by CCW | 22 June 2014 14:03
Dreams and visions. It is hard to know what to make of such things. They might seem so subjective and impressionistic, so removed from what is actual and real, as we might assume. In one way, that is true, at least when we look at the form in which ideas are conveyed rather than the ideas themselves. But if we look instead at the ideas themselves then perhaps, just perhaps, even in our dogmatic and empirical attachments to material reality, we might discover wisdom and truth.
And wisdom and truth are what are at issue on The First Sunday after Trinity. Wisdom and truth guides and directs our judgments and our actions. The Eucharistic readings, the epistle from The First letter of John that “love is of God” and Luke’s Gospel about the parable of the rich man, Dives, and Lazarus, are all about living the vision that has been opened out to us. “Behold, a door was opened in heaven,” as we heard on Trinity Sunday.
The point of an open door is that you go through it. The vision is to be entered into and lived. Our failure to do so creates the “great gulf fixed” between the rich man in the torments of Hell and Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. Hell, as always, is about our own choosing; signaled in the parable by stepping over and ignoring Lazarus “lying at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table”; only the dogs attend to Lazarus, it seems. It is quite a powerful image and one which conveys great wisdom as parables so often do.
Like dreams and visions, the parable opens us out to a larger understanding of reality. In ignoring Lazarus, the parable suggest, we are blind to the things of God which have been opened out to us. The door “opened in heaven” is about what is revealed and made known to us. We neglect such things at our peril. The further paradox is that in neglecting the things of God and heaven we wreak havoc on our lives with one another. We cut ourselves off from the only reality that there is. The dreams and visions are what are truly real.
The first lesson[1] at Morning Prayer this year is Solomon’s prayer to God for wisdom, the wisdom from which judgment is exercised. Can there be anything more necessary and important, practically speaking, than the exercise of good judgment? Can there be anything more profound than to recognize that the exercise of good judgment is itself something that comes from God? That it is about God’s will and reason mediated through us in our actions and judgments? Refuse the revelation, refuse “Moses and the prophets,” as Luke suggests, and you will never be persuaded of any truth “though one rose from the dead.” We cut ourselves off from the vision of God revealed ultimately and in its fullness in Jesus Christ.
The second lesson[2] is about the vision of Saul on the road to Damascus. And what is that except a breakthrough of the understanding where the one who persecuted the followers of the Way, as the followers of Christ were known, comes to recognize the truth of Christ, to see the glory in the sufferings and to realize the Messiah? It only happens through the struggle, the struggle really to know which alone makes possible the overcoming of our own dogmatic attachments. Saul is blinded into sight and is transformed to become Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. In his conversion, Christianity goes global practically speaking. How providential, too, that we have this story today when next Sunday we will celebrate Peter and Paul, the twin pillars of the Apostolic Church.
The conversion of Paul is the breakthrough of wisdom and understanding which changes lives. The wisdom of Solomon is proverbial and is best captured in the famous story of Solomonic judgment. Two women, described as harlots actually, come before Solomon. Each had given birth to a child. One had died but there was a crib switch; the dispute is over who is the true mother of the living child. Solomon says “bring me a sword” and “divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” It has all of the appearance of a kind of judgment. But the wisdom of his decision is that the true mother will care more for the life of her child even to the point of surrendering him to the other woman. Thus, the true mother is revealed as the one who cares for the life of the child above all else. A practical matter, we might say, but one based upon wisdom and truth that inform right judgment.
Dreams and visions open us out to wisdom and truth. There is the possibility of our being changed by what we behold in the witness of the Scriptures. At issue is whether we are willing to be moved in our hearts and minds. At issue is whether we are alive at all to the things of God without which our lives are chaotic and cruel. We live in a dark and difficult world of willful nihilism where we turn our backs on what has been made known to us and which alone has the power to change us and to make us more human. Saul who became Paul, after all, was a persecutor, one who willing contributed to acts of violence against the followers of Jesus. Oh, I know, in your cynicism you are thinking of the acts of violence that Christians have perpetuated either in the name of Jesus or out of vicious desires. But what is that except the very failure, in which we all share, in one way or another, to attend to the wisdom and truth of God made known in Christ Jesus? It’s not that there won’t be suffering and hardship but how we act in the face of such things and what we learn about ourselves and our humanity both in its glory and its sorry disarray. We judge others but do we place ourselves under the same judgment?
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a very powerful lesson about the necessity of acting out of what we have been given to see and learn. “Behold, a door was opened in heaven.” “Behold,” God tells Solomon, “I give you a wise and discerning mind.” And while we see him act wisely at first, we know the rest of the story of Solomon’s betrayal of God’s word and truth. Betrayals are us. And yet in the mercy of God we can be awakened to his wisdom and truth. It begins perhaps by confronting such things in the witness of the Scriptures. Perhaps, just perhaps, through these dreams and visions we might learn something of the wisdom and truth of God.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity I, 2014
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