In 1997, my little sister, Mary Ruth, died. She was 42 years old. About 3 or 4 months following my sister’s death, my mother had a very vivid dream in which my sister visited her. Mom explained to me that this dream was not like most ordinary dreams. It was very real with all her bodily senses engaged: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. In her dream, mom said she went to visit my sister, Mary. She knocked at the door of this building, and a beautiful woman with long, brown hair answered the door and invited my mother in. My mother told the woman that she was looking to visit with my sister. The woman smiled and told my mother that my sister was busy at the moment and asked her to take a seat in the waiting room. My mother settled down in a chair. After a little while, the beautiful woman invited mom to go with her. They went down a hallway and entered a room. On one end of the room was a window that allowed people to observe activity in another room. The beautiful woman told mom, “Come, look at your daughter.” My mother gazed through this window at my sister, Mary, sitting on the floor and playing with some little children. My sister’s appearance was transformed from the way she looked when she died. Gone was the gauntness and the pain that used to be etched into her face. Her face was vibrant, her eyes sparkled and she laughed as she played with the children. Her body was no longer bent over and painfully thin from her illness, but was now healed and healthy, my sister moving about with great ease. Alongside my sister was a young, bearded man. The beautiful woman then led my mother back to the waiting room. After waiting just a short while, my sister came into the room accompanied by the beautiful woman and the young, bearded man. My sister went up to my mother, kissed her and hugged her and told her, “Don’t worry about me, mom. I am very, very happy.” At that point, my mother awakened from her dream, the heaviness and grief my mom had carried since the death of my sister, was gone.
Dreams are important to human life. Dreams are the one thing in which all human beings have a share. Many ancient societies and cultures believed that it was through dreams that the gods communicated to human beings. We find the prominence of dreams in the Hebrew Scriptures. It was one of the ways by which God interacted in human life. Jacob had a dream in which he saw angels ascending and descending a ladder reaching to the Heavens. God repeatedly blessed Jacob in this dream. Jacob interpreted the ladder to represent the number of exiles the Jewish people would suffer before the Messiah would come, and the number of angels, the number of years passed before the Messiah would come. In a dream, Jacob wrestled with an angel from God. Following that dream, Jacob was renamed, Israel, meaning “I wrestled with an angel from God and survived.”
Joseph, the son of Jacob, was well known as an interpreter of dreams. The prophet, Daniel, interpreted the dreams of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Dreams figure greatly in the gospel of Matthew. In today’s gospel we hear of Joseph being very troubled by the news that Mary, the woman to whom he is engaged to be married, is pregnant. He tosses and turns not wanting to expose her to shame and suffer the consequences of his society imposed upon women who got pregnant outside of marriage. He finally decides to quietly break off their engagement to be married. It was then in a dream that Joseph encountered the Divine. An angel from God reassures Joseph that Mary’s pregnancy did not result from some wrongdoing. Rather, the child with whom she was pregnant was the culmination of the dreams of the Jewish people going back to the time of Adam and Eve. Within Mary’s womb was the Son of God, the Messiah, who will fulfill the hope and the dream of countless generations of Jewish people. Joseph, reassured by the angel, takes Mary as his beloved wife, and agrees to raise her child, the Messiah, as his own son.
When something for which someone hopes happens in that person’s life, we generally say that that person’s “dream has come true.” Jesus, the Emmanuel, God with us, is humanity’s dream come true. The dream of Jacob came true with the birth of Jesus. The fulfillment of the Jewish people’s dream came true with the birth of Jesus. Everything told Joseph by the angel in his dream came true. The “dream” did not end when Joseph awakened. The dream, Emmanuel, God with us, did not end when Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. The dream of Emmanuel, God with us, continues to be fulfilled in our lives today.
It seems that it is often in our darkest hours that the realization of Emmanuel is the most profound. Jesus did not abandon my sister as she suffered those long 26 years of chronic illness. Jesus did not abandon my mother and father as they watched their daughter suffer and waste away from her illness and then die. They had a profound experience of Emmanuel during those years. It was the knowledge and experience of God being with them that sustained them during the hardships of those years.
The dream of Emmanuel, God with us, comes true. The dream has come true for my sister, Mary, who is now healthier and happier than she ever was when she walked this earth. The dream has come true for my mother, who saw her sick daughter returned to full health and at peace with God.
When I asked my mom, what she thought about her dream, she said, “Mary is finally healthy and happy again. And you know what?” “What?” I replied. “I think that beautiful woman is Mary the Mother of Jesus. And, that young man with the beard is Jesus.” I said, “I believe you are right, mom.”
This dream with the happy ending never ends. This dream comes true time and time again. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, now and forever.
