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Aug 01, 2021

Where Dreams Come True

Where Dreams Come True

Passage: 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

Speaker: Rev. Michael Pestel

Series: Streaming This Sunday

Many of us have been watching movies through different streaming services from home. Over the next six weeks during worship, we will look at the gospel messages found in six of these movies. Pop some popcorn, grab a seat, and join us for this fun series that intersects culture and Christianity!

The movie has an ongoing dreamlike feel to it. Dreamlike in that it feels surreal, of course with the ghosts and all, but also that vividness and emotions that come with dreams but still are hard to pin down.

What drives the real engine of this movie are questions around faith, mystery, wrestling with our past, present, and what is beyond and the desire to heal the brokenness in and around us. Love, or the lack of it, saturates the narrative line in Field of Dreams.

These are the kind of matters that drive the engine of this movie, and the stories of the Bible. 

We look, and we can make something out, but we see it dimly. We know only part of the whole story. But we yearn, and we will, one day, see clearly, we will know in full, and be fully known. 

We’re told that faith, hope, and love are the ingredients that will bring about this move from dimness to clarity, from distance to closeness. 

I wonder what people who ascribe to a faith tradition like ours think about the narrative device of hearing a guiding voice calling a person to do something illogical? Courageous? Costly?

We should be rather comfortable around a story in which a farmer receives a supernatural nudge to build a baseball field. 

Part of the mystery of our life of faith with God is that we believe God communicates with us. Prayer is not a one-way conversation. Just like a dream though, it can be vivid and elusive.

The hearing is typically not auditory. It’s a sting or comfort to the heart, it’s a rumble in the gut, it’s a wobble in the knees. But it is no less communication from the divine.

Field of Dreams isn’t just Ray’s story, it’s the story of Terrance Mann and Doc Moonlight Graham. It’s Shoeless Joe’s story and that pesky brother-in-law’s story. 

The romantic notion in this movie is that baseball is the common bond for so many of us, it is the uniter, it makes us family, it makes our stories connected. Sound like some other language any of us are familiar with? 

All of us God’s created children, siblings in Christ, connected deeply through our common bond. 

We have a phrase in one of our foundational creeds that says as Christians we believe in “the communion of saints.” 

The mystical side of the communion of saints that Field of Dreams captures so well is that we are not only connected with those who are presently among us, but we are connected with those who have gone before. 

There is a hope we live in that while those connections are mysterious and dim now, there is a day coming when we stand face to face, fully seeing and knowing. 

What do we see in a mirror? Typically? Ourselves. You could also say metaphorically we see the past. 

“But then we will see face to face.” This phrasing feels like the mirror gets taken away at some point, and we don’t see “our face” but rather “face to face.” Our face to another’s face. 

“…then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.” The notion of knowing outside of me is directly proportional to the amount that the inside of me has been known. 

The story involves me, but it’s not just about me.

The close of the movie shows us where all of this has been bending toward, the voice calling out “If you build it, he will come” and “Ease his pain” has been referring to Ray’s deceased father. 

It’s a running gag in the movie that the ghost ballplayers are disoriented when they arrive at the field in the corn. They ask, “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.” is the reply. But they all think it’s perfect, it’s the place where dreams come true. Where it starts to become clear, where each starts to know and be fully known, where estranged father and son stand face to face. And so we believe about heaven as God is bringing it to earth. A mystery absolutely, but one that we can live in with all faith, hope, and love. 

Prayer: Glory to you, creator and sustainer God. In you all things came into being, and through you all things will be made new. Including us. May faith, hope, and love continue to weave in us the story of redemption. In Jesus’ name. Amen.