“I Have Dreamed” | Rt. Rev. Peter Buss, Jr.

Welcome to our Cathedral Family Service to those here and online.

Our topic for today is dreams of a bright future.

And we turn to a portion of Genesis chapter 41, where Joseph, who was a dreamer and a dream interpreter, comes to Pharaoh at a pivotal time when Pharaoh has dreamed some dreams that nobody else could interpret.

Genesis 41 · chapter mention

But Joseph does in a way that not only helps Pharaoh, but helps a whole host of other people.

We read, then Pharaoh said to Joseph, Behold, in my dream I stood on the bank of a river.

Suddenly seven cows came out of the river, fine looking and fat, and they were feeding in the meadow.

Then behold, seven other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and gaunt, such ugliness as I've not seen in the land of Egypt.

And this gaunt and ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows.

And when they had eaten them up, no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were just as ugly as at the beginning.

So I awoke.

Also I saw in my dream, and suddenly seven heads came up in one stalk, full and good.

Then behold, seven heads withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprang up after them, and the thin heads devoured the seven good heads.

So I told this to the musicians, but there was no one who was able to explain it to me.

Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, The dreams of Pharaoh are one.

God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do.

The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads are seven years.

The dreams are one.

And the seven thin and ugly cows which came up after them are seven years, and the seven empty heads blighted by the east wind are seven years of famine.

This is the thing which I have spoken to Pharaoh.

God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do.

Indeed, seven years of great plenty will come throughout all the land of Egypt, but after them seven years of famine will arise, and all of the years of plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the famine will deplete the land.

So the plenty will not be known in the land because of the famine following, for it will be very severe.

And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice, because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.

Now therefore, let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt.

Let Pharaoh do this and appoint to him officers over the land to collect one fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the seven plentiful years.

And let them gather all the food of those good years that are coming, and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities.

Then that food shall be as a reserve in the land for the seven years of famine which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land may not perish during the famine.

Reading further from the Lord's Word from the Arcana Celestia, a book that describes some of the internal symbolism of these dreams.

First, it says the words what God is doing mean what has been provided.

This is because everything done by God, that is by the Lord, constitutes his providence.

Every act of providence is divine, for it holds what is eternal and infinite within it.

And behold, seven years are coming means a state of providence.

In general, the seven years of abundance of corn and the seven years of famine in the land of Egypt describe in the internal sense the state when a person is reformed and regenerated, and in the highest sense the state when the Lord's human is glorified.

And let them gather all the food means all things that have a useful purpose.

That which leads to what has a useful purpose is knowing what goodness and truth are, and that which has such a purpose is the desire to realize these in action.

These are the things with which angels are nourished, and which are therefore called spiritual and celestial foods.

Here end our readings.

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

And so we're talking about dreams and the fascinating thing about dreams that we have in our own life, what they can mean for us, and also the dreams that we heard about relating to Joseph and Pharaoh and the things that would come in what are called the seven years of plenty.

So let's talk a little bit about dreams.

I'd like to identify two types of dreams today.

One is the dreams that we have at night when we sleep, and the second is the dreams that we have of a bright future, things that we hope will come true one day.

If we focus on the dreams that we have at night, sometimes people remember them in vivid fashion.

And we know that when we think about those things, we're in them often, and people that we know are in them, and things that we have experience with are in them, but often things happen that don't happen in real life.

So, for example, in our dreams we might recognize that we're able to fly, or we can walk through walls without being stuck in a normal way, or we can think about the things that might happen in fanciful times where we're interacting with dragons or crazy things like that.

And those ingredients of dreams are sometimes things that are scary, sometimes they're things that are fun to think about, to tell people about when we wake up, or to realize, phew, that wasn't real.

The second kind of dream is about the things that we hope for in some time in the future.

So we might think about the things that I dream that I'm gonna be a really good athlete one day, or I dream that I'm gonna have a kind of job that allows me to be useful, that I've really set my heart on.

Lord, let that dream come true.

Or I dream that I have lots of friends, or I have everything that I need to be able to have a prosperous life.

Those are kinds of dreams of a bright future that we might have.

So today we actually focus on the dreams of Joseph.

And Joseph, as a dreamer and a dream interpreter from the Lord, had both of those kinds of dreams that came together.

So in his dreams, if we can just think about the first dreams that he had, which we didn't read about, he was a young man who had a lot of older brothers.

And as the younger brother, he had some dreams when they knew that he was talking about the fact that he would be in charge.

So his dreams had some ingredients in them that were normal, things that he knew about.

The sun and the moon and the stars.

Well, we know about those things, right?

But in this particular dream, the sun and the moon and the stars bowed down to Joseph.

Well, that doesn't happen in real life, where the sun and the moon and the stars bow down to a human being, but that's what happened in Joseph's dream.

And those brothers knew, and his parents knew, hey, wait a minute, that means somehow we are gonna bow down to you.

It doesn't feel kind of right.

And then he dreamed another dream, and they were kind of people who farmed and grew crops, and they had some sheaves of wheat.

And in this particular dream, sheaves of wheat, something that was known to them, each of them was identified with one of the brothers somehow, and those sheaves of wheat by themselves bowed down to Joseph's sheaf.

So again, fanciful things that happened that don't happen in real life, but in this case they were symbolic and they were predictive, and those brothers knew what this was all about was Joseph was somehow in the future going to be ruling over them.

And that's what this thing was.

There was something about a bright future for Joseph that they didn't like, that they didn't understand, that they took in a negative fashion.

So for those dreams to come true, a whole bunch of things had to happen.

And I'm gonna go through it very briefly because I want to get to dreams of Pharaoh.

So those brothers, because they were upset about these dreams, they sold Joseph down into Egypt in slavery, which is a terrible thing.

But there he is, he got to be a servant, he was thrown in prison for something he didn't do, and there he met a man who is called a butler and a baker.

And he interpreted their dreams, and he did it in a way that was actually true.

It came true.

So that man, the butler, who later was taken out of prison and restored to Pharaoh, when Pharaoh had his dreams and nobody could figure them out, as we talked about in the readings, the butler remembered Joseph.

Joseph is a dream interpreter.

He can interpret your dreams.

And so Joseph was brought out of prison and he told Pharaoh what his dreams meant.

So again, what are we talking about?

Dreams can have all these crazy things happen.

Seven cows.

Cows are pretty normal, but they came up, and seven other cows ate up those other cows.

And one head of corn or wheat with seven big heads was devoured by seven thin and blighted and ugly wheat.

And Joseph was able to say, Well, that's a prediction of what the Lord's saying is going to happen.

Seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.

And what you should do is you should store up some of the grain in that seven years of plenty so that we can survive the seven years of famine.

And guess what?

Joseph was chosen to be that person.

And in that process, he became a leader in Egypt, and his first dreams of the sun, moon, and stars and the sheaves of wheat bowing down came true at the hands of the Lord, because he was able to provide for his own family and for so many other people, and his family came and said, Please help us, as Joseph was in charge.

So those are the context of the dreams, but what do they mean for you and me?

I'd like to focus just on three very short things that help us to think about this in terms of the dreams that we have or should have for a bright future.

So we come to the seven years of plenty.

There were seven years of plenty, which means that the people would have everything that they needed.

They would have so much grain that they felt blessed by the Lord.

And that's like you and me having everything that we could hope for in our lives.

We have houses, we have food, we have clothing, we have toys and money and friends and everything in abundance.

And life is great.

Seven years of plenty.

But in this particular case, the seven is a very important number.

And the seven means what is holy, and so that's a little symbol from the Lord that we're supposed to be doing something during those seven years of plenty, which is to focus on the things of spiritual life.

Not just all those nice things about this life, but the things about heaven.

Dreams of a future of one day being an angel in heaven.

Dreams of the kind of person who's good, who knows what the Lord says is to be a good person, things that we can do for other people that the Lord could show us how to do.

That's captured in this number seven, which is the Sabbath.

To remember going to church and learning the things that matter most about what the Lord wants for our life.

And seven golden lampstands, which are the very big truths that the Lord would have us know, and 70 times seven years of energy that we put into our life so that we're trying to be the best spiritual people that we can be, the best good people that we can be.

That's what those seven years of plenty are.

And if we really think about it, we have everything that we need for that purpose.

We have a church, we have abundance of teachings from the Lord's Word.

We know from the Lord what He wants us to do.

Are we willing to focus our dreams, our attention, our energy on abundance and a spiritual realm, taking care of our spiritual lives, not just this natural life and saying, everything's great.

No, there's a future, there's a way that the Lord wants us to see what really leads to a bright future, which is following Him.

And so what do we do?

We let Joseph lead.

Joseph is the spiritual part of us, and we make provision during those good years by storing up a fifth of the grain.

A fifth of the grain has a beautiful symbolism for gathering in truths in abundance.

And what that means is that we learn from the Lord all those things that I talked about, who he is, where he wants us to be one day in heaven, what it means to be a good person who functions well with other people, that we should be a useful human being.

We learned a passage there that we learn with the goal of use in mind.

And if we are doing all those things, we're gathering up those fifth of the provisions, that means we're providing for the future.

If we think about that just in terms of what was happening in those seven years of plenty, they knew seven years of famine was going to come, so they didn't use everything.

They stored up some things that were for the future.

And that's like us saying, All right, Lord, help me to practice, to learn, to grow as a human being, to make provision with you for the future version of myself that can be the strong and faithful person whenever hard times come, whenever the famine comes.

And really what it's all about is trusting in the Lord's providence.

Joseph knew that the Lord was the dream interpreter.

And much, much years later in his life, he knew that the Lord had led him through all these different stages of life so that he could be a useful human being to provide not only for all of the surrounding area in that time of famine, but for his own family.

When his brothers were much older, and he was much older, and their father died, they were worried that Joseph was going to hurt them because he had hurt them.

They had hurt him earlier in his life.

But I want to read for you what he said to them in light of that, which shows about the Lord's providence.

He said, Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?

But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about this day to save many people alive.

So the Lord in his providence gives us dreams, hopefully, dreams of a bright future.

One day in heaven, a version of ourselves that's a strong and faithful person who knows what the Lord wants us to do and is actively cooperating with the Lord to do that.

He asks us to focus on our spiritual lives during those years of plenty, to take advantage of all the things that he provides for us that shows us how to be a cooperative and good person in his eyes, and he asks us to take a fifth of that grain, to do the things that allow the Lord to store up something that he calls remains in our life, to fortify us and to help us to be the kind of person in the long haul, despite what hard things might come.

And all of it in the Lord's providence provides for those dreams of our hopes for a bright future to come true.

Joseph was a dreamer.

May we be dreamers of a bright future, and may we make provision during the years of plenty for the most important things of life that the Lord will show us.

Amen.