So… this guy I know gets paid to sleep. Yeah. It’s his dream job. Have you ever had a dream that you were enjoying so much that you didn’t want to wake up from it? But eventually, as always happens, you did wake. And it felt like a letdown, didn’t it? Maybe you woke in the middle of the night still, so you tried to go back to sleep quickly in the hopes that the dream would resume. Rarely has that happened to me. Most of the time I just stop dreaming or move onto a different dream altogether. But once in a rare while, that dream comes back and I am able to enter back into that joy. Wouldn’t it be great if life was like that? Any time things are going well and suddenly take a turn for the worse, we could just try to go back to the place where we’d been and the joy would return. But it doesn’t usually happen that way. Sometimes a joy of the same nature will return, but it takes days, weeks, months, or even years.

The author of Psalm 126 is looking back on the glory of the good ole days, when Israel lived in the land God had given their ancestors and the kingdom was strong. And even when things went awry, God would step in and restore them. But it seems that the dream has ended and things have turned in a less pleasant direction. Looking back, the Psalmist sees those glory days as but a dream, too good to have been true. And knowing the way I tend to look at events from my past, those recollections may have been more like a dream than the reality had been. We are pretty good at idealizing our past and looking down upon our present situation. The Psalmist acknowledges this while at the same time acknowledging that God is a God who restores, who brings us back into the dream.

As we approach Advent, which begins next week, we spend this week in gratitude for all that God has done for us. As we sat around our tables on Thursday or gathered with friends and family, as we reflected back on the past no matter where we were sitting, we had the opportunity to consider the blessings that we have from God and lift up a word of thanks. We talked in the children’s time last week about what we are thankful for. Many of us mentioned family and friends, good food and warm homes, our church family. If we were to spend the next 15 minutes writing down everything we can think of that we are thankful for, I suspect the list would be pretty impressive. No matter what troubles we face or what life brings us on a day to day basis, there is always something to be thankful for.

Besides Thanksgiving earlier this week, we also celebrate a different holiday today. Today is a special day in the church called Christ the King Sunday or Reign of Christ Sunday. This is the final Sunday in the church year, the capstone of a year that began with preparation for Christ’s birth. The connection with Psalm 126 is pretty strong. The Psalmist celebrates the times of fortune and joy. For the Psalmist, that time was under the reign of King David when Israel was at its most prosperous. And today we celebrate the reign of an even greater king, the one who the prophecies predicted would be the son of David. But Christ’s reign is not like David’s. In fact, when the Psalmist talks about the Lord restoring the fortunes of Zion, the original Hebrew actually reads, “When the Lord brought us back from captivity.” Christ’s reign is one of restoration and hope. It is one where the captives are set free and hungry are fed and lame can walk and the oppressed are liberated. That is the ultimate hope of the Christian faith: that we will someday experience a world where all of those things are fully realized.

That hope sustains us, but we still have to live in the here and now, where pain and disappointment and fear and loss all exist. In fact, they are unavoidable. We can try to protect ourselves against them, but the suffering of this world finds us anyway. The Psalmist recognizes that and doesn’t ignore it. The Psalmist writes, “May those who sow in tears…” And then also, “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,…” There is, of course, an end to these sentences. But before we get to that, let’s dwell for a bit in the struggle. Often when humans talk about struggle in life, we say things like: “No pain, no gain” or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In the church we say: “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “God works all things together for good for those who love him.” We say those things because we are uncomfortable living in that painful place with someone. We want to fix them because we don’t like seeing them in pain…or perhaps more truthfully, we are afraid of pain. Even within ourselves, we avoid pain as much as possible.

But the Psalmist rarely seeks to avoid pain. And Psalm 126 is no different. The Psalmist talks about sowing our tears. We aren’t burying them within ourselves but placing them in the soil of God’s garden. A few years ago, April and I planted seeds for a plant called Job’s Tears. I decided as I was preparing this sermon to look up the origin of the name of this plant. And here’s what I found in an article in the White River Valley Historical Quarterly: “Legend says that in his grief for the many agonies he endured, Job wept ‘tears unto God’. And they weren’t wasted for, as his tears fell to the ground, a miracle happened. The tears were as seed which sprouted and grew into a tall, luxuriant growth of rare beauty. That tall grass, in turn, produced seed resembling those same tears Job wept so copiously in his hour of grief.” As Job released that pain, as he allowed himself to grieve and feel the full weight of it, his tears fell to the ground and new life sprouted. That, to me, is a beautiful picture of what restoration looks like. New life sprouting from the tear soaked ground of our lives.

That is the image presented in Psalm 126. The tears of the people of Israel will grow into something new. Out of the planting of those tears, joy will blossom. The Lord will restore our joy with new life and a new hope. And this is not just about at the end of days when Christ returns as the glorious king. The truth is that Jesus is already king. And restoration is already waiting for us. But we must release the pain and anger and fear we’re clinging to. That is not an easy task and we certainly won’t be able to do it immediately or quickly. But eventually, it will eat us alive if we can’t let it out. And as we do, the joy of the Lord will begin to grow. We won’t see it right away. And life can always drag us back down. But knowing that restoration and joy is out there gives me at least a modicum of hope.

Professor Dumbledore, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, says to Harry when he has looked into a mirror that shows you what you most want in the world, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” The people of Israel had a tendency to dwell on the past, when things felt like a good dream. They wanted so badly to return to that that the only thing they could imagine for the future was another triumphant king like David. But God had a different plan for humanity. God’s plan would not return us to the glory of the past, but would plant a seed for a greater joy in the future. That seed that he sowed was the seed of his suffering and death. And out of that grew the promise of new life. The seed that was planted grew. And on the third day Jesus rose from the grave to usher in new life for us all. A life of love and kindness. A life of welcome and peace. A life of grace and mercy. Jesus was not the King that the people of Israel had hoped for, but he was the King they needed.

Today, as we continue to think about the things we are thankful for from the past and as we continue to struggle through the trials and tribulations of life, may we not try to fall back into a time that felt like a dream, but let us open ourselves to the present. Let us live within the pain and live within the blessing. And let’s sow the seeds of our tears in the ground and see what new life is produced through God. It may not be the restoration we are hoping for, but it may be the new life that we need, full of an abundance of joy through the power of God’s love. Amen.