More on 'Field of Dreams'...and the 'Table of Dreams'

Charlie Lehardy, the insightful author of the blog, AnotherThink, and a contributor to the group blog, Think Christian, left a typically insightful comment at this post, where I presented my son Philip's reflections on the movie, Field of Dreams. Charlie wrote:

Philip has written a great post about a very special movie. I always cry at the end, too, and I've seen it a dozen times. Ray Kinsella serves as a stand in for a great many boys and men who grow up alienated from their fathers in some way, and deeply regretting the void that is there where their father's love should be.

The dream is about reconciliation and the restoration of the sort of father son relationship every boy wishes he could have, but too few experience. I'll bet there are millions of men who identify with Ray Kinsella and his yearning to have a game of catch with his dad.

Thanks, Philip.

I was so taken with Charlie's analysis of the film that I wrote this response:

Charlie:
Thanks once again for leaving insightful comments. I think you're right that the real dream of Field of Dreams is one of "reconciliation and...restoration."

Back when this film was first released, I did a Maundy Thursday sermon called, "Our Table of Dreams." It was about Holy Communion.

It was built, first of all, on the fact that when Jesus instituted the Sacrament, He said to "do this in remembrance of me." The word we translate as remembrance is, in the original Greek, a form of the word, anamnesis.

Containing the root of our word for amnesia, anamnesis is nonetheless about much more than doing the opposite of forgetting. In Holy Communion, we do more than have a memory of some dusty, obscure past event. By the power of God's Word and Jesus' promise, we are re-membered with God and with every person, in heaven and on earth, past, present, and future, who has hoped in God and shared this meal.

As on the field of dreams in the movie, eternity invades our time-bound world and we come in actual contact--by hearing God's Word and tasting the bread and the wine--with God and the timelessness of His eternity.

But something else happens to us in Communion that's akin to Ray Kinsella's field, I think. We are reconciled to God, Who forgives our sins through the Sacrament, per Jesus' promise. And, as we join saints above and saints below in humbly being fed by our Lord, we are reconciled to one another. No more airs about self-sufficiency. No more pretense of a righteousness that makes us better than others. We confess our humanity and our sin and our common need to be fed and led by God. In a humble faith that receives God's gifts, we are made one with each other.

Reconciliation and restoration are the things we most crave in life, even when, like Ray Kinsella and his father, we don't know it. We crave reconciliation with each other, to be sure. We crave it most of all, with our heavenly Father. In Christ, that reconciliation happens for all who repent--turn from sin--and receive Christ as God and Savior by faith in Him. Through the Sacrament, the altar becomes our table of dreams and God helps us to be reconciled with Him, remembered to Him, all along the imperfect trail we saved-but-sin-plagued saints follow on our way to eternity.

God bless you, Charlie!

Mark