Christmas Dreams
Isaiah 65:17-25
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads;[1]
At our house, we
read this story year round. Ainslee and
I will sit down, on most any day, and enjoy this poem. Why?
We both love Christmas. But we’re
both dreamers and maybe that’s the real reason.
Clement Moore’s well-known poem has children dreaming of sugar plums. I didn’t know until I did some research what sugar plums are. If you look at the Vermont Country Store.com, you’ll find this description of sugar plums: “Visions of those darned sugarplums kept us up the whole night before Christmas year after year-wondering what the heck sugarplums were and why on earth they were dancing. Now we know: a blend of sweet plum compote and rich dark chocolate, formed into a truffle-like chocolate-coated candy that will have you dancing all night long.”[2] They sound inviting don’t they?
If you are a dreamer too, what are in your Christmas dreams
this year? An Xbox 360? Peace on earth? $1.00 gas prices?
Snow? A new car? A super-model girlfriend or boyfriend? To be pain-free? To be debt-free? To be
the “perfect size”…whatever “perfect” is these days? Renewed family relationships?
A new job? A church budget in
the black?
Christmas is the holiday for dreams...big dreams. We know how things are in the present and
often they’re extremely far away from where we want them to be in our dreams. Yet, at Christmas, we stretch out the
possibilities and hope for a life beyond reality as we know it. Somehow at Christmas, it seems like stretched-out
dreams are just a little closer to being in our grasp. Why is this so? Well, the precedence has been set long ago.
A young woman from Nazareth is called by God to be the
mother of Jesus and instead of being divorced by her fiancé, she is embraced by
him. Joseph, the fiancé, is told
everything will be alright when he takes Mary as his wife despite the cultural
pressures for him to divorce her for being apparently unfaithful. A young baby is born into this world in a
barn. This baby, of all things, is to
save a sinful world. So many aspects of
the Christmas story are the stuff of big dreams. And for those of us who are dreamers, the far-off seems a little
closer when we hear these stories.
It’s OK to be a dreamer. The Bible is full of dreamers…and big dreams. We only have to look at our passage today from Isaiah. New heavens (v. 17), a new earth (v. 17), no more crying (v. 19), no more babies dying before they have a chance (v. 20), no more adults who don’t live full lives (v. 20), people will have jobs that are satisfying and productive for society (vv. 21-23), and peace will flood the world (v. 25). I think these all fit in the “big dream” category, don’t you?
This ancient poem packs a powerful promise. The power in this poem comes from the fact that the people of God were in the middle. For them, there was a wide gap between the way things had been and were and the way things should be and will be. [3] Into this big gap between the past, present and the promise of a future from God, we hear the word “create.” Three times in the first part of our passage, God is creating a new thing. When we think of creating, we think of Genesis but the most frequent use of this Hebrew verb (bara) is not in Genesis, it’s here in Isaiah. Seventeen times in Isaiah we hear of God creating as opposed to six times in Genesis. [4] Creating is what God did. Creating is what God does. Creating is what God will do. Isaiah’s congregation needed to believe in the creative power of God to do new things.
From a reality standpoint, this is an outrageous passage. It’s as far-fetched as some Christmas dreams. It’s extreme because the new world of God we hear about from Isaiah is beyond our capacity…even beyond the imagination of Christmas dreamers. Most of us are fatigued, self-sufficient, and cynical too much of the time. It’s hard for us to imagine such promises of newness could happen in our realm.[5] Even for Christmas dreamers like myself, this is all a stretch. If Isaiah’s hearers needed to believe in God’s creative power of newness, we are probably not far behind them in our own need.
So what kind of Christmas dreams do you need to believe in today? What is so outrageous that it would take God’s creative hand to be true? Beyond our lists for material things that most of us will abandon by Valentine’s Day, what do you need God to create for you? For most of us, our deepest needs will fall within the category of: forgiveness from God or others and being spiritually renewed in our passion for Jesus. Go ahead and dream this Christmas. God loves dreamers and there’s nothing beyond God’s creative power.
Amen.
[1] Clement C. Moore (1779-1863), “The Night Before Christmas.”
[3] Rolf Jacobson, “Isaiah 65:15-25, Exegesis,” Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XV, Number 6, p. 58.
[4] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 22.
[5] Walter Brueggemann, “Outrageous God, Season of Decrease,” The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power and Weakness, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), p. 66.