Matthew 1:18-25

Advent 4 – Year A

There is appropriate guilt and there is inappropriate guilt. Likewise, there is appropriate and inappropriate responsibility.
The trick is to tell the appropriate apart from the inappropriate.
How might we look at Joseph’s actions regarding Mary’s pregnancy? Here his acceptance of reality is attributed to his righteousness, not his wisdom. Left to his own devices and the devices of his time and place, Joseph had every thing he needed to claim this task of covering for Mary as inappropriate responsibility.
Somewhere along the way Joseph had learned to first acknowledge and then to listen to his dreams. His dream claimed steadfast love as appropriate, not inappropriate.
In this time of waiting between a first and next comings, dreamtime remains an important category for us to pay attention to.
So, what dreams this day need to be shifted from inappropriate to appropriate in your life and in the life of the world?
Based on this scripture they will have something to do with the presence of G*D taking precedence over the current traditions of our culture (religious culture or otherwise). Where does church doctrine that constrains our relationships with one another need to be turned on its head? Where is there a response leading to peace between peoples that needs to come out from under an umbrella of being called treason and stand to turn us all in better directions? Where in our families and communities do we find the fulcrum from which to leverage a preferred future into view and into today?
Whatever your dream or dreams lead you to—imitate Joseph. It is time to wake from sleep!

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

One of the hallmarks of Jesus in Matthew is the fulfillment of the law and prophets - boundaries and compassionate implementation of same. Here we have a prelude to that work of fulfillment through the soon-to-come formula: "You have heard it said, but I say to you . . . ."

As a righteous person, Joseph knows the law is to be construed and implemented as strictly as possible. As a prophetic person who attends to their dreams, Joseph knows spirit as well as letter. This combination brings Joseph to that in-between place of life where creation continues. By law, Mary should be stoned to death or divorced — either way disaster for Mary. By dream, Mary should be revered unto a marriage relationship, tying Joseph to her life for better and for worse.

By law you have heard it said, but by angel now hear . . . .

What is the issue closest to your living and the living of those around you where you need to pay attention to the Joseph in you? It is time to awake from sleep and dreaming and live in the fertile ground between law and prophecy.

- - -

A reader responds - Kent

Wes, I read a book by Douglas Ottati, Hopeful Realism, that had a quote that keeps coming to mind as I read the story of Joseph's dream. Talking about The Christmas Carol he says "...the enlarging of Scrooge's heart depends on his being blessed with the right nightmares." Being blessed with the "right nightmares" is not really a pleasant thought. Anyway, something to ponder.

- - -

Wesley White

Indeed. To a law abiding person a request for mercy would be nightmarish. To a grace abiding person a request for consequences for boundary violations would be nightmarish. For most of us, in one situation/issue we focus on law or grace and in another situation/issue we find ourselves in the other camp. No wonder nightmares abound. Every day we find ourselves being challenged.

Let's hear it for Scrooge, able to change. Let's hear it for Joseph, able to change. Now comes the tough one, will I hear it for being able to change?

Nightmare as change agent. Alright. If need be. Thanks for passing on this blessed image. May the waking nightmares taking place all over this small 3rd Rock from the Sun lead us to a hopeful realism that reclaims the poetry of theology (see fuller title of Ottati's book).

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Another Readers adds - Dave

Your comments on Nightmares reminds us there is always pain and fear in those dreams. Joseph has lots of company in these days. Do we follow the rules or do we respond to the grace of God in our relationships here and around the world? Allowing Jesus, the savior, to unchain us from our legelisms, may give us more nightmares/fears/pain in being God's person.

Good News for all people is obviously a nightmare for those who use, abuse and minipulate our world unjustly. Thanks Be to God!

- - -

and returns - Dave

I got to thinking of other nightmares, and remembered the Exodus story with the Egyptians chasing the Israelites, who are trying to escape their slavery.

What a contrast are these nightmares from the Shalom we normally think of at Christmas. W. Brueggemann reminds us that the opposite of Shalom is idolatry. So, I am trying to tie all the nightmares that befall us to the things we make too important? Yet, our pain and fears we have experienced this past year (have we made them too important)seem to also be more nightmares? Scrooge and Joseph are not alone in their sleepless nights.

- - -

Dave continues:

I got to thinking of other nightmares, and remembered the Exodus story with the Egyptians chasing the Israelites, who are trying to escape their slavery.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html

Matthew begins, "Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way."

Then Matthew goes on to tell us about the official relationship between Joseph and Mary, Mary's unusual pregnancy, and Joseph's knee-jerk response and dream that transformed that response that a connection might be made with an old prophet (as if a new thing were outside the realm of possibility because fulfillment is the measure).

Thus was Jesus borne by Joseph and Mary.

The birth story is just the carrier for Joseph and Mary's story. Context is primary here — genealogy of ancestors and parental choices. Into such everyone is born. Some know more about this than others but everyone knows the frailty of our past — its a miracle any of us make it as far as we are. Life is more difficult than it has been and getting worse. So says every generation.

And, yet, no matter what a birth certificate says, the choice set before each of us is recognizing each of us bystanders have been pointed out as an Emmanuel to show Ahaz and Prime Minister President Chancellor Whomever that life is not as bleak as it is often made out to be.

Lift up your head (your name here) and be lifted up Emmanuel.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html

Ready of not, here I come! So ensues another game of hide-and-seek.

Ahaz is an excellent hider. He will be diligent in finding the very best hiding place and is willing to stay there for a very long time. No matter how close a Seeker comes to finding him he will not breathe or move. (Note: This is a different category of Seeker than recent church growth folks market to.)

Trying to bargain with Ahaz is a lost cause. He doesn't respond. Even "Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free" doesn't catch his ear. If it did he would have to acknowledge something larger than his own expertise. Most folks, by the time of their teen stage know how to refuse evil and choose the good, how to not hide but be in community. But not the tribe of Ahaz - real HE-men (Hiders Extraordinaire).

So something larger is needed to restore us to our selves, something larger than ritual, incantation, creed. Something larger is needed for "resurrection" and "grace" and "revelation" (key words in the last three pericopes).

What can't be chosen by Hiders is especially offered by Seekers - "withness". After calling our freedom and not having it responded to, Seekers continue seeking for the destruction or loss of any is not a part of the game for them. They are willing to be made fools of, to be ineffective Seekers, to lose the game if that will bring a return of community.

Though this quality of intentional seeking can have a dysfunctional aspect to it, intentional, strings-free, and creation-beginning Immanuel-offering is yet preferable to leaving folks in the dark of their hidey-hole.

- - - - - - -

desperately seeking a reset button

tears as bread, tears as drink
restoration yearned for
reset needed

unknown saints, unknown beloved
resurrection ungracefully limited
reset needed

deeds of power without response
revelation missed again
reset needed

willingly seeking
intentionally seeking
persistently seeking
seeking with good cheer
seeking with hopeful heart
seeking with open hand
seeking with a gift
"with" - reset found

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

There is appropriate and inappropriate guilt.
There is appropriate and inappropriate responsibility.
The trick is to tell them apart.

In ordinary circumstances we might think of Joseph taking inappropriate responsibility for Mary's pregnancy. Here such an action is attributed to his righteousness, not his wisdom. Left to his own devices and the devices of his time and place, Joseph had every thing in place to claim this task of covering for Mary as inappropriate responsibility.

Somewhere along the way he had learned to first acknowledge and then to listen to his dreams. His dream claimed this action as appropriate, not inappropriate.

In this time of waiting between first and next comings, dreamtime remains an important category for us to pay attention to.

So, what dreams this day need to be shifted from inappropriate to appropriate in your life and in the life of the world?

Based on this scripture they will have something to do with the presence of G*D taking precedence over the current traditions of our culture (religious culture or otherwise). Where does church doctrine that constrains our relationships with one another need to be turned on its head? Where is there a response leading to peace between peoples that needs to come out from under the umbrella of being called treason and stand to turn us all in a better directions? Where in our families and communities do we find the fulcrum from which to leverage a preferred future into view and into today?

Whatever your dream or dreams lead you to, in an Imitation of Joseph – it is time to wake from sleep!

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html

Last chance to prepare for a surprise greater than a great surprise 2,000+ years ago. If we are just getting ready to reenact a past surprise, don't be surprised if we are not only not surprised but more jaded than before.

Question before us: What will it take for you to birth G*D in and through you?

Too much emphasis has been placed upon some creedal theory of virginity. Where we missed the boat was trying to get a compelling symbol put in place. Whether you take the Isaiah quote as being about any young girl giving birth or a virgin doing so, the deal is not that of virginity. What is crucial is the ordinariness of any girl or the absolute surprise of G*D working directly through a single lowly virgin.

You, of course, could fit either of these categories - simply ordinary and simply surprising.

So, pay attention to your dreams this week. You may catch where your ordinariness will be just what is needed to shift a world's perception. May you acknowledge how surprising your life really is and begin to play to that.

May your dreams reveal to you that you are with child, pregnant with possibility that is quite ordinary and equally surprising. There is actually much power to simply be who you are, an ordinary surprise ready to be sprung on an unsuspecting public. Imagine, acting on a sense that G*D is with you will surprise the rest of us to acknowledge G*D is with us, too.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/12/matthew-118-25.html

Everything seems to have a backstory. It is a helpful exercise to imagine backstories to our most ancient of tapes that they might be seen under a better light. To be able to see the resolve needed to make the best of a situation softens our heart and moderates our blame-laying tendency.

Consider your own birth and growing-up years. Out of so many possible remembrances, we carry so few with us. The ones we carry are like unto transformative dreams or deep fears with their backstories obscured.

Imagine what difference it would make if the stated backstory in this text was differently reported—using the Song of Songs instead of Isaiah. Even if we could remember the genealogy listed previously in this chapter, we might not get caught with the virgin trope—Jesus comes through sexually active women. Simply reflecting on human sexuality—there is no reasonable data that says genital sexual activity is out of bounds during pregnancy.

To have this whole business of Joseph’s acceptance of Mary be based on Matthew’s intention to prove Jesus as David’s heir warps and skews our ability to deal with the surprises of life.

Blessings on your Advent dreaming.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/12/matthew-118-25.html