This year, in Advent and Christmas, we are doing things a little bit differently - instead of a more traditional "sermon," each week our reflection is going to take the form of story-telling, told from the perspective of someone who was waiting for Jesus.
Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday December 19, 2021 – 4th Sunday of Advent
Scripture Reading: Matthew 1:18-25
I have always been a dreamer. Even though I can trace my family tree back to Judah, the son of Jacob, everyone always told me that I was more like Judah’s brother Joseph – the dreamer. I was named after that Joseph… maybe there is something to be said for the power of a name!
I have always been a dreamer. I spend my days working as a carpenter – working with my hands on the stones and the wood – but even as my hands work, my imagination wanders far away from the place where my hands were working.
I dream of many things as I work.
I imagine the stories of our ancestors, as if they were really happening – the story of Joseph, my namesake, and how he ended up as a slave in Egypt who rose to power, and the story of how he rescued Judah, my ancestor, and the rest of their family when a time of famine came.
I dream of the story of Moses, and how Moses encountered God-whose-name-is-holy in the middle of the desert, speaking to him out of a burning bush, and how God-whose-name-is-holy told Moses to take off his shoes since he was standing on holy ground, and how God-whose-name-is-holy told Moses that he would be the one to deliver the people from slavery.
I also dream of more practical things too. I used to dream about how some day I would have a family of my own, and how I would love them, and how I would provide from them by the work of my hands.
And then one day, that dream seemed to be coming true. My parents came to me, and told me that they had made arrangements with Mary’s parents, and that Mary and I were going to be married.
I didn’t know Mary very well, but I knew who she was. I had seen her at the synagogue, listening carefully to the rabbi tell stories. I had seen her slipping away from her mother to wander across the fields. I suspected that she might be a bit of a dreamer, just like me, and I trusted our parents when they said that they thought that we would be a good match. And so I agreed to the engagement.
But it was only a few weeks after that, when Mary’s parents came to my parents with the news. Somehow Mary had fallen pregnant. We hadn’t even had a chance to be alone together, so I knew that the baby couldn’t be mine. She had told them some story about how an angel told her that it was God’s child, but we all knew that she tended to wander the hillside alone, so who knows what had befallen her on one of those wanderings.
My parents and I agreed that it was best to end the engagement. We didn’t want to entangle our family with a family like that.
But I told you that I’m a dreamer, didn’t I? Most nights, I dream ordinary dreams just like you or anyone else. But occasionally – very occasionally – I have a dream that I know is different. These dreams feel more real than the real world around me.
And just a few nights after we got the news about Mary, I had one of those dreams. In that dream, an angel appeared to me, but I can’t describe for you what the angel looked like. I couldn’t see the angel because my eyes were completely dazzled by the light that surrounded the angel. But I heard the angel say to me that we weren’t to break the engagement. I was to take Mary as my wife, and raise the child that she was going to birth as if he was my own son. I had been chosen the be the father of the son of God-whose-name-is-holy.
When I woke from that dream, I knew what I had to do. I was being called to care for Mary, so that she could do what God-whose-name-is-holy was calling her to do. It was hard to convince my parents – they don’t understand my dreams – but in the end they saw that I wasn’t going to be swayed.
Over the months that followed, Mary and I got to know each other better. She started spending her days in my workshop watching me work with the wood and the stone, and when she went away to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, I was surprised at how much I missed her. The duty that the angel had given me to love and care for her had started to become something deeper.
The months passed, and then we had to travel to Bethlehem for the census. I didn’t know how Mary was going to make it, with her belly grown so large, but she is so much stronger than she might appear. And there, on that dark night, the baby came.
I can’t describe how I felt. I went running to fetch a midwife, and it took me longer than I could have imagined, in that unfamiliar city. As I heard Mary’s cries, I fully realized how much I had come to love her, and I didn’t know what I would do if I lost her. There was so much crying, and so much blood, but then it was all over.
Mary was safe, and the baby was safe. The midwife cleaned him off, and Mary nursed him, and he fell asleep.
Later, that dark night, when the baby began to fuss, I got up to fetch him from the manger where he was lying and bring him to Mary.
And when I bent over and looked into his eyes, there in the darkened room, I saw that same dazzling light that had surrounded the angel there in the eyes of that baby. And I knew that I would do anything I could to protect him forever and ever.
(I tried really hard to find the creator of this image, without success.
I love how it portrays the reality of the exhaustion that this new family
must have felt that night. Thank you, anonymous creator!
And if anyone knows who the creator is, please let me know in the
comments so that I can credit them.)
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