FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, yEAR a

14 Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, [Christ] himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death…
~Hebrews 2:14

Joseph the dreamer—not that one, not Jacob’s son, the one with the fabulous coat, but his namesake, the husband of Mary—is dreaming again. Things happen in the scriptures when this space between waking and sleeping is crossed! Three times on the heals of the Magi visit, in this short Matthew passage he dreams, and then acts, to save the child and his family from powerful forces protecting their narrow interests. He is attune not only to the message of the angels, but to the political realities on the ground and their intersection in time. 

The holy migrant family make a journey that mirrors that of Jacob’s son, finding hospitality and refuge in Egypt. Like so many families in our own time, they cross borders and rivers seeking safety from leaders who fume and plot and terrorize.

There is a strange comfort in knowing that these ancient scriptures looking to such different times than our own know something about the human condition that spans all time…and our time. “It was fitting,” says the writer in Hebrews, “that God…should make the pioneer of [our] salvation perfect through sufferings.”

Suffering was not the end of Joseph’s imagination but the beginning. His dreams imagined and then engendered new possibilities that come from without, from a holy otherness, like a gift. He dreamed. He opened the gift, and acted, finding a way through the wilderness for the savior of the world to find us.

What is God dreaming up for us? What sharpening images do these times offer to us of new possibility and new life and new faith?

Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Isaiah 63:7-9 † Psalm 148 † Hebrews 2:10-18 † Matthew 2:13-23
 
About the Art, Hunt, William Holman, 1827-1910. Triumph of the Innocents, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59340 [retrieved December 15, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Holman_Hunt_-_The_Triumph_of_the_Innocents_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.

Commentary (adapted from The  Visual Commentary on Scripture): The painting depicts a joyously dreamlike quality to  Hunt’s depiction of the flight into Egypt—a markedly hopeful juxtaposition for a  story that carries such unspeakable tragedy. The dreaminess is especially  evident in the presence of the innocents who join the travelers on their  migrant flight to safety in Egypt. Neither Joseph, nor the donkey, seem to  notice this mysterious band of travelers who seem to exist at various stages of  reality. The infants themselves seem preoccupied with their own  concerns—exploring their new existence or resuming games cruelly interrupted by  Herod’s soldiers. But the Christ child sees them clearly and reaches out in  solidarity. Mary too, as she directs her smile down to her newly-expanded  family. Note the bubble in the center. It contains an image of the tree of life  and its delicate promise of paradise restored. 

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