Joseph Dreams
There are dreams and there are dreams. There are the creative reaches of the mind in our waking life. And there is the sleeping playfulness with past, now, future, fact, fiction. Science tells us that everybody dreams whether or not they remember it. The dreams of sleep can bring to our attention to concerns feelings and realities that may not be obvious to our waking mind. Across history, dreams by day and by night, have made history.
Joseph’s choice could have looked to his friends like a lurching at lunacy. To make a decision that would have brought shame and ridicule and possibly violence, to say it came to me in a dream a messenger of God told me to. In that era, dreams were taken more seriously, but maybe that claim was reserved for top-of-the heap persons. I’m not sure how many average people then or these days would say it out loud.
For our gospel artist, history was repeating and expanding on itself, in vivid intensity and with profound meaning. The birth of Jesus echoed the birth of that child in the Isaian context. It was for the ancients, and those around Jesus, a prophet’s speech in the past tense. Maybe a prophet recalling the birth of one of the rare good kings of ancient Judaism. Go back to the text, read the before and the after the lectionary edits out. This wonderful word has its own good news story.
The way we meet Joseph here is also a colorful echo of the ancient fancy coated Joseph who was humiliated. Whose daydreams were dashed, but whose gifts in interpreting the dreams of sleep saved thousands and thousands. Joseph the fiance, he had to have had ideas about what his future held when the betrothal to Mary was decided. One of the mature parts of this story (and it is a grown up tale despite the cuteness we force it into), this is a story of rising through heartbreak. We don’t really know anything about him. Typically the tradition suggests that Joseph was older, but nothing in life or text demands that assumption. An older Joseph seeks to align with later doctrines the text has no curiosity about. And it suggests a reason why he disappears. The last time we see him is when Jesus is amazing the temple elders around age 12. Why do we think of biblical characters as impermeable to life: diseases and accidents? Is it the statues, the art, the idealism, the shallow ideas of what it means for something to be scriptural? We know from our lives that one does not need to be younger for a partner to die first. Gospel writers have no interest in telling us about the mundane parts. We don’t hear much about the meals they ate or the clothes they mended, or their lives before the life of Jesus, or what happened to them next. As the story begins, Joseph had priorities beyond surviving. How far were those dreams from this revelatory scandal, from years as a refugee in Egypt? Joseph’s example is in his living a righteous and brave and generous life In the context of whatever heartbreak and divine directives came his way.
Joseph is so plain and undeveloped on the page as to be an everybody. He is you and he is me. And – here is the thing, I believe that every person is called just as much as Joseph is. I trust that God is working through messengers and dreams and community all the time, and all of us are called to more than just getting by. I say that, I trust that, but how many acknowledge a Joseph like sense of call? Or even the very closeness of God, so close as to be in the workings of our minds as we slumber? I trust that God is calling and calling, present and inviting all the time. right now. Not to world renown and danger, but to lifegiving prayer and service and charity.
Obliviousness to the presence of God that is all around to just not notice it is a sadness. But to acknowledge it’s reality and deny or ignore it’s expectations, well.. this is not a turning from God, not a sin like stealing and murdering, but it is what theologians call han, a side effect of sin and evil that does pervasive damage by day and by night. All of our sacred calls by God, all our vocations, all of these are different, we’re not all exactly Josephs but like him in our ordinariness God is calling all to something more. God speaks in feelings and in coincidences, in NPR stories, book suggestions, and strangers who don’t know why they’re here. I wouldn’t be here doing this if I didn’t trust in lucid moments, divine meetings, and paying attention to the refocusing of dreams. God speaks in the questions that won’t go away In the encounters of cafe or waiting room. What is the Spirit hinting and pulling and speaking to you in a myriad of ways? And so too, what is the Spirit suggesting and pushing and calling us as Christ Church to do and be?
Joseph, a dreamer of dreams, a suffering servant, a man of heartbreak and love, in his own way a God bearer. He was a changer of history by deeply devotedly practically trusting in the dream. Jesus’ birth will open anew our hearts and minds and souls to God’s holiest invitation. Come in, open your life and heart. Come in to the dream, in to the story, and know God better this Christmas.