"The Dream Outlives the Dreamer"

Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Cee Also Psalm 90

October 23, 2011 + Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

I want you to think back with me for a moment. Has there been something you wanted to accomplish in your life that you could never quite complete? I remember such moments in my life. I remember wanting to become an Eagle Scout but I could never finish the last few requirements. I have an idea that all of us – young or old – can recall some task or project that we wanted so badly to finish but we were never quite able to do it. If such a moment was important enough to us we can remember the frustration, even the pain, we felt. Try to get in touch with that memory in your own life; you will have a greater sympathy with how Moses must have felt standing there on Mt. Pisgah looking across the Jordan River at the Promised Land of Canaan.

Think of it: Moses had spent more than forty years, all his adult life, in the effort to free his people from slavery in Egypt, to guide them across one of the most desolate wildernesses on the face of the earth, to share with them his vision of the relationship God wanted with them, to putting up not just with their carping and complaining but their outright disloyalty, and to pleading with God not to give up on God’s chosen but far from charming people. Now, at the very edge of achieving his life’s goal, Moses is told by God that he cannot across the little stream called the Jordan River, in many places not as wide or deep as Chicamauga Creek. Can you imagine how he felt?

The Bible is not a psychological novel, but I think we have a right to assume that Moses would have had the same mixed feelings you and I would have: frustration, regret, sorrow, anger. There is Moses standing on the mountain looking over toward a land, toward a goal, that he will never reach. He sees the Promised Land – but from a distance – and knows he will never live there. Moses is granted the dream, but denied the fulfillment of the dream. Our scripture lesson imagines God saying to him, “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” (Deuteronomy 34:4B)

A poignant moment, but also a profound coincidence that another of God’s great prophets, Martin Luther King, Jr., had the same sense in his final message there in Memphis, of going to the mountain top and looking over into the Promised Land of justice and freedom for Black people. But he had a strange foreboding that he might not cross over the river with them. Yet Dr. King’s shining faith prompted him to say:

“I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.

So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.

‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’”

Some of us may not have Dr. King’s shining faith. It is not easy to accept that our lives may end in incompleteness, even failure. Life has limits despite our best efforts. Our problem is accepting that reality. I have known some older people who were truly depressed as they reached the end of their lives. They believed that little or nothing had turned out quite as well as they had hoped. But such feelings are not unique to older people. Even young people can despair because of some failure in their lives. This is certainly one of the causes of the high rate of suicide among young people today.

What is the answer to this depression and despair? I believe part of the answer is to recognize – and accept – that we will always live in the excruciating tension between the almost and the not yet. To be a mature human being is to know that our reach will often exceed our grasp. Yes, thank God, most of us will have moments of real accomplishment in our lives to celebrate. But we will also find that sometimes things don’t turn out as well as we wished they would.

So what keeps us from bitter cynicism or dark despair? Two things, I believe. The first is caught up in my sermon title: “The Dream Outlives the Dreamer.” Though Moses never reached the Promised Land, his people did. Under the leadership of Joshua, Moses’ successor, the Hebrew people completed the journey. Joshua was able to take them the next step of the way. They crossed Jordan and fought their way into Canaan. It was a difficult struggle, but finally Canaan became not just the Promised Land, but the Land of Promise, their homeland.

I like to think that Moses was wise enough to believe that would happen. I hope we can believe that, too. When the time comes to lay our burden down, someone else will pick it up and carry it on. That is, if it’s worth doing.

About a week ago a great sculpture was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington. To me, the memorial statue of Dr. King has powerful symbolic meaning. Dr. King is depicted as breaking out of the massive stone of segregation, but he is not shown fully free of it. That monument is an enduring reminder not just to Black Americans but to all Americans that Dr. King’s work was left unfinished at the time of his death. President Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg Address are as relevant now as they were then.

“It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Human life, if it means anything, means the continuing struggle to build on the accomplishments of those who have gone before us. Our children and grandchildren will have to complete the dreams we leave behind. But even as I say that, I know that can be quite a challenge.

Growing up in Otsego after the Second World War I remember were a number of unfinished homes. These homes were fully completed basement dwellings with a solid first floor roof and a stairway leading down into the basement. I visited one of these basement homes as a grade-schooler. It was a perfectly adequate apartment-sized home, but the only outside light came from small windows at the top of the basement walls. And, of course, one couldn’t see much, if anything, out of those windows.

In fairness to those who built those basement homes, I am sure they hoped and expected the next generation would have the money and material needed to complete the entire house. But when I went back to Otsego years later, I saw that some of those homes were never finished. That’s a symbol of life. I am convinced that lack of money is seldom the reason dreams are not fulfilled; it is because there is a lack of will to make the dream come true.

Dr. King left several dreams uncompleted at his death. His lifetime did not see full freedom and equality for Black people. His dream of economic justice and security for all Americans certainly has not come true. And his vision of an America that would be a force for peace in the world and not war sometimes seems far off. But I believe the dream outlives the dreamer. It will be fulfilled if we have the will to make it happen. That would be Dr. King’s true legacy. And, I suspect, the one he would have wanted.

But there is something else that should keep us from cynicism and despair and that is faith in the limitless grace of God. God’s love and mercy never fail. Though, as the poet says (Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard) “The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” there is one who is Lord of both life and death. There is One to whom we can safely entrust all our dreams with the faith that God will see the part of them that is worthy through to fulfillment. Now our dreams will be in God’s keeping and we can lay our burdens down in peace.

The story of Moses’ death ends on a strange note of mystery. To this day, no one knows where he was buried. When you and I go to Israel we will be shown the traditional burial sites of many great figures in biblical history but Moses will not be among them. Where is he? I like to think that Moses’ burial place is in the hearts of all Jewish and Christian people who remember and follow him. His dream lives on in you and me.

There is also a beautiful legend that because of the special friendship between God and Moses, God buried Moses personally. So it is that the poet Rilke could write:

          “Then slowly the aged

                  God bowed down His aged face to the aged mortal.

                  Withdrew him out of himself in kisses

                  into his older age. And with hands of creation

                  Swiftly remounted to the mountain until it amounted

                            to nothing more than the others, light surmounting human

                       conjecture.”

The dream outlives the dreamer!