When I sat down with the readings for this week, the discussion about Joseph and his experience of encountering God's messenger in a dream was the winner for my attention. I especially thought about the experience of dreaming. Reading through some commentaries...I realized something I hadn't noticed before: the only "voice" we hear in the pericope, besides the narrator, is God's. Both Joseph and, even more importantly Mary, are silent. And subtle, yet important, reminder that we need to not do so much talking as listening.
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Text:
Matthew 1:18-25
How many of us have
had dreams?
I don’t remember
all the dreams I’ve had, but I have had few very vivid ones. The types of
dreams where when I woke up… I had to wonder “Did that really happen?”
Those are the most
disorienting, aren’t they?
The dream world can
be such a fantastic place. Sometimes it can be a startling or unsettling. It
can be blissful and pleasant.
Ultimately…it’s a
place where once we’ve moved around in it and have had whatever strange and
amazing adventure… we come out of the dream a little different than before.
Some dreams can
stay with us in a way that… even if we didn’t actually sprout wings or whatever…
we’ve had an experience that has changed our perception.
If we were
struggling with a problem before we went to bed… sometimes our unconscious mind
is able to pull together disparate threads of information… and put the puzzle
pieces together in such a way that now… an answer becomes clearer.
That seems to be
what has happened to Joseph in this scene from Matthew’s Gospel. He went to bed
thinking he had solved a problem…but his dream presents him with another and
better solution.
We know that Mary
and Joseph are engaged…and that Mary has been found to be with child from the
Holy Spirit.
Our biblical
narrator knows this pregnancy is by the Holy Spirit.
Mary knows this to
be the case…although Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t present her side of the pregnancy
story.
It’s not clear what
Joseph knows…beyond the fact that his bride-to-be is now pregnant…and he knows
he’s not the father. If he knows that this pregnancy was a divine
intervention… he may or may not believe it.
What is clear is
that Joseph is righteous… meaning he is a just man… a good guy… knows and lives
by the law.
And the law says
that he has every right to tell his teenage bride to get lost.
He could ruin her
life forever.
Dismiss her as an
adulteress and be done with her.
But Joseph reaches
a different conclusion.
Even though he
knows his rights in this patriarchal system… he also knows the system would be
cruel to Mary.
And even though
this is not a marriage of love in the way we think about marriage… he must have
felt some affection for her.
So instead of drawing
attention to his now-pregnant young bride… he decides his best way out of this
mess is to send her away quietly.
This is still not a
great option for Mary. But it keeps the matter more hush-hush.
This dilemma… this
tension between what is right by the law and what is right by the heart…
provides the opening for God to step in.
And using the mechanism of the dream state…where the ego can’t interrupt to sideline this divine conversation…God uses one of the angels to intervene.
“Don’t be afraid to
take Mary as your wife, Joseph, Son of David.”
Don’t be afraid…by the
way… is a favorite phrase in the Bible.
And it always seems
to be said at the very moment when being afraid would be the logical choice.
And having an angel
tell you not to be afraid?
I don’t know… I
think that might be go, “Uh-oh! Now what?”
The angel tells us what
the “Now what? is for Joseph.”
Stay with Mary.
This is a special
child…conceived in holiness.
You’re going to
name him “Jesus.”
Jesus…the Greek
version of the very common Hebrew name Joshua.
A name that means “God
saves.”
And that’s what
Jesus will do.
Not just the people
of Israel who are an occupied people.
The liberation Jesus
will offer extends to all people… no matter who they are… where they’ve been…
or even where they’re going.
This dream of Joseph…
this angelic vision… is not just his dream.
This is God’s dream
coming to fruition.
This is God going
into action deliberately seeking out this couple to change the trajectory of
how things were going to happen in the world.
Joseph’s dream
helps to fulfill God’s dream to enter our existence through Jesus… to become
one with us by becoming one in flesh and blood with us.
And…despite all the
promises of a coming Messiah who will baptize with fire…and John the Baptist’s
conviction that the Messiah was going to kick-butt and take names….
Jesus is an
ordinary baby born in the most meager of circumstances.
He is not one of
means.
As I said…even his
name… Jesus… was pretty run of the mill.
It was in the top
three of favorite boy baby names in First Century Palestine.
To have the one
named “God Saves” come into the world as a baby of such regular parents…and not
some royal figurehead… shows how God works through ordinary people to do
extraordinary… daring… and wonderful things.
This is how God’s
purpose gets acted out over and over.
This Messiah…this Jesus…
is very much on the same level with you and me.
And he came to
teach us a way to live and move and have our being that frees us from the petty
and mean-spirited ways in which we put down ourselves and other people…and
infuse the world with more love.
That’s the audacious
dream of God!
Always seeking a
way of deliver humanity out of the nightmare of oppression and self-limiting
thinking.
We are invited to
make this dream of God come true.
Just like Joseph… we’re called to take part in God’s action plan to help achieve God’s dream...a world that looks more like Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom where prey and predators don’t feel the need to threaten and bully another into submission.
All of us have been
through a lot these past few years between COVID and the cancerous venom of our
political discourse.
It seems oddly perfect
then that this Gospel story mutes the voices of both Mary and Joseph… and the
only one who gets to speak…really… is God.
Perhaps that’s the
lesson for us as we prepare to welcome this baby Jesus on Christmas morning.
Maybe it’s time for
us to do a lot less talking about Jesus and about God…and actually listen and do
the work of reconciliation and relationship building to achieve God’s dream for
the world.
What a thing it
would be to have that dream come true!
In the name of God…F/S/HS.
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