Several years ago a rather childish and tasteless movie, but nevertheless one good for escape purposes, made the rounds. The movie was called National Lampoon’s Vacation. It starred Chevy Chase, a batch of kids, fleeting glimpses of seductive models, and a monster station wagon that developed a variety of mechanical diseases as the family struck out across the country to visit a theme park in California. From Chicago to California by way of Arizona and a whole lot of unscheduled points in between, including the desert and a rainstorm and depositing a corpse on somebody’s doorstep. Although Mom and the kids were weary and worn and would just as soon have given up the whole tiresome project, Dad was insistent and always upbeat: we are going to see Wacky World. Don’t you kids want to see Wacky World? Oh, this is going to be great. Pay no attention to the fact that our car will barely run; we want to see Wacky World, don’t we? Don’t worry about all our money being gone; we left home without that card, but we’ll beg, borrow, or steal. We want to get to Wacky World.
Ah, but toward the end of the movie, as they finally get to California, having steamed through many dangers, toils, and snares, they drive up to Wacky World, and are amazed that the parking lot is empty. How could it be that there is nobody around at one of the country’s most popular amusement parks? And Chevy Chase and his movie family, with tongues hanging out, with wallets depleted, with spirits dragging, roll up to the gate to read the sign: Closed for Renovation.
A thousand miles of wandering: closed for renovation. Weeks of stress, strain, expense, exhaustion; closed for renovation.
Can’t you imagine that Moses felt a bit like that when he arrived at the banks of the Jordan? For forty years, a whole generation, he had led the nation through the wilderness. They had suffered hunger and heat, thirst and conflict, deaths and debates, but all the way along they were kept going by one thing: their leader had a vision of the Land of Promise. And when they had decided they would really rather go back to Egypt and to slavery than to face starvation in the desert, it had been Moses who had urged them on: But we’re bound for the Promised Land. Don’t you want to see the Promised Land?
When they had gotten caught up with the local peoples along the way; when they had become enamored of other gods or they had cast amorous on the local ladies, again it had been Moses who spurred them on with visions and promises: there is a land out there which God will give to you, it is a land filled with milk and honey, it is full of all good things. Press on, press on. Don’t you want to go to the promised land, that land where all is peace?
And now when they’ve come to the deep river, and now when they’ve finally come to Jordan’s stormy banks; now, at last, the journey is ended and they are just about to realize all of Moses’ dreams. It’s closed for renovation. Or at least, closed to Moses. Moses cannot enter. The Lord has promised the land to the people, but it will be under a new leader named Joshua, because Moses along the way violated the command of God, violated the vision, and so he cannot realize its fulfillment.
Wacky World is closed for renovation to Chevy Chase after the long trek across the country; the Promised Land is closed to Moses after the wanderings across Sinai and up through the Trans-jordan; and for many of us, there are visions which will never quite make it to reality, there are dreams which will never quite become concrete, there are hopes which will remain hopes and not fulfillments. A man wants to build a business that will prosper and succeed and spends all his life getting it ready, and it’s just about to be profitable, but he has a heart attack and cannot finish. A woman spends a lifetime in the research lab, tracing down the answer to some nagging medical puzzle, and is on the very verge, she thinks, of finding the solution, but the government, in all of its irritating wisdom, cuts off the grants and there is no more funding for her work. A parent scrimps and saves to send that promising young child to college and on the day after graduation from high school that youngster announces that he or she has no intention of signing up for four more years of school – going off to Timbuktu or somewhere to contemplate life.
A whole lot of us are Moseses who have had visions and have nurtured dreams, and get a rude awakening one day. It may not be quite as dramatic as what I’ve pictured. It may just be waking up one morning to realize that you are no longer in your twenties, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and able to endure almost anything, and that you just aren’t going to get done everything you wanted to do. You know what, some day that might even happen to me! I am the kind of person who never quite got out of his twenties, not to mention leaving behind the thirties; and bless Pete, when I helped clean out my Mother’s apartment last week, I found my original birth certificate, and it says 1938 on it. That has to be a misprint; that can’t be right!
Do you sense at all what I’m talking about? Some of us just wake up one day and realize that we are getting on in years and that all those dreams just may not get completed. And if we are half as fortunate as Moses, to stand on the shoreline of our dreams and realize that somebody will live them out, well, we may be fortunate indeed.
I
But, you see, the first thing you have to have is a worthy dream. One of the most significant issues is whether you have a dream worth holding to. For Moses, it was the dream of building God’s nation, of lodging God’s people in a land where they could flourish and could be a witness to all the world. Moses’ vision was a vision of a holy and special people, of whom the whole world would say, “Has there ever been a nation with a God so great as theirs? Has there ever been a people with laws so righteous as theirs?” That, I submit to you, was a worthy dream. That was a vision worth living for, and maybe it was something Moses could live with because of that. Maybe the only way in which Moses could come to the end of his life and be satisfied at all; did you hear what the narrator says about Moses? “When he died, his eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force abated ... his powers were not gone at all.” Maybe the only way that Moses could stand to see the Land of Promise and not enter it was to realize that his had been a worthy vision.
You see, sometimes the things we give ourselves to are just not worth it. Sometimes the dreams we dream are dreams of self-serving and not of service. And if you dream only of feathering your own nest, well, no wonder you feel disappointed and cheated if it doesn’t happen. But I tell you if you see things that are and ask why … if you dream of things that never were and ask “why not” … if you can catch a vision of what God is about, then you will come to the crisis of disappointment and will yet be able to stand.
Some of you remember that spine-tingling night in 1968 when the dreamer Martin Luther King both electrified and yet also made somber a Memphis audience. He said that he of course wanted to live, but that even if he did not, still he cried out that he had been to the mountain, and that he had seen what God would do for his people ... and it would be all right, it would be all right if his life were to end. We didn’t know that night that indeed that life would be snuffed out. And as tragic as that was, still, weep not for King, for at least he died with his dream intact and with a worthy dream, a Kingdom dream, a selfless vision. And it was all right if that dream couldn’t be lived out. It was worth it just to lead vision. And it was all right if that dream couldn’t be lived out. It was worth it just to lead through the wilderness and get that far. Get yourself a significant dream; attach on to a worthy vision.
II
But then, in addition, if you find you’re going to have to stand at the edge of the promised land and never cross over, take comfort if you can pass that dream on to your Joshua. Take comfort if there is somebody coming along after you to whom you can pass the heritage of your vision.
Not long after the Lord told Moses that he himself would never enter the land of promise, he also gave Moses the young man Joshua, and said, here, this is my chosen one. Prepare Joshua, train Joshua to take over from you. And the Scripture says that Joshua was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him.
I must ask you today: who is your Joshua? Who is your Joshua? To whom are you confiding the secrets of your heart? Who is there that you have spied out and to whom you are communicating a vision of what life ought to be, a dream that could motivate a young life and set it on course? If you have children, are we intentional about sharing values, those worthy values? You know, sometimes it is said that the Christian faith is more caught than taught, more caught sort of like an infection, than taught. But I am afraid that’s only a half-truth. Yes, young people catch our values, yes, the world picks up on our silent messages, but I tell you, unless we are intentional and careful they just might miss the message. Unless we work at the business of sharing the Christian faith with them, they just might miss it.
Who is your Joshua? Have you settled in on somebody that you can bring along into the faith, into the church, into a way of life that you believe in? I rather believe that the only way most of us can finish the course of our lives and feel we’ve made a difference is to be able to point to others we’ve influenced, others we’ve shaped. And that the only way we are going to feel comfortable about coming to that crossroads when we have to leave our life’s work is to have brought along a few Joshuas to take it up.
Joshua, says the Scripture, was full of wisdom and ready to enter Canaan, because Moses, who could not cross over and finish his dream, had laid his hands on him. Who is your Joshua, your own child or grandchild? Some Sunday School class? A neighbor, a friend, a relative? Is the Lord directing you to someone with whom you can share, fully, carefully, intentionally, all the heritage of faith and knowledge you have? And more important, can you envision a dream for your Joshua? If you can, you can rest easy as Joshua crosses the river and you have to stay back.
You see, it is often said that the Christian church is just one generation away from extinction; the church is just one generation away from disappearing. If we do not labor today for what might be tomorrow, it will disappear. If we do not inspire by our gifts, our sacrifice, our witness, our teaching, our caring; if we do not inspire another generation, a set of Joshuas, then we as the people of the Kingdom will disappear and will die bitter.
But our Christ, a greater than Moses, says the New Testament, our Christ, keeps on refreshing the dream among us. He keeps on giving us renewed visions. He jump-starts us all the time, and sets before us the table of memory. This table is not a picnic in the promised land; it is the table of memory, remembering that once we were oppressed in the land of sin. It is not an awards banquet for the successful, fat, and sassy; it is the table of memory reminding us that there was manna in the desert, provided for our sustaining. This table is not the refreshment stand at Wacky World; it is the table of memory, a monument to self-indulgence. It is the table of memory, where again we remember the dreamer whose dream ended on a cross instead of with a redeemed humanity, where again we remember the visionary whose vision of a Kingdom of peace ended with hammer blows through his flesh. But this Moses-Christ has appointed us Joshuas; and we keep alive His dream, we keep in memory his vision. God grant that as we come to the table we have a worthy dream for our lives, and that we have found someone else to whom we may pass it on.
