyond. 

And now….just before we head into Lent, we are here: Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus goes up on a mountain with three of his best friends. Mountains are amazing things, aren’t they? There’s something absolutely magical about driving out across I-70 and straining your eyes to see the Rockies off in the distance. First they look like clouds, then they start to look like hills, and finally you’re up next to them and in them. Your ears pop. You marvel at the immensity. 

Mountains are transcendent – they point our eyes up and beyond. And so we look to the mountain as Jesus and his friends scale it. Up, up, up our eyes go until we see the four of them standing there. Jesus begins to pray, and as he does, he undergoes a transformation. Or in the Greek, a metamorphosis. He is changed completely into a new being – his face looks different, his clothes are glowing. And suddenly we become aware that Elijah and Moses – the greatest of teachers and prophets – have joined them. Peter and his friends witness all of this. And as Moses and Elijah prepare to leave, Peter cries out, “Wait! This is so much fun! Let’s make three tiny houses. One for you, Jesus, and one for Elijah and Moses!” 

But it’s not to be. The moment has passed. A cloud descends and the three friends are scared. And then that voice-coming-from-the-cloud thing happens again: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” Suddenly, Jesus is there alone. And the disciples told no one what had happened. 

It’s a magnificently transcendent sort of moment. Just what you might expect on the top of a mountain. 

But it’s not the end of the story. Because what happens next is that they come down off the mountain. The next scene is down in the valley. 

Let’s pause for just a moment and take that journey with them. Maybe you’ve never stood on top of a mountain, but we’ve all probably been up in a high place in nature. Maybe it was the top of the radio tower hill at Konza or sitting on top of a barn or even flying on an airplane. Remember what it feels like to have that sense of spaciousness? Like everything below looks different and the world below just stretches on and on?

Now….we descend to the valley. Our feet are firmly planted back on the ground. And we are told that a great crowd has come to meet us. People pressing in on all sides. Come to see Jesus. That sense of spaciousness is totally gone. We are back in the thick of the seeming scarcity of everyday life – not enough time, not enough money, not enough food, not enough love to go around. And people are desperate. 

One of the desperate ones cries out above the noise of the crowd, “Teacher! I beg you to look at my son. He is my only child!”

Things are not feeling so transcendent anymore. This is not a mountaintop moment and it’s hard to even remember what it felt like up there in the cool, fresh air with Jesus shining and sparkling. Now there is only desperation as the child is suffering immense pain. Some of us, no doubt, avert our eyes. We wonder if there is some place we can escape. We feel powerless. 

The man continues, “I begged your followers to help me, but they could not.” 

We like to think, of course, that the disciples aren’t like us. That they were a little more clueless and always messing up. But, really, have we modern disciples fared any better with the things in our world that continue to harm children? We live in a world where children die every day of curable ailments because they cannot access health care, where children are poisoned by their own water due to the recklessness of elected officials, where children are the victims of violence, where children suffer the consequences of climate change. We have our own demons that we have not yet exorcized, don’t we?

And Jesus, after chastising his followers a bit, does what he almost always does. He heals. He takes the boy into his arms, heals him, and returns him to his father. The story ends well, despite Jesus’s followers ability to “get it.”

So God flashes on a mountain and a voice booms from heaven declaring the importance of Jesus……and God dwells among the people in the valley, bringing a healing salve to those who need it most. 

And you might be wondering: well, which is it? Is God up there or down here? Does God dwell on the mountain or in the valleys? Yes. The answer is yes. 

As we move together into the season of Lent, we have a difficult journey ahead of us. The days may be growing longer, but the work of Lent is not so easy. We are called to recommit ourselves to spiritual practices that will deepen and lengthen our connection to the Holy One. We will be asked to bear witness to the most cruel and callous behavior of humans. As we go into the season of Lent, it seems to me that we would do well to pay careful attention to the very last line in this long passage….. “But Jesus…healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness, magnificence, majesty of God.”

Be astounded, friends. For we are held in love by One who is somehow both here and now and above and beyond. 

The God of mountains and valleys. Amen.  

"Everybody's looking for something"

 “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”

Mark 4:1-9

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

January 21, 2024 - Manhattan Mennonite Church

I don’t know if our family is the only odd one that does this, but ever since our kids were very little, we’ve often talked about our dreams when we wake up in the morning. When they were tiny I would say, “Good morning! How was your sleep? Did you have any dreams last night?” And now that they’re older I will still sometimes tell them about a particularly interesting dream I had. 

This happened just a couple weeks ago. I had this very long, detailed dream that was sticking with me throughout my morning routine. At breakfast, I was describing it to my husband and then one of my kids walked past and said, “Everything in that dream is oversized.” I was like, “Huh?” And he repeated, “Everything in that dream you’re describing is unusually large - oversized.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s a very interesting observation. I wonder what that means?”

Before he mentioned it, I hadn’t noticed that pattern, but he was definitely right. It turns out sharing our dreams as a family isn’t just good entertainment, it can also be really useful. While the dreamer is the only one who can truly make an honest interpretation of their own dream, it seems to me that dreams are richer when shared with others. Our trusted companions often notice things we don’t - and in sharing those observations or questions, they help us listen more deeply to our own dreams. 

Of course, even with the helpful observations of others, we still might not know what a dream means. A dream rarely has just one interpretation. We can turn it this way and that. It may look different on Monday than it does on Tuesday. If it’s a recurring dream or theme, our understanding of it may change over the years. And what we think about a dream when we first wake is often very different from the conclusion we may come to hours or weeks later. 

I think this is one of the reasons some people struggle with dreams. Or find them to be a bit too “woo woo.” Another reason people don’t necessarily want to work with dreams is because they don’t have them or can’t remember them. This is frustrating when you’re interested in them, right? Luckily, there are actually techniques to nurture what Robert Johnson calls “active imagination”  - entering into a meditative, dreamlike state while you’re still awake. These daydreams can be just as interesting to explore as nighttime dreams. You can learn more about that in Johnson’s short and helpful book, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.

Whether they happen in the day or night, dreams invite us to become a bit more comfortable with ambiguity. To trust that the first answer might not be the only one. To lean into uncertainty and weirdness. It’s not always comfortable. 

I think our ancestors were more uncomfortable with ambiguity than we are. They didn’t have an expectation of understanding or controlling everything, you know? They lived in a world with a lot of mysteries and had to get comfortable with that - for better or worse. 

Maybe this is why there are so many dreamers in our sacred stories. Of the 21 dreams in the Bible, several belong to kings, perhaps suggesting that leaders would be wise to pay attention to the messages that come from the Spirit or the collective unconscious when making decisions. There are TWO famous dreamers in the Bible named Joseph: he of the fabulous technicolor dreamcoat and, later, the father of Jesus. Interestingly, only one dreamer is a woman: Pontius Pilate’s wife. And she sees no ambiguity in her dream. She sends word to her husband that he needs to “have nothing to do with ‘that innocent man’ (Jesus)” because she’s been greatly troubled by a nightmare about him. 

Pilate’s wife and some of the other dreamers in the Bible had certainty - but, more often, in our own lives, exploring our dreams can leave us with questions. 

A few months ago, I was able to attend a retreat at the Sophia Center in Atchison where we did nothing but work with our dreams for several days. I knew it would be good before I went, because the facilitator was someone I had already learned a lot from during my three-year training to become a spiritual director. Our teacher, Bernie Graves, is the one who opened my eyes to a fascinating thing that I can’t unsee: parables are a lot like dreams. 

Really, it’s true. The next time you come across Jesus telling a parable, ask someone to read it to you. Close your eyes and listen. It sounds just like someone describing a dream. “Listen. Okay, so it was really weird. There was this farmer. I don’t know who he was. Just a farmer. He was walking along a path and, as he walked, he was sowing seeds. Some of the seeds fell down on the pathway he was walking along. And then there were these birds. They came along and just ate the seeds up. But he kept walking and some of the seeds he was throwing down went off the path and onto some ground that was kind of rocky. Those seeds grew up quickly and were burned by the sun. They didn’t last either. Then there were MORE seeds that landed under some thorns. Why were there thorns on the ground? I don’t know. That’s just what happened. They didn’t grow because the thorns were in the way. But then, finally, there were some seeds that he threw down on good soil. And those seeds grew like you wouldn’t believe. It was amazing to see!” 

You can do this with pretty much any parable. They sound like dreams. Which is maybe why we’re still talking about them today. Like dreams, parables don’t have a single interpretation. Like dreams, the meaning we take from parables shifts over time. Like dreams, parables are better-understood in community. And, like dreams, parables have a lot to teach us if we are brave enough to get uncomfortable and truly listen. 

The word parable means “throw alongside” which is exactly how parables teach us. They frequently put unexpected things together, or follow a pattern like the story of the seeds did - and in this “throwing alongside together”-ness we are invited into curiosity and learning. We become like the seeds scattered in the good soil. We grow. 

We can grow in a similar way by listening to those parable-like stories that visit us while we sleep. Whether you believe they come from God, neurons firing in your brain, the collective unconscious, YOUR unconscious, or all of the above - there’s no mistaking that dreams make fascinating teachers. 

Finding a way to intentionally listen to your dreams is as simple as keeping some kind of recording tool next to your bed - whether that’s a pen and paper or your cell phone. When you wake, before you begin your day, see if you can recall any dreams from the night before. Write down what you remember. Don’t try to interrogate at this point. Don’t follow your questions down rabbit trails. Just get the facts down - as strange or unclear as they might be. Like many spiritual practices, the more you do this, the easier it becomes. I’ve noticed that when I’m regularly trying to write my dreams down, I am able to more easily recall parts of them. 

There are numerous ways to work with your dreams and if you’d like some recommended reading or frameworks, let me know. Even better, if you have any interest in being a part of a dream group, please let me know. I’m posing this possibility in all three congregations. If there are 3 or 4 who are interested, I can connect you and share some resources to get you started. Like all the best stories (parables included), dreams really aren’t meant to be handled alone.

Whether you find companions to listen to your dreams or listen alone; 

Whether you are able to easily remember and write down your dreams or struggle to piece together much of anything at all most mornings; 

Whether you choose to listen to the dreams that come at night or learn how to nurture active imagination to listen to your daytime dreams; 

Whether you believe those dreams come to you from God, neurons firing in your brain, the collective unconscious, YOUR unconscious, or all of the above - you are invited to consider this practice of deep listening. 

Perhaps, like Jacob, you will one day wake from your rest and say to yourself, “Surely the Holy is in this place—and I did not know it!”

Thanks be to the Holy Dreamer who dreams within us still. Amen.