A Good Night's Sleep

Sermon-4 Advent- -December 19, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
The Very Rev. Samuel G. Candler is Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip tells this story: “It was a few days before Christmas. A woman woke up one morning and told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" "Oh," her husband replied, "you'll know the day after tomorrow."
The next morning, she turned to her husband again and said the same thing, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" And her husband said, "You'll know tomorrow."
On the third morning, the woman woke up and smiled at her husband, "I just dreamed again that you gave me a pearl necklace for Christmas. What do you think this dream means?" And he smiled back, "You'll know tonight."
That evening, the man came home with a small package and presented it to his wife. She was delighted. She opened it gently. And when she did, she found-a book! And the book's title was "The Meaning of Dreams."
The writer 16th century writer Rabelais once said, "I never sleep comfortably except when I am at a sermon."
I know this is rather personal, but do you sleep very well? I mean, most of the time. I was in a group of guys, this is years ago, and someone mentioned that they usually slept in a chair most nights-something to do with their breathing and acid reflux. And someone else said that they didn’t sleep much either. One guy said that his wife’s snoring kept him awake most nights, and around the group it went. Out of about 8 guys there were only 2 that actually slept most nights all the way through. I am a terrible sleeper. I wake up often in the middle of the night, sometimes go out and work, watch tv, talk to the dogs, then back to bed. I asked my doctor about it, and he said I needed to drink less decaf. But one of the main things going on is that I fret-I stew-I worry. There will be something that’s heavy on my heart, and I just can’t seem to let it go. How many of you have looked at my e-mails at 4am and wondered, “what’s he doing up at this hour?” Sometimes I’ll go back to bed and get another hour or two of sleep.
And almost always when I finally get to my morning prayers, the problem, whatever it was, won’t seem so bad. You know how your mom always told you to “sleep on it”. It turns out she was right. There’s just something about getting up the next morning and whatever it was-it just doesn’t seem so overwhelming. It’s not that the problem has gone away-it just seems like I can handle it better-I can put it in perspective. I always realize the next morning that the world isn’t going to end, that life will go on, and that I will survive another day. It’s happened so often to me that I actually go to bed (the first time) knowing that whatever is troubling me, will be ok the next day. That’s a great comfort. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes with the morning psalm 30:5
I tell you all this for two reasons-one, because I suspect that you have had this experience often, also. And secondly, because it is what happens in today’s gospel story. Joseph is described as “a righteous man” a good man-like most of us. This will come up a lot in the next year as we listen to the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew is always working at defining what it is “to be righteous”. What he means when he describes Joseph this way is that he was obedient to the Old Testament Law. Joseph was a good man, he followed the rules, he did the right things-and yet here his fiancé becomes pregnant. That might keep you up nights.
And so he goes to sleep, planning to break the engagement and not expose Mary to public humiliation. That is what a righteous man, a good man, does, that would have been the “right” thing to do. Brian Stoffregen of Faith Lutheran Church wrote this: “Perhaps what is at least as miraculous as the virginal conception is how Joseph's mind was changed. In the first century, marriages were still arranged. Their families may have determined that Joseph and Mary would be married when they were still young children. When Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, his "righteous" decision to divorce her is what the law and society expected him to do.
[Biblical scholar] Keener (A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew) notes: "Jewish, Greek, and Roman law all demanded that a man divorce his wife if she were guilty of adultery. . . . Mediterranean society viewed with contempt the weakness of a man who let his love for his wife outweigh his appropriate honor in repudiating her" (p. 91). Divorcing pregnant Mary was the right thing for Joseph to do.”
But in the night, Joseph has a dream. An angel speaks to him and tells him not to be afraid-he should go ahead and wed Mary-that Mary is pregnant with God’s child-and that this child will save his people. And when Joseph woke the next morning, he had a new attitude. And he understood is own righteousness in a new way. He decided to do what the dream angel had told him. He married Mary, and named the child Jesus-which means, God saves. Matthew, the gospel writer, tells us that this fulfilled the prophecy from Isaiah-that a child would be born that would be called Emmanuel-God with us.
I always think that despite what the angel told Joseph, that he had to be afraid. He must have been afraid of marrying this young woman. He must have been afraid of raising God’s child. Joseph was a righteous man, a good man-like most of us-and he had to be scared of doing this very hard thing. Joseph would have known his liabilities, his shortcomings. He had to think to himself, “I can’t do this, I’m just a normal Joe. I’m nothing special-why would God choose me?”
Mary gets all the glory for agreeing to do this hard thing that God asked her, but Joseph, too, had to do a very hard thing. He had to set aside his honor, he had to swallow his pride, and to a degree, he had to do something that was unrighteous. He had to wed this pregnant woman, and care for someone else’s child.
When we hear this story there are two miracles that are happening-one, is that God chooses to be one of us; and secondly, that ordinary everyday people are able to overcome their great fear, and work with God to make it happen. Have you ever thought how God needed Mary and Joseph to make Christmas happen? This isn’t about whether God could have done it without them. This is very simple: God chose these anonymous people, in a no account country, to tell the world the most important thing in the world. He didn’t choose miracle workers or kings, he chose these people-a carpenter and a teen age girl. It makes no sense. God could show his love for us in a million better ways than this. He could have chosen a million better people than these two. But I guess that’s the point. It becomes dangerous when we portray Mary and Joseph as saints, because God went out of his way to choose unbelievably normal people. God chose the ordinary to bring about the extraordinary. God chose these average commonplace people just so we would get it-he wanted to let us know how much he loved us. He didn’t love the good parts of us, the holy parts of us, the righteous parts of us-he loved all of us, every part of us, even the worst of us. And that’s why he chose these two people. He didn’t want only saints to feel as though they were loved-he wanted each of us to know it, also.
The Gospel of Matthew begins with God’s son being called, God with us. And the last verse of Matthew’s chapter ends with Jesus saying this, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”* What do you think God is trying to tell us? Not too subtle, is it?
We end the Sundays of Advent today, on the verge of the birth of Jesus. That gives us the opportunity to look once again at the circumstances that God arranged. People like us-like you and I-were chosen so that God could teach us about his love. That’s a terribly humbling reality. And if God could choose Joseph and Mary, then perhaps we are supposed to realize that God can be shown through everyone-even us. I don’t doubt that Joseph was scared, but he did what was needed. Maybe that’s the message for today, even when we are scared, even when we are having a bad night, even when our hearts are heavy, even when we are too worried to sleep, God will work even through us-if we let him.
Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,"
which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.