In the dream, I was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember looking at the row of ships on docks off to my left, and to my right was nothing much beside sand. At some point, I remember peering down onto the deck flooring of a ship that was curiously clear--I could see straight down into the water. That was a moment of fun outside of the dream and wonder within the dream. At some point--I had no sense of being in a hurry--I wandered up to where Jesus was. He was working on mending some nets and seemed also in no particular hurry.
If I was surprised to see him there, I wasn't very much surprised: it was the sort of surprise you have when you're not exactly expecting to see a friend to show up in a place where he or she might very well naturally show up, but you like your friend so much you are excited to see him or her anyway. So I was a little excited to see Jesus, but not crazy excited to see him as I would be if I turned around in my living room now and saw him standing there.
I knew very clearly in the dream that I could ask Jesus anything at all that I wanted to, although I had no particular sense of anxiety or nervousness about it. So, naturally, I asked him some wandering and convoluted question about how one should interpret some complicated problem of "authorial voice" in Scripture. My question had something to do with both epistemology and ontology and I think had some relevance to some modernist quibbling about the inspiration of Scripture. Honestly, I don't quite remember exactly what I asked, but since Jesus never quite got around to answering my question, I suppose that didn't matter too much. What did matter and what was remarkable and what was the lesson for me was how he responded to my question.
The first thing Jesus did was actually think about my question. He mulled over my question for a moment, asked me a clarifying question that went along the lines of, "So what you're really asking is x because of y and z?" In turn, I thought about it for a little while and rephrased my question with his question in mind. All the while, I noticed this sort of scrawny, mopey looking young man with quite the bush of thick brown hair sort of skulking around the edges of our conversation. At some point he wandered off down a pier, looking remarkably sad and forlorn. Jesus and I were still talking, but I remember watching the guy and feeling sort of sorry for him and distressed for him at the same time. (I got the impression this was the Apostle John of all people.) Both my eyes and Jesus' eyes followed the young man down the pier.
Jesus then interrupted our conversation by saying that he needed to go and talk to him. Then he put down whatever he was working with in his hands, followed John down the pier, and put his arm around his shoulders. I remember watching that and wondering whether I should feel put off because Jesus ditched me to go talk to someone else. Oddly, I didn't really feel ditched. I milled around the pier for a few minutes, not sure what I was going to do next, and then I woke up.
At first, I was rather puzzled by the dream. Why have a dream with Jesus in it, in which he didn't really say anything to me that was informative? Why get a chance to ask any question, but not have the question answered? I puzzled over it for a moment or two, but then I went off to do my daily morning routine of Morning Prayer plus hymn singing. The hymn I opened to, unplanned, happened to be: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" by Frederick Faber. After I sang through especially verse 3, I knew exactly why I had dreamed the dream. The meaning of the dream was threefold: One, that Jesus is far more human than I believe him to be, two, that Jesus is far kinder than I believe him to be, and three, that Jesus "speaks my language".
The dream was meant to be corrective of the kind of "gnostic" or overly-spiritualized intuition I had about Jesus--that he was "god in a bod" (Apollinarian heresy)--God's mind in a human body. The Jesus I spoke to actually had to think about my questions and process them and respond to me in a human and therefore limited way. What I was really surprised about in the dream was how sharp and incisive Jesus' question was: the way he began to consider my question showed that he could more than keep up with me intellectually, and I've always been a little paranoid about the fact that the Jesus in the gospels doesn't seem to be a nerd, so how could he really relate to me. (More on that in another post.) I was being myself and Jesus seemed to be being himself when he asked a nerd question about my nerd question. Fascinating.
But the dream was also corrective in that I tend to think of God the Father and the Son as strict disciplinarians, partly because of my own upbringing. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that the first thing Jesus would do with John was just give him a hug instead of, say, scolding him for acting like a baby. In the dream, I felt some degree of compassion for John, but I didn't expect Jesus to. I expected him to demand that John grow up and behave more sensibly. That Jesus is so naturally and casually compassionate and kind . . . that really hadn't been a part of my image of God.
The Jesus "speaking my language" bit now reminds me quite a bit of the Luke 5 text wherein Jesus goes fishing with Simon and basically says, "You think I don't know how fishing works? I know how fish work so well they just do what I want." When I read that text, I see Simon confronted with the fact that he's honored by this rabbi's interest in him, but he really doesn't know what Jesus has to do with his life. But then Jesus says through his actions, "I own this, I own fishing, I know how it all works, I know and have mastered your livelihood--so why don't you trust me, and moreover, why don't you just come follow me already?" In my dream, Jesus was telling me, "You know, I really get the life of the mind. I really have that down. You don't actually have to worry that I won't understand you or we'll run out of things to talk about or I won't be interested in you or your life. Actually, I own all this, and I made it all up and it's all beautiful and fascinating--so why don't you stop dithering and come, follow me?"
Anyway, that's the impression I get about the dream and one of the reasons I rather like dreams, and rather like when Jesus walks into one.
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord."
~Third stanza of Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy"
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