Shattered Dreams
Year
A, Pentecost 20
In a sermon Martin Luther King said
that “Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”[1] This was not the “I have a dream” speech that
he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. This line came from a sermon that he gave 5
years later, 15 years after he had taken a leadership role in the civil rights
movement. The Biblical text he was
preaching on was about King David and his dream of building a great
temple. God did not want King David to
build a temple and so it did not happen.
While King David had many accomplishments in his life, this was one
thing that remained unfinished, a dream that was never realized, at least not
in his lifetime.
Our Old Testament reading for today
is not about King David. This story
comes before David. It is another great
leader of the Jewish faith and the Christian faith as well, Moses. We have been hearing about Moses for several
weeks now in our lectionary readings but we have only touched briefly on his
life. We’ve had glimpses of it in our
readings. We heard about the time when Moses
was first called by God with a blaze of fire…a burning bush. From the bush God called to Moses and asked
him to lead his people out of Egypt. He
promised that the people would be led to a land flowing with milk and honey, a
land that had been promised to them for generations.
Moses was not particularly excited
about this assignment, but God promised that he would be with him the whole
way, that he would lead him. So Moses
did as he was asked…he led the people out of Egypt. It was not an easy escape. There were plagues. There were armies. There was a wall of water that they had to
pass through. Yet even with all of that
accomplished, there was no immediate entrance into land of milk and honey. Instead, the Israelites found themselves
wandering in the desert. They faced
starvation and insurrection. Moses dealt
with their complaints. In the midst of
the trials, he also had moments of joy and fulfillment. He witnessed God’s glory and received the Ten
Commandments. But he was challenged again and again by very
strong willed and frustrated people. He
complained to God and was bitter at times.
His sister died. His brother
died. An entire generation passed as he
led the people on a journey that felt more like a maze. But finally the end was near. They could see the Promised Land. Yet for Moses, it would remain slightly out
of reach.
God told him as he stood on the
mountain top, “I will give it to your descendants; I have let you see it with
your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”
This was not the first time God has told Moses that he would not reach
the Promised Land. God had warned him
and even gave him a reason. Yet the reason was murky…so murky that people have
been debating it ever since. It was a small thing, perhaps an act of
disobedience or even a brief moment where he lacked faith.
It is strange that one small act would
outweigh all of the wonderful things that Moses had done; the sacrifices he
made, the close relationship that he had with God. It has been a mystery for centuries why God
would lead him to this place, show him this dream, but not even give him a
moment in that land that he had been searching for—for over 40 years.
“Life is a continual story of shattered
dreams.” There have been many people,
great people---Godly people who have accomplished amazing things but died
before they could see the fruits of their labor: Abraham Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John
Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gandhi…just
to name a few. Their deaths are tragic
and heart breaking. But their lives are
inspiring stories. What makes these
stories inspiring is that while their lives were cut short, their vision lived
on. Those dreams that seemed shattered were resurrected by people who followed
them…perhaps not completely resurrected, but new life was breathed into them.
Most of us might struggle to identify
with these great saints. Our dreams
might be on a smaller scale. Yet each
person here has seen a dream that was shattered in some way. And we could let those shattered hopes and
dreams break us, leaving us battered and beaten. Or we could take these pieces… pieces of our
shattered dreams or even those dreams of people who came before and we can
build something new.
When Martin Luther King spoke of
shattered dreams, he was talking about King David and his own experience as
well. While today’s reading is not the
story of King David, Moses did pave the way for King David. He brought the people to the Promised Land,
the land that King David would one day rule.
Without his sacrifice and his obedience to God’s word, there would never
have even been a dream of a temple. It
would not have even been in the realm of possibility. One person’s shattered dream provided the
pieces for another person’s temple…for God’s temple.
During the celebration of communion,
there is a point where the priest holds up the host and says, “Christ our
Passover is sacrificed for us.” Then the
priest breaks the host. That breaking of
the host is meant to remind us of Christ broken on the cross. It also reminds us of the way that we are
broken. After these words the priest
breaks up the host even further so it is 24 pieces, pieces that are then
distributed to you, the body of Christ.
We share in the brokenness of Christ and in some ways that makes Christ
whole again because we have all shared in that as the body of Christ. In those same ways, we can share the broken
pieces of our lives with one another and with God. That is one of the ways that we can find
wholeness.
Moses might have never reached the Promised
Land. He did not feel the land under his
feet, but he saw it with his own eyes, with God right beside him. Not only that, but he knew that the people
who he had led would experience that Promised Land. Sometimes that is what faith is about. It is about working with broken pieces---either
our broken pieces or ones that other people have given up on. It is about placing our hopes in things that
we may never see. But the important
thing is that we never stop trying. Moses was told that he would never reach
the Promised Land, but he never stopped walking and frankly, I don’t think he
ever stopped hoping.
When he died, God buried him. The English just says that he was buried, but
there was only one person (one being) with him on the mountain. God. While it might seem as though God punished
him, the truth is that he was with him to the very end…even at death. Just try to picture that in your head, the
Almighty God digging in the dirt and then with great care placing the body of
Moses in the ground. That is how God
cares for each of us. In turn he asks us
to never give up…to take those broken pieces and build them into something new,
something beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment