Sunday: 1st Sunday after Christmas A
Reading: Matthew 2:13-23
Preacher: S. James Steen

For several years, during the 1980s, I was involved in psychoanalysis. I'm not talking about seeing a therapist or counselor once a week, but the experience where you lie on a couch several times a week and bare your soul to an analyst and to yourself. One aspect of the experience is looking at your dreams, and believe me, if anything will encourage dreaming - or at least make you aware of your dreams - it is psychoanalysis. I wouldn't trade for anything those years spent with Dr. Menetrez, who spoke, appropriately, I thought, with a heavy Franco-German accent.

But if we're paying attention, we probably don't need Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung or Dr. Menetrez to tell us that dreams have a function. You may think I'm a bit crazy, but I've had dreams - and at this moment I mean the kind you have while sleeping - that have actually portended future events. One dream that I've thought about many times over the years occurred when I was in my early 20's. In this rather ordinary dream I was walking down a country road at sunset, with a sense of wellbeing, when I came to a beautiful farmhouse and barn. I couldn't miss the scene because the road approached the buildings head on and then it made a 90 degree turn to the left and continued. Even the minutest detail of the scene was clear, and when I awoke, I remembered it all: the placement of the tractor, the quality of light in the evening sky, the animals nearby, and many other details. But I didn't have any idea where the scene was. Perhaps, I thought, it was in rural Oklahoma where I often spent summers as a child.

For several years I speculated as to what this dream might mean, as it would occasionally reenter my thoughts. Then, in May, 1968, several students from my seminary class made a week-long pilgrimage to the famous religious community in Taizé, France. The Taizé community was founded by young adults during World War II as a multi-national, multi-religious community; and in reaching out to people orphaned or interred during the war, it became a powerful witness to radical hospitality and a counter-witness to the xenophobia that had consumed Europe.

Being at Taizé you could feel its holiness. A sense of calm, peaceful, quiet pervaded the place. While there, one evening a friend and I went for a long walk. Other than reflecting on our experience of being at Taizé, we talked very little. Then, all of a sudden, there it was in front of us: the farm, every detail exactly as it had been in my dream. I hadn't the slightest doubt that this was the place.

What did it mean? I'm not sure. Did the dream somehow guide me to Taizé without my knowing it? Or had it been the portent of a future experience? I'm not sure; but what I am sure of is that the whole experience encouraged me to put aside my tendency to seek a rational explanation for every experience. It reminded me - and still does - that not all of life is quantifiable. It served - and continues to serve - as a reminder that life's most significant experiences often contain a mysterious center.

In the Church Calendar, today is often called the Feast of the Holy Family. Matthew tells an extraordinary story of how the baby Jesus' life is spared as his parents steal him off to Egypt to save him from the jealous rage of Herod, who is afraid that a new king is coming to replace him and orders the murder of all male babies in Bethlehem.

This remarkable piece of writing enables the reader to make a connection between the Jewish Exodus to freedom from Pharaoh's oppression in Egypt, led by Moses, and the new Exodus from the tyranny of Rome to freedom from all the barriers that alienate us, led by Jesus. Matthew begins a theme here that will be repeated in the Gospel, the establishment of Jesus as the new Moses, the liberator of God's people.

One of the appealing aspects of Matthew is its unique role in establishing Joseph as a man of character. Do you know that Joseph never says one single word that is quoted in the Gospels? Years ago a priest friend preached a homily that he entitled "In Celebration of Joseph, the Patron Saint of the Inarticulate." Joseph doesn't even appear in Mark, and John only mentions him as Jesus' father. Luke mostly reduces Joseph to a weak stage prop. In Luke, Joseph doesn't even raise any questions about Mary's extra-marital pregnancy. While Joseph never speaks in Mathew, at least this Gospel gives Joseph flesh and blood and makes him a believable character.

Maybe we should rename this day the Feast of St. Joseph the Dreamer. For in Matthew's story of the birth and infancy of Jesus, Joseph has four dreams. And these dreams are crucial to moving the story forward. The first dream, which was memorialized in our recent Christmas pageant, resulted in Joseph's overcoming a huge taboo and accepting the pregnant Mary as his wife. The other three dreams move Joseph to act on behalf of his family, sending them out of harms way into Egypt, and finally moving them to the outpost of Nazareth, beyond the view of the tyrannical powers of Rome.

Dreams. We need dreams. Dreams to understand our past and to reshape our future. Dreams to remind us of pitfalls to avoid and of opportunities to seize. Dreams to lift us out of the ordinary and to raise us to places of unforeseen possibility. What are your dreams? Where are they calling you to go? Will you follow?

Amen.