Advent 4

Advent 4
December 19, 2010
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we light our 4th candle and we remember the angels—God’s messengers of peace and good news. And on this last Sunday of Advent, I invite you to once again take a few moments of silence and get in touch with your longing. Close your eyes for these moments of silence, if you would like, and ask yourself, “For what do I long?”
Our gospel reading from Matthew today gives voice to one of the longings of our hearts. We long for dreams, for vision and the promise of God.
Our reading for today is one in a series of 4 dreams in Matthew that are all key components to Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus’s birth, and these 4 dreams are central to the very survival of the baby Jesus. After today’s dream, Joseph is visited by the angel in his dreams twice more as he is warned to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt when Herod orders the slaughter of all the young male Hebrew children and then told that it is safe to return from Egypt. (The other dream in Matthew is when an angel comes to the wise men and tells them to avoid Herod on their way out of town, as he is desperate for information on Jesus’s whereabouts so he may eliminate him.)
In today’s dream, Joseph has discovered that Mary is with child and has seemingly broken both cultural expectations and the betrothal covenant. Being a kind, righteous man, Joseph forms a plan to divorce Mary, which is the culturally expected thing to do in such a situation, but he plans to do it quietly so to minimize the harm it may cause her. As far as plans go, it is a reasonable plan.
But then the angel comes to Joseph in his dream and explains to Joseph what is going on. The angel, God’s messenger, gives Joseph a glimpse of God’s vision—that the child that Mary shall bear will be “Emmanuel—God with us.” And the angel gives Joseph a new plan to follow: to take Mary as his wife and name the child, thus recognizing him as Joseph’s own son.
It is when Joseph wakes up that I think the truly remarkable happens. When Joseph awakens, he has a choice. He can follow his own carefully laid out plan that fits in with his culture’s expectations. Or he can follow the dream of God, the vision, the promise of God with us.
Like Joseph, we long for the dream of God, for tangible glimpses of God’s vision, God’s promise of God with us.
We long for surety, for answers about many things, including which direction to follow in life to be the people God calls us to be, and we make our own plans as to how to achieve that. We live within our own culture’s expectations, and we live our lives the best we can when often the way before us seems murky and even dark. And what we wouldn’t give sometimes for an angel in a dream telling us clearly what to do, for just a glimpse of the vision of God to help us on our path.
This season we remember and celebrate that God is with us. And I wonder how often in our lives this God-with-us offers us God’s messengers, the dreams and the visions for which we long, but we cannot recognize these glimpses of God’s dream, we cannot heed them, cannot follow because we are too attached to our own plans, our own or our culture’s expectations?
Today we give thanks for Joseph, a righteous man who was not afraid to put aside his own plans to follow God’s dream and whose courageous choice opened the way for the gift of God with us.