*
I spoke this past Sunday, the last in Advent (the Gospel reading was Mt. 1:18-25), and since then I’ve been chewing on the story, marveling at Matthew’s telling of it. Over the years, we’ve internalized a version of Christmas events that papers over or blots out the details of the text itself. But when you read it closely, Matthew’s nativity turns out to be a strange story, strangely told. He includes only the barest, scantest detail, giving little more than a few suggestions, every line terribly “fraught with background” (to use Auerbach's rightly-famous phrase).
The mystery starts like this: “Mary was found to be with child.” Not a word, notice, about how the discovery was made. Or when. Or by whom. To make matters weirder, Matthew adds that the child is “from the Holy Spirit.” But of course no one could tell this by looking at Mary, and who would believe the impossible story she has to tell? By all appearances, this is a scandal, a life-shattering disaster.
Be that as it may, Joseph somehow, at some point, learns that his bride-to-be is pregnant. (Probably because she begins to show.) He must have been deeply troubled by this news, knowing this was not his child. But the Gospel shares none of Joseph’s thoughts or feelings on the matter. All we’re allowed to know for sure is that he, as a “just” man, a man whose heart has been conformed to the spirit of the Law, intends to divorce Mary secretly so she is not branded as an adulterer.
Strangest of all, Mary, apparently, says nothing about what has been revealed to her. Why? I think it’s Augustine who suggests it is because Joseph has to show his worth. But perhaps the truth is Mary simply does not know what to say. Regardless, in the end, an angel appears—in a dream—to direct Joseph. But the direction given is, essentially, permission: “Do not be afraid...” And it is given only after Joseph has made up his mind. Finally, almost offhandedly, Matthew claims that these odd events somehow fulfilled an aged prophecy, itself unbelievably arcane. Then, shockingly, he discloses a secret: Joseph and Mary did not have sex before she gave birth to her son.
**
Elliptical as it is, Matthew’s telling of the Nativity is truer to life than our stories are. How much do we ever really know, honestly, about what is happening to us or what God is doing in our lives or in the lives of those around us—especially those nearest to us, closest to home?
Matthew’s telling also reminds us that God’s care for us, however mysterious, is never magical. God is always caring for us, always doing exactly what we need, exactly when we need it. But God is never doing what we fantasize gods should do—rescuing us from every trouble, securing us against every disappointment, granting our every wish.
Joseph falls asleep the moment he is resolved; only then does the angel come to him. We’re tempted to think that the angel should’ve appeared before Joseph had exhausted himself trying to decide what to do. Couldn’t God have arranged it so that Joseph and Mary learned together, and at the same time, what was to happen and why? But that, needless to say, is just not how God works. Because that is not what we actually need. We adults mostly want to be better informed. That is why we’re always looking for ways of divining our future. But God wants us to be formed, to live lives that are fully, truly ours. If the word of the Lord had come any earlier, Joseph would not have been able to find his resolve. And as with him, so with us: finding our resolve requires the process of dissolving. It is only by “coming apart”—because of some problem we cannot solve, some knot we can’t untie—that we are ever truly able to come to ourselves. As Andy Squyres sings, we only learn that God never fails because God does not intervene.
I said to Zoë the other day, discussing The Hobbit, that the difference between bad and good magic in Tolkien’s stories is that bad magic is always used too soon, even if for supposedly good ends. Good magic always comes “right on time,” which, as far as the characters are concerned, is too late. All to say, it is just because God is concerned with our becoming whole that God “waits”—and makes us wait. Not that God is ever not acting. God is always present, always active. But at times that action must be entirely hidden from us, kept from our awareness, so that it can work on us at depths otherwise unreachable.
***
We’re told that the angel came to Joseph in a dream. (And we notice, perhaps for the first time, that he’s named for the dreamer.) Let yourself consider what this means. It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that he’s able to sleep at all under the circumstances? He’s facing the end of life as he’s known it; the woman he loves has become a stranger to him; their future is dark. And yet, in spite of the knot in his gut, in spite of the sour taste in his mouth, he communes with his own heart and gives himself over to sleep. How? Because he has patience, which is just a way of saying that he has made peace with the fact that there are things he cannot handle, and has realized finally that his limitations are good because they leave room for the good only God can do.
Falling asleep, Joseph is following the directive of Scripture:
Be angry, but sin not;
commune with your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. SelahPs 4.2
You know how dreams work. They’re not self-interpreting. So, Joseph not only refuses to sin in anger or fear, not only communes with his own heart in the silence of his bed, but also yields himself to whatever dreams may come. And as he is facing himself, listening to the sound his own voice makes in the heart of his heart, the causal joint that binds him to God attunes to the Truth. That is why, when he wakes, he is able to work out what his unconscious had learned—and is free to act accordingly.
I love Remembrandt’s* interpretation of the moment. Poor Joseph, utterly worn out by the drama, most of it carried out secretly in his heart, finally receives the touch that heals him by heading him in the right direction. The touch is so gentle, it does not even wake him.
****
In the dream, the angel addresses Joseph as “son of David.” (Who knows how Joseph’s unconscious imaged this for him?) It’s a puzzling detail in context, because David was a man of action! But Joseph, falling asleep, is doing something more glorious. The decisive moment in Adam’s life happened while he was in a deep asleep (Gen 2:21), remember. Abraham was under that same deep sleep when God cut the covenant with him (Gen. 15.12). And Jacob met the God of his fathers first in his dreams (Gen. 28:16). In the light of those stories we can see that Joseph is doing everything that needs to be done just by doing nothing but going to bed.
What was true for him is true for us, as well. At some point, faith just means doing nothing, accepting that we are limited and that our limitations are good—including our inability to stave off death and our inability to save those we love from pain. Sometimes, we have to be bold enough to resolve ourselves and fall to sleep, practicing for a good death, because that is the best way we’ve been given of being present to the God who raises the dead.
*****
A few years ago, a good friend of mine returned from an extended time overseas and promptly fell into the worst depression of his life. Nothing was working out as he’d hoped, and he could feel despair setting in. One week at church he reached out to someone, asking her to pray for him, and weeks later, she stopped him and said: “I don’t want to tell you what the Lord said, but here it is, he said you need to go to place of your pain. Where it hurts the most. Because he waits for you there.”
That, I believe, is the wisdom Joseph embodies, which Matthew’s story limns for us. It’s not a wisdom that applies to everyone in every case; we cannot make it into a hard-and-fast rule. But sometimes all we can do, and all we need to do, is seek out the place of our pain and make our bed in that hell, resting there, reclining into our frailty. Sometimes, the only right thing to do is to be still, to fall sleep, so the God who never sleeps can do good for us—the exceeding, abundant good that is not only more than we could ever achieve, but also more than we would ever dare to dream.
*I have no idea how this misspelling happened, but no way am I changing it!
Yes Chris, 1000 times. Even in our worst imagination of what is at hand, the hardest thing and the only thing, really, we can do is total surrender by placing ourselves in His loving embrace. God is never doing nothing. We just can’t see or comprehend what is happening. God is I Am-ing all the time.
Thank you Chris for your encouraging words.
Amen. I loved this the first time, and more now. The layers of how God is with us during the Advent story are beautiful and it is good to rest in that. This sermon has an immediacy that I know. Thank you for sharing these reflections here.