Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
“Come, let us kill the dreamer and see what becomes of his dreams” (Genesis 37:20). These words, spoken by the sons of Jacob against their brother Joseph, have great importance for America 2024.
Many were lulled into a false sense of “the end of racism” upon the election of a black president in 2008. This was true no matter our political party. Sen. John McCain, in his gracious concession phone call to the president-elect, noted this very thing. Others contend that the Civil Rights Act of 1965, at least legally put the divide between the races aside.
For those naive enough to believe that white supremacy is in the past, these words from Genesis challenge. We know the good end that came from Joseph's dreams in Genesis. But what will become of MLK’s dreams? And most of all, what has become of the dreams of a certain itinerant preacher from the dusty back roads of the Galilee?
Being a truth teller comes with great risk for those who dare to dream. Prophets threaten the status quo. It is a risk to dream the dreams that challenge those who manipulate and obstruct, those who hold onto power for its own sake. It opens us up to rejection and name calling. And if our dreams are big enough, if what we hope for is outlandish enough, it may open us up to suffering, as it did the dreamer whom we commemorate today, as well as the dreamer from Nazareth upon whom MLK centered his life.
Jesus had outrageous hopes for the Reign of God. His “kingdom of nobodies” raised up a hierarchy of the marginal, the unloved, the destitute, the rejected. He knew what our relationships with each other could be and how to make it happen. The Kingdom of God movement was unrelenting, militant, nonviolent resistance. When Jesus of Nazareth preached, as he does in today's Gospel, people would have commented, “Somebody is going to kill this man.” This would have been a similar reaction in the case of King.
In Franco Zepharelli’s 1977 classic Jesus of Nazareth, at first Pilate refuses to crucify Jesus and decides to only scourge him. “This man is no threat,” the procurator says. “He’s just a dreamer.”
But truth be told, dreamers have changed the world. In our own time, besides MLK, there were Desmond Tutu in South Africa and Gandhi who defeated the British Empire in India. Add to that nonviolent active resistance such as US women's suffrage, transportation strikes and acts of civil disobedience in Ireland that loosened the grip of Britain, solidarity in Poland, and Estonia’s singing revolution that freed them from the Soviet Union. All were revolutions rooted in the cause of right. All began with a dream of what could be and what ought to be.
“In the end good always wins,” the Mahatma said. “Always.” Ann Frank, who had reason to despair, wrote a similar sentence in her diary.
May we take heart in this truth and continue to dream, for dreams do come true.
-Timothy J. Cronin