Fourth Sunday of Advent - Year A
December 22, 2013
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 she had the same dream, and received the same reply.
On the third morning, the woman woke up, smiled at her husband and said: “I
just dreamed again that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you
think this dream means?” He just smiled back, saying: “You’ll know tonight.”
That evening, the man came home with a small package and presented it to her.
She opened it with delight and anticipation. Inside she found—a book! It’s title: The Meaning of Dreams.
Anticipation/expectation – they are certainly one of the
Advent themes leading us to our Christmas expectations as Christians: not only for the birth of the baby Jesus but also
for the second coming of Christ. BUT, in
a culture that has been anticipating Christmas since early fall – almost
exclusively for consumer exploitation, a culture that mostly skips the Advent
season – in such a culture I suspect most of us have also developed some very
earthly expectations, too: maybe about
gatherings of family and friends, travel, special meals or even gifts.
BUT, whether our expectations are formed
by our faith or our culture, they are often interrupted by UNexpected events or
circumstances. Most often those
unexpected things derail our plans—sometimes in dramatic ways and sometimes simply
causing frustration or disappointment (remember the woman who expected a pearl
necklace). When I had a minor collision
in my car this past week, my careful plans for the following few days of
Christmas preparations took a nosedive.
When my granddaughter learned that the baby whose upcoming arrival we
are all eagerly anticipating is breach, her plans for a normal delivery shifted
quickly. The unexpected is, in fact, part of life: the suddenly malfunctioning dishwasher or
clothes dryer, a slip on the ice and a broken bone, the possibilities are
endless, and we’ve all experienced some of them.
Another source of the UNexpected
comes in our dreams as our gospel lesson today illustrates. This particular reading is itself unexpected in
that Joseph – NOT Mary - is the main character on this 4th Sunday in
Advent. Matthew is the only gospel
writer to tell us much of anything about Joseph. For the most part, Joseph is - well, just
Joseph - Mary’s escort on the way to Bethlehem, her fiancé, and eventually Jesus’
step- father. But in today’s gospel
story Joseph is center stage, the main character. And we learn that Joseph’s expectations of
traditional engagement and marriage have been seriously disrupted by the fact
that his intended wife is not only UNexpectedly but mysteriously pregnant. Clearly this unexpected development is more
than just annoying or frustrating!
Pregnancies outside of marriage are not uncommon in our time. But in Joseph’s world, social convention and
norms dictated that a righteous man would publicly break his engagement to a
woman who became pregnant and by that action expose her to harsh criticism and
treatment that would make her – at best - a social outcast. In earlier times, Mary would, by law, have
faced stoning and death. But Joseph
demonstrates that he is not only a “righteous” man (as Matthew describes him),
but also a compassionate and caring one so he plans to “dismiss” Mary quietly in
order to avoid exposing her to public disgrace.
Joseph not only experiences an interruption of his expectations, he
responds in a culturally UNexpected way.
AND then -
Joseph has a dream. As we know from our
own experiences, dreams themselves are mostly UNexpected, and their substance
is often puzzling and even unsettling as Joseph’s must have been for him. Yet his response to the unexpected dream
reveals his faithfulness and openness to God’s direction. Joseph willingly trusts God’s instruction to
“not be afraid to take Mary as his wife” – even when that meant blatantly
rejecting the social expectations and demands of his time. Joseph was not only righteous and
compassionate and caring; Joseph was deeply faithful; he trusted God’s UNexpected
intervention in his life despite the challenges it created. Joseph’s trust and faithfulness model for us
– as people of faith – a way to consider our own life’s unexpected twists and
turns.
As we end the season of Advent and
live into Christmas, this reading about Joseph, including his dream and his
response to it, remind us of what we know but often ignore or forget (maybe
even doubt): God comes into the world
and into our lives – yours and mine (not just in someone else’s) at UNexpected
times and in UNexpected ways. We have NO
idea about all the possible ways and all the possible times – that is the
nature of the UNexpected. And, held
between God’s incarnation as the sweet baby Jesus and God’s second coming are
the minute-to-minute, day-to-day ways, the opportunities, to acknowledge and experience
God’s continuing incarnation in and among us now – if we can trust in
that UNexpected presence, live life
with expectation and awareness that God IS present in people, circumstances,
places even where we are most likely to assume God is NOT. Such trusting grows out of our faith –just
as Joseph’s trust in his dream as God’s communication came from his faith. Our challenge is to trust in God’s ongoing
and very REAL presence no matter how UNexpected or how simple. Example:
slow driver
So here’s the take-away from today’s
gospel: God will break into our lives, our world, ourselves but we may miss God’s presence because
it IS often UNexpected. Our job as
people of faith is to be like Joseph: to
trust, to be open, receptive to all the ways that God will be present, ways
that are most likely to be unusual, challenging (think Joseph’s dream), perhaps
even demanding AND God may arrive in very mundane and simple ways like that
driver I encountered. As the story I
told at the beginning today illustrates, we need to avoid expecting a necklace
so we can appreciate the book.
My prayer for each of us is that, during
the coming Christmas season (remember there are 12 days!), we will – grounded
in our faith - experience God with us in some new and UNexpected way. O come, O come, Emmanuel.
AMEN.
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