Broken Dreams

Job Lying on the Heap of Refuse, James Jacques Joseph Tissot, circa 1896-1902, original in the Jewish Museum, New York, public domain, this black-and-white reproduction courtesy of Grace Communion International, click the image to link.

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 28, Job 1:13-22, 2:7-13

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.  –Job 1:21

Hatred has led to many broken dreams, more than we can possibly count. One such broken dream involves Marty Glickman, who made his first trip to Berlin as a 20-year-old member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team. One of the four fastest sprinters in our country, he had earned a spot on the 4 x 100-meter relay team.  He was to run the third leg of the race, handing off the baton to the great Jesse Owens, who held the anchor position. A few days prior to competition, Marty Glickman and another runner were replaced. Despite their protests, two other runners - very good, but not quite as fast - were given the opportunity that belonged to them. 

Why? The head of the U.S. Olympic team in that day was known to be sympathetic to Germany's National Socialist ideology.  Glickman and the other replaced runner were Jewish. Embarrassing as it was to the regime of Adolf Hitler to find stiff competition from African-Americans, even greater would have been Nazi embarrassment through defeat by a Jewish champion.

Jesse Owens went on to win four gold medals, and became a national hero.  But the sports chronicles of those Olympic games barely mention the name of a 20-year-old runner, with great talent and a big heart, whose place in the record books was stolen from him. 

Marty Glickman returned to Berlin in the 1990s, musing about what might have been.  He wondered whether or not the presence of two Jewish men as part of the team that smashed the Germans would have made any difference to the horrors that quickly followed in that country.  Would such public repudiation of racial supremacy have helped to stem the Holocaust, even a little bit?  As he stepped out onto the track of that great coliseum again, all of the repressed emotion rose like a volcanic eruption, until Marty was screaming to the ghosts of the place, “How could you do that to a 20-year-old kid?  What gave you the right?”

In many ways Marty Glickman lived a good life: a fine occupation, a devoted wife, a loving family.  But something very important to him was snatched away in that summer of 1936.  He lived with a broken dream until the day he died.[1] 

Broken dreams are a part of experience for all of us.  In our pilgrimage through life, we all feel moments of calling, a sense that something was right about a relationship, a career, a place, a direction. And then, to our great sadness and surprise, the dream was shattered.  Some of you, at this very moment, may be facing a broken dream.

Scripture has much to say about dreams broken by circumstances beyond our control.  The Letter of James shows us that Christians in the early Church shared the story of Job.  Those familiar with his story know that Job continued to trust God in spite of a horrible shattering of dreams.  Faced with the loss of property, family, and even personal health, Job's deep trust in God still allows him to say: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job showed special gifts of faith and courage.  His message contradicts much of popular Christianity in our day, with its message that a broken dream indicates a lack of faith.  From the story of Job we learn that a broken dream is not a sign of God's disfavor. Or as one theologian has put it, “not to win is not to sin.”  Job’s story is meant to comfort us.  Many a sermon on Job has been preached with the function of encouraging listeners, when one dream is broken, to avoid a feeling of defeat, and look for a new and better dream to follow.

Still, I think every faithful preacher, especially when working with the Book of Job, should acknowledge a painful truth.  Sometimes, the death of an old dream is so horrific that you and I no longer have any courage or strength left to look for a new dream. The death of an old dream may be so painful that we would give just about anything not to be forced to contemplate it.

It’s the type of challenge that is now inescapable for the family and friends of Eliza Fletcher, the Memphis school teacher kidnapped during a morning run and murdered. When her church family at Second Presbyterian, Memphis, gathered for a prayer vigil, the prayer guide quoted from Paul’s letter to the Romans: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.[2]

Nothing truer ever has been prayed in such a moment. Through the generations, and in similar circumstances, church families have surrounded those who grieve a horrible loss, knowing their friends feel like they’ve fallen off a cliff. At some level, they know any chance of emotional and spiritual survival depends somehow on falling into the arms of God. Humanly speaking, I can’t say how they cope and live on. Yet, by the grace of God, some do.

Some of you remember the writing of Viktor Frankl, the famous Austrian psychiatrist. Frankl survived his time in various Nazi concentration camps. Tragically, his wife, mother, and brother did not. Before the war, already he was an expert in treating the depressed and suicidal. As a prisoner, he led an organized response to those who were shocked by circumstances not previously imaginable.

Even in such dark circumstances, Frankl discovered that not all light could be extinguished. He writes, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”[3]

Years ago, in preparation for a trip to Israel, I read James Michener’s novel “The Source.” Among the many characters he sketches, Michener imagines the life of a Jewish woman named Gomer living during the 7th century B.C.E.  Gomer’s dreams are broken as her community and family are destroyed by the Babylonian conquerors.  As she is being led away into captivity, she challenges soldiers, saying to them that their days are numbered, that God’s salvation is at hand.  As a soldier raises his spear to silence her, she consoles her fellow prisoners with one final confession of faith: “The Lord says, I am Yahweh who walks with you in darkness, and shall lead you back to light.”

This reminds a bit of one of the memories shared this week in news clips surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth. She made her first public speech at the age of fourteen, with a radio address to the children of the Commonwealth, many of them living away from home due to war. In the midst of death and destruction all around, she spoke with compassion and with hope for the future. She said, “We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well; for God will care for us and give us victory and peace. And when peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.”[4]

I’m not at all confident that I could respond to circumstances as Viktor Frankl, make a bold witness with my final breath like Gomer, or speak with such grace shortly after my childhood home was blitzed by an invader’s bombs. But my role as a preacher isn’t to tell you what I can or can’t do. It’s to remind you of what God can do. Part of the good news shared through Job is this: The evil of this world may break our dearest dreams. But, for children of God, it cannot kill the soul.

NOTES

[1] Glickman’s story is told by Ira Berkow, “The Return of the Old Sprinter,” The New York Times, 3 Dec. 1996, B13.

[2] Romans 8:26, as reported by Adam Sabes in Memphis church hosts vigil for missing Eliza Fletcher: 'Pray for Liza', Fox News, 4 Sept. 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/us/memphis-church-hosts-vigil-missing-eliza-fletcher-pray-liza accessed 7 Sept. 2022.

[3] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.

[4] Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, “Wartime Broadcast 1940,” https://www.royal.uk/wartime-broadcast-1940 , accessed 9 Sept. 2022.

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