Second Sunday after Christmas, 2004:

You don’t always want to follow the advice you get.  A farmer back in the hills came to his closest neighbor and asked, “Ambrose, didn’t you have a mule that got himself foundered one time?”

“Yep,” the neighbor said.

“Well, what did you do for him?” asked the neighbor.

“Fed him turpentine.”

“Huh, well thank you,” the farmer said and went off down the road, shaking his head.

A few weeks later the neighbor returned and said, “Ambrose, what did you say you gave that mule that was foundered?

“Turpentine.”

“Huh, that’s what I thought you said.  Well, by golly, I fed mine some turpentine and it killed him”

“Yep,” Ambrose said matter-of-factly, “Killed mine too.”

Joseph might have sought advice from his neighbors.  Maybe he asked what they did for disturbing dreams.  Don’t eat spicy food right before going to bed.  Don’t eat anything after sundown.  Watch out for figs, they always cause disturbing dreams.  Joseph may have followed some to the advice he received, but he still had a lot of dreams.

It was accepted as an absolute truth in the ancient world that God sent messages to people in dreams.  Joseph had three reported in the Gospel for this Sunday.  He is warned about Herod’s insane jealousy, and in the dream, God instructs him to flee with the family into Egypt.  Through the prior centuries Jews had often sought refuge in Egypt, so larger cities had a small population of Jews.  Joseph would not have worried about finding like-minded people in Egypt and would have felt relatively safe there.  Later, of course, the enemies of Christianity would say that Jesus learned magic tricks while in Egypt and pulled the wool over people’s eyes during his public ministry.  Those who would claim such a thing conveniently forget that he went to Egypt as an infant and left there as a child.  It is a matter of both faith and history to say that Jesus went to Egypt because that was God’s direction.

There are a number of legends and stories about this flight into Egypt.  My favorite is the one about Mary and Joseph on their way to Egypt.  Evening came and they were weary and sought refuge in a cave.  The baby had been born in one like this one.  It was very cold.  The ground was covered with frost.  A little spider saw the baby Jesus, and wished so much that he could do something to keep him warm in the cold night.  He decided that the only thing he could do was spin a web across the entrance of the cave, to make a kind of curtain.

Shortly afterward, a detachment of Herod’s soldiers came by looking for children to kill as Herod had directed them.  When they came to the cave they were about to break down the spider web to search inside, but the captain of the guard saw the web, covered with frost and stretching across the entrance.  He determined that the web was unbroken; no one had entered the cave from outside, and directed his men on down the road.  The holy family was left alone because a little spider had spun her web across the entrance to the cave.  And that is why we put tinsel and garlands on our Christmas trees to this day, to remember the little spider and the gift she had given to the Christ child.  It’s just a story, but the one great truth is that no gift that Jesus receives is ever forgotten.

In putting together his version of the Good News, his Gospel, Matthew wants his readers to understand that all these things were in fulfillment of what God’s prophets had said.  The flight into Egypt and the subsequent return fulfilled what Hosea had said centuries before.  “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”  The people of Israel had been formed in slavery in Egypt and been called forth.  The Son of God had been called forth out of Egypt as well.

After Herod died Joseph had another dream telling him to return to Israel.  He would not return to Judah, but settled in Nazareth.  It was in Nazareth that Jesus would grow to adulthood.  This, too, was to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophets about God’s son being called a Nazarene. 

After Joseph’s disturbing dreams came a period of calm, when good dreams come true.  The family settled in Nazareth and Jesus grew up in a good home.  He would be molded into manhood by the guiding hand of mother, father, sisters, and brothers.  Jesus fulfilled the role of the eldest son.  He learned his father’s trade, that of carpentry.  He became the village craftsman to support his mother and his siblings after Joseph had died.  A world was calling him but he was faithful to his duty to his mother and to his own people and his own home, first.  It is on those who faithfully and without resentment accept the simple duties that the world is built.

Jesus knew what it was like to be a working man.  He learned what it was like to have to earn a living, to save to buy food and clothing, and maybe a special loaf of sweet bread for the family.  He knew how to meet and deal with the occasional dissatisfied customer and the critical one who only wanted to complain.  He knew about those who would never pay their debts and those who were always late settling up.  If Jesus set out to help people, he first had to know what people were like.  That he learned in Nazareth.  He did not come into a protected, cushiony life.   He came into the life that helped know our life. 

He performed the lesser task and was given the greater task.  He was faithful in little and became master of much.  We must never forget that in the everyday duties of life we forge a destiny.  God help us be faithful to our dreams like Joseph, so that we may guide those entrusted to us and thereby change the world.  Amen.