Dreaming in the Dark

Scripture: Daniel 2: 1-16

Sermon: Dreaming in the Dark

Topics: dreams, sleep, idols, education

Preached: July 31, 2011

Rev. Mike Abma

2In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed such dreams that his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. ²So the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. When they came in and stood before the king, ³he said to them, ‘I have had such a dream that my spirit is troubled by the desire to understand it. ’⁴The Chaldeans said to the king (in Aramaic),^* ‘O king, live for ever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will reveal the interpretation. ’⁵The king answered the Chaldeans, ‘This is a public decree: if you do not tell me both the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. ⁶But if you do tell me the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honour. Therefore tell me the dream and its interpretation. ’⁷They answered a second time, ‘Let the king first tell his servants the dream, then we can give its interpretation. ’⁸The king answered, ‘I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see I have firmly decreed: ⁹if you do not tell me the dream, there is but one verdict for you. You have agreed to speak lying and misleading words to me until things take a turn. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can give me its interpretation. ’¹⁰The Chaldeans answered the king, ‘There is no one on earth who can reveal what the king demands! In fact no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. ¹¹The thing that the king is asking is too difficult, and no one can reveal it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with mortals.’

12 Because of this the king flew into a violent rage and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. ¹³The decree was issued, and the wise men were about to be executed; and they looked for Daniel and his companions, to execute them. ¹⁴Then Daniel responded with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the king’s chief executioner, who had gone out to execute the wise men of Babylon; ¹⁵he asked Arioch, the royal official, ‘Why is the decree of the king so urgent?’ Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. ¹⁶So Daniel went in and requested that the king give him time and he would tell the king the interpretation.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

On these warm summer nights, I have found myself dreaming a dream I have dreamt on and off for years.

This is what I can make out of the dream.

I am a student and I am on a campus.

The campus looks quite old and grandiose, like the campus of the University of Toronto.

In the dream, I am usually on the move to one more lecture or one more class.

There always seems to be one more paper to write, or one more assignment to do.

When they are handed in, another assignment is given.

But here is the punch, or the jolt of the dream –

at some point, I realize I am in a program I will never finish.

I am doing assignments that have no end.

I am trapped in academic limbo.

I am spinning my wheels but getting nowhere.

And then I wake up.

As I said, I have dreamt a version of this dream for years,

less so now, more so when I was younger.

Of course, you try make sense of your dream.

But dreams don’t always seem to make sense.

Yes, I was a student at the University of Toronto, but that was decades ago.

Yes, I was in a graduate program there, but I finished it very quickly, more quickly than most.

So what is this dream about?

DREAMS

Dreams are what bothered Nebuchadnezzar as well.

Nebuchadnezzar was the ruler of the Babylonian Empire.

He was more than a king – he was an emperor.

He was viewed as someone who was more than human – he was viewed as someone who was semi-divine.

He had everything in the world, literally.

But there was one thing he was not getting – a good night’s sleep.

Something kept waking him up —

a dream so real,

so forceful,

that it jolted him awake

and then kept him from falling back to sleep.

The text is quite clear that Nebuchadnezzar knows that he is dreaming.

But here is his real predicament – the details of his dream keep escaping him.

Once he wakes up, the memory of his dream fades, it vanishes.

All his attempts to recover it are as futile as trying to grab smoke, and hold on to fog.

And that is why his spirit is so troubled.

He wants to both unveil the details of his dream and to understand it.

He wants to both describe it and decipher it.

He wants to both document it and decode it.

There is a part of us that can sympathize with Nebuchadnezzar,

because in this he is not some semi-divine ancient near-east potentate;

no, in this he is very much human, flesh and blood.

Who hasn’t woken up with a start

knowing they have been dreaming

and yet the dream is just outside our grasp.

We sense it is right there in front of us,

but it is hidden in the mist of our minds.

MYSTERY OF DREAMING

Dreaming.

Everyone dreams.

Whether we can remember many of our dreams,

or whether we haven’t a clue about one blessed one,

the truth is we all dream.

Every time we sleep, we dream.

For adults, 20% of our sleeping time is spent dreaming.

And for children, between 60-80% of their sleeping time is spent dreaming.

Our sleep is divided into times of what is called

Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (REM sleep)

and non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (non-REM sleep).

We dream during our REM cycles of sleep.

The paradox of this REM sleep is that

even though this is the cycle of sleep when our bodies are most relaxed,

it is also the time when our limbic system – the emotional and memory parts of our brain – are most active.

Our bodies are most relaxed, but certain parts of our brain are most active.^[1]

We need these REM cycles of sleep.

Without them, we do not feel rested.

If our REM sleep is interrupted,

we get miserable; we get grumpy.

Nebuchadnezzar was grumpy.

This waking up from his dreaming was driving him crazy.

He wanted answers.

Now Babylon was the center of the educated world.

The brightest and the best were in Babylon.

So Nebuchadnezzar summons in all the specialists

and he gives them this assignment:

tell me my dream and its meaning.

You have to admit that what follows is sort of funny.

Both sides end up exasperating the other.

All these academics are trying to be polite and professional,

all the while, they are exasperated by this unreasonable tyrant

who is demanding that they do something that only the gods can do.

And then there is Nebuchadnezzar,

exasperated by all these lousy civil servants,

people he has paid salaries for years and years,

and when he needs them the most,

they are useless!

In the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar loses his temper quite a bit.

And here is another classic example —

Nebuchadnezzar loses his cool and decides to kill them all.

All the useless academics – off with their heads.

Throughout this book, Daniel remains calm, cool, and collected.

He approaches the king and calmly asks for a little time.

Nebuchadnezzar surprisingly gives Daniel a little time.

Just think about the enormity of the challenge Daniel faces:

to attempt to interpret a dream is one thing.

to figure out what another person is dreaming in the first place, is

impossible.

And it remains impossible today.

Today, sleep scientists can set you up with a myriad of tests:

PET scans positive emission tomography

MRI’s magnetic resonance imaging

EMG’s (measuring muscle tone)

EEG’s (measuring heart activity)

EOG’s (measuring eye movement)

And more..

They can measure it all.

They can tell if there is brain activity.

They can tell which parts of the brain are active.

They can tell whether you are dreaming or not.

However, there is no test,

no method,

no means of discovering the content of a person’s dream.

In spite of such creative movies as Inception,

it is still humanly impossible to get into another person’s dream.

WHERE DO DREAMS COME FROM?

And that raises another question that still perplexes us today:

where do dreams come from?

Are dreams simply a product of biology?

Are they simply a product of our physiology?

Are our brains a closed and contained system?

Or are our brains open to other forces?

Could dreams be more than simply a product of our physiology?

Could outside forces somehow influence our dreams?

Could God influence our dreams?

We are people who accept that God sometimes intrudes upon our dreams.

That sometimes he may shape them,

and try communicate something to us through them.

I say this because the Bible is filled with stories

of God speaking through dreams in order

to warn people,

to direct them,

to encourage them,

to reassure them.

In fact, the church in the New Testament made a huge theological change on the basis of a God-given dream.

When the Jewish Christians were struggling with what to do with Gentiles who began to believe that Jesus is Lord, Peter has a dream.

He dreams of being invited to eat unclean food three different times.

The dream was so powerful, so real, so convincing it was in fact God-given,

that this dream revolutionized the church.

That is why we are people who accept that God

may be prompting us,

or prodding us

or directing us somehow in our dreams.

But what is God trying to tell us? That is the great mystery.

DECIPHERING OUR DREAMS

Many of us know how the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream ends.

Daniel prays for God’s help.

And God reveals both the dream and its meaning to Daniel.

The dream is of a huge and brilliant statue made of different metals:

A gold head, silver middle, bronze thighs, iron legs, and iron/clay feet.

People love trying to match each of these parts of the statue with different historical kingdoms.

But that really isn’t the point.

Whether the statue was made up of 5 metals, or 25 metals,

The point of the dream is the stone cut from the mountain not by any human hand.

The point is that this stone comes rolling in and crushes every part of the statue,

every kingdom that stands in the way,

even the golden head – which Daniel specifically says represents

Nebuchadnezzar.

And here is the biggest surprise of this story.

Nebuchadnezzar, who we know had a short fuse,

who we know was easily angered,

does not fly off the handle when he hears Daniel speak.

He does not get hopping mad when he hears about how his kingdom,

and many other kingdoms, will come crashing down.

Instead, Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man alive at that time,

falls on his face,

worships Daniel,

and confesses that the God of Daniel is the true God.

Scientists are not exactly sure what function dreams play in our life.

They are not sure why we are wired to dream.

But they say that dreaming and our REM sleep

has a cleansing function.

It has a restorative function.

It helps to renew us – and without it, we are never refreshed.

In a way, this physiological function of dreaming

may mirror its spiritual role.^[2]

What this chapter in Daniel shows us is that one of the main purposes of our dreams is to help us journey down the road of repentance:

to cut down what is wrong, and build up what is right;

to die to our old self, and to rise to our new self;

to not walk as children of the darkness,

but rather to live as children of the light.

CONCLUSION

Over the years, I think I have come to understand my own dream of being lost in academic limbo.

You see, according to a Strengths Finder test I once took,

I am wired to absorb information.

Almost all my strengths — Learner, Input, Intellection, Context —

are about wanting to know more and more and more.

My statue is not made of metals.

My statue is made of books.

My statue is all about education, information, analysis, context —

for me, these are the ways to wisdom, to harmony, and to shalom.

Let us all reason together!

But my reoccurring dream

has slowly taught me that the world of learning is not enough;

Education alone will still leave you lost.

Information alone is a dead-end.

And the only way to true wisdom, true harmony, true shalom,

is by way of Jesus Christ,

and his kingdom.

Amen

1. See J. Allan Hobson, Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep, Oxford, 2002. ↑

2. See further, Rodger Kamenetz, The History of Last Night’s Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul. Harper, 2007 ↑