Matthew 1.18-25; 2.13-23
I’ve heard it said
that you
should never trust what you remember from a dream,
because the boundary between reality and fantasy
stretches
thin in the hours of darkness.
But for me, dreams have always seemed somehow more real
than the
events of the daytime.
Maybe it’s because my name is Joseph?
My parents
called me after the great dreamer of old,
whose
teenage dreams of sheaves in a field,
and
of the sun, moon, and stars bowing down before him,
created in
him some capacity to see beyond the now,
to
futures yet to be,
and which
led to him interpreting the dreamings
of
none other than the Pharaoh of Egypt himself.
So yes, if you want to call me ‘Joseph the dreamer’,
that’s fine
by me, they’ve called me that all my life.
I have had many dreams,
but chief
among them was my dream for a family;
of a wife,
children, a home of happiness and contentment.
And it seemed as if that dream was coming true
when I
became engaged to Mary:
a young
woman from a respectable family.
I paid her father the required betrothal payment,
and then
began the period of waiting
for the appointed
time of the marriage to arrive.
Poor Jacob had to wait fourteen years before he could marry
his Rachel,
but unlike
Laban of old (Gen. 29),
Mary’s
father was an honourable man:
so there were
to be no surprise substitutions or unexpected delays
-
we agreed the standard one year betrothal.
But the dream didn’t last long:
my Mary was
found to be with child,
and thing
is, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.
And then, to make it worse,
the law is
very clear on what should happen next.
I even went to the synagogue
and asked
the Rabbi to check the scroll of the law for me:
He read to me:
‘If
evidence of a young woman’s virginity is not found,
then they
shall bring her to the entrance of her father’s house
and the men
of the town shall stone her to death.’ (Deut. 22.20-21).
Whoever heard of such a thing?
Surely
no-one would do this these days!
I mean, the Romans would never allow it, would they?
But I could still imagine the scandal
that would
engulf Mary and her family if news of this got out,
and none of
that was part of my dream.
So I found another way:
I would
relinquish my claim on Mary,
leave
her father with the betrothal payment,
and have a
private bill of divorce drawn up and signed by two witnesses,
leaving
Mary free to marry another,
maybe
even the father of her child?
Such things matter to people,
and they
mattered to me.
Children should surely be with their parents, everyone knows
this;
society
relies on fathers taking responsibility for their own children,
it’s always
been this way.
And then I had one of my dreams,
and this
one was more real, more vivid, than any I’d had before;
and it seems I’m to be a father after all,
and with
Mary too.
This child of hers would become mine,
and through
me he too would become a son of David and an heir of Abraham.
Well, I’ve had worse dreams.
Despite it all, I still wanted Mary,
and an
early child in a marriage is no bad sign of blessings to come.
Not all families have straightforward stories,
and many
great men have had complicated origins.
After all, Plato, Alexander the Great,
Romulus,
and even Caesar Augustus
were all
said to have been conceived from the gods;
and within our own Hebrew Bible
we have the
stories of Sarah, Leah, Rebecca and Zipporah
each being visited by the Lord
before
conceiving their sons
Isaac,
Reuben, Jacob, Esau and Gershon.
Did I really believe the angel’s claim
that Mary’s
child was conceived of God?
Does it matter?
I just know that I heard the call of God
to be a
husband and a father,
and my
dream began to merge once again with my life.
A family, it occurred to me as I lay in my bed that night,
is
something called into existence by God,
not willed
into being by a man.
And I resolved that this son of mine,
for such
the angel had said he would be,
would be mine more truly
than if I
had made him myself.
I’m told that parents who adopt a child often feel this way,
as if the
act of choosing somehow matches
or even
exceeds the act of creating.
After all, are we not all God’s children,
chosen in
grace and adopted into love?
Is this not what it means to be part of God’s family,
God’s
chosen people?
One of the privileges of fatherhood is that of naming the
child,
and my
angel helped me here too,
echoing to
me words spoken in dreams to others.
You understand, I have made something of a study of these
things,
and
according to our traditions,
the Lord
came to Moses’ father in a dream, telling him that
‘this child… shall deliver the Hebrew race
from their bondage in
Egypt’ (Josephus, Ant, 2.215-16);
and similarly the great hero Samson’s birth
was
revealed by an angel in a dream,
telling his
mother that she would ‘conceive and bear
a son…
[and that] it is he who
shall deliver Israel
from the hand of the
Philistines’ (Judges 13.5).
So the angel in my dream told me
that my betrothed
would bear a son
who will
save his people from their sins (1.21),
and that I should call him Jesus,
after
Joshua of old who led the people of God after Moses,
into the
safety of the promised land.
I have to admit, at this point in the dream
I nearly
woke myself up.
I mean, taking on a child and a woman I love is one thing,
but
comparisons with Moses, Samson, and Joshua
are
something else altogether.
But the angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
This talk of salvation needed some explaining,
because the
Romans and the Greeks
had
already declared their gods of Asclepius and Zeus
to
be the saviours of the people,
and the
emperors of Rome
exercised
this salvation on their behalf.
Any suggestion of an alternative saviour
born from
among the Hebrew people
could
quickly become treasonous,
and no son of mine was going to face that fate
if I could
help it.
Enough with this angel and this dream,
it’s time
for some sober reality now in Joseph’s family.
Except the angel wouldn’t let me go,
and for a
time our spirits wrestled
as the angel sought to keep my dream alive
and I tried
to break free.
But then the angel spoke again,
this time
quoting from the book of the prophet Isaiah,
speaking words originally shaped for the evil King Ahaz of
Judah,
way back
before the Babylonians
laid waste
to Solomon’s temple (2 Kings 16.1-20),
at the time when the Assyrians
were
besieging the northern kingdoms of Israel.
Isaiah prophesied to Ahaz
that a
young woman was with child and would bear a son,
whose name
would be Immanuel,
and that this child would be a sign of either deliverance or
destruction,
before the
child reached maturity (Isa. 7.14-16).
God had offered Ahaz a possibility of deliverance,
and whilst
the child of promise had indeed been born to his wife,
his faith
had faltered and Judah and Jerusalem too had fallen.
The message to me was clear:
my child of
promise would succeed where Ahaz’s had failed,
and my task was to keep the faith,
to hold
onto the dream of a better future for God’s people.
What such a future might look like
not even I
can begin to imagine,
but I have
some convictions about what it won’t
be.
It seems to me that for too long
those
called and chosen by God to be part of God’s family
have lived
under a system of domination.
From Egypt to Assyria,
from
Babylon to Greece to Rome,
the world’s kingdoms have existed in opposition
to God’s
dream of people living in peace
and justice and righteousness.
And for too long,
God’s
people have resisted God’s dream of a better future,
being led astray by the competing dreams of power and
privilege,
that have
their origins in the nightmares of imperial aspiration.
So what did the angel mean
when they
said that my child would save God’s people from their sins?
This may be one of those things that, as Mary sometimes puts
it,
we just
need to treasure in our hearts.
But it seems to me that God’s salvation
must surely
look like an alternative empire,
a way of existing in the world
where the
dominating powers of Rome, Babylon, and Egypt
give up their claims on human lives,
and people
are freed to experience life in all its fullness.
But here, I’m dreaming again,
and how
this is related to my child, only time will tell.
But I can tell you, however,
that the
angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
I did as I had been asked,
and took
Mary as my wife, and Jesus as my child,
and we stayed in Bethlehem,
intending
to return to Nazareth in due course.
But then the system of domination flexed its muscles against
us,
as our own
king, the great Herod,
heard from travellers form the East
that a
child had been born
who embodied a new vision for what
God’s people could be,
a vision that threatened his
carefully negotiated power
as
a puppet king of Rome.
And so at the angel’s command,
and like my
namesake Joseph of old,
we set off for Egypt - of all places -
to escape
Herod’s murderous intent (2.13).
I heard later what Herod did to the babies of Bethlehem,
as he channelled
Pharaoh in destroying the children of the Israelites,
and my
heart breaks for those children and their parents (2.16).
Why did my angel not warn them too?
I have no answer,
just a hope
that in the salvation of our child
will come, as with Moses of old,
some
consolation for all those who mourn in Israel,
for Rachel who weeps for her
children (2.18).
Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt,
can our son
in some way also lead people
out from their
own imprisonment to forces of evil?
Is this what the angel meant
by saying
our child would save God’s people from their sins (1.21)?
I thought then that I had heard the last of my angel,
but to my
surprise one night I he came back to me in another dream,
telling me
that it was time to return to our homeland (2.19-20).
We set off, and trust me, it’s a long journey.
It didn’t
take us forty years like it did Moses
and the people of Israel after the
Exodus,
but it was
no easy thing to do.
As we neared Judah,
we heard
that Herod’s cruel son Archelaus had replaced his father,
having gone
to Rome to be confirmed as king in his place.
Did you know that a delegation of Jews went after Archelaus
to appeal
to the Emperor,
saying that
they did not want him as their ruler?
The angel came to me one final time, in another dream,
as we
journeyed up from Egypt.
The angel told me that we should avoid Judea and Jerusalem,
and so we
made our way north, to Nazareth in Galilee (2.22),
where we now live in peace with our wonderful child of
promise,
and our
other children too.
I haven’t had any more dreams with angels since those days:
maybe four
angelic visitations is enough for anyone,
even a
dreamer like me.
But I do still dream,
and I try
to encourage my child to dream too ,
to dream of a world where men like Pharaoh and Herod
no longer
control the lives of people,
where God’s family is a people where all are welcomed
and even
those born in disgrace are adopted in.
Together we dream of a future
where the
power of evil over people’s lives is broken,
and where
God’s purposes of liberation are accomplished.
This is my dream, of God with us,
and I
invite you to join us in dreaming it into existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment