A friend once asked me, “Do you suppose God ever dreams?”
My answer, “I know my dog sure does. You should see her, feet twitching and barking.”
Does God dream? That’s one of those questions that kind of sticks with you like an earworm, one of those songs that just keeps going through your head. A theological earworm.
There are dreams in the sense of wanting something or having an idea, but then there are the dreams of deep sleep, where we are not in control and we are taken for a ride who knows where.
That kind of dream, that vulnerable place, where anything can happen, all sorts of possibilities and whimsies and dark things. Does God ever drift off into that place?
Are dreams just the stuff of creatures rather than the Creator, for humans and dogs and such?
Or is it part of the image of God, the likeness, the fingerprint of the divine on the created?
I used to have some amazing nightmares. But it turns out it was just high blood sugar. Since I started taking insulin those have all gone away.
Dreams are a holy thing in scripture. A place where God can be heard. Sometimes it is cryptic and strange like when the first Joseph was a prisoner in Egypt, dreams that would save an entire nation and his family from starvation. That first Joseph had many dreams where God touched the world through him.
Then there is today’s reading, another Joseph who dreams of God, the father of Jesus, the husband of Mary, the Joseph of the Holy Family.
It was a much clearer dream, a clear message, sort of the divine equivalent of a shotgun wedding, you will marry that girl, you will not quietly abandon her, he is God’s child, who will save us all.
The Angel of the Lord. In Luke’s Gospel, the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary directly.
In Matthew the angel is unnamed, simply an Angel of the Lord, or the angel of the Lord, who appears repeatedly but only in dreams to Joseph and others.
It is a darker angel, a more mysterious angel than in Luke’s Gospel. This is not dazzling Gabriel with his mighty horn and blasting trumpet. This angel moves in shadows.
The entire birth story in Matthew is darker, more dangerous, a mad scramble and screams in the night. There is no blazing glory, no angel choirs like what appear in Luke.
So the Angel of the Lord, in the night, pays a visit, where we are most vulnerable and helpless, in our sleep. Like a thief. Like a spy leaving a secret message at the last moment before it is too late. Joseph gets the message.
The Christmas story in Matthew shows us the God who is present in the dark painful secrets of life.
Emmanuel, God is with us, God is involved, finding a way where there is no way, life where there is death, hope where there is fear, deliverance where there is bondage, dreams where there are nightmares, miracles where there is scoffing, commitment where there is abandonment.
Does God dream?
You. You are God’s dream come true.
God is touching the world through you.
Like Joseph, we are commanded to wake up and choose to be involved, to love, to forgive, to raise others up, to love the name and in the name of Jesus.
The great thing about God’s dreamers is that they wake up.