The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Homily:  “Light My Fire”     

The Reverend Richard R. Davis, Dec. 24, 2008           

If there’s one thing that really impresses me about us people it’s the dreams we dream.  Almost every night I have dreams full of all sorts of amazing characters, symbols and unique situations.  Sometimes they’re disturbing dreams and sometimes they are incredibly intriguing or funny or insightful or mysterious.  Every once in a while I’ll have a dream that strums some holy chord in the very depths of my being, and I hear heavenly music in my soul that fills me with a profound sense that our lives have purpose and meaning.  

Where do these dreams come from?   My conscious mind certainly doesn’t have the creativity to conjure up the amazing images and twisting narratives that come to me in my dreams.   It is a source of wonder and mystery.   Now I don’t know about you, but I believe that dreams carry genuine spiritual and psychological freight – they tell us something about ourselves and about the meaning of our lives.   They let me know when I’m on the wrong path, when I’m confused, scared and angry, and they also let me know when I’m on the right path. Dreams come to us unbidden from a deeper and higher source than our individual selves.  They come to us from a source beyond all imagining.  Dreams, I believe, are bearers of truth.  They may not always tell you the truths you want to hear but rather the truths you need to hear.  You have the dreams you need to have.   Pay attention to your dreams. 

What’s truly incredible is when people have a common dream of hope and that dream passes down through the centuries.  The candle of one generation lights the candle of the next one.  It’s amazing to me that these bright dreams get ignited in the first place and that the flame does not go out in spite of the harsh winds of adversity that blows across the landscape. 

Think about the story of the birth of the baby Jesus we just heard.  Do you know where that story comes from?  Actually, the original inspiration for the story pre-dates the birth of Jesus by at least seven or eight hundred years.   It was the ancient Hebrews and Jews who originally had a dream of a great leader, a Messiah, an “anointed one” who would come and redeem their society.  Think about what some of us hope our new president will help us do – now, multiply that expectation by about a million and you have some idea of what the Jews expected from their Messiah.  They needed hope.  Their entire society had been devastated by military conquest and the people who survived that horror were taken into exile.   As a people they almost ceased to be.  Living in exile, in the depths of despair, they needed a great dream to lift them up, to give them some sense of hope for tomorrow.  And a dream came to them – they  dreamed of a Messiah who would unite his people, eradicate cruelty and corruption and injustice, he would make all peoples of the world aware of the sacred unity of all creation and his rule would usher in an age of peace and justice.  When this Messiah came even death and suffering would end and there would be never-ending joy.   It was as lofty a dream as could be imagined.  

The early followers of Jesus were inspired by that dream. They, too, needed a dream after Jesus had been crucified and the fledgling group who followed Jesus’ teachings faced persecution and oppression at almost every turn.  They saw in Jesus the promised Messiah who was not an earthly ruler but a spiritual ruler – a Prince of Peace – who brought the good news of God’s love for all humankind and who would someday return and usher in the reign of God in all creation.  Theirs’ was dream born of the passionate yearning for the ending of sorrow and separation and the beginning of a time of joy and unity. They took an ancient dream of a Messiah who would redeem the world and made it their own dream.  

When I refer to these Jewish and Christians hopes as dreams I’m making one scandalous claim – I’m saying that these are dreams.  We go astray when we try to insist that these ancient dreams reveal literal truths.  All sorts of havoc in our world is the result of too many people taking their religious dreams literally. In truth, dreams often have more significance than literal events because they tell us something about ourselves and something about this glorious but mysterious universe in which we find ourselves.  Such dreams aren’t meant to be taken literally – they are hints, clues, a sense of spiritual promise – they point beyond themselves to more enduring truth. 

When Christianity spread into Europe , it encountered people who had their own ancient pre-Christian understanding of reality.  Living in the northern hemisphere, these ancient people saw how the days grew shorter and shorter as winter approached.  They knew that the sun is the source of life and without that source they would perish.   Today we don’t fear that the sun will disappear – we have plenty else to fear, but we don’t worry about that.  But we have our own fears of plunging into other kinds of personal and collective darkness so we can imagine the sense of anxiety they felt as the days grew dimmer and dimmer.  To coax back the light they built bonfires on hills across the land to encourage the sun and they danced into the night. Call these primitive rituals if you like – I’d call it a human ritual, rooted in a deep need to see more light in a time of darkness.  Over time the rituals of winter solstice took on deeper spiritual significance.

 Once Christianity was established in Europe , decisions had to be made about when to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus.  The church could see that it made perfect sense to celebrate at the same time that people, since time immemorial, were used to celebrating the rebirth of light in the world.   That’s why we’re here tonight and not sometime in the spring when Jesus was most likely born.  After all, Christmas Eve in April just wouldn’t be the same, would it?

So when we read this story of the birth of the baby Jesus tonight, it’s good to remember how the ancient dreams of so many people – the Hebrews, the early Christians and the Pagans dreams are bound up in it.  It’s good to remember, too, that these were the dreams of people who feared they were on the edge of annihilation. 

But you know, the fear of annihilation, the fear of plunging into an abyss of darkness is not just an ancient fear - it’s a human fear.   There are many varieties and levels of annihilation that a person can experience:  an illness, getting fired, the break up of your family, the loss a loved one or the loss of anything near and dear to us.  Or it can be the loss of meaning and purpose, the loss of hope itself. 

For some the fear of darkness is not a fear of something that might happen – it is a reality.   Hopelessness and despair have pretty much won the battle.  Sometimes this loss may have happened so slowly and imperceptibly over time that a person doesn’t even realize what has happened.  You can lose your frame of reference.   You can get lost in a jaded forest of cynicism and bitterness.  Then, there is only the darkness of meaninglessness.  It can happen slowly or suddenly, and it can happen to any one of us.  You cease to dream, you cease to hope for something great and wonderful, and a light goes out inside of you.  

The ancient Hebrews and Jews and Christians and Pagans knew all about this – they experienced great hardships, too-- more than any I’ve ever gone through.  Yet they knew that if you cease to dream, over time you will die inside.  They knew that when you become so jaded and cynical or hopeless, when you cease to believe that something radically new and different and wonderful can break into your life, a light goes out, you die inside.   They knew that having the light of heavenly hope was essential.   

My hunch is that I’m not telling you of anything you don’t already know.  That’s why we’re here tonight.  We know the vital importance of dreaming.   There is no better time of the year to dream of a high and holy love than now, on Christmas Eve.  Think of the collective power of the dream we are dreaming tonight – think of the billions of our brothers and sisters in places far and near who this very moment are looking up into the heavens of their souls, who feel the love that surrounds and sustains us all, who can sense once again that love will - if we allow it to - redeem the world and bring the great promises we dream of to birth.

Tonight is a night when we affirm that we have not yet seen it all – that we still dream that there is something new and redemptive which will come to birth in our world – some new joy, some new love, some new purpose or meaning -  some great gift we did not earn - a gift of life.  This dream that people have dreamed down through the ages is not false.  It’s too beautiful, it resonates too deeply in the human heart to be false.  It is a dream that comes to us because we need it.   Who knows when this dream will come true for you?  Who knows how it will come true?  I don’t. 

But I do know this: Tonight during the time we have been together, approximately 15,000 babies have been born in our world.  In our tradition we affirm that every night a child is born is a holy night.  Every night and every morn new possibilities come to birth.