This Sunday, we look to an understated member of the Holy Family, Joseph. We don’t sing songs about him or celebrate his role in parenting Jesus or nurturing his family, but there is much to be said about him. Matthew’s gospel account says that in the midst of the miraculous scandal that is Mary’s pregnancy, a dream changes everything.
Just when Joseph has made up his mind to let 
Mary go quietly, an angel shows up while he sleeps to say, “Don’t be afraid. This is all part of the plan. Love can’t wait. Prepare him room. Name him Jesus, Emmanuel, God is with us.” And somehow Joseph takes the risk and does as he has been guided, remaining with his young fiancé and her unborn child who both is and isn’t his.
Why in the world would an angel-visit dream be enough for him to embrace such a path? In and after this dream Joseph, could seemingly see beyond the present reality into what was possible. In addition to Joseph being a person of deep character and great courage, this dream, this vision filled him with profound hope. Hope that enabled him to imagine beyond biological family to chosen family.
Hope that enabled him to embrace the unimaginable…that all of this just might be true, that God’s love might be so unstoppable and irresistible that it was going to be born by Mary and born into the world in the most vulnerable, human way of all.
“Dreams are love’s visions,” writes Episcopalian Bishop Michael Curry, “the boundless faith that the world can be remade to look more like what God hoped for [God’s] creation…The language of a dream is the language of hope.”
We begin our Advent journey with the language of hope on the 1st Sunday, and today, the 4th and final Sunday, we bring Advent to a close with love’s visions. Both are essential tools and practices for helping bring to life the beloved community here and now. It can be difficult at times, especially in the present weariness of the world, to know where or how to begin since some things don’t feel particularly optimistic at the moment, but I think we’d be well served by circling back to hope once more before we turn to love. I imagine them…hope and love…like inseparable schoolgirls skilling hand-in-hand.
In her book, Hope: A User’s Manual, Presbyterian pastor and author, MaryAnn McKibben Dana helpfully distinguishes between optimism and hope. She writes, “Many folks use the terms interchangeably. But there’s a vital difference. Optimism does its best work in the Before—when the evidence points plausibly in a positive direction, when you can still anticipate the best possible outcome, when things could work out OK. But when the facts suggest otherwise, optimism isn’t enough.
This is when hope comes in, rolls up her sleeves and says, “Optimism, take a seat.”… I’ve heard optimimsm described as a mathematical construct, an equation in which past experiences + present striving equals future greatness. Optimism relies on external circumstances lining up a certain way. Hope isn’t mathematical; it’s philosophical, physical, maybe even musical. True hope defies cause and effect and has impact regardless of outcome.”
Hope, then, sees the obstacles and barriers of a present moment or reality and says, “Okay, we’re going to give love a shot anyway.” Like Joseph reminds us, hope needs a vision of love and it takes work. But, as McKibben Dana continues, “The good news is, no matter who we are, hope is a muscle that can be exercised. Research shows that hopeful people have access to two kinds of thinking that merely optimistic ones don’t.
The first is called “pathway thinking,” which allows people to imagine many possible approaches to a situation in pursuit of a goal or outcome. The second, “agency thinking,” is a sense of personal empowerment and motivation to work to pursue those goals or outcomes. Pathway thinking dreams of many potential futures; agency thinking tries to bring them about.”
Even if one of us struggles with one or the other at a given moment, together, surely we can access both of these ways of thinking and seeing, of hoping and doing. Together, we can say: “I know there’s another way to look at this.” And when we have a love-guided dream and a vision, then we can take a next step.
Lutheran pastor and Palestinian Christian, Rev. Mitri Raheb’s motto, his statement of faith is “Hope is what we do.” In other words, hope is the business we’re in. “But even deeper is this: Hope is wrapped up in what we make real. Hope isn’t what we think. Hope isn’t what we feel. Hope isn’t even what we imagine is possible. Hope is what we do in the face of suffering, pain, and injustice. Hope is what we do in the face of depression’s dull weight or grief’s harsh sting. Hope is what we do.”
And if hope is what we, humans, do…then hope lives in the body, just as love does. We’re on the cusp of celebrating the Incarnation of Love, so hope must be embodied, as well, or it is nothing at all. Do we believe that our bodies—in their strengths and their frailties—are vessels for hope? Mary did! Joseph did! What is possible if we believe it, too?
If we’re ever in doubt, Bishop Curry reminds us again: “The way of love will show us the right thing to do every single time. It is moral and spiritual-grounding, and a place of rest amidst the chaos that is often part of life. It’s how we stay decent in indecent times. Loving is not always easy, but like with muscles, we get stronger both with repetition and as the burden gets heavier, and it works” (Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times).
Love and hope, then, are both muscles to train and strengthen with our ongoing, repeated use! So with strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, I close with this glimpse of the love to come in just a couple days’ time. A poem by Leslie Leyland Fields, called Let the Stable Still Astonish:
Let the stable still astonish.
Straw–dirt floor, dull eyes,
dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
crumbling, crooked walls;
no bed to carry that pain,
and then, the child,
rag-wrapped, laid to cry
in a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: “Yes,
let the God of all the heavens and earth
be born here, in this place?”
Who but the same God
who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
of our hearts
and says, “Yes,
let the God of Heaven and Earth
be born here –
in this place.
Dear ones, the answer is Yes. Yes to Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yes to God’s love in our lives. Yes to a divine spark in our hearts. Yes, Love is worth the work. Yes, hope is worth the risk. May we continue saying yes to that holy Advent work this day and each day. Amen.
Breath Prayer:
INHALE: Lead me, O God,
EXHALE: My hope is in you.