The First Eucharist of Christmas
24 December 2013
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
When
David graduated from high school, his family pulled together enough money to
send him and me on a trip to England and France. David had always wanted to visit the Normandy
beaches where the events of D-Day were played out, and so, in April of 2005, he
and I took off from Vancouver. The trip
was a mixed blessing: David had his wish
fulfilled and I spent five days and four nights in the cardiac care unit of the
hospital in Bayeux.
Upon
my return my physician sent me off to see Saul Isserow, a cardiologist who
practices out at UBC. Under his care I
went through a long series of tests to determine what course of care and
rehabilitation I needed to follow in order to have a longer and productive
life. One day, after I had answered a
series of questions, Saul decided to refer me to the sleep clinic at UBC. There the staff determined that I suffer from
sleep apnoea, a condition caused by temporary but recurrent blockages to the
main airway. Those who suffer from sleep
apnoea run a risk of stroke and, more practically, never get enough sleep.
One
of the treatments for sleep apnoea is a device that provides ‘continuous
positive airway pressure’, often called a ‘CPAP’ for short. Some people find the use of CPAP difficult,
but the first night I used mine I went to sleep in a moment. The next morning, when I woke up, I turned to
Paula and said, “I dreamt.” That morning
I realized that I had not really dreamt in many years.
Nowadays
there are many theories and myths about dreams and dreaming. Human beings have wondered whether dreams are
messages from God or troubling visions sent by evil forces or premonitions or
numerous other experiences.
Psychologists have explored the meaning of dreams and there are some
schools of theology that actively encourage the interpretation of dreams as a
means of spiritual growth.
Recently
some neuroscientists have put forward a new understanding of dreams. When we dream, our brains are re-ordering
information. It’s a similar process to
de-fragmenting your computer. When we
use our computers, bytes of data. are stored in various locations, not always
in close proximity to related data. When
we ‘de-frag’ our hard drives, data is moved about and similar data finds a new
home, closer to related matters. It
improves the memory function of our computers and enables us to access data
more quickly.
When
we dream, these scientists suggest, our brain is moving memories, experiences,
intuitions and other important data into new locations. In our sleep we experience different bits of
our experience being set next to other bits, often unrelated, with the result
of vivid but strange mental images. Some
information the brain puts away into deep storage, other experiences are
actually discarded as unnecessary. The
end result is we actually remember more clearly and find ourselves able to
access those memories more easily. There
is even a suggestion that one of the most important ways to stay mentally alert
and fit as we grow older is to sleep well and dream deeply.
It
seems to me that every year at this time Christians and others share a dream. It is a dream that begins with a common
experience: the wonder and mystery of a
child’s birth. But this birth comes with
many other wonders: heavenly beings,
earthly shepherds; royal mystics and cruel tyrants; safety and danger; joy and
sorrow. It is a dream that offers the
promise of a new world, a world in which every human being is treated justly, a
world where the needs of every person are met and a world in which life-giving
relationships between men and women, young and old, human and non-humans, are formed and nurtured.
But
this dream has not yet fulfilled its purpose.
You and I have not yet been fully ‘de-fragmented’ so that our memories
are clear and easily recovered. The
experiences of each year often cloud our minds and we have difficulty in
recovering the essential vision of this night.
We struggle to remember why this Child is so important, to remember why
heavenly beings and earthly shepherds gathered to celebrate his birth, to
remember why the royal mystics travelled so far to see him and why cruel
tyrants, even to this day, fear the message that this Child brings.
The
seventeenth-century English poet, Robert Herrick, tried to capture the meaning
of this dream in his own words:
What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give honour to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden?
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.
We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.
Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
So
tonight we dream the dream again. Images
come into view that are both familiar and strange. Memories of a hoped-for world come
tantalizingly close to our conscious minds.
The ‘sweeter music’ of this day entices us to dare to believe that the
promise this Child brings is not meant just for some distant future but for this
present moment, for people such as you and me.
And
as we dream this dream again, God is ‘de-fragmenting’ our hearts and minds,
re-organizing our thoughts so that the truly necessary things come closer to
our conscious minds. Only there can ‘the
hopes and dreams of all the years’ find expression in the choices we make
today, tomorrow and all the days after tomorrow until this night comes again
and we dream God’s dream and dare to hope that it might be ours as well. For it is in this dreaming that we catch a
glimpse of what is truly real --- for us and for all of creation. Amen.
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