SUNDAY 7 AUGUST 2005
Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28; Romans 10: 5-15
Self-disclosure by preachers in the course of a sermon can sometimes be edifying to the hearers, who may discover that experiences or insights the preacher may have had resonate with their own experiences or insights, and therefore place those in a new light. At other times self-disclosure can be a little technique by which the preacher pokes a bit of fun at him- or herself lest congregation or preacher fall into the trap of equating the preacher??s words and person with something semi-divine. Sometimes, by dwelling too much upon his or her own self, the effect the preacher might have on a congregation could be similar to the effect the young Joseph had on his eleven brothers. I have yet to hear of any of my colleagues being sold off to a passing band of passing traders, but I guess there is always a first time?ñ
I am fortunate to be able to recognise at various points along the way in my journey, people or events which have helped shape me and my sense of call. At various times over the years I have shared some of these in sermons. I hope what I??m about to tell you won??t make you begin to think I am shallow! I want to acknowledge that among the various influences I can identify as helping shape the direction and content of my life, especially in terms of ordained ministry being not merely what I do but who I am, I have to include the lyrics from songs in movies.
I blush ever so slightly when I admit that the first of these came when I was 17 or barely 18, and I was watching The Sound of Music (for the first of I will not admit how many times since), and the Mother Superior burst into "Climb every mountain." Earlier that year I had experienced a sense of call to ministry, and I was in the middle of going through the application and interview process. I think the Mother Superior??s stirring words somehow addressed the somewhat daunted feelings I was experiencing at the time as I thought about what lay ahead of me ?± not that, looking back now, I had the slightest clue about what really lay ahead..
Another song that had a significant impact on me ?± to the extent that I kept the words in front of my desk for well over ten years ?± was from the musical The Man of La Mancha. Man of La Mancha features a play within a play, with a third layer thrown in for good measure. In the movie, Peter O??Toole is in the lead role, playing three different characters. First he is Miguel de Cervantes, an author who with an associate is brought to prison to await a hearing before the Inquisition. He is set upon by the prisoners, who decide to hold a mock trial in order to find him guilty and steal all his possessions (including a package he seems to value greatly). Cervantes presents a play as his defence, to give the "jury" insight into the "crimes" of which they accuse him. They agree and become actors in his play, which is of course the story Don Quixote, the manuscript of which is in the package.
In the movie, in a play within the movie, Cervantes becomes Don Alhonso Quiana, a Spanish country squire who has set aside his own reality to create the character Don Quixote de la Mancha. And so, in a play within the play within the movie, Cervantes playing Quiana becomes Don Quixote himself. The story of Don Quixote is often cited as the story of a man who had lost reason and who followed irrational, unsolvable, and hopelessly idealistic courses of action. "Tilting at windmills" is a phrase that has come down based on the story, meaning someone who has lost all sense of reality and chases phantoms or unrealistic ideas. The story personifies romantic idealism ?± a state of mind which some might say exists just on the sane side of madness ?± in its purest form. It is not surprising that the play and the movie appeared in the first half of the 1970s ?± the hippie era. Quixote??s story expressed an inspiration to pursue our personal quests with unfailing dedication, unbridled optimism, unwavering courage, and unparalleled chivalry. With such qualities, Quixote is presented as a kind of Christ-figure who is misunderstood, misrepresented, and ultimately is mistreated by the establishment who are threatened by such unbridled, enthusiastic and illogical ideals. If Quixote had been alive in the 1970s, surely he too would have opposed the war in Vietnam and he would have gone to Woodstock, and he would have espoused "make love, not war."
In the play within the play within the movie, Quixote??s song "The Impossible Dream" is his explanation of his quest and the reasons behind it. It captures the essence of the play and its philosophical underpinnings. For me, 26 or so years old, newly ordained, and embarking on a quest to make my mark on the life of the church, it was absolutely spell-binding. It expressed the idealism that was somewhere at the heart of what I felt I had been called to ministry for. Ministry was not merely about doing things, it was about being someone ?± like a knight errant ?± with a purpose and quest which defined his life.
To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
I hadn??t read those words for about fifteen years until this line of thought occurred to me in preparing this sermon. All these years later, a little scarred with the realism, not to mention the cynicism that comes with growing older, I find I do not feel in the least embarrassed at the idealism that is expressed there. What would a world be if it were a world without dreams, and a world without people with dreams? Where would the United States be if Martin Luther King had not had a dream and had not enlisted hundreds of thousands in following that dream? Where would South Africa be if throughout his long imprisonment on Robben Island Nelson Mandela had not had and clung to his dream that one day apartheid would be defeated? In fact, where would the world be if it were not for dreamers like King and Mandela whose lives and examples, whose dreams and words have lifted people of many nations and cultures above the "what is" and helped them glimpse and grasp the "what can be"?
The biblical story of Joseph the dreamer who became the second most powerful person in Egypt is one of those particularly memorable tales from Sunday school days, made familiar to many other people who haven??t gone anywhere near a Sunday school through the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the lyrics of Tim Rice. Perhaps it is memorable because of its oh so real tale of family feuding and sibling rivalry. And there is always something immensely attractive in the story of someone who keeps finding himself in the worst of situations and who by his own ability rises above the situation. Perhaps, also, it is memorable because of the real grace and generosity of this brother who has made good, in not taking revenge when he had the opportunity to do so on the brothers who had sold him into slavery.
I find myself wondering, too, if one of the reasons the story of Joseph feels a bit more real than many other biblical stories, is that unlike just about every other story in the Bible, with a few notable exceptions such as the story of Esther, God is not a key player. All the characters in the Joseph story are very human. God has no direct role whatsoever in the Joseph story , unlike many other biblical stories in the series we have been following from the sagas of Israel??s matriarchs and patriarchs, where God intervenes in human affairs in some miraculous or mysterious way ?± saying something to someone or causing something to happen. Nor is there any acknowledged indirect role except right at the end, when Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, and says that what they had meant for evil, God used for good .
That brief theological interpretation of Joseph??s life story is the same kind of interpretation many of us could make looking back over past events in our lives, when what had at the time seemed an unmitigated disaster turns out to have been the beginning of a significant new direction. So often, caught up in the pain and emptiness of whatever the particular crisis may be ?± the disintegration of a relationship, the death of a partner, the appearance of some obstacle to personal success, failure to obtain something I had longed for ?± we are unable to see the possibilities of a new beginning. It is only retrospectively that we might theologically acknowledge that the times when we have felt most abandoned by God frequently turn out to be the times when God was there in the beginning of something new.
There is no sense in the Joseph interpretation of events that God willed the various catastrophes to happen to Joseph in order to bring later good. God is not and never is part of treachery, deceit, injustice, pain, persecution either in and of themselves or as a prelude to good emerging. God didn??t somehow arrange Nelson Mandela??s long imprisonment in order that at the end of it Mandela could deliver a powerfully compelling message of reconciliation and forgiveness any more than God arranged the imprisonment of Joseph in order to later save Egypt from famine. That is not how we understand the God of the Bible as we see God through Jesus.
God is hidden in the Joseph story not because God wasn??t there at all, but because God was present in Joseph??s humanity and in Joseph??s exercise of his innate abilities. The ?´out there?? God is hidden in the Joseph story because, with hindsight, we recognise that divinity is at work within a person??s humanity when that person acts for good using intuition and personal skills, drawing upon latent strength and cleverness. In our own lives, when we think God is most hidden and all we have left is our own resources and abilities and the exercise of our own judgement and decision-making skills, then God is truly present.
God does not exist and act apart from us, over and above us, ?´out there?? somewhere, but within us and amongst us individually and collectively, right here. I believe that is at the heart of the Christian doctrine of incarnation. If the incarnation metaphor is about God becoming human in order that humans might become divine, as an early theologian once stated, then it is not God outside of us, but God within us and amongst us, God who is more than the sum total of our highest humanity with our highest values ?± including the ability to dream impossible dreams ?± that is at work for all that is good and true and lovely and loving.
This God is seen in the courage and dedication, words and passion of Martin Luther King who could stand at Washington??s Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and declare his dream of an America where black and white were free together. This God is seen in the forgiveness and generosity of Nelson Mandela who could invite his jailer as a special guest at his presidential inauguration in Cape Town in 1994. This God is seen not acting independently of we human beings, but in those actions of ours which are most loving and generous, healing and reconciling, nurturing and recreating, caring and life-enhancing.
Twenty years after the inspiration of the high idealism of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his "Impossible Dream", many people were inspired by words which urban myth insisted were spoken by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural presidential speech. Actually, he didn??t quote these words; they come from another source. But I don??t care ?± I like to still think they express what a man with the qualities of Mandela would have expressed; and I also find in them a resonance of the story of the Hebrew boy sold into slavery who became the second most powerful man in Egypt. I??m sure many of you will recognise these words:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so
that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others."
Inspired by an impossible dream, driven by a vision of what can be, challenged by a world we have not yet seen, led by the Spirit of Jesus to be gorgeous, talented and fabulous, we can make dreams realities. That is something we express each time we celebrate Holy Communion ?± a ritual, symbolic meal which speaks of a new world, a new society, new people, new wholeness. The communion meal is both nourishment and foretaste, an act of commitment to that which can be and an act of receiving the future here and now, in the present. This is the time and place to dream dreams, see visions, and in taking bread and wine to open ourselves to the possibility of helping enable all things to be new, to the glory of God seen in our glorious humanity.