The Dream of God

It's always so much fun when I am able to connect the stories in the Gospels to the roots of the Old Testament. And Matthew's Gospel makes it easy since he is always wanting us to know that the things happening with Jesus are fulfillments of the prophecies from before. 

So here's the story behind the story of how Matthew wants us to understand the birth of Jesus as the long-awaited answer to right the wrongs of Israel's past. See what you think.

Texts: Isaiah 7: 10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

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Have you ever had a dream that feels so real that when you wake up…you almost have to pinch yourself?

I once had one like that years ago when I was working in radio.

Our half-hour magazine program was pre-recorded.

At that time…we were still in the analog days of reel-to-reel tape machines.

We hadn’t yet made the transition to digital files.

We depended upon an engineer to hit the play button and send our show out over the NPR satellite system.

In this dream…there was some crisis that happened which prevented our program from starting on time.

And for whatever reason…the engineer wasn’t in the control room.

So…I had to rush into the room…quickly fast forward the program to the correct starting place…so that the show would air and time out correctly.

I remember waking up…and the palm of my hands were sweaty from having gone through such a stressful situation in my dream.

Later that week…on that Friday evening when “Capitol Report” was to air…. for all the public radio stations in Florida….there was silence.

The engineer wasn’t in the control room to start the show.

I ran into the room…quickly hit the fast forward button…and pushed play at the exact point we needed to for show to air and time out correctly.

I couldn’t believe that I had had a dream…and in my dream I had already rehearsed this scenario so that I knew what to do.

I was both amazed…and very grateful.

Dreams can be fanciful and weird as our brains process the information they’ve taken in during our waking hours.

And they can be informative and give us messages that will help us see our way through the difficult decisions of life.

Because our conscious egocentric selves are at rest and quiet…this is the perfect time for God to reach us.

We hear in our Gospel about a dream that helped guide Joseph to rethink his decision to dismiss his pregnant young wife.

We can understand the predicament of this couple.

Joseph had probably had another dream about his life’s purpose and direction.

He’d probably fantasized about starting a family with Mary…and making the most of his life as a carpenter.

Instead…he learns from her that she has been visited by an angel and she’s already pregnant.

We can imagine such news would’ve rocked his world as his vision of a simple family life gets completely shattered.

Fortunately…Joseph had enough of a sensitive nature that he understood and had empathy for the precarious situation of Mary.

According to the Torah…Joseph not only would have been in his rights to break off the engagement…but he could’ve brought her before the priest…and made her a public spectacle…accusing her of adultery (Numbers 5:12-28).

That’s when an angel paid him a visit in a dream…and gave him the directive he needed…to carry out a much larger vision.

And the rest…as they say…is history.

And speaking of history…Matthew wants to make sure that we see that connection between the sign given to King Ahaz from the prophet Isaiah and this announcement of Jesus’ birth.

For Matthew…this is the fulfillment of a promise God made to the Jewish community …and to us later as the Christian Church of today.

Who was Ahaz and why does this matter?

Ahaz was the son of Jotham…the ruler of Judah.

He succeeded his father to the throne in the year 735 BCE when he was only 20 years old.

King Ahaz was not remembered as a “righteous” king.

Among his many dastardly deeds was to sacrifice his own son in a pagan ritual.

Ahaz cared more about being in power and had an ego that went on forever…including building altars all over Jerusalem to worship anyone but the God of his ancestors.

This vague sign given to Ahaz…about a young woman giving birth to a child who “will eat curds and honey before he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good” made little impression on him.

He refused to pay attention to this sign.

Because Ahaz refused to listen to Isaiah…and take this sign as a reason to follow God as opposed to looking to human alliances for protection and his own will for greed and grift…he led his people into disaster and their downfall to the violent and repressive Assyrian regime.

Now…we hear Matthew in our Gospel making this historical connection for those descended from the Assyrian exile to see that this vision spoken to Ahaz is now coming to fruition.

This child that Mary is bearing is that long sought-for sign of Jerusalem’s rescue from oppression and the tyranny of a new occupying force…the Roman Empire.

Matthew’s message: Don’t be like Ahaz.

Don’t doubt God’s will acting in the world.

Trust in this sign that we will be delivered from our distress.

And here we are now…so many centuries later…hearing these words and being asked again to trust that God is going to be with us.

We are invited to look to this inbreaking of God…Emmanuel…of God with us…to be reminded that change is coming.

Hope is being born.

Peace is on the horizon.

Joy is ready to be stirred up as Love meets the challenges of our times.

We are at a moment in our collective lives in this country where this Love is desperately needed.

Things are not OK in the world right now.

There are still wars.

There are people so afraid of masked agents of the government that they will not leave their homes.

Farmers are struggling to find markets for their goods.

And our government is involved in scandal upon scandal with no accountability while scapegoating whole segments of the population.

We are once more being beckoned to hear this story of the birth of Jesus and see it as the sign of a change that is coming…a change that stands at a 90-degree angle to the brokenness of our world and demands that we meet these challenges with Love.

Because the world that Jesus came into in the First Century was also full of chaos and corruption.

It was also full of people scared of their governing authorities.

It was also ruled by fear and intimidation.

If there ever was a time when we need to be brought back to the that dream experienced by Joseph…the vision that kept him standing with Mary and helping to bring this sign of Hope and Love into the world…now is the time.

The question for us: Are we ready to receive this gift of God?

We know the beginning…middle and end of the Jesus story.

We also know that with each time we encounter this narrative we are getting that nudge to do our part to be more like Joseph…and less like Ahaz.

To trust that God’s purpose will be worked out through us doing our part to live into the reality that Love is a greater force for change…that faith can help us overcome fear…and that we have a role to play in making this a better world for everyone.

Our former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry was fond of reminding us that the dream God had for this world was one where the mountains of problems we see in front of us are lowered…and the valleys of despair are drained and raised up.

That dream is still possible…if we keep looking…and noticing…and seeking the helpers in the world.

It can be the reality if we trust in the teachings of Jesus to lead us toward building up our communities.

It will come about with our leaning into our faith that God is with us as we serve the Christ in each other.

God is with us…and in us…to be the light and the love in the world.

In the name of Our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

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To get the full story of Ahaz, look at Isaiah Chapter 7 and 2 Kings 16. 

 

 

 

 

Dreaming: A Sermon for 2C Christmas

 

I've been having a LOT of dreams lately. Many of them I would classify as nightmares. 

I'm being chased, hunted down, by agents of the state. Or I am frantically trying to get others to places of safety as if I am some kind of 21st century Harriet Tubman. 

I associate all of this with the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the country as we prepare for the sequel to the first DJT administration (I purposely do not use his full name as naming has power). I am dreading this administration, especially since I live in Florida where we have been experiencing the trial run of much of the MAGA agenda. It promises to be punishing, and the further one is away from the 'accepted norm' of heterosexual white male with money, the more painful it is going to be. 

We've already seen version one of this administration, marked by cruelty and chaos. It ended with a violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021, to stay in power. Don't let anyone tell you that the thousands who marched on the U.S. Capitol armed with bear spray and flag poles sharpened into bayonets were just typical tourists on a peaceful visit to the seat of our national government.

It is into this stark reality that I, and every priest, pastor, and preacher who attempts to follow the model of the Jesus found in the Gospels of the New Testament, find ourselves. 

My seminary taught us that we must "Seek the Lord, come whence it may; cost what it will." That's the inscription on my class ring that I wear every Sunday as a reminder that I am part of a community without borders with my classmates as we labor in our particular vineyards. I know that, for me, I am tasked with both speaking the truth of the Gospel, teaching not only the context of its story but finding in that story something that resonates with our current times. And when the current times are feeling uneasy I must return to the Gospel, go back to the Jesus who knew trouble and terror and bullies and tyrants...and still stood for the hope and the love that is beyond the reach of anyone to tear it down and destroy it..unless we give in to our fears. 

There's a reason the phrase, "Do not be afraid" gets said so often in both the Old and New Testaments!

How's that for a set up for this particular sermon? See what you think.

Text: Matthew 2:13-15; 19-23

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How many here dream?

And how many of you remember your dreams?

Dreams and dreaming are fascinating.

Scientists who study dreams say that when we dream…our brains are on fire.

While the rest of our body is relaxed and regenerating for the next day…our brains are whirring and stirring and processing bits of information that we have taken in during our waking hours and creating ways to deal with emotions or whatever is going on in our inner world.

For me…I know the dreams that I remember are usually the ones that feel super real or are profound in sometimes good and challenging ways.

I remember one dream that I had some years ago that I turned into a short film for one of my seminary classes.

I was sitting outside somewhere in Tallahassee.

The scene quickly shifted and I was transported to one of the courtyards of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Suddenly…I saw a flash of light…and images of faces began popping up in my vision in rapid fire succession.

They were of people of all genders and colors and ages and animals of every kind.

And…as it often happens in my dreams…there’s some narrator voice that wants to direct my attention to something important.

So as these faces kept coming at me…the dream narrator intoned, “This is the face of God.”

When I woke up…I felt deeply moved by what I had seen and heard.

I had a profound sense of the reality that God was in the face of every being…every creature.

And that…in the words of Jonathan Myrick Daniels…”we are indelibly and unspeakably One.”

Today…we heard about a set of dreams that Joseph had…visions that guided him to keep Mary and the newborn Jesus safe from a jealous and ruthless King Herod.

Our Gospel picked up at verse 13 of the second chapter of Matthew.

Fortunately, you do have verses 1-12 in your insert as well.

To give you a very quick synopsis: some wise men come to Jerusalem from the East looking to pay homage to the “King of the Jews.”

Scholars believe that…despite the popular hymn “We Three Kings of Orient Are”…these men from the East were more likely scientists…astronomers specifically.

There’s a reason they’ve become enchanted by following this very bright light over Bethlehem.

This star piqued their interest and somehow, they knew it signified someone important had been born.

King Herod the Great is not happy to hear that there is some rival out there in the hinterlands and asks these Gentile strangers to please let him know where to find this newborn king so he could pay his respects.

They go.

They find Jesus and Mary and Joseph.

They’re in awe of Jesus…give him gifts…gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And then…they dream.

And their dream narrator tells them…don’t go home through Jerusalem because Herod is a bad guy.

There’s a LOT of dreaming in Matthew’s story about Jesus’ birth.

And the dreams seem to function as interventions…ways to avoid catastrophes.

The dreamers are receiving premonitions.

Jospeh seems to have had a dream similar to what the wise men experienced.

The angel who appears in Joseph’s dream lets him know that there’s serious trouble brewing and he needs to get the family out of the country and do it now.

It’s a good thing he listened to his dream angel.

Our lectionary portion decided to spare us the next gruesome part, but I think it’s important that we don’t gloss over what happens next.

Because the missing verses….Matthew 2:16-18…tell of the vengeful campaign the jealous King Herod waged on the families of Bethlehem.

Herod was angry that the wise astronomers didn’t spill the beans on the location of Jesus…so he decides to take drastic action to hunt down his rival.

Not knowing exactly which boy under two years old had attracted the wise men’s attention…Herod ordered all the Jewish boys two years old and younger to be killed.

The church marks that day on the calendar…December 28^th…as the Feast of the Holy Innocents…a remembrance of the reported 20-plus baby boys killed in Bethlehem.  

Children killed because of a tyrant’s petty fears.

Historically…there’s no evidence that this massacre really happened and…even if Herod did order such a mass killing…his overall record is full of indiscriminate brutality toward the Jews so this would have been just another bad deed by a terrible man.

But it speaks to the real dangers that existed in the world in which Love came down at Christmas to dwell with us as one of us in the person of Jesus.

It’s still speaking to us in the world in which we are living today.

Violence…especially violence against children…is still with us.

We have all seen the images from the war-torn areas of the world…Gaza…Ukraine…Syria…Sudan…with indiscriminate killings of civilians and children being the most vulnerable victims.

And even closer to home…we know that school shootings are becoming an all-too frequent occurrence.

In the same way the birth of a child represents hope…the death of a child can feel like a devastating blow to hope.

It’s into times and places and moments such as this that Jesus enters the world…and depends upon the faithful actions of human participants to pay attention to the messages in their dreams.

Joseph did follow the dreams…and did so despite it being a risky proposition.

They left their homeland…the familiar.

They were immigrants…refugees…on the run into a foreign land.

In fact… it was the land from which their ancestors had escaped from another tyrannical figure so many centuries earlier.

How strange that must have been to seek refuge in Egypt!

We might imagine the stress of this situation and how terrifying it must have been to have to flee from their country of origin.

I’ve listened to many reports about the dangerous trek of people fleeing gang violence in Central America to seek refuge in our country.

Just trying to get through the area called the Darien Gap…which is both a swampland full of snakes as well as jungles and mountains…where marauders hang out waiting to attack people running for their lives…is harrowing experience.

That anyone makes it through there is truly miraculous.

The holy family’s experience isn’t as well documented…but we get the idea that like today’s refugees…they too had to could never fully rest because there was always danger around the corner.

Even after Herod’s death…Joseph was still listening to his dream narrator telling him not to go back to Judea.

And so the family settled in the Galilean village of Nazareth.

This story reminds us of how much it takes sometimes to keep hope alive.

But that fragile and vulnerable hope is the Jesus that lives within each of us who have been brought through the waters of baptism and marked and sealed as Christ’s own forever.

And this Jesus…born in us…is the hope that we bring out into the world…into our homes…our work places…everywhere we go and encounter those faces of God seeking meaningful connection.

This hope is what fuels a dream of a world where there is health, healing, and hope with unconditional love.

As we enter into the season of Epiphany…a time of many great “a-has”…may it be a time where the Christ light in us grows brighter each day as we keep that fire of hope burning in our hearts.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

Make God's Dream Come True: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A

 

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.