SHALOM, good morning. I want to thank Rev. Ed Horstmann for inviting me to share ideas and concerns with you within this series of sermons on “Great Dreams and Dreamers of the Bible.” The subject of dreams and dream interpretation has interested me for many years. In recent decades, it is the psychologists, far more than pastors or theologians, who have engaged this subject—much to the detriment of our theologies and spiritualities, I would argue. My own graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School in the 1970’s focused on the interdisciplinary field of psychology-and-theology, along with Jewish-Christian relations. Among the courses I took were two on “Myth and Dreams” and “God and Psyche,” both taught by Prof. Leighton McCutchen. One of the assignments for those courses was to keep a dream journal, recording nighttime dreams upon waking in the morning. This is a discipline that I began in 1974 and continue until today. Over the years, these nocturnal messages have nourished and deepened my own spirituality considerably. And it is this personal experience which has, in turn, stimulated my scholarship in the area of dream symbolism and interpretation. In my research, I have tried to integrate insights from both theology and psychology. Since I am also active, as teacher and scholar, in promoting mutual understanding among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the interreligious dimension of this research has also held profound meaning for me.
In an essay on dream psychology, my former teacher Leighton McCutchen, writes:
“An understanding of the function of dreams has unquestionably given fresh insight into the nature of psychopathology and psychotherapy. Can we suggest a concomitant insight on the side of health?…The power tapped by dreams is that which is allied with the energy moving creativity, art, and higher forms of human expression. The dream is sometimes the direct source for literature and poetry (Blake, Coleridge), painting (Bosch), to say nothing of the visions of philosophy (Descartes), and religion (Jacob-Israel).” :
And Jungian psychologist James Hillman, in his book Insearch, offers advice on how we can “befriend” our dreams, in order to deepen our understanding of “the myths which are operating in [each of us], [our] real stor[ies], the stor[ies] of [our lives] from within, rather than our case histor[ies] derived from without.” What Hillman calls the “rediscovery of soul through the unconscious” entails a spiritual dimension: “the reawakened presence of inner myth and sense of destiny, the sense that one is somehow meant. To be meant implies a transcendent power that calls, chooses…a power which gives meaning.” :
Psychologists likes McCutchen and Hillman use modern language to restate truths that were known to our ancestors centuries ago. The Hebrew Bible, in passages like the ones we read this morning, conveys the same wisdom: dreams are vessels for communication from the Divine, also known as prophetic revelation. Such messages help us discover or confirm what our life purpose is, where we are meant to go, and how we are called to live. Very rarely do we experience in our dreams the kind of unambiguous message from God that, say, Jacob experienced when he had his famous dream of the angels ascending and descending the ladder reaching unto Heaven. No, most of us are not graced by such an awesome dream. Our own dreams are more ordinary, more ambiguous, mixing together information or events from our daily lives and scenes, characters, and messages that are outside the realm of our waking reality. We tend to call the latter “fantasies,” akin to the creations of our willful imaginations, but percolating up from our unconscious.
I want to suggest, based on teachings in the Jewish and Muslim traditions, that the “unrealistic,” often “surrealistic,” content of our nighttime dreams is like a stream of
flowing water containing gold nuggets, in this case nuggets of transcendent meaning; and that, like the California gold prospectors, we are invited to pan for those nuggets of sacred meaning by recording our dreams when we awaken, then dialoguing with them over time in order to extract the higher wisdom that is being sent to us from a source beyond our egos or intellects.
On the front of today’s program are excerpts from the Talmud and Hadith, the oral traditions of Judaism and Islam, respectively.[3] They teach us that our dreams can contain a fraction, 1/60th or 1/46th , of prophecy: nevu’ah in Hebrew, nabuwwah in Arabic. In the case of Joseph and Pharaoh, these fractions approached 100%, but the messages were conveyed in cryptic symbolism that required Joseph’s special gifts as dream interpreter in order to decipher the symbolism in both his own dreams and those of Pharoah. And it was that God-given capacity that caused his brothers to hate him—when they saw him coming and conspired to kill him, they said “here comes that dreamer”. Later that same capacity of dream interpretation brought about a positive turn in his fortune, when Pharaoh had his dreams satisfactorily deciphered and lifted Joseph out of the dungeon and installed him as Minister of Agriculture and Nutrition, putting him in a position to save the nation of Egypt, as well as his own family back in Canaan, from famine. 
Judaism and Islam both teach that, in the absence of direct revelation received and proclaimed by a Divinely sanctioned prophet, our dreams serve as channels, however partial and obscure, for communications from God. In fact, the prophet Muhammad taught that, after his death, dreams would be the primary source of subsequent revelation supplementing the sacred teachings in the Qur’an. In the Bible, dreams are presented as a prophetic medium, whether dreamt by prophets and pharaohs and kings, or by people of less exalted status.
What can we make of this shared tradition about prophetic dreaming, and what import can it have for us today? On the personal level, dreams can be a powerful source of higher wisdom, guiding our uncertain steps and, on occasion, even bringing about a radical transformation in our lives.
On the transpersonal or societal level, how can our dreams help us? We live in an era of genocide, weapons of mass destruction, and ecological threats caused mainly by human folly. In the imaginations of many people, apocalyptic fantasies are rampant, partly as a response to the insecurities of our present condition. They testify to our collective impoverishment of spirit, and to the absence of alternative, nonviolent scenarios of messianic transformation. The prospect of an instant upheaval, overturning this corrupt or “fallen” world, is very tempting. And for groups or whole peoples suffering injustice, haunting memories and “victim scripts” generate ideologies of militant revenge.
Against this violent corruption of our imaginations, and the pathological symptoms we see reported in the mass media, are traditions of healing and hope in all our Abrahamic traditions. I would argue that the teachings on dreams and prophecy that we find in Islamic and Jewish (and parallel Christian) sources are resources we can tap to redeem our precarious situation as vulnerable creatures on this planet.
But in order to become allies in this redemptive effort, we need to overcome the parochialism that has constrained us for centuries. We can no longer afford visions of triumph at another group’s expense. Such fantasies are expressions of our own insecure egos and our childish needs to “win” some kind of dualistic religious war. Such negative energies only feed the darker and destructive forces within us. They ultimately tempt us into playing God, but without justice or mercy; instead, they cause us to abuse our freedom in the service of domination and death.
The end-of-times dreams of global transformation through violence need to be countered by truly messianic dreams of transformation through justice, compassion, and reconciliation. We need life-affirming and life-enhancing dreams, ones that we can together implement and fulfill.
For religious Jews like myself, the re-establishment of sovereign Israel in the wake of the European Holocaust was nothing short of miraculous. On the Sabbath, the holiest day of the week and the harbinger of the final redemption, we fervently sing Psalm 126 as the prelude to the grace after meals. This psalm celebrates the return of the exiled Jews from ancient Babylon: “When the Eternal brought about the return to Zion, we were like dreamers.” It is that ancient dream, first fulfilled in the 6th century B.C.E. when Cyrus invited the exiles to return to Jerusalem, then carried forward by the messianic dreams and prayers of Jews throughout the generations, that generated the modern ingathering of Jews to Israel. The challenge is to expand that dream to include the Palestinians and all other peoples suffering exile, indignity, and despair.
We need, all of us, to publicly share our dreams of redemption and see how they can nourish us and reinforce each other instead of competing in a zero-sum struggle for “victory” or Divine vindication. The culmination of those dreams is called, in Jewish and Christian terms, the Messianic Redemption, and in Islamic terms, the arrival of the Mahdi followed by the Day of Judgment and Resurrection. Meanwhile we seem to be killing an awful lot of people, too often in the name of some religious ideology, while some of us are focused either on resurrection or Paradise in some other realm of reality. The perverse paradoxes, or contradictions, in these militant religious worldviews are too tragic for words. They guarantee that one group’s dream of triumph will end up being a nightmare of colossal proportions for everyone else.
Our dreams can help heal us. But we need to humbly share them with our Abrahamic siblings. These neighbors can be interpretive mirrors and correctives for us. For each person, and for each faith community, subjectivity limits the field of vision. The field is broadened and enriched when we come together, as Muhammad and his Companions did over their morning tea, to share dreams and possible interpretations of their symbolism. If each of us, at best, can aspire to 1/46th or 1/60th part prophecy, would not the odds of reaching a critical mass of higher wisdom increase if we were to pool the visionary resources from our dreams? Muslims, Jews, and Christians can come together as allied dreamers and as partners in historical transformation—in fact they must, lest the extremists in our faith communities hijack our sacred texts, our dreams, and ultimately our destinies, in the service of evil. We are all drawn toward the Divine Light, as plants are drawn to the sun’s rays. Our dreams can be informed, and our lives transformed, by that light—even at night, when the moon and stars illumine the sky, and, as we sleep, we are more receptive than in our waking hours to illumination and inspiration from the Divine.
I wish us all not just pleasant or sweet dreams, but also dreams that can teach us how to be agents of God’s love, justice, and reconciliation in a world that desperately needs us as active peacemakers.
Thank you, and SHALOM.
