DREAMERS ALL by Larry Patten

Please write a brief essay on one of the following:

McDreamy.

I have a dream.

Dream job.

If you were a fan of the television show Grey’s Anatomy, maybe you’d pick the first and delve into pop culture. Or perhaps your essay would highlight Martin Luther King Jr.’s transformational 1963 speech in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Then again, you might respond personally, sharing about the ideal career you aspire to claim.

Dreams die young. Dream a little dream of me. Dream Team.

Philosopher Joseph Campbell declared, “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” Back in the 1960s, Bobby Kennedy made this George Bernard Shaw comment famous: “You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”

We are dreamers, yes?

The Biblical witness has well-known dreamers. Jacob, head resting on rock, dreamed of heaven. Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. With Daniel, compared to all the rest of the Bible, dreams are strewn about the chapters so frequently you’d think the word was found in a supermarket’s ten-for-a-dollar sale.

But in the New Testament, with one exception, only Matthew dreams. Search Mark, Luke, and John and no one has sleep disturbed. Read anything by Paul (or Paul’s surrogates) and never once does he awake to remember a nighttime revelation.

And the exception? Early in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:17), Peter quoted Joel about old men dreaming. But that’s “cheating,” isn’t it? Joel was, after all, located in the Old Testament.

Only Matthew dreams. And mostly in the New Testament’s first Gospel, only Joseph dreams. Of course I don’t mean the Joseph who helped Pharaoh discern his dreams nightmares. No, I speak of Mary’s betrothed. In Luke, of course, Gabriel visited the dreamless Mary. She had face time with a divine messenger. But Matthew’s Joseph, anxious and conflicted, slumbers. Then awakes, and remembers.

Other than Joseph, only two others dream in Matthew.

With the cross looming, Pilate’s wife awakened and sought her husband to tell him of her dark thoughts (Matthew 27:19). “Have nothing to do with that innocent man,” she urgently whispered to Pilate about Jesus. Her warning will be ignored. It is also a warning that defined the experience of Matthew’s other dreamers . . . the Magi. In Matthew, the travelers from the east shared a cautionary nudge while in slumberland. With their gifts already strewn about the feet of Mary and Joseph and the child, they rise to remember a night message imploring them to return home “by another road.” Beware Herod! Unlike Pilate’s wife, the warning was heeded.

I am not much for dreams. Maybe it’s my strange schedule. I typically awake before 4:00 A.M., and rarely remember my dreams. Does my atrociously early morning thwart their work? Maybe. And I hardly ever like novels where the hero has a dream that reveals his or her “true” character or provides a crucial clue. The oft-quoted adage for writers is “show, don’t tell.” Which is to say that readers prefer action: dialog that matters or scenes where the hero’s hard work pays off. In fiction, dreams can be a storyteller’s lazy crutch.

And yet, though I think of the Christmas stories mostly as sacred fiction, I don’t see Matthew’s unique use of dreams as an easy way to tell a story. Dreams are not within our control, are they? Whether warnings or blessings, they unsettle us. We don’t and can’t plan them.

I have no idea why Matthew chose the dreamer’s path while Mark, Luke, and John did not. I suppose if Gospel dreams were commonplace, if Jesus’ actions or the Pharisee’s reactions were continuously underscored by nighttime revelations, I’d grow bored. I’d wish they would show and not tell. I’d believe the Gospel writers to be lazy and unreliable.

But only Matthew dreams.

And I pay attention. Every Gospel writer, and every believer then and now, struggles to personally embrace and publicly proclaim the ways of God. Sharing faith is a fool’s effort, like explaining Einstein’s theories to an infant or reading Dostoyevsky to a geranium. Still we try. Try we must.

Jesus, divinely foolish, often used simple stories. Better than dreams, yes? But how easily I’ll read his parables of forgiveness or justice and convince myself he’s talking about someone else or that I don’t understand or the parable’s meanings are thwarted by the context of ancient times. Nothing that attempts to explain faith, stories or dreams or personal experience, is easy to tell or be told.

Are dreams divine whispers? Holy nudges? Spiritual scribblings? What I “know” is this. Matthew chose to have Joseph, the Magi, and Pilate’s wife dream. I believe Matthew was claiming this good news would often be out of our control, arriving as an unbidden, unsettling gift.

It was Matthew’s way to explain the inexplicable.

We are all dreamers, yes?

in Peace,

Larry

In the season of EPIPHANY - Written on December 26, 2008

For the Lectionary of January 4, 2008: Matthew 2:1-12

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”