A long time ago Joseph’s dad had a dream. We don’t know exactly what it was, perhaps a wonderful vision of his own eternal youth…and he gave the youngest of his sons an amazing technicolor dream coat. Too bad Joseph’s brothers didn’t share Jacob’s dream.
They were jealous and afraid of losing their power in the family. They tossed Joseph into a pit and told their father that wild animals had killed him. Later they sold their brother into slavery in Egypt.
Joseph wasn’t too successful at first. He finally got out of jail by interpreting the Pharaoh’s daughter’s dreams. Gradually he became one of the head honchos in Egypt. He responded to the guidance in the dreams. When famine hit, Joseph had prepared the granaries and there was plenty of food. His brothers came begging and he helped them. A dream, a nightmare, a dream, a nightmare, and finally a dream as Joseph is reunited with his father.
Fifty years ago today, another man had a dream. He proclaimed it at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. This brave man dreamed of a society where all people were equal and loved, where the nightmare of segregation and racial hatred would end, and everyone could live into God’s dream of a just and loving society here and now.
His ancestors had survived the nightmare of chattel slavery in America. His parents had realized their dream when he went to college, got at Ph.D. and became a minister. People young and old had lived through the nightmare of lynchings, church burnings, jail and unspeakable abuse while trying to end “legal” segregation here in the US. They dared to dream of freedom and justice regardless of skin color or economic status. Hundreds of thousands strong they gathered along the Mall to demand that the government of the people, by the people and for the people make their dream a reality.
There was power in that shared dream. Power of people awakening to discover that they could work together to right ancient wrongs and break the shackles that still bound them. Even after they left the Mall, they kept dreaming and working to make their dreams come true.
It was a nightmare for the people who wanted to keep the shackles in place. Like Joseph’s brothers, fear overcame love, and an assassin’s bullet ended the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. life. Nightmare, dream, nightmare, dream, nightmare…No, we can’t let a nightmare end our dreams, the people cried, and went on dreaming and working for justice.
Today, we must continue living into these dreams. We must join hands and hearts and fill the granaries with hope and justice so that everyone can be fed. We must dare to dream new dreams too. The nightmares will happen, but our dreams are stronger. I believe it and hope you do too.
–Rev. Dr. Fran Bogle