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Once upon a time there was a little man from Africa. He was little, but he had a big dream - very big. His dream was big, and he believed in it. And he helped other people believe in his big dream, too. You see, his dream was from God. His dream was big, because it was God's dream, not his. And the longer he dreamed that dream, the more that dream became a part of his life. The more he lived into that dream, the more real that dream became for him, the more he came to see that God was planting that dream, planting and watering and growing that dream within him for a reason. This story is a real story. And this little man from Africa? He's a real man. Nearly twenty-five years ago he came to my seminary in New York City when I was a student there. He took some time off from his work, time for a sabbatical. He lived among us, sharing his dream. He did that in the classroom and in the chapel. But he also did it in other places, unexpected places. For example, he went to a neighborhood deli and hung out with the owner and his family. And he would share a can or two of beans with that family in the back of the store, laughing with all of them. The little man from Africa and that family from Puerto Rico shared a dream, a big dream - a dream of being one family, God's family. He would take his exercise by walking. He moved out daily into the concrete jungle that surrounded our seminary, all dressed up. He donned a hat and what was then the music delivery system of the day, a Walkman. He wore his state-of-the-art shoes. And the little man from Africa usually sported a T-shirt that carried a message. The one I remember best, a T-shirt I had not seen before he wore it, said, "A woman's place is in the House - of Bishops." He himself was already a bishop. But this little African bishop believed that women should be bishops, too. He dreamed of a day when women would join men, equal in every way, full partners in ministry and in life. As it turns out, the first woman to become a bishop in our own Anglican Communion, Barbara Harris, is an African-American. And the little man from Africa's daughter, Mpho, is now a priest. She shares his big dream, God's big dream for us - a dream of being one big family, God's family. For me, the people with whom that dream came most powerfully alive, the people who shared the dream instantly way back then, were the children. Each day dozens of children came to the seminary's daycare center. My son was one of them, eighteen months old when we arrived, not quite three when the little man from Africa shared that time among us. Each week the little man from Africa came and visited those children and played with them. And every time they would see him, anywhere on the seminary campus, they would jump up and down and call out his name. "Bishop Tutu! Bishop Tutu!" The little man from Africa was a bishop. He still is. Now the retired Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, Desmond Tutu will always be a bishop. And he will always be a child, God's child. During his time with us, this child of God shared a dream, a dream so big, a dream so divine that it earned him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984, while he was dreaming God's big dream with us. And here is God's dream, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu sees it: God believes in us. God loves us as we are. God loves our enemies, too. And God only has us. Tutu writes, "Dear Child of God, do you realize that God needs you?...When there is someone hungry, God wants you to perform the miracle of feeding that person. But it won't any longer be through manna falling from heaven. Normally, more usually, God can do nothing until we provide God with the means, the bread and the fish, to feed the hungry. When the person is naked, God wants the miracle of clothing that person, but it won't be with a…Calvin Klein outfit floating from heaven. No, it will be because you and I, all of us, have agreed to be God's fellow workers, providing God with the raw material for performing miracles." Tutu continues: "There is a church in Rome with a statue of a Christ without arms. When you ask why, you are told that it shows how God relies on us, (God's) human partners, to do (God's) work…Without us, God has no eyes; without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms. God waits upon us, and relies on us" (God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, pp. 59-60). On this last Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent, a day when we recognize Jesus Christ as King, the one who reigns over the world, God's world, we hear Jesus tell a story of another king, a king whose reign is divine. The story Jesus tells is, of course, about himself. This parable from Matthew's twenty-fifth chapter is about all the nations of the world, gathered together before the Son of Man. It is, as one writer puts it, "a world court, with Jesus as chief justice, sitting in judgment" over all the countries, including our own (James E. Brenneman, "Living the Word" in Christian Century, November 18, 2008, p. 20). King Jesus, who is a different kind of king, judges the nations, the peoples of the world in this way: "As you did it (or did not do it) to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it (or did not do it) to me" (25:40). In other words, how we - as a nation, as a people, as a family of God, as a church - how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoners and even the strangers and the guests among us, here, today - how we treat others is all that matters to God. Do we treat others who have less than we do, "the least of these" among us, do we treat them as family - as God's family, as sisters and brothers in Christ, as children of God? How hard this is. How hard it is, in a world of economic meltdown, in a time of financial panic, in a season of what seems like perpetual anxiety to share what we think we may have already lost! How hard it is to give away when we don't know how much we have to give. But my sisters and my brothers, Jesus is telling us that these ARE our sisters and our brothers! There but for the grace of God, go I? NO, there go I. There WE go. The hungry, the homeless, the imprisoned, those who seem strange to us - they are, if we are honest, if we will admit it, just like us. They, too, are part of God's family. They, too, are children of God. If we do not share with them, who will? If we do not see with God's eyes and hear with God's ears and share what we have with God's arms, with God's help, in the name of Christ, who will? This is hard work, very hard work indeed, this work of ministry. We cannot do it alone. That's why we need each other. That's why we need dreams to keep us going when times get tough. That's why we need dreamers. That's why we need God. And that's why we need people who are ready, willing and able to dream God's dream and to encourage us to dream God's dream, too, to dream God's big dream with them. Desmond Tutu is one of God's dreamers. Last night he shared some of that divine dream with hundreds of us at Old St. Paul's Church in Baltimore. It was a special evening, a time also to celebrate Bishop Eugene Sutton's dream of reconciliation in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. Our new Bishop, the first African-American bishop in this diocese, also dreams. His dream is about urban education for children of low-income families, environmental justice and racial reconciliation. Bishop Sutton and Archbishop Tutu are calling us to live into God's dream through a spirituality of personal, social and global reconciliation. That big dream, God's big dream, will come alive, it seems to me, not all at once, but one day, one moment, one person at a time. Like many others, I had a personal moment, a brief conversation last night with Desmond Tutu. I shared my memories of his time among us at the seminary a quarter-century ago. I told him my family had watched him and Nelson Mandela on television the day they and all people of South Africa voted for the very first time. And I told him, "Thank you for visiting my son. He was not in prison. He was in daycare. But thank you, thank you for visiting my son." As I took his hand to shake it, I felt his skin - soft as a baby's. This baby, this child, this little man from Africa changed my life all those years ago. He is still changing it. His dream, God's dream, can change us. No matter how hard the work before us may be. No matter how discouraged we are. No matter how bad the economy is. God has a big dream for us. God's dream for us is alive and well and living in the dreamers, God's dreamers among us. As we wait for God to come again in the person of Jesus the king, the Christ child, as we begin our Advent journey of expectation and hope, let us thank God for dreamers like Eugene and Barbara and Mpho and Desmond. May God help us dream. May God help us to dream and to remember that God is waiting, too. God is waiting on us, God's children. God is relying on us, God's family. God is dreaming. God has a big dream…and it's about us. The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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