Sermon: Dreams & Visions

Dreams and Visions

Our sermon today begins with an artist named Akiane Kramarik. An American child and now teenage art prodigy. She has become a self-made millionaire by selling her incredible paintings from the early age of 5 years old. Akiane is a devout Christian and paints from visions she has of Jesus Christ, which speak to her… “God speaks to me and tells me what to paint,” she says.

Her visions and paintings of the Christ are not only portraits of the man Jesus. They are paintings of our material world infused with God’s creative love and energy. One of her paintings is called “The Light”, which I will describe to you now.

Imagine, if you will, a wooden boardwalk or a wooden bridge that extends out from you, that extends out from reality, from you into the center of the galaxy. At the far end of the bridge, now glowing in the light of a million stars, stands an almost imperspetable figure gleaming. That figure—even in the still painting—seems to walk toward you on the bridge, emerging and glowing in soft white light. There is a sense of peace and glow. It really is beautiful.

Here are the words Akiane uses to describe the vision that guided this artwork:

“We can see the universe in so many ways… but when not illuminated it looks all empty. From far away our world like a firefly at night appears lit only momentarily. From far away our life might appear insignificant. Even our biggest victories and struggles seem meaningless. But without any of us the universe could not grow. Our eternal path is a narrow path where we need to wait for others to pass us. It is a bridge to all infinite possibilities. On this bridge someone always waits for us. Always. It is the Light. The more the Light gives… the more is left. Whatever the Light touches is awakened. On this bridge every breath and every heartbeat is welcomed and embraced. And once in a while… the Light transcends time and all the memories become an incomplete echo we can all hear… ‘Eternity is not that long…’”, says now 18 year old Akiane.

Isn’t that inspiring? “A bridge to all infinite possibilities.” What I find beautiful about Akiane’s life passion and art work, is her vision of God, Christ and the Spirit — that is a kind of visual vision and a spiritual vision. A vision of what “The Light” of God feels like, for example. Or “guidance”, or “odyssey”, or “metamorphoses”, which are other themes she explores in her faith and in her painting.

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Today we, like Akiane and like Peter in our reading from Acts, are invited to see dreams and visions… faith visions, and to live into God’s revisioning of our everyday human ways.

"I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision.” Peter said, “There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. [And I saw everything that was ugly to me inside]… a voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ (Acts 11:5-9)

God’s purpose, in Peter’s vision. He can almost see it! Ideas that Peter’s inner heart is trying to understand. In prayerful dreams and visions, Peter is opening himself to something that has not arrived yet, but that God has invited him into. Something he hasn’t seen. Something he hasn’t yet witnessed, or experienced, because it is just dawning over the horizon. He senses, he believes, he has a piecing together how God is guiding him to that new heart space or that new Way.

As you may know, this sense of clean and unclean, holy and profane that Peter speaks of, was of utmost importance to 1st centuries Jewish people. It was more than obvious hygiene, like washing your cutting board after you cut chicken, or making sure clothes were clean and tidy. Holy and profane was about being ritually pure or tainted: objects, food, and people, who were clean or unclean because of religious or social taboo.

And I think these taboos were keeping people apart in those ancient times, in a way that required revision. The Book of Acts describes a new community forming from people of diverse cultures, backgrounds and social norms. The Jewish followers of Jesus meeting the Gentile followers of Jesus. In Peter’s time was almost unimaginable!

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Sounds like today, doesn’t it? Today’s world is becoming more and more polarized. Often we are seeing things from very different points of view, with seemingly little in common. It may have to do with social media and news media. We are being fed, and we choose, perspectives on the news and our choice of entertainment, on Facebook and YouTube, we are engaging with what like. As a result, our own opinions are reinforced, and our beliefs are not challenged by different perspectives. Our tolerance for difference is diminishing. We are losing the ability to listen, hear and dialogue with people holding different points of view.

An author I’m reading these days said, “People basically eat with others with whom they share values” (Neyrey 364). I wonder, is there a common table in this day and age, and is that how God envisions us to be?

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To continue our theme commemorating Asian culture today, let’s hear from a Korean United Church minister from Vancouver, British Columbia. He writes,

“When Asian people gather together for a meal, along with other dishes they usually share a bowl of rice since rice is the most widely consumed staple food for Asian people. Even as we human beings are all different, so is rice—different in length, shape, colour, texture, and aroma.

But beyond the differences there is one commonality in rice—it gives life. For more than half of humanity in the world, rice is life.

The Korean poet Kim Ji-Ha says in his poem: “Rice is heaven”. The poem, frequently used as a grace at meals, goes like this:

Rice is heaven, Because heaven cannot be possessed by one Rice must be shared with each other. Rice is heaven. Just as together we view the stars in Heaven, Rice must be shared by all. When rice is eaten Heaven enters the body. Rice is heaven. Ah-ah! Rice must be shared!

This poem reflects Asian people’s holistic thinking of life as interconnected and interdependent. Heaven, earth, and human beings have to work together to produce a bowl of rice. A bowl of rice on our table is the collaborative work of heaven’s sunshine, cloud, rain and thunderstorm, of earth’s nurturing embrace and of human labour.

For East Asian people, rice is an embodiment of peace. “Peace”—In Chinese characters means “to eat rice together equally”. Peace. And the same is true of Mandarin, Japanese and in Korean. Writing “peace” is writing “to eat rice together equally”. Since rice is such an embodiment of Asian peoples’ interconnected, interdependent life, it is supposed to be shared together. Since “heaven cannot be possessed by one” alone, “Rice must be shared with each other.” Eating rice together is a sacred act. In our sharing of meals together, there is peace. In our sharing of meals together, there is community. Whether a communal or an individual ritual, eating rice is a sacred act.

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I think our scripture today is about Peter entering into God’s vision of a new community. And that vision, we are told, is a strong conversion moment when he realizes, it’s not about the food it’s about the sharing, the interdependance, the community, which is sacred. Sharing is the essence of beloved community.

And I think that this may be exactly what Peter’s conversion is all about. Noticing how his experiences are connected with God’s vision. Noticing how God is using his gifts to paint a new Vision and new Way of peace on earth, a new way of accepting, embracing the Other, who would normally have been a foe. Instead welcoming the other to Table. To bread or rice, to wine or fish, to sit and eat together as one family of God.

After his vision, Peter is summoned by a household in a Roman city. He goes with the Gentile believers. And recalls,

The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. …And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ (Acts 11:15-16)

This is a moment when Peter connected his faith and his actions to God’s dream of a table where all are welcome. He connected the Christ’s teachings with opportunities in his own life. He challenged himself to move past normal, to accept the God’s invitation to something more.

Like Christ, like Peter, like Akiane paints visions that we can almost step in to—by listening to God’s dreams that come to us we can imagine into being, “a new heaven and a new earth” in which all are welcome and nourished, body, mind and spirit.

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Are faith visions and faith dreams something we mere mortals here at Wesley United Church can be part of? I think so. I really do. I think this is what prayer is. Whether we pray with our head bowed, whether we pray over a meal of hot rice together, whether we pray with brushes and paints, whether we journal, whether we sing, whether we find those divine creative moments in the shower! In a prayerful relationship with God, one that is rooted in safety and trust we know in Christ, we can go into a trance, as Peter said, leave ourselves. Leave our own voices, our own rules, our own expectations, our own normals… and be guided. Be guided by the needs of those around us, be guided by God. Be guided and be open to the universe of possibilities that Akiane so beautifully and prayerfuly painted for us to see.

What kind of life does God envision for you? What kind of relationships might God be guiding you to envision in new ways? Who could you mend relations with over a coffee or a meal? What is this communities dream for each of our members and friends? Let’s listen. Let’s pray. Let’s be transform our lives into the “new heaven and the new earth” that God dreams for us. Amen.

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Bibliography

The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation. (1991). Jerome H. Neyrey, ed. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers.

VIDEO: The Light, by Akiane. Source: https://youtu.be/MqjGLFNmorg

“Rice is Heaven,” a worship service, by The Rev. Dr. Hyuk Cho is Coordinating Minister at West Point Grey United Church in Vancouver. © 2019 The United Church of Canada/L’Église Unie du Canada. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca. Any copy must include this notice.