Of what dreams?

On Pentecost we heard St. Peter quote from the prophet Joel:

 “And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions."

Heady words for a heady day but somehow they have been co-opted by many in support of all kinds of things the prophet never envisioned and God did not promise.  Where are the dreams and visions of which the prophet spoke and St. Peter testified?  They lay fallen and discarded by a Christianity discontent with truth and in pursuit of cultural relevance.  How sad it is for them to have stolen from the aged the very promise of God and made the visions of the young the foolishness of the present moment masquerading at the timeless truth of eternity!

Pentecost has been emptied of its transcendent truth and reduced to a day of mere echoes of the moment.  Once there were a people who left behind the locked door of the upper room to venture out with the boldness of the Spirit and preach the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen to any who would hear.  Once there were people who insisted that the Gospel was the key to transcending the values and virtues of a world more concerned with self-interest than redemption.  Once there were people who were willing to risk their own personal safety for the sake the Word that might bring the hearer to faith in the incarnate Lord Jesus whose dying and rising again offered forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who believed.  The prophet looked through the window of the Spirit to a day when just such a church and just such a clergy would risk health, safety, misunderstanding, and even death to proclaim the dream now real by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  Now we live at a time when the wisdom of the world sits on a throne equal with the God of Gods  and Light of Light.  In this new Christianity, the job of the Spirit is not redemption but getting in touch with the sovereign self even if it means violating every one of God's commandments and the very nature of His order.

In the end part of Christianity thinks that Pentecost is the freedom to violate consistent custom and God's order and to be happy in the moment.  In their minds, the only freedom worth having is the freedom to oppose the Lord on the ground of feelings.  I guess we have backed ourselves into this corner but perhaps we have forgotten the cost of our pursuit of a liberty that can only say yes to what we think and desire and cannot transcend the moment with anything remotely like eternity.  The only dreams such a faith can dream are those already present in the heart and not the unimaginable promise of God's own gift.  In this version of Christianity, the visions always look like what we see in our mirrors and the dreams are rooted in the values we invent for ourselves and our future.