Video of Evening Prayer is here. The sermon begins around the 19:45 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real while it was happening and yet, when you woke up, you realized that the events in your dream would not have been possible in real, waking life? You, or other people, moved in ways that would not really be possible. Or you jumped from one place to another. Or you were sort of kept from doing something that would be easy to do if you were awake. Dreams can seem so real while they are happening, and yet indistinct and unnatural when you are awake.

But what if your waking, “real” life is also not quite real? In fact, something like that is the case, because sin and death have made this world less real than it should have been, and less real than it should be. The dreams we have while we’re sleeping might not be possible in real life. But real life is less than the true reality.

We also use the word “dream” in other ways. For example, your dream might be something you eventually would like to accomplish in your life. Of course, sometimes it happens that the choices you make in your life make that dream impossible, or maybe it was unrealistic to begin with. And yet, sometimes, the thing at which you’ve been aiming actually happens. And you have this strange experience where you’ve been imagining and thinking about it for so long, that it’s hard to believe it’s actually real, right in front of you.

That’s how Psalm 126 starts: When Yahweh returned the captives, restored their fortunes, we were like dreamers. After 70 years in Babylon, it was hard to believe that the people were actually back in the land of Israel, rebuilding the city and the temple. And now, this psalm is being sung as the pilgrims make their way up to the city of their God. They had been thinking and talking about being back for so many years; they were so used to the lament, to the exile, to being surrounded by temples to false gods and idols, that they could hardly believe their eyes when their return was actually real, right in front of them.

But of course, many of the people—maybe even most of them—had never seen the city, so it was literally like a dream: an almost unreal place, far away. And their “real” life, beside the rivers of Babylon, was not as real as the promise of their God, that He would restore their fortunes, and return their captives.

When the seeds are being sown, the harvest is not yet real; it’s like a dream. In the midst of tears and grief, joy seems as unreal as a dream upon waking. We doubt and waver. We cling to dreams instead of reality; and we cling to our “reality” instead of the promise of God. We think it is the things we can see that are real and eternal, when it is actually the unseen things of God in Jesus that are eternal, and more real than reality. Return our captives, all of them, like rivers in the dry plains of the Negeb! Israel prayed that prayer, and they heard the promise of Isaiah, which God had given to the exiled people, Rachel weeping for her children: “Thus says Yahweh: Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares Yahweh, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy” (Jeremiah 31:15-16).

In September, 1542, Magdalena Luther died at the age of 13. Her father, Martin, wrote to his friend Justus Jonas, “I and my wife should joyfully give thanks for such a felicitous departure and blessed end by which Magdalena escaped the power of the flesh, the world, the Turk and the devil; yet the force of our natural love is so great that we are unable to do this without crying and grieving in our hearts, or even without experiencing death ourselves. The features, the words and the movements of the living and dying daughter remain deeply engraved in our hearts. Even the death of Christ (and what is the dying of all people in comparison with Christ’s death?) is unable to take this all away as it should” (LW 50:238). That is, for now, we still face the consequences of sin and death in this world, even after the death of Jesus and His resurrection. Around the same time he said, “I am joyful in spirit but I am sad according to the flesh” (Table Talk, LW 54:432).

So it goes in this world: for Israel, for Luther, and for us: joyful in the spirit but sad according to the flesh. Going out to sow with tears, but returning with joy at the harvest. In exile in this world, sowing in hard and sorrowful ground; waiting for Christ to gather all His captives from the ends of the earth, to bring us to the joyful new creation. It seems like a dream now, but it will all come true, and our mouths will be filled with the laughter of eternity. Yahweh has done great things for us; so we rejoice!

The promise is tied to the greatest thing, the coming of Christ. The prophet Joel says of His time: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh…your old men shall dream dreams” (Joel 2:28). The dream of the Messiah, so long in coming, was fulfilled. And the Spirit of God caused the preaching of His death and resurrection to be heard in all languages. That is the way God both sows and reaps: by His Word, by His baptism. And just as He promised through Isaiah so long ago, now He promises to all His scattered, exiled people: “And the ransomed of Yahweh shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10; 51:11).

At the end of the final book of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, when the Pevensie children find themselves in a new country after “the last battle,” they meet Aslan, the lion who is a representation of Christ. And Aslan says to them, “‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’ Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’ ‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’ Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning’” (The Last Battle, 210). Restore us captives, O God! Let the dream end and the morning come.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 12/19/23