So that
was Christmas! Time to take down the decorations and put them back into boxes for another year. Time to feast on leftovers. There are no more gifts to unwrap or family members to visit or cards to send.
The Ghost of Christmas Past.
But what about the dream? What of all the hope
for the new and the light in the darkness and the birth of a new age into our midst? Does the dream die along with the season,
or are there still visions and dreams that will lead us into a New Year? The
power of dreams and visions formed an important part of our scripture lesson.
King Herod has a dream that leads him to commit
a terrible evil. There was a darkness that lay over his life that expressed itself in paranoia and fear. When he hears of
a potential threat to his position, he takes the life of all those who could potentially be his successors.
In response to their visions of the stars, visitors
from the East came to pay homage to a newborn King of the Jews. Joseph, the earthly
father of Jesus, has the direction of his life altered a number of times through God interpreting his will in a dream. Let us consider these three groups of dreamers.
Firstly, consider the vision of Herod. The land of Judea was a far-flung and troublesome outpost of Roman occupation. The Romans viewed the Jews with a combination
of mistrust and respect. They knew they could be a rebellious people, but also intensely loyal if they thought they were on
the side of right. The Romans knew the Jews did not readily accept outsiders but had their own way of doing things and working
out their problems.
So the lands of Israel and Judah enjoyed a fair deal of
tolerance and could regulate their life through something approaching home rule. As long as they made no waves that reached
Rome,
then they could be left well alone. But they needed some body in charge, some figurehead that recognized Roman power, yet
was Jewish enough not to be considered an abomination to those he sought to govern.
That task fell on the family of Herod. Although
they were little more than puppet governors whose strings were pulled by Rome, they took their task and it’s attendant privileges
with deathly seriousness. Often self-indulgent, many times blind to the needs of those around them, they maintained their
position through fear, through alliances, and through murder of those who got in their way. (Sounds more like an episode from
the Sopranos than the Bible.)
Herod has to watch his back. There were others,
even family members, who would happily see him disposed of. Herod kept busy building
and maintaining his own little empire. He had no time for compromise. When he
learns of the birth of a New King for Israel, he interprets this as a threat. “A new King has born? Then who am I, King has been?”
Scripture tells it this way. “When Herod
saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under,
according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.”
Herod had a dream. His dream was a nightmare.
His was a dream full of demons, a disturbing vision of a world where he was all in all, a vision that left no room for dissent
or tolerance but rode roughshod over any who dared to question.
There have been many dreamers since Herod who
traveled a similar path. Chairman Mao in China, Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Nazi Germany, those in every land who justify their abuses of power by such terms as “Ethnic
Cleansing” or “Being for the common Good” or “In the interest of the State.”
As we witnessed so tragically at 911, once the
Extremists or the Fundamentalists of any philosophy take the upper hand, be it religious or political, there seems no restraint
upon the evils they are prepared to inflict for the sake of their cause. Not all dreams are good dreams. Not all dreams are
the same.
Matthew quotes to us Jeremiah’s words,
words which are often heard in times of tragedy: "A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
What of the vision of the Wise Men? Despite the
images of Kings with flowing beards and comedy camels that we place in our nativity stories, we know very little about those
gentlemen, except that they had an understanding of the importance of Christ’s birth which had come to them through
their understanding of the heavens.
Some speculate that they were Persians, descendants
of the astrologers and religious communities we read about in Old Testament Books such as Daniel. Others suggest they were
from an African Nation. Again, some compare them to the scientific Islamic communities of the Middle Ages where a fusion of
science, learning, and religion resulted in a great renaissance of culture.
One thing’s for sure. If you were on the
streets and saw them coming, you’d be thinking, “You guys ain’t from round here, are you!” Whatever
it was they were seeking, it was something different from the shepherds or even the Jewish people as a whole. It is part of
the genius of the Gospel of Matthew that it is he, the writer of the most Jewish of all the accounts of the life of Jesus,
who tells us that there were Gentiles who greeted the Savior’s birth with gifts which were symbolic of the life he would
face.
You have heard the expression “Thinking
outside of the Box.” That’s precisely what we need to do if the dreams we express at Christmas Time are to become
anything more than ancient heart-warming fables and legends of some distant time.
The Wise Men remind us that the dream we think
of as Christmas is a lot bigger than a holiday celebration. It’s bigger than our families, bigger than our church, bigger
than our town, bigger than our state, bigger than our denomination, bigger than this nation, bigger than the narrow confines
we sometimes place upon our beliefs. Jesus died for our sins. Oh yes. Yet not for our sins alone, but for the redemption of
the whole world.
There is a global aspect to the gospel message
that we so easily ignore. “Go into all the world” Jesus told his disciples. ‘All the world’ is a pretty
big place, don’t you think? I always used to wonder as a child how Santa
managed to get around all those houses and down all those chimneys in one night. Then I learnt about Quantum Physics and theories
of Relativity and, well, it seems that time is a relative concept.
Two hours listening to a sermon can seem like
an eternity, but one line in a child’s prayer that touches your heart and causes tears to well up in your eyes can stay
with you for ever. So moving on, I want you to consider the continuing dreams
of Joseph.
An angel had come to him to tell him he was to
marry Mary. But that wasn’t it. The dreams kept coming. He’s warned in a dream to flee to Egypt. He’s told in a
dream to go back to Israel. You’d think he’d be getting used to the idea of angels in dreams, but that one took
him by surprise. “An angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream.” It’s obviously not something you can
get used to!
Still, he kept his head about him. When he realizes
that it’s another of Herod’s line, his son Archelaus, who was going to be in charge, he wisely heads for a different
part of the country. Replacing Herod with his son was like replacing a headache with a toothache! Again, there is a dream
and finally the family settles in the district of Galilee. All this is happening against a background of words and visions
of prophets from years before.
So is the dream just for Christmas? No way. Our
lives need to be continually nurtured by the Spirit of God. There’s a New Year coming. We don’t know what it will
hold. It’s time to put away the old and head for the new. All along the way, the promises of God will remain sure. There
will continue to be angels to guide us and prophets to inspire us. There will be those taken captive by dreams of darkness
and those who are envisioning a better day.
As we come to the end of one year and another
Christmas passes by, I encourage you to place your life into the hands of a God who can be trusted. God will at times seem
slow and absent to respond to your needs, but the reality will simply be that the Spirit is working so quietly that our noisy
lives haven’t picked up the signals. At other times it will be like the angel who arrives suddenly. ‘Woah, Lord,
slow down, I’m playing catch up back here.’
No matter. Keep the Faith. For the Great Shepherd
of the Sheep, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is quite capable of leading His flock through another year of still waters, terrifying
valleys and green pastures. So to God’s name be the glory. AMEN!
