Jack Hardaway
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We are all detectives sifting through the evidence of our lives.
Like Sam Spade, picking up the black statuette in the Maltese Falcon.
When asked what it is, he says, “The stuff that dreams are made of.”
Meaning that life is fleeting, and we grasp at things that fade so quickly, grasping at mist and vapor.
The stuff of dreams is fleeting, we wake up, and they fade quickly, and life itself is no different.
We are detectives sifting through the morning mist in search of evidence, evidence that is often hard to find.
Sam Spade was adapting a quote form Shakespeare, from The Tempest.
Humphrey Bogart quoting William Shakespeare in a film noir detective story, pretty cool stuff.
Dreams are the stuff of God. At least in the Bible they are.
Joseph dreamed.
Over and over.
And like all the dreamers in the Bible he woke up and changed his life, he had a change in plans.
Detectives looking for evidence of God being involved in life, involved in the world, evidence that God cares, that God is real.
Faith in the God who is often hidden, or perhaps a God who we bury in the clutter of our lives, who can only reach us when we are most vulnerable, like in our dreams.
Dreams in scripture are different from how we usually think of them today, today they are either the left-over random stuff of a mind decompressing, or as revealing hidden trauma and meaning in our past.
Dreams are a great problem-solving tool for some people, focus on something that needs figuring out, then sleep on it, and the mind will often sift through possibilities and come up with new approaches.
I write sermons that way sometimes, (probably not a surprise to some!) especially when I’m stuck.
I’ll read the Bible, sit back with the Bible resting on my chest, and take a quick nap, and I snort awake with an idea. It’s like I have to get out of the way to listen to the Spirit.
Dreams in Scripture, and dreams in Matthews Gospel, especially Joseph’s dreams are a way forward through a dangerous world where the most vulnerable are preyed upon.
Joseph had reason and biblical warrant to have Mary killed. But he didn’t read the Bible that way. He knew that scripture wasn’t about preying upon the most vulnerable. Though plenty of people use the bible as an excuse to beat up on somebody, Joseph knew it was about something else, the exact opposite.
It’s about the dream of God, making a way through a dangerous world that preys upon the vulnerable.
Joseph dreamed, he knew what faith was really about, and he woke up.
Joseph woke up more and more, bringing life to a world that could no longer dream.
Mary. Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us.
Joseph woke from the dream and said yes to life coming back to the world.
Joseph said yes to the dream of God filling the world again.
We are detectives, like Sam Spade, we sift the evidence of the fleeting contingent stuff of our lives and make choices.
Like Joseph we have been set free to dream, to find the ways that bring life to the world.
We can use Jesus as a weapon and miss the whole point.
Or we can wake up to the Jesus who saves us from our sins.
Dreaming, sifting, choosing and waking up.
Jesus is God’s dream come true in the world.
The stuff that life is made of.
Dream on.