Who's dream was it anyway?
Joseph was asleep and he did what people do in a deep sleep. He was dreaming.
A little while before he thought he knew what his dreams were and what was coming next in his life. He was engaged to marry a young woman named Mary. He most likely dreamed of having children, building a home, and getting on with life with her. Joseph's plans took a turn with the news that Mary was pregnant. He knew that the child wasn't his; and he chose to look away from his dreams involving her and start over in a new direction. Matthew said he was an honorable man who chose simply to let it be leaving her behind quietly rather than expose her to shame and possibly death by stoning for adultery. Its painful to loose a dream like Joseph; much of our identity is shaped by our hopes and dreams. Its tough to see those hopes and dreams fall away.
We've all got dreams. We've all got things we want to do and things we worry about in time and these things surface in our dreams. Christmas is a great time to talk about dreams. The dream that Mary had as she accepted Jesus. The dream that Joseph had, and the dreams that our kids have of toys and food and fun. As our lives change our dreams can be very different. I know from first hand experience that dreams of a little kid at Christmas are different from the dreams of a teenager and those dreams are different than a dad and I can't imagine what all will change in my dreams over a lifetime.
A friend of mine is married to a woman he calls, “an Olympic class dreamer.” He says that he sort of dreams, but her dreams have more detail than real life does for him. He said that one morning he woke up about a year ago sore after she punched him hard in the shoulder. He woke up startled. It must have been about 5 am when he blurted out, “Ouch” She said that he'd been such a jerk in her dream that she just had to let him know how mad she was at him. He muttered something back like, “Honey whatever it was I'm sorry now and I'm sure I'll be sorry if you just get back to sleep.” “I knew you'd say that, you just said it in my dream. I'm sorry too.” He rolled over and went back to sleep pretty fast. She just couldn't fall back to sleep as easily that night; her dream had been too vivid to let go of so quickly.
Dreams are part of maybe a third of our lives if we sleep 8 hours a day. They can haunt us and move us. They can motivate and transform us. Joseph was asleep when this one particular dream came along. His day to day life sure wasn't going as planned anymore. He had huge decisions to make that he hadn't planned to ever make. Mary was pregnant and he wasn't the father. He could walk away, he could stay and keep the child knowing the secret, or he could demand justice and see that Mary's blood be spilled because of her sin and the disgrace she'd brought to both of them. What do you do when you have a huge decision to make. How many people say, “let me sleep on it.”
He was going to leave Mary behind and start over. He went to bed to sleep on this huge decision that he had just about made. He chose to divorce her quietly rather than publicly demanding her punishment. And he settled down to sleep.
God has dreams all his own. His dreams are sometimes very different than ours and at other times God uses dreams to communicate his will so very vividly with all of us that we our will and God's will becomes one. Maybe you remember these prophetic words,
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
Dreams aren't our reality but they point us to the reality that God is guiding us toward. Martin Luther King is best known for speaking about this dream. It was a dream that moved a nation; because it wasn't his alone indeed this dream was God's. God uses dreams repeatedly and purposefully. Being attentive to God's dreams help us see things through God's eyes and not our own. God uses dreams like Joseph had to show us the world not as it is but as God intends it to be.
In the night an angel appeared in Joseph's dream. The angel began speaking to him calling him by name, “Joseph son of David...” Then came these words of assurance, "fear not..." Sure Joseph had dreams before; but this one dream was different. This one dream wasn't Joseph's own personal property any longer. He shared this dream with God too. Angels, when they appeared in scripture, often started speaking with the words, “fear not.” God's presence has to often been softened in our imaginations. Most people think of angels as chubby little kids who look sweet and innocent. We imagine angels as women or children who are delicate and sweet and soft. We think they scoot around on pillow-soft clouds strumming harps. But the angels of scripture appeared so powerfully and dramatically that they would have inspired fear even if they were encountered in dreams. The angels of God were warriors ready to do battle against evil in all its forms. They came not just to strum little harps they brought messages straight from God to let God's will be known in our world.
The angel said to Joseph, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” this angel knew exactly what Joseph was planning to do. He knew that Joseph was a good man, a righteous man, who was trying to find a quiet way to protect both himself and Mary from public disgrace. And now he asked Joseph to take on a responsibility that he didn't want. He asked him to take on the possibility of shame that would come from raising a child that wasn't his own. The angel explained plainly something that no one could have imagined, “the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Had anyone else said this I doubt that Joseph would have believed. We know where babies come from. But this dream was giving Joseph a sense of peace that he didn't have as he lay down to sleep ready to quietly end his engagement.
In Christmas we see the story of God unfolding in our everyday life. Joseph and Mary were not extraordinary; the child in her body was God in flesh but everything else was so ordinary. The feelings, fears and hopes were so ordinary until the dream came for Mary and she conceived a child without knowing a man and he came to accept that he was called to love this woman and this child regardless of what the wagging tongues in town might say.
Joseph's meeting with an angel in a dream started his life, and the whole world in turn, on a different course than he expected. The prophet Isaiah said, 14 The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be pregnant. She will have a son, and she will name him Immanuel. 15 He will be eating milk curds and honey when he learns to reject what is evil and to choose what is good. NCV (New Century Version)
Joseph and Mary weren't in this alone. God was going with them into history. He was coming, the angels declared his presence to them, now they both were called to live it out. They had different dreams but both pointed them to what God was up to in this one child Jesus. The dreams were one of God's points of contact in their lives. Even before the dreams they had to word of the prophets to reveal the will of God to them.
The point the angels were making in dreams to Mary and to Joseph, and that Matthew is trying to make for us years later, is that they shared shared in a long standing dream with God. They separately dreamed at night of a child they would call Jesus. The prophets dreamed of the one who we would call Emmanuel; God with us. Christmas is about seeing God's dreams made real in our time.
AMEN
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