Book Promotion

Year A - Advent 4 - Needed Change ⁴

December 22, 2013

Matthew 1:18-25

Book Plug:

The following comment on this text is found in my book based on previous Year A reflections. You can purchase your own copy of Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience or give it as a gift at Amazon.

There is appropriate guilt and there is inappropriate guilt. Likewise, there is appropriate and inappropriate responsibility. 

The trick is to tell the appropriate apart from the inappropriate. 

How might we look at Joseph’s actions regarding Mary’s pregnancy? Here his acceptance of reality is attributed to his righteousness, not his wisdom. Left to his own devices and the devices of his time and place, Joseph had every thing he needed to claim this task of covering for Mary as inappropriate responsibility. 

Somewhere along the way Joseph had learned to first acknowledge and then to listen to his dreams. His dream claimed steadfast love as appropriate, not inappropriate. 

In this time of waiting between a first and next comings, dream-time remains an important category for us to pay attention to. 

So, what dreams this day need to be shifted from inappropriate to appropriate in your life and in the life of the world? 

Based on this scripture they will have something to do with the presence of G*D taking precedence over the current traditions of our culture (religious culture or otherwise). Where does church doctrine that constrains our relationships with one another need to be turned on its head? Where is there a response leading to peace between peoples that needs to come out from under an umbrella of being called treason and stand to turn us all in better directions? Where in our families and communities do we find the fulcrum from which to leverage a preferred future into view and into today? 

Whatever your dream or dreams lead you to—imitate Joseph. It is time to wake from sleep!