Christmas 2B, January 3, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

O God of our dreams, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

Before the year 2020 began, I thought a lot about the idea that 20/20 is a term to express visual clarity. 20/20 is what optometrists strive for when prescribing corrective lenses, and did we ever see more clearly in this past year. We have seen “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened” where we have missed the marks as a society when it comes to the equitable distribution of resources, and we have seen “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, what is the hope to which God has called us.” We have risen to previously unthought of challenges, and we have acknowledged our vulnerabilities. We have seen (in others and in ourselves) foolishness and bravery, self-absorption and self-emptying, grasping and giving away. Since hindsight is 20/20, it might take a little time before we are completely clear about all that we’ve seen and what it means for us going forward.

In these last few days many of us have celebrated that the year 2020 has finally come to an end with its many worsts and several bests. I want to note that for Christians, we are also still celebrating Christmas, which always spans two Gregorian calendar years. (We can celebrate both, by the way.) Today is the 10th day of Christmas, on which our true Love gives us leaping lords. Some say the counting song is a Christmas catechism, and ten is the number of the commandments. I don’t know if that was the intent, but I do know that Christmas is an extended period of celebration that true Love desires to restore the dignity of human beings, and that’s the same desire manifest in gift of the ten commandments, the same desire manifest (for Christians) in the gift of, and in the name of, Jesus Christ.

Every Christmastide, we (in the Church) make something like a Gospel casserole out of the four different accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ, which form the basis for our extended Feast of the Incarnation. This year it’s two parts from Mark, two parts from Luke, two parts from John, and one part from Matthew, which we stir together and serve ourselves in an effort to prepare for and celebrate Christmas. And each time I find myself feeling like my two-year-old granddaughter wanting my meal in a divided plate with a section for each part, not wanting any of the parts to touch each other. I want each of the Gospel stories to be tasted on its own; I want to recognize and hopefully learn to appreciate the unique flavors of the four Gospels, and I want to teach others to do that, too. (It’s a big project of mine.)

Matthew, like Luke, has a story about Jesus’ birth, but it is very different from Luke’s. (Perhaps you remember that Mark and John don’t tell anything about the birth or youth of Jesus.) To begin his Gospel account, Matthew first establishes Jesus’ genealogy, starting with Abraham. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David; fourteen generations from David to the deportation to Babylon, and fourteen generations from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah. Fourteen is the sum of the numerical value of the three letters in the name David in Hebrew. Matthew is particularly tidy. Joseph has the starring role in Matthew’s birth narrative, albeit without a speaking part. (Really Joseph has the only role except for the wise ones from the East and King Herod.) It is Joseph who decided to take Mary as his wife even though she’d been found to be pregnant before they lived together. It is Joseph who named the baby Jesus, meaning he saves. It is Joseph who got Jesus and Mary safely to Egypt to avoid Herod’s slaughter of all of the children of Bethlehem younger than the age of two. And it is Joseph who relocated the family to Nazareth to avoid Herod’s son Archelaus. In Matthew’s version, Mary and Joseph were from Bethlehem, not originally from Nazareth. Some scholars speculate that they went to Nazareth when they decided not to go back to Bethlehem, because there was plenty of building work in nearby Sephoris. Matthew either doesn’t know or doesn’t care whether Mary and Joseph had connections in Nazareth. Matthew says that it was so that Jesus could be called a Nazorean according to the prophets, but there’s no known reference in prophetic scripture to anyone being called a Nazorean. And that is all that Matthew has to tell until Jesus goes to the Judean wilderness as an adult to be baptized by John the Baptist.

If you read through the first two chapters of Matthew (they’re very short, about 50 verses in all), I bet you would notice that Joseph is a dreamer. (A dreamer is a seer, with vision that cannot be measured by optometry.) It is because of a dream that Joseph changed his mind about his plan to dismiss Mary quietly and instead to marry her. Joseph dreams that this child is going to save his people: save them from political and economic oppression, save them from military occupation, save them from their own sins. Joseph dreams that people will call this child Emmanuel: God with us. Joseph dreams that fleeing to Egypt will keep his child safe. Joseph dreams of returning to Israel, and then Joseph dreams that Galilee is the place to settle down.

What strikes me is how rich this brief story is with allusion and irony. Maybe you remember another dreamer named Joseph: Joseph, the favored son of Jacob whose dream-telling made his brothers hate him enough to sell him into slavery. It was that Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams that made him a powerful man in Egypt, powerful enough to save his family from famine. But Egypt is the traditional place of enslavement, the place from which God’s people were freed. Remember the slaughter of Hebrew children that causes Moses’ mother to hide him in the bulrushes with his sister, Miriam, to save his life. How ironic that dozens of generations later, Joseph’s namesake returns to Egypt to escape Herod’s slaughter of children in the promised land. For Jesus’ followers, Israel would be called out of Egypt again (and again and again) out of Babylon, out of Rome, out of whatever empire oppresses the people of God.

This Jesus, he who saves, and who will be called God with Us, Emmanuel, lived his life as a refugee in Matthew’s Gospel, first in Egypt and then in a strategically obscure Galilean village cave. Think of that for a moment; here is the unlikeliest God with Us, a most unusual divine manifestation, born from an extra-legal pregnancy (sounds a little better than illegal or illegitimate, but that’s what it means) and threatened by the fear or the rage or the cynicism of tyrants and nearly insurmountable challenges. The divine manifestation, Jesus the Messiah, was unable to return home to Bethlehem, a town just outside of Jerusalem, without grave risk.  Matthew wants to persuade us that this God (Who is Love), found in the kind of person Jesus grew to be, is stronger than military might or political and economic oppression. Love like this is so strong that it can save, according to the Gospel of Matthew.

You don’t need 20/20 vision to see the connections of the threatened ruler absurdly willing the deaths of those who are helpless, stories of infants stolen from their families in our own age. We have captivities in our own country, our own oppressive situations and narrow escapes, our own need for asylum, our own dreams for better lives. As a nation, we seem to be reclaiming a higher calling, a renewed sense of dignity and reinvigorated purpose and great promise, but we’re in a precarious situation.
I wonder about what dreams we have inherited, and what dreams we will take on. What dreams will we remember and heed as we move through this time of national transition? What fear, rage, or cynicism will threaten to annihilate the new hope struggling to be born in our country? What will we do in the face of nearly insurmountable challenges? What actions will we take to live into our dreams?

And what about this Emmanuel God with Us Church? Who among us is dreaming of a future? What dreams will we remember and heed? What threatens to annihilate new hope recently born: fear, rage, cynicism, or you-fill-in-the-blank? What will we do in the face of nearly insurmountable challenges? What actions will we take to live into our dreams? Emmanuel Church, also, is poised to reclaim a higher calling, a sense of renewed dignity, purpose, and great promise. Can you feel that in the air around here? This is much much bigger and much more important than simply figuring out how to survive. In fact, I believe that we were never meant to survive, to borrow a wonderful phrase from the poet Audre Lorde. As a parish we are in a moment that is ripe with possibilities. We are in a moment of new birth and growth, of promise and hope. We are meant to do much more than survive. Emmanuel will need your presence (wherever you are out there), your voice (however mediated by technology), and your clear vision (whether you are relatively new or relatively old, tall or short, very funny or very, very serious) to engage in the work that we are called to do, to become God with Us – Emmanuel more than ever, to restore the dignity of people who have lost track of it or had it wrenched away. Emmanuel will need your presence, your voice, and your vision to fulfill our potential, to deepen our relationship with Love, and to offer bolder prophetic witness and externally focused service, so that the people will be like a well-watered garden, and will be satisfied with the bounty of the Holy One, so that all people shall see clearly the glory of Love together.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

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