Dreaming of Christmas

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. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Put the words “dreaming” and “Christmas” in the same sentence and almost everyone thinks immediately of the famous Irving Berlin song, “White Christmas,” the most recorded and played song of all time.[1] I confess that I find it rather insipid but I still usually sing along whenever I hear it on the radio. I won’t ask for a show of hands. But I suspect that most of you sing along, too. Right?

I think of “White Christmas” every time I read the text about Joseph’s dream. Both are Christmas dreams but they express very different ideas. Irving Berlin dreamed of a white Christmas like the ones he used to know in his past. Joseph dreamed of a new future God had in mind. “White Christmas” dreams nostalgically of glistening tree tops and sleigh bells in the snow. Joseph dreamed of doing something extremely difficult and delicate, avoiding additional embarrassment because of Mary’s pregnancy. “White Christmas” wishes sentimentally that all Christmases be magically white. Joseph’s dream has to do not with sentiment but with salvation for the world. Very different dreams.

These contrasting dreams teach us something important. For after all, dreams are a way of seeing, a way of interpreting reality. Whether we think dreams are about the past or the future or both, whether we think they come from God or our subconscious, they are a way of interpreting reality. What we dream about shapes what sense we make of things. So let’s ask a couple of questions today and the first is this: what is at the center of our dreams?

Of course, there can be many things at the center of our dreams and what’s at the center determines how we see things. We have a book containing prints of some of Norman Rockwell’s most famous paintings and illustrations. Rockwell, of course, spent much of his life in western Massachusetts (Stockbridge) and even though he died in 1978 his illustrations still show up relatively often today. One of my favorites is one he did for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for December 27, 1947. It is called “Christmas Eve.”[2]

It pictures a salesgirl in the toy department of a great department store. The date on the calendar is December 24th. The girl has on the lapel of her dress a little watch and the hands on it point to five minutes past five. Stores closed at five o’clock back then on Christmas Eve. The exhausted clerk has slumped upon a pile of toys behind the counter — clothing askew, hair disheveled, and arms limp at her sides. She has slipped off her shoes and her eyes are rolled back as if she were about to breathe her last. She has just made it through another great American Christmas!

In a humorous and even gentle way Rockwell helps us see that for many the dream of Christmas does in fact begin and end with a frenzy of buying and selling. There is nothing wrong with buying and selling but ought we not to wonder about it if that is the actual center of the Christmas dream? And for too many, it is.

Or think of this irony. In 1247 a hospital was founded in London called St. Mary of Bethlehem. Two centuries later it was converted into a hospital for the insane. In those days the mentally disturbed were greatly abused, chained in their cells, beaten, cared for as no better than animals and perhaps not as well. So St. Mary of Bethlehem became known throughout the country for its noise and confusion. Over the years the original name of Bethlehem was gradually shortened to — can you guess? Bedlam! — a word now meaning any place of wild uproar and confusion.[3] Think of words that are mostly associated with peace and gentleness. Bethlehem would certainly have to be one of them. Yet isn’t it ironic that through a curious historical accident a name of beauty and joy has come down to us in another form meaning distress and wild confusion?

Unfortunately confusion and distress are at the center of the dream for many people. The suicide rate goes up dramatically at Christmas. Marriages come unglued. Family abuse increases. Alcoholism takes a terrible toll. And a time that is suppose to bring peace becomes for many the least peaceful and most stressful of any season of the year. It all depends on what we allow to be at the center of our dreams.

Remember that at the center of Joseph’s dream was God. What Joseph dreamed about was something that God was doing. He didn’t dream of buying and selling. He dreamed of what God was doing to bring about salvation. He didn’t dream of confusion. But notice this. The dream didn’t take away his confusion either. He was called to accept that his betrothed was pregnant and that this was from God. We know the story too well so we fail to appreciate the amazing, difficult, and confusing thing Joseph was being asked to do. But God was at the center of his dream. The dream didn’t take away his struggle or confusion but it did assure him that God was with him and guiding him.

How we see what happens to us in life depends on what is at the center of our dreams. Is God at the center of our dreams or is something else?

We also need to ask a second question and that is, what do we do after we dream?

I heard a story once about a minister and his family’s Christmas traditions. One of their favorite activities was getting out and setting up the nativity scene. The pieces came from at least three different sets. They included a three-legged donkey and a one-horned cow and all the other animals and people that usually make up a crèche.

One Christmas the minister’s son — three-years old at the time — was particularly fascinated with the crèche and all the animals and people. Of course, his parents tried to teach him where the different figures went. Sheep with the shepherds, camels with the wisemen, the baby in the manger, and so on.

But the young boy kept putting one of the sheep in the manger and stood baby Jesus by the wall with the other people. His father “corrected” things and returned the sheep to the shepherds and put baby Jesus back into the manger. But the son insistently again put baby Jesus with the other people characters and returned the baby sheep to the manger! There was to be no changing his mind about this.

Finally his theologically trained father was forced to look at the nativity scene with a sheep in the manger! It seemed ridiculous. But then he saw that the boy had seen something that he, for all his education and learning, had missed. After all, mangers are for animals — not people. And people like Jesus are for standing with the people. In fact, what Christmas most seems to be about is that God comes to stand with us. It isn’t a baby in a manger that makes Christmas wonderful. It’s the good news that God stands with us. The little boy saw that and his minister father did not.

What we do after we dream is fundamentally important. To dream even a God-centered dream of Christ in the manger is not enough. We have to live lives that allow Christ to get out of that manger and stand with us and challenge us and lead us because he is Lord. A lot of people get sentimental about the baby in the manger. But can they and can we pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ who was born a baby but who grew to become our crucified and risen Lord? That’s a tougher question and answering it has to do with what we do after we dream of Christmas.

God doesn’t stand with us just for the fun of it. God stands with us so that we stand with others. That’s why the dream of Christmas has to be shared. It can’t end with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads, even if they are holy sugar plums. The Christmas dream can’t end with the sentiment that someone else’s Christmases always be white. The Christmas dream ends only when we do the sometimes difficult but invigorating work of reaching out to others and standing with them as God has reached out to and stood with us. What do we do after we dream?

Let me tell you a story. It didn’t happen to me but when our kids were young it could have. I think it’s a Fred Craddock story though I’m no longer sure where I read it. A family is out for a drive on a Sunday afternoon. It is a pleasant afternoon, and they relax and take an easy pace down the highway. Suddenly the two children begin to beat their father in the back: “Daddy, Daddy, stop the car! Stop the car! There’s a kitten back there on the side of the road!”

The father says, “So there’s a kitten on the side of the road. We’re having a drive.”

“Well, then, it will have to die,” the father says angrily. “We don’t have room for another animal. We have a zoo already at the house. No more animals.”

“We never thought our Daddy would be so mean and cruel as to let a kitten die,” they say.

Finally the mother turns to her husband and says, “Dear, you’ll have to stop.”

He turns the car around, returns to the spot and pulls off to the side of the road. He goes out to pick up the kitten. The poor creature is just skin and bones, sore-eyed, and full of fleas; but when he reaches down to pick it up, with its last bit of energy the kitten bristles, baring tooth and claw. Ssssst! He scratches the father’s hand. But finally he picks up the kitten by the loose skin at the neck, brings it over to the car and says, “Don’t touch it; it’s probably got leprosy.”

When they get to the house the children give the kitten several baths, about a gallon of warm milk, and intercede: “Can we let it stay in the house just tonight? Tomorrow we’ll fix a place in the garage.”

Then one day the father walks in, feels something rub against his leg, looks down and there is a cat. He reaches down toward the cat, carefully checking to see that no one is watching. When the cat sees his hand, it does not bare its claws and hiss; instead it arches its back, as cats are wont to do, to receive a caress.

Is that the same cat? No. It’s not the same frightened, hurt, hissing kitten on the side of the road. Of course not. And we all know what makes the difference. The hand of love.

In so many ways God in Jesus Christ reaches down to bless us with the hand of love. And if we notice carefully the hand of Jesus, there are, as it were, scratches on it. But such is the hand of love. What we do after the dream of Christmas is to reach out so that hand can touch the lives of others.

This is really what the dream of Christmas is all about. It’s a dream that came to Joseph long ago but it’s not a dream held back there in the dusty pages of history. This dream is a living reality, a reality that transforms us when we live it. And whenever we see it lived — in the church, in our lives, in the lives of our families and neighbors, in unexpected places — we can rejoice because then the dream is real. And God enters the world again and again through the mangers of our lives.

[1] The song “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin (1888-1989) was first sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942 musical, “Holiday Inn.” As a record it has sold over 30 million copies and millions more as a part of other albums, making it the best-selling recording of all time. The song was reused as the title theme of the 1954 musical film, “White Christmas” which starred Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. “White Christmas” has been the most performed Christmas song in history, with more than 500 versions recorded — a stunning outcome for a song of just 80 words in 13 lines with lines 10-13 exactly repeating lines 6-9! Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas, Internet, 12 Dec. 2004.

[2] 102 Favorite Paintings by Norman Rockwell (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978) 160.

[3] The Bethlem Royal Hospital is the world’s oldest “madhouse” or psychiatric hospital. It has been a part of London since 1247, first as a priory for the sisters and brethren of the order of the Star of Bethlehem. Its first site was in Bishopsgate Street (where Liverpool Street station now stands). In 1330 it is mentioned as a hospital and it is documented that in 1403 some of the first lunatics were there. Colloquially known as Bedlam, it was handed over by Henry VIII with all its revenues to the city of London as a hospital for lunatics in 1547. In the 18th century people used to go there to see the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the “show of Bethlehem,” and laugh at their antics. In 1930 the hospital was moved to an outer suburb of London, Eden Park near Beckenham, Kent. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas, Internet, 12 Dec. 2004.