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Hespeler, 18 December 2022 © Scott McAndless – Advent 4
Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25

It can be difficult to come up with unique approaches and find ways to relate a Bible passage to the concerns and worries we are all dealing with in the world today. So let me tell you one of the things that I do.

Before I start working on a sermon, I often make a point of reading the texts as the last thing I do before turning off the light in bed at night so that I drift off to sleep with that reading in my unconscious mind.

I do this because I have come to understand that dreaming is not just nighttime Netflix. It is not just a little video that your brain puts on to keep your unconscious mind entertained for a few hours while your body rests. It is actually a vital activity that you need to function in the daytime world.

How we Process Information

All day, every day, you are assailed with thousands of pieces of information some of which are vital and some useless. Dreaming is a brain process that allows you to sort through all of that information and discard what you don’t really need. But even more important, it allows you to store the vital information, what your brain thinks you will need, in long-term memory. It does that in a very particular way.

Long-term memory works mostly by making connections. So, the best way for your brain to incorporate new information is to make connections between it and the things that you already know. And there’s one very important way that human beings make connections. They do it by telling stories. In fact, you might even say that story telling is the primary way in which we make sense of the world that we live in.

Why our Dreams are Strange

That might help you understand why it is that the dreams that you have can be these really bizarre stories that don’t even make sense in the real world. When you dream, your unconscious mind is frantically trying to spin a story that will somehow create a narrative link between the things you learned during your day and some of your other essential memories.

It might also help to explain the strange phenomenon that you have probably also experienced where you wake up suddenly, you’ve just come out of a dream and the story is so vivid and bizarre. And then, all of a sudden it seems, the whole dream is just gone.

That is because the point of your dreaming is not for you to remember the dream. That would be to create even more new information for you to integrate into your memory. No, the actual story of your dream is meant to disappear, but the key thing is that the connections that that dream made for you will remain and become a part of the way you look at the world.

Preparing to Preach

And so, when I go to sleep and my last thought is about a Bible passage that I want to preach on, it is my hope that that passage will enter into my dreams and, as a result, I will wake up having made some new connections between that passage and the real issues that I and many of us face in the world today.

So, let me give you an example. The day before I started working on today’s sermon, the last thing I did before turning out the light that night was to open up my Bible app and read these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly.  But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream…”

Programing my Dreams

And then I turned out the light, fluffed my pillow and turned over into my favourite sleeping position. As I did so, I replayed again and again in my head that image of poor Joseph and his disappointment upon hearing the news that the woman his parents had chosen for him to marry was already pregnant. I thought of his indecision, how he hardly wanted to drag the name of this woman he barely knew through the mud, of the accusations that would surely follow. At the same time, he was battling with his desire to maintain his own honour within the community.

I did my best to keep all of these thoughts top of mind, but you know how it is when the fog of sleep begins to gather. I couldn’t help but allow my thoughts to turn to the other things that had been bothering me of late. Would I ever manage to be ready for Christmas? Would I find all of the gifts that I wanted to give? Would the people I gave them to really appreciate them?

And then, well, you know what it is like. Once you open up that door of worry in your mind, all sorts of other causes of anxiety begin to flood in. So, as I drifted off, many things were worrying my unconscious.

Oh, and there’s one other thing, earlier that evening I had watched the classic fantasy film, Willow, for the first time. And so, I began to dream.

My Dream

I was at the shopping mall. There were people everywhere and I remember feeling as if I had so much to do. But, as I moved about tending to my shopping list, other things seem to keep coming along to interrupt me and before long I was engaged in a new quest.  Instead of looking for Christmas presents, I seemed to be searching for a child, and not just any child but a child whose fate it was to save the whole world.

The quest very quickly took some strange turns. First Billy Barty showed up and joined me. Then, shortly after Warwick Davis appeared too. I honestly can’t remember all of it that clearly. I remember being worried about the mother of this child and what people might think of her. But somehow, by the end, everything had worked out and we had gathered together with Warwick Davis’s little children and we were celebrating with a modest little feast.

It was all so vivid when I first woke up, but then as I got out of bed and started going about my day, it faded so quickly. I think I only remember it because I tried so hard to do so I could tell it to you.

The full narrative still escapes me. But I was left with one connection that I do not want to lose. Somehow, despite the worries and the fears, despite rather vague feelings of anxiety that always seem to come at this time of year and despite all the confusion between Nelwyn, Daikini and Brownies, I was left with one key connection. Somehow, God is with us. And so, I awoke and began to write this sermon.

Matthew’s Story

A man who wrote a gospel, wrote it quite anonymously, but whom tradition eventually decided was named Matthew, was struggling with his narrative.

There had been others who had written gospels before him, one of which he undoubtedly used as a direct source, but he had decided that he wanted to begin his story a little bit earlier. He wanted to begin with an account of the birth of Jesus. This was something that had never been done before and so he was struggling with it a bit.

He only had a few basic pieces of information. He knew that Jesus was from Nazareth. He knew that he had to have been born in Bethlehem and that he was a descendant of King David because his Bible said that the Messiah had to be both of those things. He knew the name of Jesus’ mother and that he had been a carpenter. That is about it and it’s not a whole lot to build a birth narrative around.

But Matthew knew that there had to be something special about Jesus’ birth because he knew how special Jesus was. And so, he went searching through his Bible, what we would call the Old Testament, to find clues about how it must have happened.

Matthew Goes to Bed

He had been reflecting all day, for example, on the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob, in the Book of Genesis and how he had been a dreamer and had gone down to Egypt. He didn’t really know what, if anything, that had to do with the birth of the Messiah, but it had always been one of his favourite Bible stories.

But that night, before turning in, he had been reading another favourite passage, one from Isaiah: “Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, ‘Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.’ But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.’ Then Isaiah said, ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.’”

Matthew blew out his lamp and drifted off to sleep.

Matthew’s Dream

He found himself back in the times of the sons of Jacob. The eleven brothers were at odds with their young brother Joseph because he was a dreamer who dreamt of the plans of God. And then, it seemed that Matthew and Joseph had entered into a quest together. They were seeking to save a virgin who had fallen under suspicion because she was pregnant.

In his dream, Matthew talked it over with Joseph who wanted to help out the young woman and save her from dishonour but didn’t know what to do. So, Matthew told him that perhaps he ought to sleep on it and he would have another dream to show him the will of God.

And so that is what Joseph did and, while Matthew watched, he dreamt of the woman and the Holy Spirit and he woke up knowing what he would do.

Matthew woke from his bizarre dream. And frankly, many of the crazier aspects of his dream faded quickly. But the strange connections that the story of his dream had made remained with him. The strongest connection of all, of course, being that Emmanuel meant God is with us. Soon after, Matthew took up his pen and he started to write, “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way…”

Joseph’s Dream

And so it is that we came to know that, when Joseph the intended husband of Mary, Jesus’ mother, was troubled by the whole question of how it was that the woman he was to marry was unexpectedly and strangely pregnant, he sought an answer to his dilemma in a dream. He drifted off to sleep thinking of the traditions of his people – of how God had sent angels to help his ancestors, of the incredible promises of the Prophet Isaiah. And he found the answer he was seeking.

The dream that he had, to be sure, was very strange. It involved an angel coming to him and telling him what to do. It gave him an odd image of a virgin who was pregnant from the Holy Spirit whatever that meant.

How important are the specific details of that crazy dream? I don’t know. It could just have been Joseph’s frazzled mind helping him to sort through a sticky dilemma. It could have been divine inspiration. Maybe it was both. What matters is that Joseph woke with a single connection: God is with us. Even more important than that though, he awoke and then acted immediately upon that connection.

Inspiration

I have long remained fascinated by the whole question of the inspiration of scripture. Christian theology affirms that the biblical writers were inspired as they wrote, and I have no quarrel with that. But I often wonder what we are supposed to understand by it. Take the case of the Gospel of Matthew. There really is no question that, whoever wrote that Gospel, used other books and texts and likely oral traditions as sources. One of those sources was the Gospel of Mark.

But he may have been the first to write an account of the birth of Jesus and he didn’t get that story from the Gospel of Mark, which only starts with Jesus fully grown. It is possible, of course, that he did have other sources for that birth narrative that simply no longer exist, but if he didn’t, I know where else he might have looked.

Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament

The author of this gospel clearly believed that the Old Testament was bursting full of information about the life of Jesus in the form of prophecy. Surely he would have not hesitated to draw from that source to fill in any details – details like the birth of a child to a virgin, of a man named Joseph who was led by dreams, maybe especially the detail that it was all about God being with us.

As far as the biblical author was concerned, these were totally legitimate ways to find information on the life of Jesus. And, honestly, who are we to say that they are not?

Making Connections

But it has still left me wondering about exactly where those connections came from. Wouldn’t it be quite awesome if the gospel writer actually left us a clue to his method by telling a story of Joseph who made his key connections as a result of a dream?

And where does that leave us? We also can be dreamers. I think we are also called to make connections that teach us new things about the nature and the love of God. But above all, like Joseph, we are called to take those connections and actually act on them in a way that affects history, that changes the world and that demonstrates for all to see that God really is with us.

One of our bible readings this week

This week's playlist

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Hespeler, 11 December 2022 © Scott McAndless – Advent 3
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46b-55, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11

John had been so sure. He had looked around at what was happening in Judea and knew that it was all wrong. This was, after all, the land that God had given to his people in order to support them as they brought a message of peace and hope to the whole world. It was there to feed their families and their children and allow them to live out their relationship with their God.

But now, though they still lived in that land, it was as if they no longer truly possessed it. The land was in the control of foreign interlopers. And it was those foreigners, together with their collaborators among the people, who enjoyed the riches of a Promised Land that flowed with milk and honey. John knew that that was not what God intended.

A Model of Conquest

There was a biblical model for how the people could repossess the land – the Joshua model. After God had led the people out of the land of Egypt and after they had wandered for a full generation in the wilderness, they finally came to the border. They stood there on the eastern bank of the Jordan River and they looked upon that land in all of its beauty and splendour. Just one barrier remained: the river. Once they had passed it, the real work of possessing the land could begin.

And of course John knew – everyone knew – the incredible story of that crossing, how the Lord had led the people down the banks and into the river. And so holy was the passage of God with the people that the water parted before them, and they came out renewed and cleansed and ready to take possession of the land that God had given them.

And that, John decided, was what needed to happen again. Now, John knew that he was no Joshua. He was not the one to lead the conquest of the land. But he felt that he could do the first part.

John’s Baptism

And so, he called the people to come out to the Jordan River, and out they came! They came in such numbers that it seemed as if all of Judea and the whole city of Jerusalem had heeded his call. He brought them to the far bank, and he began to re-enact the great crossing. He took them one-by-one down into the Jordan and then up on the opposite bank. They came up from the water renewed and cleansed, ready to possess the land again.

And, yes, it was true that the water did not part before them as it had in ancient times. Instead, they were baptized into the waters of the Jordan. Perhaps the waters would part when the new Joshua came. But in the meantime, John felt as if he had done his part. He had prepared the way.

Yeshua

And now you can perhaps understand why John was so excited, one day, when an extraordinary man arrived at the Jordan. The first thing that John noticed about him was that his name was Yeshua. Someday someone would translate that name into Greek and it would become Jesus, but no one had ever called him that yet. In the local language, Aramaic, his name was Yeshua. The reason why that caught John’s attention was because that was the Aramaic form of the Hebrew name Joshua.

And, as John looked at this Yeshua who stood before him, he could not help but think that he might be the Joshua he had been waiting for – the Joshua who would lead a new conquest of the Promised Land. There was a charisma to him, he had a way of speaking with authority and power. Here was someone who really could command a new conquest.

John’s Promise

John had been promising the people who came out to him that, if they went through with his baptism, someone else would come to lead them. This is how he described that leader: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

As he looked at this man, Yeshua, John wondered if he might not be that man.

John Arrested

But things did not go very well for John after that. The Romans began to notice what he was doing, and it seemed like insurgency to them – which it kind of was. I guess they didn’t want to bother with him themselves, so they got King Herod of Galilee to take care of him. Herod also ruled over Perea on the east bank of the Jordan where John was operating. Herod didn’t need much convincing by the Romans though. He had heard that John had been saying bad things about his marriage. He gleefully arrested John and threw him in prison.

And it is one thing to believe that God is about to intervene and give your people back their land when you are standing boldly and free on the banks of the Jordan River. But it is quite another to hold onto that hope when you are locked in Herod’s dungeon, when you start to forget what the sun looks like and when you are fed so poorly that you begin to long for the taste of the grasshoppers you used to eat in the wilderness. John began to fall into despair.

The Most Discouraging Thing

But what particularly bothered him was what he was hearing about this Yeshua. The reports coming back about him didn’t make it seem like was busy clearing threshing floors and burning chaff with unquenchable fire.

Instead of taking on the Romans, he seemed to be spending all of his time helping out the sick, blind and lame. Rather than attacking the wealthy collaborators for profiteering off the occupation, he seemed to put too much effort into reaching out to the poor with encouragement and good news. What kind of Joshua was this? It was naive to think that the Promised Land could be retaken only by such acts of gentleness and kindness?

So John’s hope which he had placed in this man who seemed to have such potential, appeared to be dashed. It was that, more than the darkness and the dankness of his prison that had broken his spirit. If he could believe that that new conquest was coming, that the forces he had prepared in the waters of the Jordan would be led to victory, he would have been willing to put up with anything and even to die without regret. But this uncertainty was killing his spirit.

And that is why, when a couple of his old disciples came to visit him, he sent them to ask. He told them to find this Yeshua and say, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

The Church’s Situation

In many ways, I think that the picture we have of John the Baptist in our reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew is a pretty good picture of where we often feel in the church today. You know, there was a time not all that long ago when the Christian church felt as if it could just take over the whole of our culture and lead us all into a new Promised Land. Like John at the height of his popularity out at the Jordan River, the Christian Church could count legions of people spread throughout our society among its numbers. We had all been baptized and we were sent out to conquer the whole land in the name of Christ.

That was the mission and that is how we often spoke of it. Those were the heady days of Christianity and I know that many people still remember them. Indeed, many still think of the mission of the church in exactly those terms. But the last few decades of the Christian experience have shown us that we may be needing to rethink that mission. And, like John sitting in jail and stewing in his disappointment, we have been feeling a little bit depressed as we watch it.

General Decline

Over the last few decades, the church has not exactly gone from triumph to triumph. Various abuse scandals in various denominations – and there are none who have been entirely spared this, including our own denomination – have certainly tarnished the reputation of the church in the eyes of many. How can the church be part of a glorious conquest of society if it has been shown to be so very flawed?

And, of course, alongside of that we have seen that the continual growth in numbers of Christians has leveled off and fallen into decline. This, also, is something that has struck across denominational lines. I know you may have heard that it was just the mainline and liberal churches that were in decline, and that may have been true for a while. But most recently that decline has spread to the more conservative and fundamentalist churches as well. In the most recent years the decline has been right across the board.

I know there are always a few exceptions here or there, but the overall trend is pretty clear. Recent census reports showed us that, for example, Wales and England are no longer majority Christian countries. You can bet that many other countries are about to follow that trend. And it is not particularly because of immigration or the growth of other religions, though that has been part of it. In fact, the fastest growing religious group around the globe has consistently been that group who claim no religious identity whatsoever.

Falling into Doubt

What do we do with that as believers living in our society today? I suspect many of us, just like John, have fallen into all kinds of doubts and questions. Is this the movement that we were promised? Where is the promise of the triumph and continual growth of the church that’s going to transform our society? And so, like John, we would like to send to Jesus and ask, “Is this what you promised would come, or should we be looking for something else?”

And this is where Jesus’ answer to John is, I think, exactly what the church needs to hear today. When John asks Jesus where is the proof that he is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, Jesus doesn’t point to the kind of success that John experienced on the banks of the river. He doesn’t point to the size of his crowds, even though, of course, Jesus had drawn a number of disciples. The answer that Jesus sends back is this: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

The Sign of the Kingdom

What is the sign that we are part of what God is doing in the world? What is the sign that God is creating the conditions that bring about the kingdom? Only this, that the people who are living on the margins of society, the people whose plight is often forgotten by those in power, are experiencing healing and hope even when things look bleak. And if we, with our outreach and efforts to care for the people around us, are part of that work, then we are part of the kingdom. This is the work that God calls us to do. These are the signs of his kingdom. That is what Jesus is saying.

And yes, I do believe that if we do that kind of work with integrity, we will draw other people to join us, and our numbers will have an impact on society. But things like the overwhelming growth in numbers and attendance, these are not the proof of the coming kingdom. If we keep to the work that God has given us to do, we can count on God taking care of the rest.

A Subtle Jibe

Jesus does include the subtlest jibe at John the Baptist when he ends his answer by saying, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” People will take offense if we concentrate on reaching out to the poor and marginalized. They will say that that is not what victory for God’s kingdom is about. But they are wrong, and I would rather claim God’s blessing on our work by continuing to reach out with whatever resources our God places in our hands.

My friends, we ought not to despair for the future of the church. That is in God’s hands and that is always the best place for anything to be. And so long as we continue in that work, I believe we will find the joy that Jesus found in the work that he was doing, joy that can penetrate even the darkest prison.