Changing the Trajectory

He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it [Genesis 28:11-12].

I had “the dream” again the other night. I’ve had it off and on for at least 40 years. I’m scheduled either to preach at an unfamiliar church or to give the keynote at a gathering of attorneys and insurance professionals. As some of you know, for many years now, my treatise writing about workers’ compensation law has paid the bills. In my dream I’m running late, usually because I’ve had to retrace my steps to collect my speaking materials. To regain some time, I take what I think is a shortcut. Alas, when I reach the door that is to allow my ingress, the door is locked. That’s generally when I wake.

Freud postulated that our dreams are a form of wish fulfillment—that when wishes can’t or won’t be fulfilled in our waking lives, they are carried out in dreams. I think Herr Doctor Freud is wrong. He only thought that because of the way his mother held him. I do not covet embarrassment. I do not long for humiliation. I do, however, dream about it.

Thank goodness, we post-moderns don’t put much stock in dreams. We concentrate instead on those things that we can measure and control. We seek manipulation, not the feeling of being manipulated. In all things, our proud, modern mantra is, “Follow the science.”

But because we’ve been so busy trying to order our days, trying to manage and manipulate our “GTD” (“Getting Things Done”) tools, trying to close all our open loops, we get tired, and we must sleep. Then, while we slumber, while our guard is down, the deep stirrings within us bubble up. Thoughts that we would never consider in our careful waking moments charge right through to us. Someone left the back door open to our inner psyche. Then we see and hear the inexplicable. Even if we can remember them in the morning, we usually toss away our dreams.

Of course, the ancients weren’t afraid of dreams. They saw things differently. They viewed the communications of night as utter possibility. They had unscientific notions—that God often used the venue of dreams within which to communicate His will, His holy purposes. Moreover, they knew that while God often spoke to them in dreams, the communication was usually not straightforward. It usually required interpretation. Above all, they believed that God came to people in their dreams so as to change the trajectory of things.

The trajectory of things: The Old Testament contains quite a few important divine dream communications, moments in which God used His powerful nocturnal forces to offer ideas and messages to humanity. One of the most prominent is found in the Old Testament reading assigned for this upcoming Sunday, the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost [Genesis 28:10-19a, RCL, Year A].

Most of us are familiar with the scene. Jacob has enticed his hungry, fraternal twin into trading the latter’s birthright for a bowl of lintel stew. Later, with the aid of his mother, Jacob tricks the old man, Isaac, into giving him the family’s primary blessing. Jacob needs to get out of town to allow things to cool down a bit and so, having been counseled not to marry a Canaanite woman, Jacob leaves Beersheba and heads toward Haran, to the home of his Uncle Laban, Rebekah’s brother. Laban should be able to find Jacob a good wife. Jacob’s plans appear to be working quite nicely.

Along the way, however, the weary Jacob lies down to rest. He falls asleep. Alone, afraid, and tired, Jacob is a good candidate for heavenly interruption. You see, while Jacob may be satisfied, God doesn’t like the trajectory of Jacob’s life. Jacob thinks he can live by his wits. Jacob thinks that he’s in control. Jacob sleeps. Jacob dreams. He dreams of angels moving up and down a mysterious ladder. He hears God’s voice speak out to him, offering a renewal of the covenant made with his grandfather, Abraham. God promises, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land” [Genesis 28:15]. God has changed the trajectory of Jacob’s life.

For the past few months, my Wednesday morning Bible Study has been making its way through the book of Daniel, a task not for the faint of heart. The book is filled with dreams. Echoing, in many important respects, the earlier, separate “Pharaoh dreams/Joseph interprets” stories in latter chapters of Genesis, Daniel interprets the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire—the folks who ransacked Jerusalem and carried off many of its citizens to exile in 587/586 BCE. “Neb” is busy making plans for the expansion of his sovereignty. Being king requires cunning. It takes concentration. It takes planning, and in his case, not a little cruelty. He’s set. Nothing it seems can block his path.

But, you see, God doesn’t like the trajectory of the king’s plans and actions. And so, God comes to Nebuchadnezzar when he is vulnerable, during his sleep. God uses the dream to change the trajectory, to suggest and to reprimand. The difficulty, of course, is that the king doesn’t understand his dream.

Daniel, a quick-minded Hebrew exile, one who is favored by God, tells the king the meaning of his dream. Counter to the king’s intuition, Daniel reminds “Neb” that he is king only at God’s sufferance. He is no true sovereign; only God is truly powerful. God, through Daniel, tells Nebuchadnezzar that the latter must change the trajectory. He must practice mercy and justice [Daniel 4:27]. At the end of Daniel, chapter 4, the king acknowledges his limitations and his role within the created order. He also offers a doxology to Daniel’s all-powerful God.

For many of us, the favorite Biblical dream story comes from the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” [Matt. 2:12]. God looks at Herod and doesn’t like the trajectory of things. The Bethlehem babe is a threat to Herod. When the fate of the Christ child is at stake, when the future of humanity hangs in the balance, God speaks to the Magi while they repose in the night.

God has this habit, this modus operandi, of interrupting the profane in addition to the sacred. God reaches out to change the trajectory. In scripture, we see God not only speaking to and through prophets, but also to public, secular figures like Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Magi, when the well-being of God’s creation is in jeopardy. As I’ve written before, God will do anything to get His way. He’ll turn over every rock, push any button, when it comes to having His will—His trajectory, not ours. He will interrupt our slumber.

As I mentioned earlier in this piece, however, since the so-called “Enlightenment,” we’ve given up all sorts of silly superstitions. Our science has banished the darkness, chased away the nocturnal vulnerability of sleep, where our carefully-maintained, jealously guarded “systems” don’t rule. As modern and post-modern individuals, we’re sure that we set our own trajectories. We ignore our dreams. But still they come.

We’re quickly approaching the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” sermon/speech. Dr. King spoke of a personal dream “deeply rooted in the American dream,” of a day in which our nation might “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed …, that all men [and women] are created equal.”

Sixty years ago, I think God looked at America and didn’t like its trajectory. All of humanity, not just a portion of it, had been created in God’s image and many of God’s children were suffering under the weight of racism. And so, God gave King a dream that one day people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

King’s dream was not merely the articulated desire of one who had seen hatred, cruelty, and racism. King’s dream—and I’m drawing here from some old notes gleaned from the excellent book by a Durham friend, the Reverend Dr. Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Word that Moved America [Oxford Univ. Press, 1997]—was no mere projection of what King would have liked to have envisioned for America. Instead, King’s dream, like the dreams of so many others over multiple millennia, was planted by a God who is repulsed by cruelty, who seeks to reverse complacency, whose nature is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and whose Holy History is to protect the vulnerable when humanity will not do so. God sends dreams when God wants a change in trajectory.

I’m convinced that even in our time of technological advances, in spite of our skill at shining light into what we consider darkness, in our world within which “Reason” and its pseudo-religion, Science, seem to reign, God still causes stirrings to flow within us, sometimes late in the evening or early in the morning, when our normal guard is down. God still uses dreams to show us alternatives. God tells us that the lives of others should not be subject to “our choice.” We inhabit this Earth only at God’s sufferance. We must practice mercy and justice.

Acknowledging the presumptuousness of my words, many dream that in real and tangible ways, God may again be seeking to change the trajectory. Our mainline Protestant church gives lip service to mercy and justice, but generally fails to treat the unborn—dare I say it? —love the unborn as our neighbor. Following our current trajectory, one million defenseless souls will be summarily dispatched this year within our borders. Are we really so sure that they cannot also dream?