Sermon - Trusting a Crazy Dream

Matthew 1:18-25
Trusting a Crazy Dream
James Sledge                                                                                     December 4, 2022

The Courageous Choice,
Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity,
A Sanctified Art LLC, sanctifiedart.org

Last Sunday we heard a bit of scripture that I’ve not ever heard read in Sunday worship, the genealogy from Matthew’s gospel. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar…” and on and on like this for forty-some generations. It’s a rather odd genealogy in that in contains women, Gentiles, foreigners, scoundrels, and others we might not expect to be highlighted in the genealogy of a Jewish king.

This genealogy, with prefaces our scripture for this morning, seems to serve several purposes. It establishes Jesus as a descendant of David and so someone who could sit on the throne of David. It also foreshadows the diverse, inclusive new community that Jesus comes to inaugurate. And finally, it marks Jesus as something startlingly new in the story of God’s salvation history, something very different from those who came before him.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way, opens today’s scripture. And coming immediately on the heels of that long genealogy where someone fathered somebody and he fathered someone else, this way marks a striking change. It is something miraculous and new, a fresh start, a new creation. But this all depends on Joseph, something Matthew highlights by telling us nothing about Jesus’ birth itself, rather telling us about what Joseph did before and after it.

As critical as Joseph is to the story, we know next to nothing about him. He is the main character in this story and one other in Matthew; he is mentioned briefly in Luke’s gospel, and then he simply disappears. He is absent in all the stories of Jesus as an adult, leading many to find credence in the legend that says Joseph was much older than Mary, and he had died long before Jesus began his ministry. There’s even some uncertainty about his profession. Many of us learned that he was a carpenter, and he well may have been, but there seems to be some confusion in the Bible over whether it is Joseph or Jesus who is the carpenter.

Nonetheless, this largely unknown Joseph takes center stage today, and he is introduced rather abruptly. When (Jesus’) mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. How Joseph learns this startling fact, we are not told. But it must have come as quite a jolt. Likely this was an arranged marriage as was typical in that day. Mary’s father had promised her to Joseph when she was just a child. But because she was not yet old enough, she still lived with her family. This “engagement” was different from engagements today. In the legal sense, they were married, and for the woman to become pregnant was an act of adultery which brought great dishonor on her husband and family. It was grounds for divorce and even possible execution.

Imagine how Joseph must have felt. His life has just been turned upside down. His plans for the future are crumbling around him. If he is an older man as some suppose, will this endanger his hopes of ever having a family? Not to mention the shame. If Joseph knows about Mary, others know, too. This kind of news gets around. 

And now we learn one of the few things we do know about Joseph. He was a righteous man. In Jewish thinking that means he is a law-abiding man. He knows and keeps the Law, Torah. But his following the Law is tinged with mercy. He will not seek to recover his honor by parading Mary in the town square, holding her up for ridicule and even possible stoning. No, he will let her off easy, quietly, and go home to lick his wounds.

Joseph lies down to go to sleep, wondering how things ever got so messed up. One minute he was just a decent working man hoping to have a little family. Now it had all come unraveled, and he had been powerless to stop it. This whole mess had simply happened to him. He had done nothing to cause it, done nothing to invite it. 

With all these thoughts bouncing around in his head, sleep is slow in coming. But finally fatigue overcomes his restless mind, and he drops off into a deep slumber. And he dreams. And what a dream it is. A messenger from God speaks to him, insisting that Mary’s pregnancy is not due to adultery on her part. This is God’s doing. And the dream gets even more outlandish. Joseph is to name this child, to legally claim him as his own, and he is to call him Jesus, the same name rendered Joshua in our Old Testament, a name based in the Hebrew word meaning to save, for this Jesus will save his people from their sins. Indeed this Jesus will be the one promised by prophets. He will be Emmanuel, God with us.

Joseph awoke with a start. He replayed the dream in his mind, seeking to take hold of it and remember it all before its wispy images faded from his memory. Take Mary as his wife? How could he? What sort of crazy idea was this? And to think that this all might be God’s doing. God was the one that had caused this mess? God was the one who had so thoroughly fouled up his life? Assuming he was crazy enough to live his life according to directions from a dream, why would he want to get involved in this mess? It was embarrassing enough as it was, but to go ahead and take Mary into his home. What would people say then?

What a crazy thing it would be for Joseph to turn his life upside down because of a dream. But that’s not the craziest thing in this story. To me the even more bizarre thing is that all God’s plans are riding on whether or not Joseph goes along with this crazy idea. If Joseph says, “No way!” then Mary’s baby won’t be a Son of Abraham, a son of David. He’ll just be the illegitimate child, assuming he is born at all. Mary’s parents might throw her out in shame. With no support, Mary’s child and Mary herself might die. And it all hinges on whether or not Joseph is crazy enough to trust a dream.

Come to think about it, the whole Christian enterprise is a little bit crazy. The power that Jesus will wield to defeat sin, a cross. Even crazier, Jesus’ work is then entrusted to his followers, to the church, to us. We are called to overcome the world, and our weapons are words, love, acts of kindness. The whole thing is crazy. The Apostle Paul calls it “foolishness.” He speaks of the foolishness of the cross and the foolishness of preaching. But Paul insists that God’s foolishness, God’s craziness, it wiser than anything we know.

In a crazy dream, Joseph is urged to trust that the mess his life has turned into is part of God’s future, a future bound up in the birth of a child, a future that will not come without Joseph doing his part. Joseph has no evidence of anything beyond a dream. How could God possibly risk everything on this? What if Joseph says, “No?” The whole thing seems more than a little crazy, more than a little foolish.

Even crazier, God calls us to continue the work that began with Joseph. Jesus insists that we are now his body, Emmanuel in the world. We are part of God’s future, a future that is in some way dependent on us. We are witness by our lives to a world, a new day that is not yet clearly visible. When we look at the mess of our world, all that is wrong and evil and broken, the notion that how we live, that what we say and do heralds a new future, seems more than a little crazy, more than a little foolish.

Today, those of you being confirmed take your place in that foolishness of God. As it has been for generations, God’s future is in some way dependent on you who make your professions of faith today. Just like Joseph, you are invited to trust yourselves to God’s crazy dream for a world made new, to take your place among the generations who keep the hope of that new world alive and vibrant.

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.  Crazy, absolutely crazy.  Thanks be to God!