Please don’t take offense at what I’m going to say, because I mean it as a compliment — but most of us here in our parish would describe ourselves as practical, down-to-earth people. We’re serious and realistic about life, and we are hard workers once we set ourselves on a path. So when we hear advice that we’re supposed to follow our dreams, we think, well sure, that sounds very appealing, it’s certainly something we should tell young people, but for the rest of us, it seems very unlikely that we’d face that kind of a moment in life when a dream would change something. Because most of us, when we think of our actual dreams, we think of them as something occasionally disturbing, or pleasant, or sometimes just weird — you know, you tell people you had the strangest dream, but you don’t think it means anything. We don’t see them as a channel God might use to communicate with us.
But here’s something for all of us to think about, at the end of Advent, with Christmas upon us. What have all these Advent scripture readings these four weeks been about, really? If nothing else, Advent is a time when we’re meant to see an outbreak of communication from God. It’s as if all of a sudden, everyone in these gospels has had their lives interrupted by something or someone with a message specifically for them. Whether it’s John the Baptist’s father seeing a vision in the temple, Mary visited by an angel, and then given a message from God through her cousin, John the Baptist himself emerging from the desert with a sudden mission, or Joseph today with a dream that changes his future, it’s a time when God suddenly is all over people, using every tool in this world to try to reach people, and God is using everything from dreams to angels to real humans you know and can talk with. Somehow, this is the season when we’re supposed to realize how great God’s desire to communicate with us really is.
At the beginning of this gospel today, we see someone maybe a little like us. We see that Joseph is a good man and a compassionate one, and he’s going to end his betrothal to Mary, because it’s really the only sensible and moral decision for a devout person, but he’ll do it as gently as possible. But instead, after his dream. he suddenly saw that there was a more difficult choice that was the one he was meant for, staying with her, believing that God would somehow take this situation and transform it, if only Joseph could trust that God was there, right next to him. So he took a step into the unknown, possibly an unpopular and difficult choice that no one around him understood, but he had no alternative once he decided that his dream wasn’t just a dream.
If you’ve had a dream recently and you want to know what it means, I’m afraid I’m not covering that today. The pope said last week that homilies should never be more than ten minutes, and I usually come in under. But here’s what to realize: the Advent message to us is that God didn’t choose only a few people, and a limited time period centuries ago, for this remarkable urge to speak with individuals on this earth. God is with us now, and wants our attention, and it’s us that has to take the step of giving that attention, giving it to people, giving it to what’s going on inside our hearts, and maybe listening to our dreams. The word “Emmanuel” that we keep saying and hearing all during Advent after all means God with us, alongside us, next to us, and not sitting there silently. Why else have we been asking these past weeks for the Lord Jesus to come and be with us? It’s so that we can be expecting him, looking for him. It’s time to realize that even the lives of regular old people get broken into with God wanting to show us what he wants for us, what will bring us closer to the love he wants us to experience.
So for all of us, when we have that distant sense that God is reaching out to us, reassuring us, or maybe pushing us, that’s exactly what God might be doing. We can ignore it or shrug it off, since that is what humans are so good at, or we can slow down and listen. Every day, yesterday, today, last week, people we love and total strangers are reminding us of who we are and what the world needs. The sad condition of this world is constantly there, and that is also one of those messages a reminder of how much there is for all of us to do if love is going to be victorious. If we listen, and realize that the message is meant for us, God can use those things to change our hearts, to put aside our anger or our indifference, to see something new that our lives could become, to give in and help someone who needs us, maybe to follow a dream, an easy one or one that is not so easy, but that like Joseph, you suddenly see is right.
Somewhere in all the noise and busyness of the next few days, there are messengers, and if the message is from God, the words might be different for each of us, but the heart of it is always the same. God wants us closer, so that love can take us over completely.