“Dreams of Christmas”

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 1: 18-25

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Advent 4A, December 22nd^th, 2013

  ""Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us. (Mat 1:23 NRS) …

It was a few days before Christmas.   A woman woke up one morning and told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" "Oh," her husband replied, "you'll know the day after tomorrow."

The next morning, she turned to her husband again and said the same thing, "I just dreamed again that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" And her husband said, "You'll know tomorrow."

On the third morning, the woman woke up and smiled at her husband, "I just dreamed once more that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" And he smiled back, "You'll know tonight."

That evening, the man came home with a small package and presented it to his wife. She was delighted. She opened it gently. And when she did, she found-a book! And the book's title was "The Meaning of Dreams."

It’s almost Christmas.  What have you been dreaming about?  (This story and the core of this sermon comes from Samuel Chandler, in Atlanta, GA, at www.day1.org).

WHAT ARE YOU DREAMING?

Some of us are dreaming about wonderful possibilities.  Maybe we’re dreaming of pearl necklaces and new bicycles.   You remember that great line from Clement Moore:  “The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.”   Or what about that classic Christmas song by Iriving Berlin, made famous by Bing Crosby: “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas”.  Or maybe it’s simply the dream of family coming home.  Whatever your dreams are this Christmas, I hope all those dreams come true!

But before those dreams become a reality, I want you to consider another kind of dream.  Most of our dreams are of two types.  Some of them are dreadful, like nightmares.  We dream of problems we can’t shake, monsters after us, falling or more specific for me; standing up and forgetting what I’m to say.  Some nights my wife wakes me as I wrestle like Jacob by the Jabbok, struggling with a bear, an angel, or maybe even with God.    At other times, dreams can be as refreshing and reviving.  We might dream of something delightful, like a dream of enemies becoming friends.   Some of us dream of flying through the air.  We might dream of being in heaven with family and friends. Maybe you dream of having all your bills paid.  I’m still dreaming of selling my house in Lenoir.  On long nights in winter we might find ourselves dreaming more, perhaps even dreaming like this great patriarch Joseph.

Back in December 2004, Time magazine published an intriguing cover article.  It’s wasn’t an article about the birth of Jesus. You normally expect articles like that this time of year.   But this magazine cover was not about that, but it was about sleep.  For all that we know about the world these days; all we know about the human body these days, and all we are learning about the brain, scientists still do not know the exact reason that we need sleep.  We know why we need food, shelter, and clothing; but we do not know why we need sleep.   When we sleep we often dream, then we wake suddenly, and reality itself seems like a different world.  Why do we need sleep?   We may need sleep because we need to dream.

The Scripture from the gospel today is about a dream.  The dream of Joseph. It’s not Mary's dream, but it’s Joseph's dream.  In fact, the story of the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary appears in only one gospel, the gospel of Luke.   In two other gospels, Mark and John, there is no account whatsoever of the physical birth of Jesus.  We have four gospels, and they differ dramatically in how they tell the story of the birth of Jesus. In Matthew's gospel, the angel appears not to Mary at all, but to Joseph.  I guess you could call Matthew, the story from Joseph’s perspective, and in Luke the story is from Mary’s.

WHAT JOSEPH DREAMED

It is Matthew's gospel that we read this year (Matthew 1:18-25).  It is Joseph we hear of today. Consider his point of view.

Joseph dreamed something wonderful. It was astounding.  Joseph dreamed that God was about to enter the world in a visible and detectable way.  God would be born in the world as a child to his wife.   It sounded crazy, and it was just as crazy to understand.  In order to understand, Joseph had some serious trusting in God to do!  But Joseph had to trust someone else, too. Joseph had to trust Mary.

I know Mary was his wife, and surely Joseph must have loved Mary.  But, still, this took a lot of trust!  As our text says, at least at first, Joseph “planned to dismiss her privately” (1:19), but he didn’t.   How Joseph learned to trust God is why his dream is so important.   Joseph learned through his dream to trust God as he learned what it meant to dream of the salvation of the world.   And for Joseph, the way of salvation began with trusting someone else besides himself.  True salvation could only come through someone else.

That is a valuable lesson for us, too.  Like Joseph, sometimes, the best we can do is to trust God and then get out of the way.  Trust is the belief that God is working in our world.   Trust can be that God is working through our wife, or our husband, or our children, and then, our task is to get out of the way.   This is what believing the dream is about.  It is mostly trusting and then getting ourselves out of the way.

A recurring question about God often comes to surface this time of year: Why doesn't God speak to us directly?   Wouldn't it be great if an angel appeared again?   Like the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary?  That’s a good question to put to faith isn’t it?   Just imagine young Mary, minding her own business, suddenly being overcome with news of a great conception, overwhelmed with the presence of God. It's really something to have an angel speak to you.  Even folks who are not religious might turn their heads.  Recently, I saw an image of a rescue helicopter flying someone to safety and the caption underneath read: “Angel’s Among Us!”  That’s one way of seeing and believing in angels today.   The word angel means ‘messenger’.   Certainly, if you were the one being rescued that helicopter would be like a messenger from God.   But wouldn't it be great to know that such a revelation of God’s angel might happen again?  The reply to that kind of question is: Well, you know what? It did happen again.  The angel did appear to someone besides Mary.  The story is recorded right in the Bible. The angel appeared not just to Mary, but the angel appeared to Joseph.  It wasn’t just a woman who got the first news about Christmas, but it was also a man.  Now, there’s a miracle in this somewhere.

Too often we forget about poor Joseph. Every year, we tend to focus on the story of Mary. But this year, it's Joseph’s turn.  This is the year to visualize, to understand and to believe in Christmas in a whole new way.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THE DREAM OF GOD WITH US?

What are we supposed to believe about Christmas this year?   We are to believe that if the angel can appear to Mary, the angel could also appear to Joseph.  In the Bible, the annunciation (the announcement of Jesus’ birth even has its own vocabulary) does not occur only once, but twice.   It does not only occur just to a woman, but also to a man.   But the most wonderful part of this story is that it is not just a story for them, but it’s also a story meant for us.   In the Bible, the most implicit message is that “God is with us” not just once, but that he is with us still.    God is not just part of our history, but God is present.  Christmas is the message that God has appeared over and over again to various sorts of folks; and that God is still with us, too.  Matthew and Luke both have it right, but they are different stories.  God continues to come into the world, but we too have different stories.  In order to know that God is with us today, we have to learn to trust other stories.  We have to learn to listen to and trust stories besides our own. 

Back in October, I spent some vacation time in Charleston, South Carolina.  Teresa and I have always loved that town.  We spent our Honeymoon there.  There is so much history there.   It is a romantic town mostly because it’s also a town that remembers and doesn’t easily forget.   Walk the streets of Charleston and you’ll remember part of the story of our own world that hasn’t fully left us---the story of the old and antebellum South.   I am only able to go and stay in the heart of Charleston these days, because I have a friend who lives there.   She owns one of those unbelievable historic mansions right on the south battery.  It was a house build in 1782 by Colonel John Ashe, a man who ran the shipping industry in that day.   

I came to know the current owners of that home, when Debbie’s Father was dying.  He was Garson Rice, the founder of Rice Toyota in Greensboro.  Garson was attending the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, but in his heart, he was still a Baptist.   At the request of the family, I visited Garson, became friends with the family, and ended up conducting the funeral for both of Debbie’s parents.  I remain friends with the family still today. 

Upon our last visit, Debbie reminds me of the final moments with her mother.  I was came in the home moments after her Father died, but I was there, at the hospital moments before her mother died.  When I came into the room, Debbie’s mother was looking up toward me, but beyond me, and saying, “Oh what a beautiful face she has!”  Teresa had not yet entered the room.   “Who do you see mother?”  Who did she see in the last moments?  Debbie insists that it was God in that room.  I’m inclined to believe her.  Since Christmas, we can know that God is never far away.   God is always with us.

When my neighbor Hazel died, my Father had only recently died too.  Hazel had cancer long before my Father.  Daddy had visited Hazel many times.  He had prayed for her.  He had prayed with her.  He suddenly got cancer and left us before Hazel did.   But when Hazel was dying, she too saw something.  It was someone.  She says she saw my Father welcoming her.  She raised up her arms.  She was being carried into heaven.  It was my Father who was carrying her.   God was with her and he was with her through my Father. 

I don’t know who you are trusting, what you believe in or what you are dreaming of this Christmas.  I certainly hope that you aren’t thinking too much about death, dying, or being received by angels.  In the Tomlin family, we’ve often had to think about death around Christmas.  My Grandmother, several uncles and my Father all died in early December, just before Christmas.  As a Tomlin, I can’t get through Christmas without having to think about this.   But it’s not all bad.  I’ve learned that when I think about death I also get to think about life.  Because you see, for me Christmas is the time I realize once again that, no matter what happens, what I’m going through, or what we are going through, God is still with us.   This is the best Christmas ‘present’ I dream of or always give myself this time of year.   I give myself the gift of God’s presence. 

So, I don’t want to ask you, “What are you getting this year”, but what are you giving?  What are you giving yourself for Christmas this year?  We all want something wonderful, I am sure. But what are you giving to yourself for Christmas that no one else can give you?  What are you giving yourself that really, you can’t give yourself, except that you have to give it to yourself as a gift of faith?

CAN YOU BELIEVE IN THE DREAM OF LOVE?

The greatest gift you can give is to believe.   I’m not talking about believing in your own dreams, but I’m speaking of giving the gift of believing in someone else’s dream.   That might be as close as some of you will ever be to the real Christmas.   When you believe in the dream of someone else, you get really close to Christmas.   When you believe in the dream of someone else, you are right up next to believing and trusting God with everything.   This is what Joseph did.  We know little about him, but the great gift that Joseph gives us is the gift of belief.   Joseph gave himself to believe in someone else’s dreams.

Most of us, as parents, will recall our best Christmas, not only when we received gifts as children, but when stayed up late to prepare and give gifts to our children.   We believed in someone else’s dreams.  As lovers, we will remember most, not the Christmas we spent alone, but the first Christmas we spent together, with the one we loved, learning to believe in someone’s else’s dreams.  Those of us who are Christians, not just playing Christian, but really, sharing and giving Christians, will also remember some of our best Christmases, not when we focused on what we were getting, but what we were giving to some family, some person, or some stranger in need.   We learned that Christmas comes again and again, as we learn to believe in someone else’s dream. 

The greatest gift is the gift of faith, and the greatest gift of faith not to believe in your own dreams, but to believe in the dreams of someone else.   And the greatest faith we can ever have is to believe in God’s dream.   This is what gave faith to Joseph and to Mary.   They both surrendered themselves to the believing in the dream of God, and this is when Christmas came.  

What will you find yourself believing this Christmas?   The greatest gift you can have is the gift you can give and it is the gift of having faith, not just in yourself, but in someone else.   Believe not just in your dream, but learn to believe in their dreams.   Learn to believe in the dreams of the persons you love.  Learn to believe in dream of your husband. Believe in the dream of your wife. Believe in the dreams of your children.  But also learn to believe in the dream of the strangers too.  Learn to believe in the dream of your hero, your leader, your friends—both new and old. Believe in their dreams!   And when you do this, just maybe, you will get a glimpse of the dream of God for them, as it is also a dream for you!

God works through relationships. God worked through both Mary and Joseph.   We need both Luke's story of the annunciation and Matthew's story of Joseph's dream. They are miracle stories.   They are stories about the miracle of the dream, the dream that came true.  God worked through a young and wonderful woman, and God worked through the husband that believed in her.  That kind of miracle could and should occur again and again.   Believe in the dreams of the person you love. Believe in dreams of love this Christmas, and if you will believe, not you and Jesus will be born again.  Believe in dreams this Christmas, and God will appear.

One more thing:  Sleep comfortably this season, as we get near Christmas.  I know some folks do not sleep too well this time of year.   Children are excited---too excited.   Parents have too much worry.  Most of us have too much food and drink.   So, remember how the writer Rabelais joked, saying, "I never sleep comfortably except when I am at a sermon."  I hope you get or got some sleep.  But the reason we sleep is to dream. The reason we dream is to learn to believe.  The reason come together is so we will believe in our dreams; so that we will learn to believe in the greatest dream of all, which began and ends with God.  Amen.