18 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. 19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling
to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20But 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. 21She will bear a
son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ 22All this took
place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall
name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ 24When Joseph awoke from
sleep, he
did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25but had no marital
relations with her until she had borne a son;* and he named him Jesus.
Matthew 1:18-25
Have you ever seen an angel, or had a vision? I think I had a vision. It happened this way. Two days before I had the vision I could
hardly finish my workout on the treadmill.
I gave up and went home, gathered my strength and everything seemed to
be fine. The next day, Friday, it took
me 10 minutes to make it up the 13 stairs to my bedroom. As I was dressing, I broke out in a cold
sweat, became lightheaded, and felt as if I was dying. Again, I rallied. I got my youngest to school and took my
sister to run an errand. Arriving at
work at 1pm, I started to feel the same, maybe worse than I did earlier in the
morning. I eventually made it to the
doctor’s office, who told me that I would be “staying as a guest in the
hospital for awhile.” X-rays showed two fist-sized
blood clots, one in each lung. I was
told that I was lucky to be alive.
After about 2 days on Heparin I started
to understand what the doctor meant, how close I was to dying. Thank God for
blood thinners! So, as I settled in for
a second week in the hospital – and 5 roommates later – I had my back to the
door and was staring out the window. I
wasn’t asleep, and I wasn’t anxious about anything, and I wasn’t on any other
drug. Then I saw my dad. He came through the door of my room. Dressed in his usual jet black suit with
crisp white oxford shirt and blue necktie.
But, he had such a worried look on his face. It was the first time I had ever seen his
face that way. I saw him as clearly as I
am seeing you. He said nothing, but walked
towards me. I began to panic. And instantly he moved backwards with his
hands up and went away. I guess the
reason why I was afraid was that my brother and sisters and I had buried him
two months prior. I’ve never had an
experience like this before, and I haven’t had one since.
My experience was not like how Matthew
writes about Joseph’s. No, do this, or
don’t do that. It didn’t involve anyone
else except my dad and me. And, there
was not a big revelation, no “This was the interpretation of the vision of your
dad.” But, what I’ve come to understand
these 13 years later is that the space between life and death is very
thin. I don’t think we see the space
because we are, for good or ill, products of the Enlightenment; we are so
wedded to the rational, what can be explained by microscopes, test tubes, and
longitudinal studies. And, thanks to
John Calvin and all of the theologians of the 16th century for
excising any and all things that lent themselves to mystery and sacred symbolism
and practice in giving us Protestant Christianity.
When angels visit, as they did to
Joseph and Zacharias and Mary they
challenge our understanding of, not only time and space, but also faithfulness,
righteousness, and openness to God looks like. And when angels visit they invite us to risk being unsafe, being seen as credible, and be
led by God in ways that we can’t even imagine. I think that’s what the
Joseph story is all about. Both Joseph and Mary were vulnerable, and risked
being excluded from their
families and Jewish society in order to follow through on the word of an angel,
a messenger from God. The word from God
was to trust God’s
promises of presence, of being the one who would bear them up, of being the one
to make a way for them when what they were being asked to do all seemed
implausible. Like Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and all of the others in
the Hebrew scriptures who witnessed the call of God through an angel, a vision,
a voice:
-the boy Samuel in the temple who hears a voice calling out to
him
-Daniel and his companions in the lion’s den. There’s a vision
in the middle of them, spewing fire
-Balaam’s
donkey – Balaam goes to speak to God’s people, and the donkey won’t behave.
Balaam finally kicks the donkey, who then speaks, “There’s an angel there!”
So, too,
are we called by that same God to follow and trust. The voice, the vision asks us to give all of
our heart to a way of being in this world that goes against the grain and
privileges of mercy and grace, of courageous patience and forthrightness to
speak up and speak out about what God is doing.
To speak about seeing angels and hearing
voices and having visions is very dangerous in our world when one out of every
five Americans is living with some level of mental illness, and often lack of
care and funds. But, if our confidence
rests in a God who is always in pursuit of us, who promises to never leave us
nor forsake us, who has led us this far along our way in life, who speaks
still…then why not an angel? Why not a
star? Why not lumbering shepherds? Why not diviners? Why not the weakness of a baby? Ours is a God who can speak to and through
broken and troubled minds and hearts.
When angels visit we are not always
aware of their presence. And sometimes
their message is lost on us. But, God is
faithful, and will not leave us to flounder in chaos and confusion. God’s voice can open our deaf ears. God’s power can open our blinded eyes. God’s power can break up our stony
hearts. God’s power can change our
stubborn minds. That’s good news, and it’s
frightening at the same time for us who have been anticipating the Christmas event. God’s presence coming among us, indeed,
already among us, meets and works with us where we are – in our common ordinary
lives, using common ordinary things and people to do uncommon, not ordinary
things.
To the extent that you can discern it,
when an angel visits, and if it is showing you and asking you to dare and go
deeper in the life of the Spirit of God, be obedient and do it. It may seem like it’s not real and we can
explain it away. But, don’t write it off. That’s the call to the new creation
we’ve been waiting for. That’s the
mystery of the incarnation – God with us in all of life. Amen.
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