No doubt I wasn’t the only one in America on Election Night who had this thought, but still, so resonant was the effect that it felt like a revelation all my own: with uncanny biblical equivalence, exactly 40 years had passed—not 39, not 41, or, for that matter, 25 or 200—from Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech the night before his murder in Memphis to Barack Obama’s victory speech last night in Chicago.
If that doesn’t blow your mind, then allow me to let it blow mine again for you.
40. The same number of years that the Israelites spent on their sojourn in the wilderness, the defining paradigm that fueled King’s fatal march for the promised land right up until his last night on earth. As his words never cease to bear repetition, the end of that speech now resounds in a way that King himself might never have imagined:
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
Not that I mean to imply anything messianic about Obama, as some have been inclined to do, or presume that with his election we’ve entered a land of milk and honey, but I would be loath to call it a random coincidence that 40 years after King unwittingly bid his people farewell from the mountaintop, a black man has been voted President of the United States of America.
And in the vein of biblical equivalence, let us remember that King’s murder took place in Memphis, namesake of the ancient capital of Egypt. His view of the promised land notwithstanding, come morning Pharaoh would catch up with him at the Lorraine Motel.
I suspect Obama knew full well the numinous significance of the timeline he was dealing with back in March of 2007 when, shortly after declaring his run for president, he gave a speech in Selma, Alabama, where he called upon “the Joshua generation” to carry out the vision of King and other Moseses who had gone before us. Call it prophetic on his part, or just smart politics. Either way his early speech bears repetition in its own right:
“I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I thank the Moses generation; but we’ve got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn’t cross over the river to see the Promised Land…. We’re going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens…. So the question, I guess, that I have today is: what’s called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy; to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?”
How Obama answers his own question remains to be seen. So does, for that matter, the way I answer it.