Dreaming
Thumbnail image: “Saint Joseph Listening to the Angel's Counsel” by Sébastien Bourdon; Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
December 20, 2025—Advent 4A
Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25
If we pay attention to the Bible, it seems parents might want to think twice before naming a child Joseph. Because they just might wind up with a dreamer on their hands!
When we hear this story about Joseph’s dream, here at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, we are meant to remember that other dreaming Joseph, he of the technicolor dreamcoat, from way back in the book of Genesis. In fact, the entire narrative of the gospel of Matthew deliberately echoes the Hebrew Bible, to demonstrate the ways in which the story of Jesus re-enacts and perfects the history of Israel.
So, when an angel comes to Joseph in a dream to tell him what God is bringing about in his life, it brings with it the memory of that long-ago favorite son. The second-youngest and much-beloved son of the patriarch Jacob, who for some reason chose to tell his older brothers about the dream he just had, in which their stars bowed down to his. Given that they were already jealous of his favored status, this brought their resentment to a boiling point, a murderous rage in fact, that was only averted by the last-minute idea of instead selling him into slavery.
There’s so much to unpack in that complex and layered story. For today, we might just take note that being a favorite in the bible does not guarantee an easy life! You might well end up (like Joseph) somewhere you never expected to be, given tasks you never thought to undertake. In Joseph’s case, he was brought to Egypt as a slave, subject to the whims of the powerful: exalted one day and thrown into prison the next, but eventually bringing about the salvation of both Egypt and his own family, when famine hit the region.
Favored not just by his father, but by God, it seems. And with great favor comes great risk, and great responsibility.
Joseph and Mary, too, find themselves caught up in what it means to be favored (even “highly favored”) by God. Joseph has discovered that Mary is pregnant (and not by him!), and has done all the math to weigh up what he has the right to feel and do, and what God’s mercy would ask him to do, and he’s decided on the middle way of dismissing her quietly: to minimize his own shame (at the idea of raising another man’s child), and lessen the ruin she would face if he denounced her loudly. His choice threads the needle nicely: adhering to the kind of righteousness that is about following the law, thinking about what is just and reasonable, while also incorporating some amount of lovingkindness.
But the dream, oh, the dream, in which Joseph learns that he too is favored by God. And thus, that he too will be asked to do far more than reasonable righteousness demands. That he will be invited into the highly unreasonable favor of God. The unreasonable call of God. The work of God to save the world, which will ask far more than we would ask of ourselves, or imagine ourselves capable of doing.
This dream Joseph has asks him to do more. To be sent far from the safe and the familiar. To be part of a life that will fly in the face of societal norms and expectations, that might bring admiration one day and a prison sentence the next. To do all this, in order to make the ways of God’s kingdom more visible. In order to bring hope and salvation, to a starving world.
It is no small thing, to be favored by God.
Because the bible tells the story of a God who knows that the world in which we live is in desperate need of something beyond what is justified and fair and reasonable. A world torn by war, violence and greed; a world in which nations overthrow, dominate, occupy, and oppress other nations; a world in which laws too often prioritize the property of the wealthy over the survival of the poor; a world in which humanity can invent endless justifications for serving their own needs: this world is in desperate, desperate need of a different way. A holier way. A way that will require more than what is justified and fair and reasonable … that will need God’s people to do something beyond what we had imagined for our own lives.
So we just might want to be careful about falling asleep!
Then again, I don’t know about you, but my dreams rarely have anything interesting to tell me. At best, I am reminded that I feel anxious about one thing or another. Mostly, it’s pretty dull stuff.
Where I might actually find a messenger from God breaking in with a wholly unnerving “Be not afraid” is in the silence of prayer. When I open myself, and invite the presence of God, the guidance of God, the dream of God.
Those are the times that the unreasonableness of God might just try to take hold of me.
Which is why, as I commented to my spiritual director the other day, there are questions that I just might avoid asking at such times. A divine imagination that I would really rather keep in check. Because, good lord, what might happen if it turns out that I too am favored by God? What more might be asked of me?
And what more might be asked of you? Are there things you’re afraid to hear the angel say, if you ask, “What does God want of me?”? Answers from God you’d rather not hear? Parts of your life you’d rather leave unexamined. Tasks and pathways you don’t want to have to take on.
What might you be called to do? Conversely, what might you be told (or perhaps allowed) to stop doing?
What, my friends, might God want to make of you? You, child, who just might be fortunate and fated enough to be favored by God.
The favor of God is no small thing. It may not bring the kinds of things people WANT to believe it brings: good fortune, wealth, success and happiness. But it will definitely send you out past what you had ever asked or imagined of yourself; past what seems justified, reasonable or fair; past anything that sounds like self-interest or self-preservation. Out into the wilds of mercy, the unknown breadths of compassion, into a measure of self-sacrifice that is both terrifying and liberating.
In service of God’s kingdom. For the salvation of a starving world.
May we all dare to dream, my friends. Amen.