“The stuff of nightmares” rather well describes last week’s weather conditions, as well as my recent efforts to keep the acres of car parks at St Joseph’s and Holy Family safe underfoot. The back-breaking and time-consuming, valiant, lone fight against the elements turned out to be mostly futile as a mix of snowfalls and short thaws followed by frost cancelled my efforts soon after I had considered it done. “The stuff of nightmares” is a useful phrase to describe many situations, events and happenings that life can throw at us. It refers to one of the strangest elements of our mental equipment: dreaming in sleep.
It’s safe to say that all of us have dreamt many times, so there’s no point in telling you how weird dreams can be. Since time immemorial people have tried to interpret and understand or find a specific meaning of their dreams. Many of the methods had a strong religious component. There are written records of dreams interpreted as a way of conveying messages from, or visitations by a divine being. Some dreams were seen as revelations regarding the future that consequently led to certain actions. One of the most well-known examples is recorded in the Book of Genesis when the dreams of the Pharaoh were interpreted by Joseph as the forecast of a period of prosperity followed by a long drought and subsequent scarcity and famine. Joseph advised the Pharaoh to use the time of boom to build up reserves for the hard times. In such a way, the dreams of the king had a tangible and widespread impact on the Egyptian society of the time. These days we can only dream of such foresight…
The development of understanding of the inner workings of human brains over the last century has reduced or even completely eliminated the religious aspect of dream interpretation. Dreams no longer offer space for divine messaging or visitations. I read somewhere that the more we understand the human brain the less there is space for God. Consequently, when we read or hear biblical stories like the one in today’s gospel, we are rather sceptical about their veracity or even consider them fairy tales. I would agree to a great extent with the former; taken literally they are hardly precise records of specific occurrences. However, we have to remember that no part of the Bible was written as a scientific paper for peer review. In the case of St Matthew’s gospel (as well as others), it was storytelling, not a biography, written down decades after the events had taken place, some of them known to the author only second- or third-hand. We can apply here the preamble used in many modern books or films: “based on a true story”. I explained this extensively in one of my previous sermons, so to cut a long story short, it’s a way of telling the story in a compelling way, though not necessarily one that is completely accurate factually. When we apply this way of reading the gospel, Joseph’s dreams in today’s passage make a lot of sense.
So, what could have happened to Joseph? Let me start with a general though massively simplified understanding of the function of dreams. When we sleep, our brains process the information acquired prior to sleep. It can be immediate (what we read or watched in bed), or events of the day, or something from a more or less distant past. The content of our dreams can be affected by many things, some of which we are not even aware of. Nightmares are often the expression of highly negative or traumatic experiences. Occasionally some worries are so strong that we cannot fall asleep or we drift into a lucid sort of sleep. It’s not hard to imagine Joseph’s highly troubled state of mind: “Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child”. It was a veiled way of stating the obvious; a situation that in highly conservative Jewish society was at best very embarrassing and at worst fatally dangerous. Obviously, Joseph’s mind went into overdrive about what to do. Eventually, he came to the best decision he could have thought of: “Joseph […] wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally.” However, having made up his mind, he didn’t tell anyone yet but decided to sleep on it. Incidentally, it’s a commendable and highly recommended practice for everyone… So, when Joseph was asleep, three factors came into play. Firstly, Joseph was “a man of honour” as testified by the gospel. Such a statement implied the second factor: Joseph was a Jew, practising his religion and taking it seriously; it must have had a genuine impact on his everyday life. The third factor was obviously the complicated case of Mary’s apparent extramarital pregnancy. Joseph’s brain in his sleep was working hard to process that and it was certainly affected by his personal integrity and religious perspective. The final conclusion was rather unorthodox but understandably inspired; he couldn’t leave a pregnant woman and her child to their own devices, exposed and vulnerable. The Law of Moses demanded taking care of the enemy’s stray animals: “When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.” (Exodus 23:4-5) How much more important was taking care of a vulnerable woman to whom Joseph was already engaged!
This episode got its current form much, much later, being interpreted with the benefit of hindsight and from the perspective of what had happened in the meantime, and God’s discreet involvement at the time became more obvious. It’s tempting to expect God to intervene in our troubles in a direct, spectacularly miraculous way, But He rarely does. So often it looks like we have to deal with our challenges on our own with God looking the other way. And yet, dare I say, He never leaves you or me alone of His own volition. As long as we stick with Him, He always discreetly accompanies us and if we listen carefully “the Lord himself, therefore, will give you a sign.” What you do with that sign will be totally up to you.
