Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25
Dreams reveal things that are hidden. They give awareness to things unrecognized. They cast light on the shadows and darkness. Dreams can bring to the surface things causing great fear, and they can open to us in our unconscious wonderful moments of joy. These words by the English poet Lord Byron are a wonderful description of the power and impact of dreams:
…Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity…[1]
During my journey to ordination, I often had what I call “red stole” dreams. They were dreams in which red – the color of ordination – was prominent, and they typically included a moment of having a stole draped around my or someone else’s shoulders. In some of the dreams I felt unprepared, such as one in which I showed up at my own ordination service only to discover that I’d brought the wrong vestments and as a result was asked to step out of line and go change. In others I felt uncertainty and disappointment, as in one in which I was at a wedding and found my name missing from a list of those invited to the reception – only to hear the voice of a priest friend as she told someone else in response to my being left off, “Well, we’ll see what the bishop has to say about that.”
While I had these dreams, however, I never really understood them. The ability to understand and interpret dreams is something that has long been of interest to humanity, in both the sacred and secular realms. The Old Testament patriarch Joseph, for instance, was freed from slavery and rose to the second-highest position in all of Egypt because of his ability to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud developed an entire sub-genre of dream interpretation that became a cornerstone of his career. Even now there are many websites providing tools for any one of us to use in interpreting our own dreams, to make sense of scenes that are often chaotic or confusing.
Among all the other dreams we can read about, particularly those we find scattered throughout the Old Testament, the dream of this Joseph is different. We know he’s feeling burdened by great anxiety, having learned that Mary was going to deliver a child through an action of the Holy Spirit. Because he has already been identified as being righteous, we know he wasn’t taking this situation lightly – nor was he taking lightly his own sense of personal obligation to protect Mary’s reputation. It’s in this stressful situation, during his own conscious struggle about his next steps, that an angel appears to him in his subconscious.
When the clutter of his waking life obscures the voice of God, God simply waits and speaks while he sleeps.
This was not a dream like the one of Nebuchadnezzar interpreted by Daniel, a dream about a statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay that was broken and scattered by the winds even as the stone that broke it became a mountain.[2] This was nothing like the dreams of Pharoah interpreted by the Joseph in Genesis, including one about seven fat cows rising out of the Nile River and being eaten by seven thin cows and another about seven blighted stalks of grain swallowing seven full, healthy stalks.[3]
No, in this dream there’s no chaos or confusion. There’s no mystical symbolism defying understanding. There’s nothing requiring interpretation. The angel simply speaks, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for 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.”[4]
Do not be afraid. Take Mary as your wife. When the son is born, name him Jesus.
What’s Joseph’s response when he awakens? Does he have the typical reaction and question God about all of this? Does he cry out, “Lord, what does this mean?” No. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t question. He doesn’t even panic. He simply acts. In the straightforward words of the Gospel, “He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”[5]
Our lives often become so crowded, so cluttered with activity and noise, that we may not give God an opportunity to speak to us – and then we question why we don’t hear him. I’ve been thinking recently about the silence of God, and about the disappointment we often feel when we don’t sense God speaking directly to us – when we’re desperate to hear God’s voice and brokenhearted when we don’t. In the context of today’s Gospel reading we’re not unlike Joseph, so engrossed in our own stresses and difficulties that nothing else gets through. Maybe we talk so much that we can’t hear God, or we’re so focused on hearing the booming voice we expect from God that we don’t even notice or hear the whisper of God in the voice of the person right next to us.
No matter how stubborn we may be, no matter how many times we may focus on the wrong places, regardless of how often we block other possibilities because we expect things to happen the way we want them to, God will get through to us. It may be while we’re awake – and as we learn from Joseph, it might be while we’re sleeping. God can wait us out, and God will always have the last word, in whatever form and in whatever voice that word may take. As the Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote, “From His place, whether Sinai, Sion or heaven Yahweh comes in the storm, or enthroned over the ark of the covenant, or in His Word of Spirit, or in dreams or visions…”[6]
So what happens when we do hear God, whether in our waking or in our dreaming? Will we question, as human nature often compels us to do, or will we be like Joseph and respond without hesitation and without question? Maybe until we’re in the moment, we can’t answer. Maybe until we think we’re hearing the voice of God with great certainty, we won’t know how we’ll act.
As we come to the end of this Advent season and this period of hopeful expectation, my prayer for you is that certain things do not end. May the hope to hear the voice of an angel of heaven never end. May the hope for the arrival of Christ – and the hope for Christ’s return – never end. May the hope to receive a heavenly message never end. And may the willingness to make space for God and the desire to discern the voice of God – in our waking and most especially in our dreams as we sleep – never end.
Amen.
[1] Lord Byron, “The Dream.” http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/lord_byron/poems/5969.html
[2] Daniel 2:31-35 (NRSV).
[3] Genesis 41:1-7 (NRSV).
[4] Matthew 1:20-21 (NRSV).
[5] Matthew 1:24 (NRSV).
[6] Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics: Index, with Aids for the Preacher, p. 285.