As Christmas approaches, what are you dreaming of?
I remember two young boys a few years ago in Pottstown. They were dreaming of having bikes. You can understand that can’t you? It is hard to be young and restless and full of energy and not have wheels. So much can happen on the seat of a bike: great escapes can be made, heroic charges can be mounted, finish lines crossed, records broken, dreams dreamed. But two Christmases came and went – and there were no bikes under the Christmas tree.
Not that their mother had not tried. But there was only so much money and as a single parent she was struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. But that year there would be two bikes under the tree – thanks to a neighbor and that neighbor’s church. That neighbor did not have much either – but she did have a church and the Deacons at the church gave her a gift card. And although there were clothes and other non-luxury items she would like to have been able to purchase with that gift card, she knew what she needed to do with it. She went next door to her friend, the mother of the two boys and said, “Come on, we’re going shopping.” When they got to the store, she led her puzzled neighbor to the sports department and said, “Go ahead and pick out two bikes for your boys.” When she later told Kerry about that moment in the store, her eyes sparkled and she broke into the biggest grin: “I can’t wait to see those boys when they find those bikes under the tree,” she told her.[i]
Making Christmas dreams come true: it feels so good, we are willing to pay almost any price to do it. Like that woman’s face, life sparkles when we play a part in making dreams come true. As the French philosopher Albert Camus once said “Happy are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.”
What are you dreaming of these days? Along the way, many of us have stopped dreaming. We grow older and dreams of bikes under Christmas trees can seem too petty, but we do not always replace them with new, bigger dreams. Or we do have big dreams, but we don’t know how to reach them. They seem too far off, too unattainable, or too expensive. Sometimes we think getting older means being more practical and giving up dreams. But doing that can be sad and unsatisfying. I remember the college student who came home one Christmas, worn down by the semester ending exams and discouraged because she didn’t have much money to get gifts for her family. She asked, “Will I ever be swept away by Christmas again? Will I ever get that overwhelming feeling?”
Dreams can be costly. But losing our dreams or having no dreams at all, can be costlier still. As Proverbs says, “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Joseph has some dreams. He is engaged to Mary and they are to begin a new life together sometime in the future. A life with companionship; they will not be alone. And life with children – “blessed is the father with many children,” the psalmist declares.
But now Mary has killed that dream. Mary has told him that she is expecting a child. Joseph, knowing the Torah, feels that he has no choice but to put her aside. He is gentle and cares about Mary, so he will not do it publicly. But to be righteous, he believes, he must give up on his dream. The poet says, “if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly…when dreams go, Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.” (Langston Hughes) Joseph’s life seems frozen with snow.
But Joseph is not the only ones with dreams. God is a dreamer too. God has a dream, as the prophets tell us, a dream that nations shall beat their weapons into farming tools, and every man, woman, and child shall sit in the shade of their own shelter. God has a dream, as Mary sings in Luke 1, that things will be set right: the tyrants will be brought down from their thrones, the lowly will be lifted up, and the hungry will be filled with good things. God dreams of a time when God’s people are set free from their sins, hearts are renewed, and the whole creation is redeemed.
This is God’s dream. And, as the manger and cross show, God is willing to pay any price to make it come true. And God will make it true. Did you notice that the verbs in Mary’s song in Luke 1 are in the present tense – not future tense? God’s dream springs into action with the announcement of the upcoming arrival of the Messiah.
But God needs help. Or perhaps worded better, God chooses to need help. God cannot fully be “Emmanuel,” that is, “with-us-God,” without taking on flesh. God cannot take on flesh without entering and growing in Mary. And God cannot take on flesh and grow into adulthood in first century Palestine without a man’s protection, a man who will provide shelter for Mary and the child. God cannot be the promised descendant of David without being adopted by Joseph and claimed as his son. Just as God came to Mary in an angel to let her know of her role in God’s dream, God now comes to Joseph in a dream. God needs Joseph to make God’s dream come true.
Perhaps of all of the wonders of Christmas and the incarnation, this is the greatest: God is risking God’s dream on two young, unknown peasants and a helpless baby. And like Mary, Joseph is given a choice by God: Joseph can say, “No way.” Joseph doesn’t have to change his plans to put Mary aside and divorce her.
Throughout the Bible, God chooses to work in and through imperfect human beings to make God’s dreams come true. As the British theologian Austin Farrar once put it, God works in the world through the combination of divine will and human will. Both wills are needed. God needs righteous people, people who want more than anything what God wants. God needs Joseph to make God’s dream come true.
This dream that God shares with Joseph is far more than the romantic dream of a couple living “happily ever after.” This dream is not just about Joseph and Mary and their children. Not just about the people of Israel. No, this is a HUGE dream for all of the people, all of the time. “I am coming to you! To show you like never before my love that can save you and make things on earth the way I mean them to be!” As someone has written, “you can almost see the grin of God arcing across the heavens, and the sparkle in God’s eyes.”
Then, from this huge Dream for all people, God takes a piece and offers it to Joseph. As is always the case, the piece of the dream that God gives Joseph is a good fit. It fits the desires of Joseph’s own heart: to wed Mary, to build a life with her, and to care for the children that will come.
And, God has already prepared Joseph. In these few verses, we are given a picture of Joseph: that he is a righteous man who seeks to do God’s will and please God. That he is a compassionate and kind man. And by the end, that he is a man who listens to God, who is willing to change course when asked by God to do so, and who is courageous. As he will need to be, to raise Jesus in a world that doesn’t always welcome the light of God. There will be trouble – but God will provide resources, the help Joseph needs to do God’s will and bring God’s dream into being.
God gives Joseph. And, Joseph says “yes” to God. Matthew tells us: “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took Mary as his wife.”
As Tom Long put it in his commentary on this passage, what Joseph learned in his dream, what he models for us now, is “that being truly righteous does not mean looking up a rule in a book and then doing the ‘right thing.’ It means…listening for the voice of God and then doing God’s thing…Being righteous is never simply being pure and good in the abstract; genuine righteousness is always joining with God to do God’s work in the world.”[ii]
This is the way God unfolds God’s great dream for the world: God breaks off pieces of it and hands them out to people who are seeking to do what God wants them to do, people who have been prepared by God to do what God wants them to do. A couple goes to Malawi and comes back with a dream of lifting up those pulled down by extreme poverty and so they start Villages in Partnership. A guidance counselor reaches out to her church to respond to the hunger in her students and so food is now regularly provided to food insecure children on weekends. Members from various organizations in Allentown meet because they see a need for a shelter for homeless guests during the cold of winter, and so the Warming Station at the Y is started to provide shelter.
Sometimes the pieces of the dream may be big; and sometimes they may be smaller. As with the two bikes under the tree. Or, the widow who invites other widows to join her so they can support each other as they navigate life after losing their husbands. Or, the neighbor who offers to watch her neighbor’s children on snow days and school holidays so that her single parent neighbor doesn’t have to give up valuable vacation days to be home with her children. Or, the man who works to be sure that new refugees have basic computers to help them as they settle in their new country.
Big or small, pieces of the Dream come to us in a variety of ways. Sometimes it may be through a dream, as with Joseph. Sometimes it may be in the thought that strikes us in the middle of the night when we are wide awake. Sometimes, words of God’s dream in the Scriptures speak to us. Sometimes it is the invitation of a friend to join her in a project that is being launched or to serve on the board of a community organization. And sometimes, the plight of a friend or even stranger will be a portal to seeing a larger issue or need that we had never noticed before.
However God shares that piece of the Dream with us, we can be assured that we have been prepared by God and that we will be given the resources we need somehow, someway to do what God is calling us to do.
God planted a piece of the Dream in Wangari Maathai. As a child growing up in Kenya, she saw her native land being raped of its forests and trees. Over time, as the land’s resources were stripped, more and more areas were turning into desert. There was less land to farm, fewer trees for firewood and shelter, less nutritious food to feed he children. But she was one poor woman. What could she do?
God gave Wangari an image: men, women, and children sitting under their own vines and fig trees. She heard in that a call: a call to work with others to produce sustainable wood for fuel use and to combat soil erosion. She began to plant trees in her back garden. She encouraged other women to plant a tree every time every time they had something to celebrate: a child being born; a birthday or anniversary, a sickness overcome. And the women did.
Believe it or not, such a simple idea was not always welcomed by the rich and powerful who had a financial interest in seeing the land stripped of its trees. At one point, she was beaten, pistol-whipped, and imprisoned. She sustained head injuries. But she persisted because God had planted a dream in her heart. And she was willing to pay the price to make it come true. And God provided the resources she and the other women needed to make that dream become a reality.
From a rural village in Kenya, a movement started, the Greenbelt movement – and over time it has spread across Kenya, into Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. In 30 years, an estimated 30 million trees were planted. There was more wood for shelter and fuel, and water may be boiled clean; soil erosion has slowed down; and arable land increased. In 2004, Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize.
All around us, big and small pieces of God’s dream are being shared with righteous people whose hearts seek to do God’s will. And through them, with God’s help, bits and pieces of God’s dream become reality.
Not everyone gets to see the dreams fulfilled. Joseph would not live long enough to witness Jesus’ full ministry, nor his death and resurrection. But Joseph had a good life. Though his life was surely not easy, Joseph had the peace, satisfaction, and joy that comes from knowing that our lives are caught up in God’s dream. And that is true, whether our piece of the dream is a big one, like planting 30 million trees, or a small one, like seeing that two young boys have bikes this Christmas. As Catherine Marshall wrote, “when the dream in our heart is one that God has planted there, a strange happiness flows into us.”
Do you know that strange happiness flowing in you? What are you dreaming of during this Christmas season? Is the dream one that God has planted there?
If not, why don’t you ask this Christmas for God to plant in your heart and mind a piece of God’s dream. And then, with trust and courage, get up and do as the Lord tells you. Because living and acting on the hope we have in God is always worth the risk.
Happy are those who dream God’s dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.
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[i] From a sermon by Rev. Kerry Pidcock-Lester, preached at First Presbyterian Pottstown on Advent IV, 2004. That sermon was a starting point for this sermon.
[ii] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 14.
