In today’s reading from Matthew Joseph had three dreams.  In fact, no matter how we read this passage we cannot avoid one of these dreams.  Without these dreams we’re left with a narrative that makes no sense, for Joseph takes action because of these dreams: he packs up the family and moves them off to Egypt I the middle of the night.  Then he brings them back when he gets the “all clear” in another dream.  And, then being warned in a dream again, he goes north to Nazareth in Galilee to live.  Therefore, Matthew tells us, that is why we call Joseph’s son “Jesus of Nazareth” to this very day.

Now, Matthew is the only one of the four gospel writers to tell us about the flight into Egypt and about all the dreams that Joseph had.  In fact, it is only in Matthew where one hears of Joseph’s moral dilemma when he learned of Mary’s delicate condition: as you may recall, he considered divorcing her, but (again, warned in a dream) he thought better of it and didn’t.

Most scholars are in agreement that the author of Matthew was writing his gospel so that it would answer critics of the first Christians.  You know, we sometimes don’t think about it, but when Christianity first got started most people did not understand this new movement and were skeptical of it; and they were asking questions – questions about Jesus’ origins, rumors about his illegitimacy, criticism of his poverty and the powerlessness and shame of his death, questions about the ways in which Jesus of Nazareth was so different from the expected Christ.  For example, how do you explain Jesus’ having grown up in Nazareth when there was already a tradition locating his birth in Bethlehem?  And what about the flight into Egypt? How did that happen?  How did he get from one place to another?

So, Matthew sometimes resorted to an explanation which would make sense to his readers: he basically put forth the notion that people sometimes do things because they are told in dreams to do them.  And, the people to whom Matthew wrote understood because they believed that God spoke to them in dreams.  For them the strange world of sleep was full of important truths.  For them many things were still meaningful which could not be easily explained by simple human logic.

Yet, we tend to think that we modern folk have come further than that.  We know much more now then did our ancient brothers and sisters.  But, do we really??  We insist on weighing and measuring everything.  We insist that only things we can fully understand can possibly be meaningful to us.

But you know, I have come to think that we do a radical thing in turning our backs on things that are somewhat mysterious – like our dreams.  It is also a sad thing because the world is terribly limited, terribly constrained if we cannot permit anything to enter it that is larger or more mysterious than the limits of our rational minds – as admirable as our minds may be!  Think of what we would miss if we were to be successful in this silly prohibition.

We wouldn’t know about beauty.  Music to us would be just a mathematical series of sound.  Painting would be a chemical formula.  Sculpture would be nothing but a bunch of rocks.  Theater would not exist if we had only rational minds to bring to it, for it depends on the ability of the actors and actresses to touch our emotions and suspend our disbelief.  Ah, and I know you’ll like this: worship in churches would be confined to sermons that would be like lectures.  There would be no need for singing.  Flowers would be an unnecessary frill, as would candles.  There wouldn’t be much call for prayer, either; for what would be the logic in that?  We would have a hard time continuing to celebrate the Eucharist if all we had were rational minds.  How would we explain the mystery of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine?  Well, not very clearly.  In fact, we’d have to give it up.

And, we wouldn’t know about love.  For if you really think about it, there is no logical reason why we love one person and not another; but we do.  And there is no more powerful force in most of our lives than this one: receiving love, giving love, longing for love, mourning lost love.  We are moved by love at a very deep level of our being, and though it works through our rational minds, it seldom begins there.

But, we’d never give these things up.  We’re not going to stop falling in love or going to musical performances; we’re probably going to keep attending art galleries, and we’ll probably continue to think that our worship needs the mystery of music and the beauty of flowers & candles.  And, I think it’s safe to say that we’ll in all likelihood not soon abandon the mystery of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine just because we can’t accurately define it.  The truth is - whether we care to admit it or not – we are not really such logical, rational creatures as we like to tell ourselves we are.  Most of the things that really matter to us are rooted in things we cannot really explain: love, beauty, faith.

So, why should it seem strange to us that there is truth in the world of dreams?  Joseph had a set of very serious personal problems and he couldn’t figure out a satisfactory solution to them.  Why should it puzzle us that he got his answer in a dream?  After all, is it not so far away from where we are?

Psychology has known for some time that dreams are important in understanding the hidden hopes and fears of the human heart.  And, if we can know more about ourselves by looking at our dreams, who is to say that we cannot also know more about God that way?  Who is to say that God cannot speak to us there?  In fact, don’t we sometimes say, “Well, let me sleep on it” when we are stumped?  As we puzzle over something in the daytime – turning it over and over in our minds and arriving nowhere – who is to say that a gracious God will not use our slumbering mind to help us sift through things a bit?

“Aha,” someone says, “you don’t know God spoke to you in your dreams or your prayers; that’s just wishful thinking, and you don’t know it was God and you can’t prove it!”  And, of course, that is true.  We don’t know it was God.  But, maybe we have committed ourselves to remaining vigilant and alert to the signs of God’s activity in our lives.  And you know, it is that alertness to the possibility of God’s action in our everyday life that is at the heart of what we mean by faith.  For faith is nothing more than the humility to admit how little we know and the willingness to see the truth from whatever source it comes.  And, in that sense, it’s much more than just wishful thinking.  It is reality.

Did Joseph ask himself the next morning if God really spoke to him through an angel in his dream?  Matthew doesn’t say.  He doesn’t tell us what kind of dream it was or how Joseph knew it was God who have him warning.  But, I think Matthew would say that we know it was God because of what happened.  Now, is that good argument in terms of philosophical logic?  Well, no, it isn’t.  But, let’s look at what did happen.  The fruit produced from this story (the story of Jesus of Nazareth) is peace, courage even unto death, love for the stranger & love for the outcast, love for the poor & love for the sad, and much, much more.  Is that the work of God?  Matthew suggests that it is.  And, that’s my wager as well.

Really, though, when I get right down to it and stop rambling and thinking out loud, my message today is simply this:  yes, of course we need our rational minds. But, we also need the part of the mind that dreams, for the part of the mind that dreams is at the heart of the soul that prays, and sings, and loves, and believes.

As we gather for worship today we are just 4 days into the year 2009.  Ahead of us is a 361-day stretch that may be a real challenge.  Many of us have set our New Year’s resolutions and our prayer today is that we will keep them.  But, I want to suggest to you something different – and something you don’t hear preachers put forth.  As we ponder what has been and what 2009 will bring, my suggestion is that we might do well to first sleep on it.  Amen.

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