Advent 4
By Mark Oakley, Monday 24th December, 2007
A sermon by the Venerable Mark Oakley
The story is told of the woman who wakes a couple of days before Christmas and says to her husband, you know, last night I dreamt you gave me a beautiful diamond necklace, I wonder what that could mean? Her husband replied with a twinkle in his eye, well, you´ll find out in a couple of days. The following morning the woman wakes up and says, I dreamt again that you gave me a really pretty diamond necklace, I really wonder what it means? You´ll find out tomorrow, said her husband. Finally Christmas morning comes, the woman wakes, I had that dream again, you gave me a spectacular necklace with stunning diamonds: what can it mean, darling? Well, today you will find out, says her husband, and hands her a snall beautifully wrapped present. Oh, says the woman, excitedly opening it and finding – a book! The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.
During a typical life, a person spends about 6 years dreaming, that´s 2 hours a night. And there are, as you know, many theories as to what is going on when we do. Freud thought that dreams protected our sleep, holding our attention so we wouldn´t wake up. They may also allow the repressed parts of our mind to play and stay alive; bad dreams he thought, were to help us gain control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences (the majority of dreams have anxiety in them). They can also offer a view as to how future events might proceed, running it through the mind, a job interview say or a first date.
Carl Jung suggested that dreams may compensate for one-sided attitudes held when we are awake. Others have said that dreams communicate what we fail to otherwise, or that they are like the cleaning up operations of computers when off-line, dreams removing all the accumulated junk from our minds. Dreams can also create new ideas through random thought mutations, they can regulate mood, they can be nature´s free psycotherapy, making connections in a safe place and allowing the dreamer, often symbolically, to integrate where fractured.
In our post-Freud and post-Jung world where dreams are now interpreted as being some interaction between the unconscious and the conscious, and projections of parts of us that are being ignored or rejected, it is understandable that our ancenstors believed that dreams were caught up with the divine: the invisible reality touching the visible, heaven wrestling with earth, God with the soul, the past presenting and preparing for the future. Dreams occur in the Bible and in other faith traditions a great deal. You will remember Joseph interpreting the dreams of Pharoah and today we have another Joseph dreaming. The angel comes at night when he was relaxed and his guard is down, and he is told not to be afraid. Heaven and earth negotiate.
When Matthew begins his gospel he lists the genealogy of Jesus and calls it the genesis of Jesus Christ. It is an important word because in the 1st book of Genesis we have God´s spirit brooding over the waters of chaos and creating what is good. Now here too we have the Spirit coming to incubate something new again, something new to an exhausted world where imagination fails and lives are shut down.
Two names are to be given to the new baby: Jesus or Joshua which means To Save or Rescue. An important name for a world that discovers time and time again that we cannot save ourselves but have to be touched into life from outside, held into being, loved into loving. The second name given to the child says it clearly: Emmanuel, God is with us. We are not alone. When the world, when myself feels unsaveable or unsavoury, here is the one called Save – he is the one who tells us we are held, cherished, wanted and looked after. When the world or myself feels abandoned, here is the one named God with us. The truths of Joseph´s dreams contradict our one-sided semi-conscious state and invite him and us to base our lives upon this promise that we are wanted, that he is here and we don´t have to deserve it, it is a gift.
So, here´s a thought. Perhaps human beings sleep in order, not so much to rest as to dream. And perhaps human lives are changed by attending to those dreams and learning lessons that the noise of now often won´t allow us to hear normally. Perhaps the divine whisper to you is far beyond your common sense day to day self, but deeper within the echo-chambers of your heart and being, with all their fracture and potential. As Oscar Wilde said, “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.�
When he grew up Jesus was always subverting what people took for granted, but his teachings resonanted then and still do and require excavations of who we are and might yet be. They had the potency and scorching truths of dreams.
For Joseph, listening to the dream angel meant he began to trust again, even though it meant some heartache and shame. It meant that he would now let God live in his and his family´s life by forgetting himself, carving out a nest in himself by removing pride and flat living, and allowing the dove-spirit to nestle and hatch new things, a baby to be placed in the manger but also a new adventurous spiritual awakening born in him and potentially in all of us.
And so we are told, “when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took her as his wife but had nor relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him Jesus�.
