The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
August 30th, 2020
Proper 17 (A—Track 1): Exodus 3:1-15; Ps 105:1-6, 23-26, 45; Romans 12:9-21; Matt 16:21-28
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
–Langston Hughes, Harlem
This past Friday, August 28th, marked the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Normally, 57 is not a particularly notable anniversary to mark but this year we had considerable cause to pause and ponder anew that memorable dream and how it has and has not come to fruition. As news of a police officer shooting into the back of a young black man named Jacob Blake reignited protests and marches across our country—from small town Wisconsin, to the nation’s capital, to the worlds of professional sports—we were forced to grapple again with issues of race and justice; violence and fear. Jacob Blake’s case is a complicated one, but one thing that is clear is that he did not deserve to be shot seven times in the back. What is also clear is that the week of protests that followed were not just about him. They were about him, but not just about him. Now, in what has become the summer of our discontent, we are seeing the explosion of a dream deferred. The dream of racial harmony and equality so memorably defined by Dr King in his speech so many years ago and still so long in coming.
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