Follow Your Dream

Follow Your Dream Matthew 1:18-25

I have a small collection of cartoon books in my office, one of which is titled “Just a Simple Country Preacher.” It is a collection of strips drawn by Doug Marlette that include the “wit and wisdom of Reverend Will B. Dunn.” The Rev. Will B. Dunn is a man with a vision, but unfortunately that vision rarely has anything to do with the gospel he is called to preach. Mostly, his visions and dreams are about money – and specifically, getting more money. He writes an advice column for the local newspaper for the check. He has a religious television program where he invites people to make a pledge by calling the “gimme phone.” He started a ministry to the fabulously well-to-do in the hopes of taking advantage of their hot tubs and catered meals.

The Rev. Will B. Dunn also has a recurring dream that he shares with his congregation. The particulars may vary, but the message is always the same. For example, he shared this vision one Sunday: “Friends and neighbors, last night I had a vision – a vision in which a young man in a turquoise jump suit with sprayed hair just like Glen Campbell’s appeared unto me, and he whispered these very words to me: ‘Preacher, I have an important message for you and your congregation!’ And suddenly there was a clap of thunder and a brilliant flash of light and the clouds opened up and a multitude of snow white doves descended from on high, and they were carrying an orange Day-Glo banner with these words emblazoned in Old English script ten stories high: ‘Reverend Will B. Dunn deserves a raise!” After an empty and silent panel, the strip ends with Rev. Dunn saying, “I guess you had to be there.”

In First Samuel, it is stated that in those days visions were rare, which is why Eli wasn’t ready when the boy Samuel had a vision. After the last of the prophets, there was a gap of 400 years without a vision from God – and the people were OK with that. There was an assumption, an understanding, that God was not a chatty sort of God. The God of the Hebrews probably wouldn’t be on “Panim-Sefer” – which roughly translates as “Facebook.” So it is kind of surprising how calmly Joseph deals with being visited by an angel in a dream, and how he accepted that this was a legitimate vision from God.

Today, however, many people have dreams. Many people have visions. We believe very strongly in the admonition of Proverbs 29, that without a vision the people perish. Many people dream of a preferred future where they are thinner, stronger, richer, happier, and more honored. They dream of a time when everyone else agrees with what they want, and provides them with what they need. And they dream of a god who supports them and blesses them in their desire for this future. Many people take as the gospel Walt Disney’s quote that “if you can dream it, you can do it.”

The problem with dreaming and visions comes when we assume that our every dream and our every vision is surely a sign from God. John Wesley called this the sin of enthusiasm. He wrote “Give no place to a heated imagination. Do not ascribe to God what is not of God. Do not easily suppose dreams, voices, impressions, visions, or revelations to be from God, without evidence.”

Wesley wrote that we are guilty of enthusiasm when we are “expecting the end without the means – the expecting knowledge, for instance, without searching the Scripture and consulting with the children of God; the expecting spiritual strength without constant prayer; the expecting growth in grace without steady watchfulness and deep self-examination; the expecting any blessing without hearing the Word of God at every opportunity.” Wesley continued that we are to test the spirits, as advised for us in I John 4. So, how do we know that the dream of Joseph is a dream that comes from God? What is the test that separates what Joseph experienced from what the Rev. Will B. Dunn experienced? This is an important question for us to ask, because it is in this dream that revelation and resolution come together in God’s will.

The prophet Joel (2:28) reports a proverb that captured a basic Mediterranean belief: “Old men dream dreams, young men see visions.” This proverb was used by Peter in his sermon immediately after the people had received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, recorded in Acts 2. And within this is a distinction that will help us understand how we are to test a dream from God.

Joseph had a dream, which makes him an old man. All that really meant then is that he was at least 30 years old. But that is an old age, when you consider that a young boy becomes a man at his bar mitzvah at age 13. It meant for an observant Jew at least 17 years of duties “between man and God”, duties such as prayer and religious observances governing food, clothing, Sabbaths, festivals, and fasts. It meant for an observant Jew at least 17 years of duties “between man and man”, duties such as honesty, truth, justice and peace.

For Joseph, the time for visions is past because, after all of these years, the vision is fully formed. Life as one of the Chosen is clearly defined, clearly seen after having spent more than half of his life engaged in daily prayer, daily reflection on what it means to be faithful in practice, and daily interaction with others who have accepted the vision that they are the Chosen of God. The test is in how the dream advances the vision: does it draw us closer to God and our neighbors, or away from God and our neighbors?

So Joseph has the tools and the experience to test this dream of an angel coming to him. In this dream there is a revelation – the child is from God in a way that is consistent with the prophecy of Isaiah, which Joseph would have heard read in the synagogue many times before. In this dream there is a resolution – Joseph must be resolved to accept this child as his own, to name the child, to raise the child, and to protect this child, or the prophecy of his bringing salvation to the people will not be fulfilled.

From our vantage point today, we know the right thing to do is to take Mary as his wife and to raise Jesus as his son, but this would not have been the obvious choice then. It would not have been the safe choice, or even the legal choice. If anything, this was the hardest choice for Joseph to accept and make.

The law was clear. If an engaged woman became pregnant by being attacked by a man in the city, both were to be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. If it happened in a field where no one could hear the woman cry out for help, then the man was to be brought to the city gates and stoned to death, while the woman was spared.

The purpose of these deaths was to “drive the evil” out of the community. If Joseph says anything about Mary being pregnant, an investigation will be launched and someone will be arrested. If someone is arrested, then that someone, and perhaps Mary as well, will be put to death. If no one can be found as the attacker, the suspicion falls on Joseph himself and he would be the one killed.

In the dream, Joseph is told that the father is not a man who can be stoned to death, but instead God. There is no one to arrest; no one to stone. There is a revelation, and there is a resolution.

But just because this dream solves a problem for Joseph doesn’t make it any easier to accept. John Shea has written about Joseph’s hesitancy to take Mary into his home. “This foreshadows the tension of all who will be drawn to Jesus. Is he a scandal to be rejected, or a manifestation of the Spirit to be welcomed?”

This is still the choice before us – do we accept that Jesus is the son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, or was he an accident, and a tragedy, and a scandal that must be dealt with quietly? Is Jesus nothing more than someone who overcame the sins of his parents to find some success as a local rabbi before being killed, or is he the one sent in fulfillment of God’s promise to save us from sin and death?

In this dream, Joseph is told the name of the child – Jesus, which means “God saves.” Joseph has tested the dream, and it leads us closer to God. We know that he believes because when Joseph gives the name to the child, it is a declaration to the community that this is my child, the one for whom I am responsible. I will raise him as my own because, in my heart, he is my own.

It is important that we test our dreams against the vision of God. When the prophet declared that the promised child would be named Emmanuel, which means “God is with us,” we should also hear “this God is with us.” This God who is revealed in our scriptures is the God who is with us.

The qualifier "This" is significant for us. During World War II, the regional police of Germany were combined into a country-wide force, who were given a buckle like that of many German soldiers. That buckle retained the inscription, "Gott mit uns" (God with us), but below the inscription was an image of an eagle grasping the Nazi swastika.

These two symbols, taken together, were a potent sign of the god of the Nazis—a god who loved only Aryans and Christians submissive to the Führer; a god who hated, persecuted and sought the deaths of Jews, non-submissive Roman Catholics and Protestants, the Roma, homosexuals, and persons with any sort of handicap, deformity, or mental illness. The god created in their own image was a god of endless war, a god of hate and oppression.

I think that when people say they do not believe in God, this is a big reason why. Over the centuries, people have had dreams of their basest desires and then called it “god,” in order to oppress and control others who were not like them. People of sincerity and integrity don’t want to believe in God, if God is nothing more than a person’s base desires inflated into a deity.

I also think that this is why many people say they do believe in God. They have made their own little god, based on their own little dreams and visions of what they want out of this life. But the god they believe in is not this God, our God of the scriptures, our God revealed in Jesus Christ.

And this is why it is never enough for any of us to simply say that we believe in God. We are instead called like Joseph to confess that this God is with us. Our faith does not let us rest with a god we make for ourselves. Instead, we confess a very different God, the one who made us. This is the One who has come to us in Jesus, who abides with us in the Holy Spirit, and who will come again to make all things new. This God, and no other, is with us.

This God is with us—the One who speaks to us by whatever means available to show us the next step. This God is with us, the One invites a respectable man to receive a child not his as his own, and the child’s pregnant mother as his spouse. This God is with us, the One who chose to become vulnerable to the decision of a man thus placed in a difficult predicament. This God is one who trusted Joseph to choose love and life over honor. It is this God whose coming we celebrate in this season. And we are asked again, in the dream of this season, if we will take Jesus as our own. The dream has been tested and found true to the vision received in our scriptures – it is up to us now to decide if we will follow this God, who comes to us in Jesus Christ.

Our next hymn has Mary asking Joseph to make that choice, and in the second verse Joseph gives his answer. If you have given your answer, I invite you to sing that verse. But if you are ready to give your answer now, I invite you to come to the chancel rail and accept this God into your heart today.

Faith We Sing 2009 “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine”