Lectionary readings: Isaiah 63:7-9 and Hebrews
2:10-18 and Matthew 2:13-23
How did you sleep? Did you sleep well; or were you
disturbed by fireworks ushering in the New Year? Perhaps, like me, your bladder
bids you rise in the small hours. Perhaps sleep eludes you, from time to time,
and you take up a book to help you drift off again.
Sleep is a fascinating part of being human, an act of faith,
surrendering ourselves to unconsciousness, that we might be born again, made
new. Sleep returns us to Eden, and to the Lord God causing the creature fashioned
from the soil to fall into a deep sleep, before taking it and breaking it in
two, creating male and female from one common human being. But whereas in that
first sleep we were broken, for the benefit of many, in our subsequent sleep the
broken fragments of our days are taken up and made whole again, our dreams
being a process of sifting and sorting, in search of patterns, from which we piece
together sense, meaning, understanding, that, on waking, propels us into
action.
Until the advent of the electric light bulb, people
took two sleeps at night. This pattern appears to be a stable one, across
cultures and through the ages. Families slept together on a shared mattress,
retiring to bed by 9.00 p.m., rising again between 11.00 p.m. and 1.00 a.m. before
sleeping again until around 6.00 a.m. This first sleep took the edge off the tiredness
of the day, while the nighttime waking hours provided for slower activities.
This was time for moving around the house doing simple, largely automatic
tasks. Time for meditation on Scriptures, ‘of recounting the gracious deeds of
the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord’ to your children or neighbours.
Time to send existing children off on household chores and procreate sisters
and brothers for them.
It is fascinating to note those things that take place
at night in the Gospels. Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. Yes, this is
advantageous, in that it minimizes the chances of being seen, of report
reaching unsympathetic ears; but it is not an odd action. Nicodemus would quite
reasonably expect that Jesus would be awake and that engaging in theological
reflection was an acceptable, even normal, activity to undertake between the
first and second sleep.
Jesus himself sets parables at night. The story of a
man whose guest, having been delayed, turns up at midnight, causing him to
knock on his neighbour’s door in hope of bread. The shocking element here is
not that one should visit your neighbour at midnight, but that the neighbour
has returned to bed for their second sleep so soon, right in the middle of a
time of activity. As the neighbour is a cipher for God, Jesus speaks of a God who
sleeps, unafraid, with his children, and who rises to break bread with friends
and strangers.
Another parable, of a woman lighting a lamp and sweeping
her home by night. The search for a lost coin adds drama to an everyday—or
every night—scene.
Three times in our Gospel reading this morning we observe
the holy family asleep, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, lying together. This is the
first sleep of the night, the surrender of the conscious self at the end of the
day. And as Joseph sleeps, he is visited in his dreams by an angel. Not once,
but on three different nights. The first of these isn’t even the first time this
Joseph, this dreamer, has experienced such an encounter, a messenger sent from
God, to help him put together the broken pieces of his waking hours.
The angel warns him that Herd is seeking to kill the
infant Jesus and instructs him to take his family and flee to Egypt, to seek
asylum among the Jewish community there. They rise, and spend the waking hours
pulling their things together, putting their affairs in order, undoubtedly conferring
with, and giving instruction to members of Joseph’s extended family. And when
the household returns to bed for the second, longer sleep, Joseph takes his wife
and the child and they slip away, on the road heading south of the border.
Sometime later, during another first sleep, the angel
returns, instructing Joseph that it is safe to return home, those seeking the
child’s life are dead. No need to travel with such urgency this time. Arriving
home in due course, Joseph hears that one of Herod’s sons is on the throne.
Despite the angel’s words, it doesn’t feel quite safe enough. The angel returns,
again by night, and on further advice the holy family journey on, to Nazareth
in the north, Mary’s hometown.
Into these dreams, Matthew inserts a fragment of the
words of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:15) about the matriarch of
Bethlehem lamenting over her lost children. In the original text, the children
have been carried off into exile, but God promises to bring them home. Though
it is ambiguous in Matthew’s recounting, the lament (and promise) here is as
much over Jesus’ sojourn in (and return from) Egypt as for the lost boys of
Bethlehem. But what is fascinating is that the context of the words Matthew
cites is God speaking peace into the fretful dream of someone in search of rest
(‘Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the
wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away.’
… ‘Thereupon I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.’ … ‘Thus
says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the
moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves
roar—the Lord of hosts is his name: If this fixed order were ever to cease from
my presence, says the Lord, then also the offspring of Israel would cease to be
a nation before me for ever.’ (Jeremiah 31:2, 3a, 26,
35-36) The night is ordained by God, as a meeting place between earth and
heaven, between humanity and divinity, forever.
Whether you have fallen asleep yet or not, angels break
into all our readings set for today. The Old Testament reading from Isaiah
speaks of the Lord becoming the saviour of his people in distress, acting
directly and not through the intermediary of an angel. The New Testament
reading from Hebrews reminds us that God did not come to save angels,
but human flesh and blood, doing so by becoming one of us, becoming like us in
every respect. ‘Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able
to help those who are being tested.’ Suffered, here, means to be acted upon,
whether for good or evil. Tested, here, means character being tried by such
means, to determine whether it is trustworthy or not.
In coming into the world that was created through him,
one of the things that Jesus suffers is being acted upon by sleep. When the
Lord comes in person as saviour, he does so surrendering to sleep. This is remarkable.
In this way we see the humanity of God, having delegated authority throughout
creation, honouring the ordained purposes of the night for rest, for
reflection, for recreation, not needing to be constantly active in agency.
Sleeping, without fear; rising, without terror, even in the face of evil. For
the writer to the scattered Hebrews this finds its fullest expression in the
death and resurrection that every sleep rehearses, freeing us from our enslavement
to the fear of death.
The advent of the light bulb changed our experience of
sleep. The digital revolution has done so yet again, a more sedentary lifestyle
and the ubiquity of digital screens conspiring against us. Under-worked limbs
and an over-stimulated brain do not easily surrender to sleep. Hard though it
may prove, given where we are as a society, the wisdom of the hours between a
first and second sleep may prove a (Christmas) gift worth reclaiming.
In 2023, may we encounter angels, and even Jesus himself,
in the night. By candlelight or the soft glow of kindle light. In the pages of
a book. In prayer and praise. In gentle rhythmic tasks. In making love. In
dreams. May Jesus gather up the fragments of your days and make you whole
again; then take you up, bless you, break and give you, your life for the life
of the world. And on the day when he comes to take you home to glory, may he
come by night, with the moon and the stars. Refreshed by the first sleep, may
you awake to life within his house, according to the abundance of his steadfast
love. Until then, may the nights you must flee for your life be few, may the
nights of weeping be met with consolation, may your guardian angel watch over
your bed, and may the Lord grant you the rest you seek. Amen.
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