Online Extra: Exercises for
Discerning the Dream of God
Though the truth and its implications are life-altering, can there be any doubt that God is a God of transformation who wants to embrace and transform all of creation? The promise is present in the prophet Isaiah, who cried out to the complacent children of Israel, giving voice to the word of God:
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise. (Isaiah 43:18–21)
And in the closing chapters of the New Testament, we hear echoes of the same promise:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell among them; they will be God’s people, and God will be with them, wiping every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” And the one who is seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:1, 3–5)
We humans might have a vested interest in depicting a changeless God who made a stable and unchanging world. Scripture, history and our own life experiences put the lie to that hope. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” You have never seen rivers in the desert—this God will make it so. You have never seen wild animals obey—this God will make it so. You cannot imagine life beyond the old patterns and accepted ways that seem ingrained in the groove of creation—this God is not bound by those limits. This God is making a new heaven and a new earth, one where pain will cease, justice will rule, and death itself will die. God invites us to look around with the eyes of faith; then we, too, will see how God is “making all things new.”
A warning: the new thing God is bringing to life is not “new” in the way we so often understand and fear it to be. Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, the first black diocesan bishop elected in the South, and thus a man with long experience following the God of transformation, explained it to me with these simple words: “God is changing things so that they finally reflect the dream of God. It will be new to us, but it is merely the fulfillment of what God intended all along.”
Many theologians have painted their picture of this new thing God is doing in the world, what Episcopal laywoman Verna Dozier calls “the dream of God” and what Howard Thurman, another black theologian and mystic, describes as “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sly.”1 If it sounds pleasant and non-threatening, it is not. In his book God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu adds color, contour and depth—and teeth—to Dozier and Thurman’s sketches of the divine dream:
God calls on us to be [God’s] partners to work for a new kind of society where people count; where people matter more than things, more than possessions; where human life is not just respected but positively revered; where people will be secure and not suffer from the fear of hunger, from ignorance, from disease; where there will be more gentleness, more caring, more sharing, more compassion, more laughter; where there is peace and not war. . . .2
Having labored under the weight of racial apartheid, neither Tutu nor Dozier nor Thurman was under any illusion that the kingdom had come, that the creation had indeed become some idyllic “friendly world of friendly folk.” Their discussion of the dream of God hinges on their belief in a God who yearns for the transformation of a broken yet redeemable creation. “The world is not as God would have it be,” Dozier admits. “The kingdoms of this world are not yet the kingdom of God, but they can become it. They are not yet the realm where Gods sovereignty is acknowledged and lived out, but they can become it.”3
Why do we do this? Because
we’re Christians. Christ ministered to all, and that’s the model for me. He was healing and touching all people, eating with tax collectors and lepers. Our call is to be with all, too, not just where we feel comfortable.
STEPHEN CHENEY-RICE,
ALL SAINTS-PASADENA
In Jesus the Christ, we see the lengths to which the God of transformation would go in order to bring the dream to life. In the Gospel of Luke, the first act of Jesus’ public ministry is to enter the synagogue and offer this prophetic pronouncement from the scroll of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19)
Having dropped his bombshell, he rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and takes his seat. Meanwhile, everyone is staring at him, at once aghast and in awe. He knows what they are wondering: Is this guy serious? His response is curt: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Yes, he tells them, the Messiah has come. The old order is passing away, and I have come to usher in a new age. Things are about to change.
And change they do. Jesus’ whole ministry—the whole account of God’s human life among us—is that of one who honors his tradition, but will not be bound by it if the dream of God demands something else. So he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well, even though Jews and Samaritans were not to relate to each other, and especially not a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman (John 4:1–26). When he sees the man with the withered hand sitting in the synagogue on the Sabbath, he knows the rules: do not touch him, do not heal him, do not perform any unnecessary work on this day ordained by God for rest. He also knows he is being watched by the religious authorities who are waiting to pounce on him for the slightest infraction. Knowing all that, as Mark tells us,
Jesus said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” The man got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. (Luke 6:8–10)
Jesus knew, and we certainly know, there would be consequences for his actions. He also knew he had come to do his Abba God’s will, to usher in the just reign of God. And he knew, as we struggle to acknowledge, that there is no way to have the dream without the transformation. The point is not to slog away in maintenance mode or to sit on the sidelines, pining for what was. The God of transformation invites us to “be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating” (Isaiah 65:18). God yearns for us to be part of this new creation and to rejoice in its unfolding.
The God of Relationship
That invitation reveals another face of God. The Holy and Immortal One could choose to act without us, could choose to be the watchmaker who sets creation in motion and then walks away. But the very nature of God is to be in relationship, first within the Godhead, then with all of creation, and even with each of us, making us the very children and partners of God.
According to orthodox theology, the Trinitarian God is a God in perichoresis, or an eternal, continual dance, with Godself. The Creator is in union with the Redeemer who is in union with the Sustainer who is in union with the Creator—at all times and in all places. That relational quality propels God into creation, where God yearns for relationship with us all and draws us beyond our barriers and into relationship with each other.
In Scripture we see this God going forth, claiming Abraham and his descendants and establishing a covenant relationship with them.4 That promise sustains the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness, and the Deuteronomist reminds them of the relationship when despair