Jeremiah 31:7-14, Psalm 84, Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a, Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
Two Sundays ago I preached about Joseph, and his first dream, when the angel told him that Mary’s baby was from the Holy Spirit, so he should marry her and accept her baby and call him Jesus. I said that his dream did not make things any easier, even more difficult, yet Joseph decided to believe his dream and act on it. As he has to do with his second, third, and fourth dreams in our lesson today.
His second dream gets the Holy Family down to Egypt. It is not coincidental that Joseph shares his name with the original Joseph in Genesis, he of the coat-of-many-colors, whose dreams got him sent down to Egypt. The third dream of Joseph brings them back, and his fourth dream gets them to Nazareth in Galilee. How did Mary like it when Joseph woke her up and said, “I had a dream.”
And little Jesus gets bundled about from place to place. Not in a car-seat, but in a sling or a papoose or a basket. Like Moses in the basket, also in Egypt, also rescued from the raging of a king and the slaughter of baby boys. Moses was in the care of Miriam, and the name “Mary” is a later form of “Miriam”. To Matthew it’s not coincidental, it’s all fulfillment. Miriam for Mary, Joseph for Joseph, Pharaoh for King Herod, and Moses the Prince of Egypt for Jesus the Prince of Israel. “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” The long history of Israel begins its fulfillment in this Jesus boy.
The word “fulfillment” means several things. The first is that the Old Testament story is so true that it keeps coming true again. The story is paradigmatic and typical. By the word “typical” I mean both senses, that while human behaviors are not inevitable they are so typical that you can expect them, and also that individual characters are “types” within the paradigmatic stories.
Jesus is a type of Moses in the paradigmatic story of children being the innocent victims of the powerful. Both Pharaoh and Herod are the types of rulers who will sacrifice children and families to preserve their power. Can you think of any rulers in power who are doing this today? Despite their power and their greed and pride, what really drives them is their fear, and they exploit their fear.
Both Miriam and Mary have more to fear than rulers do but they are not driven by their fear and they choose for life. They are the type of women who protect their children at risk to themselves. And Joseph is a type of Joseph in how God worked salvation in the world through him by his reading the signs and making hard choices and investing his life in the right thing, regardless of his interest. As Mary also had to do. It’s an old story that gets fulfilled in new ways because it’s a true story.
The second meaning of fulfillment is that the names and details in the story reach behind the story. The particulars are the icons and the links to the great and comprehensive story behind it that is poking through it. The names are hyperlinks to connect you to the other stories within the greater scheme. St. Matthew invites you to the larger story behind the details of Joseph and Joseph, of Miriam and Mary, of Pharaoh and Herod, and of Moses and Jesus.
St. Matthew is also inviting you to believe that while the individual characters are free to act as they see fit, and that nothing is inevitable, yet there is a long-range plan of God at work, a grand strategy, that is fully able to gather up our particular momentary choices into God’s design. I invite you to believe that, just as Joseph had to believe his dreams. Sometimes you believe it because what else is there to believe in?
How much did Joseph know, and when did he know it? Faith is always a projection. Faith at its best is a vision, and at its worst a fantasy, and how do you know the difference? How many nights during the childhood of Jesus did Joseph lie awake, wondering and worrying what he should do next? How many nightmares did he have, and how did he know which of his dreams to believe?
I figure he must have thought about those stories from the Torah of Moses and Pharaoh and Miriam and his own namesake. Joseph must have seen those stories as paradigms for him. And you too have to see your own life in your own way as a fulfillment of the scriptures.
The greater story is true again in you, and if you believe that, and compare your own particulars to the paradigmatic stories of God’s design, you can be ready to do the right thing when you see the danger ahead.
I’m thinking about that church shooting in Texas last Sunday where the murderer was killed by parishioners bearing arms. This is being celebrated, which I cannot do, although it’s not for me to judge them. There are Christians today who would have to tell Joseph and the other fathers of Bethlehem to arm themselves to protect their families. Not with guns but knives. Should the Jews at the Hanukkah party in Monsey last week have been prepared with their own knives, considering the rise in anti-Semitism?
These two events are both horrible and horribly typical. Should we see them as paradigmatic? As Christians we are not supposed to see them as inevitable, lest we too resort to violence as our response to violence. Joseph and Mary should not arm themselves.
How do you know the right thing to do? We don’t depend on dreams, nor on our natural intellect, but, according to St. Paul in Ephesians, we depend on “a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may come to know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”
That’s how. You determine your choice for the right thing by your hope, not by your fear, and not by your past experience but by your future inheritance among the saints, and not by your own power but by the immeasurable greatness of his power. The risk is that’s a fantasy, a foolish dream, but it is the vision to which God is calling you, the vision that takes your faith, and directs your choices and your responses to the dangers ahead of you.
To see your way you need enlightenment from the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. You need the eyes of your hearts enlightened. Now that’s a strange metaphor. Hearts with eyes. It’s because your heart is at your center, between your head and your guts. Your heart is where you combine your mind and your feelings into your convictions, where you merge your thoughts and your desires into purposes. Your heart is the home of your will and of your wanting. Your love comes from your heart because your love is the combination of your thoughts and your emotions into your willful purposes.
The Holy Spirit opens and illuminates the eyes of your hearts. Not what you look at, but what you look for. Not your observations but your investments, what you desire, what you want. It’s from your heart and within your love that you will discern what is the immeasurable greatness of his power to you who believe.
It’s why King Herod could not see the power of the baby. Nor Pharaoh. They were strong rulers, both of them, but they operated out of fear, not love. It is why Miriam and Mary could both operate so fearlessly in caring for Moses and Jesus.
It’s why Papa Joseph could keep on moving through the world and trusting his direction, despite his being on the run from fear of death and persecution, because he was navigating from his heart. His heart told him more than he could think and understand, his heart told him more than he could feel, and what it told him was that there was something immeasurably great behind the small and risky choices he was making.
That’s the right move coming out of Christmas. That’s the Incarnation’s proper follow-through. You must see your own small life and your own small choices as another particular fulfillment of this great story. Which means that you too must address this world and all its agony in love.
Yes, please do think about it with intelligence and sober analysis and critique, and yes, do fully feel it, from pleasure to anger and from happiness to grief, but then only from the choices of love do you make your way into the world, or else the world will be cruel and bitter, no matter how much power you have.
But you have been enlightened. It’s to your eyes of love that the great riches of your glorious inheritance begin to show themselves, and the immeasurable greatness of his power is for the greatness of your hearts and for the power of your love. What you are fulfilling in your personal particulars is the never-ending story of God’s love.
Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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