DREAMERS ON A JOURNEY

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

Somewhere in my library is a copy of a little book about the life of St. Francis called The Journey and the Dream. St. Francis' dream was to rebuild God's church. His journey led him to wander the Italian countryside. I remembered The Journey and the Dream as I considered today's gospel. This beloved story of Jesus appearing to his disciples on the road to Emmaus is also about a journey and a dream. Of course, Jesus was always on a journey, traveling from one place to another: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem. After his resurrection, he left for Emmaus, a little town just miles from the cross on Calvary. But all those destinations, all that wandering, did not make up the only journey for St. Francis or for Jesus. They were on a journey inward, living a dream Jesus so often called "the kingdom of God." Their journey was inspired by God's dream.

Like Francis, like Jesus, we, too, are on a journey. For some of us, our journey has taken us many places, some of which have become home for us. For others, our journey brings us back to a place where we started. We journey with Jesus, whether we travel near or far. We journey with Jesus when we seek to know God and God's kingdom, God's dream for us.

On that Emmaus road, while his friends were talking and walking, Jesus "came near and went with them" (24:15). He joined them, and he invited them to join him on a different kind of journey - the kind we take today, whenever we seek God in prayer or walk and talk with a friend. Jesus invited his friends on what the old hymn calls "a closer walk," a journey inward - a spiritual journey.

Until they see Jesus, we know almost nothing about these two friends, except for an early description ("their eyes were kept from recognizing [Jesus])" and Jesus' response ("Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart…!") (Luke 24:16, 25). All along the road to Emmaus his friends failed to see Jesus. They failed to recognize the risen Christ, even when he walked and talked with them.

Scripture doesn't say, and we can only guess, why they were blind to Jesus. I wonder: did their blindness have to do with their grief? Were these friends and followers of Jesus so sad, so angry, so broken-hearted that they couldn't see straight, while they looked at the very one whom they missed so much? Why else would their hearts burn within them, unless, despite his death, their longing for God's dream, their love for their Master was still alive?

Last week I thought of the journey and the dream as I pondered the 40th anniversary of the death of another journey taker and dreamer, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I traveled to the place where I spent my teen years, the place where I also lived the last six years of my adult life, before moving here to Maryland. Back in high school, Memphis didn't feel like home to me. One of the reasons was that I came to my first awareness of racism in Memphis. Seeing racism for the first time marked the end of my childhood fantasy - that everyone would "just get along." It broke my adolescent heart.

Now, all these years later, I have come to understand that racism is everywhere and in everyone, including me. Dr. King said that "love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." More and more I have been learning how to befriend the enemy of racism within me. My spiritual journey over the past few years has helped me open my eyes a bit more, to recognize how I participate in the sin of racism, to see more clearly how I need to be part of God's redemptive work of reconciliation through the risen Christ.

On Wednesday I went back to what was once the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum. I stood next to room 306, where Dr. King would have slept. And I stood for a long time outside, looking at the stone plaque that holds a quote from the story of Joseph - when he was tossed into a pit by his brothers and left for dead. It says, "Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him…and we shall see what will become of his dreams" (Genesis 37:19-20).

When dreamers die, it can feel like the dream died with them. That's how it must have felt to Jesus' disciples. That's how it must have felt to those who journeyed with St. Francis. That's how it felt to me last week, nearly forty years after Dr. King's murder, as my eyes welled with tears even before I set foot in the building. Like so many others, I was still sad, a bit angry, even broken-hearted.

During this brief journey in time, I remembered my conversation with a neighbor, someone I met by chance when returning from a morning run. Like me, he had lived far from Memphis for decades, only to return. He assured me things had changed for the better since the 60's. Columnist David Brooks agrees: "Progress has been slow. Nearly a third of American high school students don't graduate (half in the cities)…Poverty rates in Memphis have scarcely dropped. (But) Martin Luther King Jr.…left behind a model of how to repair the social fabric…(H)is inspiration is outlasting his critics" ("The View from Room 306," The New York Times, April 4, 2008).

Next weekend dozens of Memphis churches are holding a symposium called "Healing of the Races." It will be a time set apart - to walk and talk together, to keep on keeping on. Those churches in Memphis and, I believe, this church in Frederick - we will, if honest, admit that God's church needs a bit of rebuilding. We long for our church to be renewed. But our renewal as a church can only happen when, in Desmond Tutu's words, no accident of birth, not a single thing becomes a barrier to achieving God's dream. Dare we believe it is God's dream we seek? Dare we become who we claim to be - a community of faith, God's beloved community, known not for the color of our skin, but for the content of our character?

At Friday's recommitment march to the Museum, Bernice King, Martin's daughter, said that, once her father had been assassinated, he "became fertilizer for the seeds he had planted in the hearts of men and women…." His life, she claims, "has been transferred to generations and will continue to be transferred to generations yet unborn." Perhaps it is not just rebuilding or renewal the church needs. Perhaps we need to prepare the Easter soil of our church's heart, so that our seeds of love can grow up in Christ, from one generation to another.

Yes, dreamers die, but the journey and the dream lives on. Martin and Francis live on, in their hopes and dreams. Jesus lives on, once again in Eastertide and in all our seasons, whenever we are willing to look and to listen. Whether in simple moments or in momentous occasions, Jesus is on the road again, inviting us to join him and his friends on a pilgrimage of faith. Jesus keeps encouraging us, the beloved community of God, to be beloved to one another, to love as he loves. Today, when we break bread together on our knees, he makes himself known, he rekindles our hearts, all over again.

Before her death, Verna Dozier, an African-American schoolteacher who became one of our church's great advocates of the ministry of all God's people, said, "We have all failed the dream of God. The terribly patient God still waits" (The Dream of God, p. 150). Jesus is here, today, with his friends - Francis and Martin and Verna and all the saints. He is waiting patiently for us. All we need to do is open our eyes, join hands…and dare with him to journey and to dream.

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
All Saints' Episcopal Church, Frederick, Maryland
April 6, 2008