Waking Actively
Matthew 1:18-25
Have you ever woken up after a bad dream, only to discover that it was true? One of my bad dreams is that I will get to the church on Sunday morning, and things are not where they are supposed to be. The pulpit is gone, the lectern is relocated, the communion table is hidden, and there is this strange stuff sitting in the middle of the chancel.
No, wait – that really happened this morning! This is exactly what my bad dreams look like. The only things which could make this worse would be if the bishop showed up this morning, and the video projectors failed, and my sermon was a video I made after interviewing homeless women who gave birth in barns as a Christmas reflection. Oh, and Nancy was sick, and the hymns I chose were somehow no longer printed in our hymnals, and I lost my voice, and my robe suddenly started to fall off in chunks. That would be the worst dream for me ever.
But this here isn't really my bad dream. I know that things have been moved because our children in the church will be presenting their program at the next service. I know that it takes time to move the chancel furniture, and to set up the sets, and to get the kids ready before the next service. And I know that it takes more time than what is available between our two services, so everything except “the last minute. getting the kids ready” was done earlier this week.
When we know why things are not where they are supposed to be, then the bad dream can become a good dream. Instead of the bad dream that the church was broken into by devil worshipers, we have the good dream that our children are participating in worship! Sometimes we need a little more information and context, we need to see how God is at work among us, before we can know if a dream is good or not.
I don't know about you, but over the years I have gotten pretty good at recognizing my dreams as dreams. When I dream, I am not afraid that I am falling to my death. I am not scared about being chased by people wanting to do me harm. I am not elated that I can suddenly fly. I know that these are dreams.
Because I know these are dreams, and not my waking reality, I find myself observing the dreams for whatever insights I am supposed to glean for my waking self. I have trained myself to do this because usually our dreams are nothing more than our working out our fears and hopes for life.
This was not always the case when it comes to the dreams in the Bible – at least those which get remembered. While I am sure that everyone in the Bible dreamed, since that is what humans do, only a few dreams get recorded in the Bible. And the ones that do mean so much more than someone struggling with their fears and hopes.
The first reported dream is Abimelech being warned to not take up with Abraham’s wife. It's OK if you missed that reference, as it is really a story about Abraham and Sarah, and not Abimelech. In this passage, God spoke to Abimelech through a dream, and he knew it was God speaking – which is kind of impressive since Abimelech didn't know the God of Abraham.
We are more familiar with the dreams in the stories of Jacob and his son Joseph. We get dreams of a stairway to heaven for Jacob, and wheat bowing down to Joseph, and fat cows being eaten up by skinny cows, for Joseph to interpret. The implication in these stories is that Jacob and Joseph are so close to God that they can distinguish between a regular dream and a dream from God.
That's kind of the point of dreams when we get to the time of Jeremiah. There were many prophets who had dreams of coming blessings and prosperity for the Chosen People, but these prophets did not have a close relationship with God. They were prophets in name only, and not by actual calling from God, so their dreams were about their hopes for themselves.
It was only Jeremiah who knew that God would instead be holding the people accountable for their sins, sending them into an exile from Jerusalem. What made Jeremiah a prophet was not just getting it right about the exile, but also the promise of a much later return to Jerusalem when the hearts of the people were renewed. Jeremiah had that kind of relationship with God that he could see past the present moment of despair to the faithful promise of God’s salvation.
One of the ways King Saul knew that he was not the true leader of the Israelites was that he never had any dreams from God. He knew this was an indication that God was not going to speak to the people through him. What this means, when taken altogether, is that with the exception of Abimelech, dreams in the Bible indicated whether or not you had a close relationship with God.
In our reading for today, we get this all-too-familiar real-world situation. Joseph is betrothed to Mary. Mary tells him she is pregnant. Joseph is not the father.
In today's world, we know how to deal with situations like this. We know that Mary and Joseph might have gotten married anyway, or they might not have gotten married. Mary could have chosen to raise the child on her own, or she might have gone off and lived with family in another region. But back then, those options were not all available to Joseph.
There were laws which governed this situation, and they were all written to protect the rights of the actual father. They were written this way because women had no rights, and children belonged to the father. Laws which sound disturbing to us, and which are in truth still disturbing, only make sense in this context.
Laws like, if a woman was raped and no one heard her cry out, and she becomes pregnant, then she is to be married to her attacker – to whom the child belongs. If an unmarried woman is pregnant, and she won't identify the father, then she is to be stoned to death so that no one will have claim to the child. If a woman is betrothed, and becomes pregnant, and her betrothed is not the father, then he is to be stoned to death for claiming a child which is not his to claim.
The law is very clear about Joseph’s options when he hears this news from Mary. But then Joseph has a dream. If Joseph was just having a regular dream, he might have dreamed he had never heard of Mary, that they had never met, that this problem didn’t exist. He might have dreamed that he was the father, and there was no problem. He might have dreamed that Mary was punished by someone else's hand so he wouldn't have to deal with it. He might have dreamed that he could keep this a secret, and they would live happily ever after. But this is not what Joseph dreams.
If Joseph was just having a regular dream, he might have dreamed something which he could point to as being part of their tradition. He could have dreamed that he was warned to not take up with Mary, like the dream of Abimelech. He could have dreamed that there were angels descending and ascending from God to take care of his problem, like Jacob. He could have dreamed that by taking Mary as his wife, others would bow down to honor him, like Joseph. If he had dreamed these things, it would have the benefit of being something which had been dreamed before, and believed as dreams from God. But this is not what Joseph dreamed.
Instead, Joseph receives a dream from God. The messenger of God tells Joseph to not be afraid of taking Mary as his wife, because the baby’s father is the Father God. God claims this child, so there is no man on earth who can make this claim against Joseph. Joseph doesn't have to fear being stoned for claiming what by rights belongs to another. Joseph doesn’t have to fear Mary being punished, because she has named the Father.
Joseph doesn't have to be afraid that someone else will claim the right to marry her. Joseph doesn’t have to be afraid that someone else will claim this child as their own son. Joseph can move forward with his life, as planned.
If the dream had ended there, Joseph would have been assured, Mary and Joseph would have been married, and their life would go on as if they were like everyone else. Joseph would have dealt with his fears and hopes, and it would all work out to his benefit. But that would make this dream like all other dreams. The good news for us is that this dream continued.
In this dream, God claims this child, God's Son, because he will come to save God's people from their sins. Now, the dream is not just good news for Joseph. It is good news for all of us – and this is a sign that this is a God-given dream, and not a hoping for wish-fulfillment. This is a dream which relieves Joseph, in one sense; and which places a responsibility on Joseph, in another sense.
If Joseph accepts this dream as from God, then Joseph's duty is not to raise God’s Son as his own son to take on his work, but to raise God’s Son to take on God’s work. Joseph’s duty is not to raise God’s Son to build tables and chairs for people of the kingdoms on earth, but to raise God’s Son to build the Kingdom of God so that we might all sit at the banquet table of God in heaven. Joseph’s duty is not simply to protect his son and wife, but to raise God’s Son to protect us all from sin and death.
All this is good news, but it is still only a dream – unless Joseph wakes up and acts on it. The reason we are here today getting ready for Christmas, instead of Hanukkah, is because when Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. Joseph took Mary as his wife, and he named the child Jesus, which means, “he who saves.”
Today, there are a lot of people who dream dreams and see visions. But unless there is a close relationship with God, the odds of the dream being from God are significantly reduced to almost zero. There are too many false prophets claiming that God has spoken to them in a dream, that we are called in these dreams to be fearful, inhospitable, defensive, and selfish – and that this is how Jesus wants us to live. These kinds of dreams are no different from the dreams of those who have no relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
The way we test these dreams apart from a relationship with God is simple: does the dream primarily benefit our self, or does it call us outside of our self to help others? Even in the first Joseph’s dream, his honor was so he could help his people survive seven years of famine as he worked through a foreign nation to save up grain during seven years of plenty. The dream was from God because it led Joseph to help others.
There are many songs in this season which invite us to dream of a “white Christmas, just like the ones we used to know.” There are songs which ask us to have “visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.” But these dreams and visions are only about what we want, and what will help us enjoy the holidays. And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with these dreams, we need to be clear that these are not dreams from God.
The dreams of Christmas call us to wake up from our sin. The dreams of Christmas call us to love our neighbors as ourselves – even those neighbors who are overburdened, underserved, displaced, and without shelter, like Mary and Joseph. The dreams of Christmas invite us into a closer relationship with God through Jesus Christ, so that we may indeed dream dreams and see visions of the coming Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Some people resist the Christmas season because it feels to them like we are living in a nightmare of greed and loneliness and grief and judgment. That is why some people sing about a “low-down dirty Christmas,” or sing of a “blue, blue Christmas without you.” The Christmas season is only about their fears and hopes and unfulfilled dreams.
But when we know that God is with us, that Christ the Lord is born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph, our bad dream can become a good dream. When we can look at our dreams from inside a close relationship with God, we can see how God is at work even when the pulpit is missing, and the lectern is relocated, and the communion table is hidden.
Listen again to the angel of God, who came to Joseph one night in a dream – do not be afraid to take Mary into your life. Do not be afraid of the child who is to be born. Do not be afraid to make this life-long commitment. Wake up, and know the glory of the Lord has come to you, and to all people, to save us from our sins. The dark night of sin and death is ending, and a new morn of God’s Light is rising to shine God’s grace and love into our hearts and into our lives.
Let us stand, as we wake from our dreams, to find ourselves at the manger on Christmas morn!
Hymn 232 “When Christmas Morn is Dawning”