Across the Pastor’s Desk

By the Rev. Cherie Daniel, Freeborn Congregational United Church of Christ in Freeborn, Alden United Methodist Church in Alden, Grace United Methodist Church in Kiester

Do you have dreams?

Any amount of caffeine after 4 p.m. causes me to have dreams — strange dreams — of familiar people doing uncharacteristic deeds in very unique settings. My mother used to be able to tell by the look on my face when I came to the breakfast table that I had spent the night in “strange dreams.” She would have to talk me back to reality sometimes, so that I wouldn’t approach those people and wonder about their secret antics!

Today is Epiphany — the day we recognize the arrival of the wise men from the East at the house where they found Mary and the child Jesus. You know the story: ‘they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” They seem to be impractical gifts for a child of low income parents who had rather more practical needs. But our Bible stories are not about sensible responses to practical needs or conventional answers to normal situations. Our Bible heroes dare to dream.

Abimelech (Genesis 20:3), Laban the Aramean (Genesis 31:24), Solomon (1 Kings 3:5), Job (Job 33:15), and Eleazar (4 Maccabees 6:5) all had messages come to them “in a dream.” Sometimes the message was a warning. Sometimes it brought hope. Sometimes it gave instruction. Always, the dreamer shared that he had dreamed and recognized the dream as significant. The dream was not ignored or dismissed.

The carpenter Joseph dreamed. He was a righteous man. He was a socially responsible man. He was a sensitive man. When “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream,” he did not panic, neither did he ignore or dismiss the message. He accepted the advice from the angel and went ahead with his plans to marry his pregnant Mary. Despite probably “public disgrace,” the couple were married and, as a couple, went to Bethlehem to be counted in the census.

A second time Joseph dreamed. Again, an “angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream” and gave instructions to “take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt…” Joseph followed those instructions and kept his family safe from King Herod’s wrathful and paranoid actions. An interesting note to all of us who are skeptical about such things as angels and dreams is this: the angel told Joseph to take his family in Egypt “and remain there until I tell you…” Not only did Joseph receive two amazing messages in his sleep, but there was to be a third!

And so, as promised, “an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt” and again Joseph listened. He took Mary and the child back to the land of their ancestor Jacob/Israel. However, Joseph was afraid of the new king, and so was open to yet another message “in a dream” and was warned to travel a different road to a different home.

Joseph was a faithful Hebrew believer. The wise travelers from the East were from someplace else in so many unique definitions of those terms, and yet all remembered and heeded messages brought to them in dreams. The wise men had learned about and waited anxiously for the birth of a new king of the Jews. When they saw the star, they traveled over a great distance to find this child and to pay their respects. I think that they thought the whole population would be as curious and as happy at the birth as they were. That was not so. King Herod, still just as angry and paranoid as always, was not happy and was frightened at the prospect. He was curious, but not for the good reasons the wise men expected.

And so, “after having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” That must have been a powerful dream! I imagine a large entourage surrounding the wise men, so this new route back home must have created quite a problem — as did the stealth with which they had to travel to avoid Herod or his spies.

I asked earlier. I ask again: Do you have dreams? Do you pay attention when messages come to you from out of the blue? Do you trust that ideas which pop into your head might have a heavenly source? Do you share your dreams and dare to act on them?

As we celebrate the arrival of the wise travelers from the East, their gifts, their perseverance, their homage to the newborn king, may we also, like them, dare to dream!