Vision and Dreams
“What has straw in common with wheat?”
Straw, you know, is the waste product of grain harvesting. Its uses are limited—some animals will chew on it, but it is not a high-quality feed. Mostly it is used to line stalls and as a cheap construction material. Wheat, by contrast, is the goal of the harvest. Its seeds are a staple food, ground into flour for bread. Some wheat from every harvest would also be set aside and sown again in the fields, ensuring future harvests.
The metaphor refers to the contrast between the truth of God’s word and the useless falsity of lying prophets telling the things they have dreamed up.
We can look at this in terms of two kinds of “vision.”
Vision is a word we hear a lot about today. One dictionary describes it as “the act or power of imagination” (Merriam-Webster). Included in this is the meaning which encompasses divine revelation. “Direct mystical awareness of the supernatural, usually in visible form.” However, more widely used is another sense of the term, “unusual discernment or foresight.”
Sometimes this word is used as an adjective to describe a person or quality: people may speak of someone such as the late Steve Jobs as a “visionary” whose “unusual discernment or foresight” changed our world (though not necessarily for the better). Those in positions of leadership often try to cultivate a perception of having this kind of “vision,” whether or not they actually possess it.
We can think of a “visionary” as one one who helps the community to see things that are real or potentially real, possibilities that could emerge. The visionary may help to alert the community both to unseen dangers and opportunities, and may suggest potential actions.
Vision, in this sense, is something much spoken of (if more rarely observed) in our world, and in fact is something human societies require to endure and thrive. Without this we stagnate, we flounder, we find ourselves incapable of making important choices, and instead continue with the kind of short-sighted and self-interested behaviors that do not prepare us for the future or improve our common life.
Vision can be dangerous. A faulty or misguided—or worse, a wicked and deceitful vision can lead the people astray and even destroy them. Some reputed visionaries are successful because they tell people what they want to hear, things that make them feel good about themselves. In politics, we call such smooth talkers demagogues. For the Greeks this simply meant one who championed the cause of the common people. However, such men are often deeply cynical, and the word has acquired for us the sense of one who gains power by manipulating popular prejudices.
Of course even the best vision must also be heard and acted on by the people if it is to make a difference. An important quality of a leader is the ability to persuade people to believe in a vision and act on it.
The Bible word for a visionary is a prophet. God’s consistent complaint against the so-called prophets who peddled their visions to the people, is that they were leading the people astray, away from the truth of his word. These false prophets were popular. They were powerful. They were persuasive.
Yet among all these false prophets swapping “dreams” and empty visions, God provided his people with faithful prophets who spoke his true word, whether or not the people would listen. Jeremiah was one of the last prophets in Jerusalem before the Babylonian conquest, which at God’s bidding, he faithfully foretold. It was a thankless task, not a message he enjoyed telling, or that anyone wanted to hear. Jeremiah reflected God’s own sorry over the downfall of his people by his tears. We know him as “the weeping prophet.” And, like his God, Jeremiah remained faithful to his people, even finally going with them on an ill-advised mission to Egypt against his own counsel. (One of the big ideas of the Bible is that going back to Egypt is always a mistake.)
So amid false prophets, and leaders who devised clever but foolish schemes for victory and prosperity, Jeremiah told God’s truth. Babylon would win, and the people would be taken into exile. Yet it was not a message of woe without hope. Jeremiah also promises a return from exile, and better things to come.
At the beginning of the chapter from which today’s reading is taken, Jeremiah prophesies the return of the exiles and the rise of a true and righteous king, one from David’s family line. We can identify this as a prophecy concerning Christ, God’s anointed; the incarnate Word of God the divine Wisdom; the one who brings to the earth, as he said, God’s cleansing fire; the one who is a stone of stumbling and rock of offense, but also the cornerstone of the new kingdom of God; the fruitful seed sown in the earth and raised up to bring life to all people; the grain that, crushed, becomes for the world the Bread of Life.
If we seek a true and enduring vision for our lives, as individuals and in community as the church, we must find it in none other than Jesus, and in the scriptures that bear witness to him. We must test the visions of our leaders, and the imagination of our culture, against the reliable standard of God’s Word, and most of all we must read and study this word until his thoughts become our thoughts, and our own imaginations are shaped and directed by the vision of his own eternal glory.
