The Christmas story is motivated by dreams. Angels appear in dreams to bring messages, instructions, and warning. And Christmas itself is a kind of dream. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”, visions of sugar-plums, a dream of peace on earth. A candle-lit, vespers service to send you off to dream your dreams, or a dreamless sleep.
Christmas is a dream.
“The children are nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar-plums dance through their heads.”
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” And if a view of the distant mountains counts we might even get one tomorrow.
Dreams feature prominently throughout the Christmas story according to the Gospels.
Matthew tells us that Joseph was planning to leave Mary because she was pregnant with another man’s child, or so he thought. Imagine what Joseph’s decision would have meant for Mary in a patriarchal society where women had no options for livelihood outside of the support of a husband and no man would marry a woman who was already the mother of another man’s child. Imagine what an abandoned Mary would have meant for her and for the life of her son.
If not for a dream the Christmas story might have ended before it began. Joseph falls asleep. He dreams of an angel. The angel tells Joseph that Mary’s child is conceived of the Holy Spirit and that Mary deserves his faithfulness. The dream angel tells Joseph the baby will be a boy. And it’s even from the angel, in his dream, that Joseph receives the name for the baby, Jesus.
Joseph wakes from his dream. And Matthew says, “He did what the angel of the Lord commanded him.”
After Jesus is born, Magi come to pay their respects at the stable in Bethlehem. We remember the story of the Magi as three wise men or three kings following a star, but there is a dream in this story, too.
The star leads the Magi to Judea. But first they stop at the palace of King Herod, in Jerusalem, and in asking Herod for information, Herod learns that a “King of the Jews” has been born, a threat, Herod fears, to his own crown.
So Herod plots to let the Magi find the baby and once the child has been identified, Herod will have the baby killed.
We’re a long way from sugar-plums now.
The star goes before the Magi, leading them to Bethlehem and the stable. They bow to the baby. They give him their gifts. And then, “having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”
A dream again saves the Christmas story. Who had this dream? We aren’t told. Did all three Magi have the same dream or did only one have the dream and he told the others? Was it an angel in the dream that gave them the news? Was it the same angel that spoke to Joseph? We aren’t told.
The story of the Magi continues in the next Bible verse, and again in this part of the story there’s an important dream. This is the scene called, “The Flight into Egypt”. It’s not usually included as part of the Christmas story but it immediately follows the birth in the stable, and it is the conclusion of the story of the three Magi.
Here is the story in Matthew:
“When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
This story ends with two more dreams. Here it is:
After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.”
Dream after dream after dream. Dreams of warning. Dreams of instruction. This Joseph is a dreamer just as the Joseph of the Old Testament was distinguished as a dreamer.
Dreams steering the characters of the story so that one by one all of the conflicting prophecies about the Messiah could be called true. He’s a Nazarene. No, he’s born in the city of David, Bethlehem. No, he comes out of Egypt. He’s raised by a human father, but he’s really born of a virgin, the child of the Holy Spirit,.
To those with a skeptical mind it seems like a lot of special pleading. The manipulations of the plot all seem too conveniently arranged just so the Gospel writer can claim a prophecy true after the fact. For Unitarian Universalists who don’t need Jesus to be God, or ancient prophecy to be fulfilled, it’s all a little too much. We don’t need tortured explanations of dream angels in order for us to revere a great man who inaugurated a revolution of love and justice on behalf of the least of society. It is Jesus the man, the teacher, the principled leader of an ethical movement, whom we honor on his birthday.
And yet, there is something in dreams, that may inspire us, this evening, or later tonight when we go to our beds to dream our own dreams.
There are two ways we think of dreams and dreaming.
One sense of dreams are those fantasy pictures that play in our minds while we sleep. Sugar-plums, perhaps, or angels. Some say these kinds of dreams contain useful messages from our unconscious. Information we may need to know. Warnings, perhaps, or advice. Perhaps a communication from a part of our mind that we are too distracted to hear during our waking hours. But in the quiet of a dream we become aware of a kind of truth we might otherwise miss. Maybe like Joseph we hear a message that a friend we thought had betrayed us is actually faithful to us and deserves our continued friendship and support. Or maybe our dream is telling us that now is the time to make that big change in life that we’ve been putting off, to start that journey, to choose a different route, to make that move.
Sometimes our deeper minds have knowledge that our busy, anxious, minds can’t grasp, and dreams put that knowledge in our reach.
Perhaps one message from the Christmas story is a reminder to all of us to slow down, to breathe deeply, to listen to those quiet thoughts that may have wisdom for us, that may be guiding us to lives of peace, of joy, of security.
And the other sense of dreams and dreaming is also present in the Christmas story. Dreams as another name for our hopes and greatest wishes for the future.
Dreams as visions. Dreams as goals. Dreams as guiding lights that draw us toward a future of possibilities.
On these dark nights of winter we can lose our connection to those dreams. They seem distant, impossible, forgotten. Perhaps a second message from the Christmas story is an encouragement to dream again.
A dream, perhaps, of something like a kingdom of God, where instead of a human ruler the divine values of love, and peace, and justice sit on the throne. Where those who have been considered the least among us are are raised to the highest position. Where the formerly last are put first.
Where those who mourn are comforted.
Where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are filled.
Where the merciful are shown mercy
Where the pure in heart will see God, the peacemakers will be called children of God
Where the poor in spirit will be given the kingdom of heaven
And the meek shall inherit the earth.
A pleasant dream
A Christmas Dream.
It begins with a dream and thus it begins with a restful sleep
A quiet night.
A silent night.
Ma in her kerchief, and I in my cap…
“while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.”
“Let Christmas come, its great star glow, on quiet city, parks of snow;
let Christmas come, its table gleam, love born again: the truth of dream.”