Christmas 2 Year A

Here is a link to the readings. This is honestly a Christmas sermon, but since I am the assistant rector I don't (and no assistants do) preach at the really big services. So I get to think about Christmas a little longer. And this one really comes out of the new and exciting being pregnant through Advent and Christmas which felt quite different. 

      

     In his Christmas sermon, Fr. Denaro told us that the thing he had been struck by in the Christmas story was the presence and role of the angels. It was hard to imagine anything else when confronted with Fr. Denaro in angel wings on that high pulpit. But I have to admit there has been something else calling out to me as we have journeyed together through Advent, into Christmas and now as we approach Epiphany. I have been fascinated with dreams. I have been captivated by dreams this season partly because I am a woman in the second trimester of her pregnancy and I have had some truly fantastic dreams. Now, I haven’t reached this place in life with out the realization that no one, not even my very loving husband, no, no one has any interest in my dreams. And it’s not because they’re not fantastic or because they are lacking in any way, it’s just that no one is really interested in anyone else’s dream. Maybe parents are vaguely interested in their children’s dreams. But I just cannot remember any conversation that began with “I had this crazy dream…” and then ended well. So this is to say mostly that I promise I will not bore you with my dreams. So then avoiding the content of my dreams it is enough to say what has been interesting is that the dream landscape has shifted, and  whole new worlds are open to me in the dreams. The subject matter, where they are taking place, and who I am have all been new and exciting. It’s not that they are even all “good” dreams, though many of them are, they are just different. The dreams seem to be preparing me for a new stage in life, they are getting me ready for change. And this change, this shift as my pregnancy has progressed has got me thinking about what dreams are, what they reflect about what has already happened, and what they suggest about what is to come.

            Scientists have found that dreams often are places where people work out problems they encountered during their day. Lab rats, asked to run mazes al day, dream of new and creative ways of solving their maze during the night. But this is a rather mundane and practical use of dreams, there is also something extraordinary that happens in the dream world too. There is the part of the dream world that is beyond the self, beyond our personal day to day lives and struggles. There is the part of the dream world that taps into what psychoanalyst Carl Jung calls the collective unconscious. For those of you unfamiliar with Jung’s work (as I am) it will help to know a tiny bit more about his theory. First of all we each have a psyche—the word means soul—but in psychological terms it is the totality of the mind the conscious and the unconscious. It’s the stuff that makes up who we are whether we know it or not.  Dreams are the time when that unconscious, the stuff we don’t know or have pushed down, comes rising up and we can encounter parts of our selves that we just don’t know. But Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious suggests that there is even more that we take part in—and that all humanity takes part in.

            As I was thinking about how to understand, and then how to explain this complex concept I realized that in some ways we as Christians have an easy way into to comprehending this psychological lingo. We understand our selves, our souls as separate things, but we also know that we participate in a larger thing as well. We know that our collective faith, our collective souls take part in and transform into the Body of Christ. Could we say we are participating in God’s psyche? Or are we a part of God’s dream as the Body of Christ? Maybe. But we can say that we have dual identities, we are our individual selves and we are a part of the Body of Christ. These identities are simultaneous and also separate. Within the Body of Christ we are not ourselves—we are a unity with all those in the Body. This morning I want to take our understanding of ourselves as dual citizens and take it into a look at how Matthew’s Gospel uses dreams.

            The mention of dreams in today’s Gospel are the third and fourth dreams in Matthew’s Gospel. The first is the dream Joseph has where he is told not to dismiss Mary, because the child is from the Holy Spirit. The second is a dream that the wise men have, where they are warned not to return to King Herod after they have found Jesus in the manger. Dreams are functioning as a way of conveying information in the early chapters of this Gospel. The birth narrative’s plot moves along at the insistence of these dreams. Joseph as a dreamer was never something that caught my eye until this year. The two dreams in our reading this morning each have an Angel of the Lord appearing in them, giving very specific travel instructions. Go here, do this. Such clarity. And after each dream Joseph takes his family and goes there, and does this. The dreams require little to no interpretation. They are straightforward with and Angel speaking on behalf of the Lord conveying information that Joseph and his family would not have otherwise. Matthew’s Gospel is the only one to use the word dream. And his birth narrative focuses not on Mary like Luke’s but on Joseph and these dreams. That God is stepping in the dream world is fascinating. It is not the most direct route. But it is highly effective. Ultimately, and importantly The dreams are productive. They get things done. Like the lab rats trying to puzzle out their maze, or like my psyche coming to terms with what it will be like to be a mother, Joseph’s dreams are full of purpose.

            Maybe it is time to get our heads out of the clouds. I’ll come back down but not before wondering about your dreams. I wonder what they are. And not just that good ones, I wonder what the ones of terror and fright might be too. But more than you, I suppose I wonder about what our dreams, as the community of St. Ann & the Holy Trinity are. What are our good dreams of? What are our recurring nightmares? And then, perhaps after we identify what those things are—what do those dreams and nightmares get us to do? How do we hear God calling us forward and calling us into action? I would like to encourage us all to have a little conversation about our dreams for and as St. Ann’s with each other, and with the clergy here. I know the clergy have some dreams—but a church, and especially this church, is more than it’s clergy’s dreams. So we will need to talk a little together to clarify and dream together. Since we are a growing church, we will also need to make sure we are hearing new voices, and even as we grow, listen too to quiet voices, who perhaps slip out before the gathering of coffee hour, but are nonetheless devoted, regular members of the parish. And our dreams will shift and change. New things may appear to us, or old symbols may fade away. But this mornings Gospel is a call to pay attention to our dreams.

            Since dreams function differently in different cultures it is unlikely that ours will be as clear and as straightforward as Joseph’s dreams were. Though he is rather out of style, Freud and Jung have left us with a legacy that objects and images in dreams are symbolic of other things. So our dreams as individuals and as a community may require a little interpretation. We will need to determine, what does it mean to have this dream? What are the elements suggesting to us about God’s call to us?

                          But importantly we need to hold on to the most important part of Joseph’s dreams: he wakes up and follows those dreams. He takes action. He is productive. He heeds the call of the Angels who spoke to him during the night. And now is a really great time. We are in the season of Christmas. We are living with the concept and reality of God with us. Our long wait through Advent is over, and we are in a celebratory mode. We are in a mode where what was unknown is now made manifest in Christ Jesus, and it is time to both celebrate that and take action as his body in the world. And this is where our function as individuals and as the Body of Christ truly comes into play: we are each responsible for action, for responding to God’s call to us, and the first step of that call is in being willing to be a part of Christ’s body in the world, by being willing to share in his Body and Blood and by taking responsibility for dreaming and entering into that collective unconscious. And then, when we wake up together, when we are dismissed at the end of our service, we are sent out into the world, we are sent out to dream our dreams as the Body of Christ, and to respond to God’s call in our dreams.