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Column: Joseph the dreamer

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

“You will never believe the bizarre dream I had the other night.” We have all said something like that before. We have all had crazy dreams, some we talk about, and some we try to forget. Crazy or not crazy, most of us do not pay much attention to our dreams. Almost no one allows their bizarre dreams to direct their lives.
That is why Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew always inspires me. He had one crazy dream after another. Not only did he pay attention to each of them but took them as the gospel truth; which of course they were.
Joseph was the husband of Mary. However, both Matthew and Luke are adamant, he is not the father of Jesus. We do not know how Joseph learned of Mary’s pregnancy. Did she tell him herself or did he hear it at the town square? We only know that upon hearing the news, he was determined to do the right thing but to do it kindly. As Matthew puts it, “He planned to put her away quietly.” Joseph planned a private divorce.
With the good sense to sleep on his decision, Joseph went to bed. The old carpenter may not have slept much that night but he dreamed through most of it. In Joseph’s crazy dream, an angel appeared and told him not to hesitate to take Mary as his wife. She was not pregnant by unfaithfulness but by the Holy Spirit. She carried within herself not the child of indiscretion but the savior of the world.
Sometimes I wonder if Joseph was looking for an excuse not to divorce Mary. Maybe, even before he went to sleep that night he was looking for a way out of the mess, without making a mess. Whatever the reason, Joseph believed the angel and the dream, becoming the husband of Mary and the stepfather of Jesus.
That was not Joseph’s only dream. It was in a dream, God warned Joseph to flee to Egypt with his family. Herod the Great was determined to end the young messiah’s life before it even began. Someone had to save the savior. Joseph obeyed the dream and saved Jesus.
Joseph not only obeyed that dream but the one that followed when God told him it was safe to return from Egypt, following Herod’s death. At least one other dream came to Joseph. This one warned him to avoid the part of the country where the son of Herod the Great ruled. Once again, Joseph packed up the family and moved.
After Jesus turns 12 and becomes a “Son of the law,” the gospels are silent regarding Joseph. We assume the dreamer went to sleep and did not wake up.
Because of his early death and silence in the gospels, it is easy to see Joseph as merely a bit player in the biblical drama. However, he was more than simply the family’s breadwinner. Joseph was a person who dreamed and listened to dreams.
Granted most of us do not have dreams as Joseph did. I have difficulty even remembering mine. Yet, Joseph’s willingness to believe and to trust in what seems illogical and irrational challenges me. A pregnant virgin, a flight to a foreign country to avoid a maniacal tyrant, it all sounds like make-believe. Joseph reminds me that the gospel story not only ends with the unbelievable, God dying for the likes of us. The story begins the same way always beckoning for belief in the unbelievable.

Dr. Mark Ross is the pastor of Marion Baptist Church. To learn more about MBC, visit http://www.marionbaptistchurchva.com/.