WHAT I WILL SAY TO OUR NEW PRESIDENT WHEN HE CALLS
I Kings 3:3-15 I Timothy 2:1-6
Sermon presented on January 18, 2009
President-elect Obama has often said, famously now: “My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.” With that promise in mind, I’ve been thinking he might call me, to chat about things, but the call hasn’t come (not yet, anyway). I know he’s been busy these days, and sometimes I turn my cell phone off. But I’m prepared, when he calls, to say a few things to him, and I’d like to share some of those thoughts with you today.
First and most important of all, I want him to know that I’ll be praying for him, and that we’ll all be praying here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church. Our praying for him is not a political act. I’ve been leading worship for 33 years, and have led prayers for Republican presidents 21 of those years and for Democratic ones 12 years, now to be 16, at least. It’s what we do in obedience to the Word of God, where it is written: “ . . . prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings [should] be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions” (I Tim. 2:1, 2).
John Calvin wrote – and I might have to take a moment to remind President Obama that this is the 500th year of Calvin’s birth, and he might want to come to Grand Rapids to participate in some of the festivities marking the occasion, and if he does, he’s warmly welcomed to worship with us here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church! – but, that aside, Calvin wrote about this passage from scripture: “Whatever character they may be who rule over us, we are commanded to offer up public prayers for them.”
And I would take the opportunity to tell the new President that in the Church of Scotland, from whose spiritual soil the Presbyterian Church sprang, every Sunday prayers are raised for the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Princes and “all the royal family.” This doesn’t mean that those who are praying support the policies of the royal family; in truth, polls suggest that a majority of people in Scotland favor the elimination of the monarchy altogether. But the wisdom of the Church of Scotland is, that’s another issue, to be debated at other times and places. In worship, prayers are to be said for “all who are in high positions,” it is written in scripture. And so we have often prayed here in worship for President Bush, and now we shall pray for President Obama.
Kevin Ferris, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes that he recently dropped-by the meeting of a high school Young Republicans Club in a Philadelphia suburb, to find out what these young people were thinking as the Obama inauguration approaches, something they surely regard as unwelcome. A 16 year old told him she’d like President Obama to know she’ll be praying for him. “What sort of prayer?” the reporter asked. She said: “May you be safe in times of war and peace. May you return to your family a better person than you were before. May you learn the price of being a president, and be able to carry that weight. May you remember the hopes and prayers of a great nation rest with you.”
Amen to that. President Obama needs to know that people of faith will be praying for him, without regard to their own political affiliations or sensitivities. I’d like to assure him of that.
Here’s another thing I’ll tell him when he calls. I’ll encourage him to go to church.
This may be a touchy subject, so I need to raise it carefully, because Barak Obama belonged to a church, that church in Chicago, and it didn’t work out well for him. I might also tell him, by the way, as a friendly aside, that I appreciated his defending the preacher there. It’s not that I agreed with the ideas of that preacher, ideas which I found disagreeable. But, well, I sort of like a guy who stands-by a preacher when everyone else is piling-on! In the end, though, Barak Obama came to conclude with many others, that he could no longer defend the indefensible, and he left that church. But he seems not to have chosen another church. And this is what I will encourage him to do.
When you don’t go to a particular church regularly, but worship here-and-there, now-and-then, you begin to lose the clarifying, correcting, and caring fellowship that healthy faith must have. It’s through worship and study groups, the words to hymns and prayers, communion celebrated and mission projects shared with brothers and sisters in the faith, and so forth, that we come to understand Biblical faith rightly and to know what the Lord requires of us. Left to our own, sin begins to reshape what we believe to our own ends and purposes.
Absent a community of faith, we end-up being tossed back-and-forth, believing anything, standing for nothing. I might even tell President Obama, if I dare — (I’ll have to assess how the conversation’s going) — that I’ve already gotten hints of this kind of thing, in his selecting a high profile evangelical minister to pray at one inauguration event, then a high profile liberal minister to pray at another. I’d like to suggest that you don’t have to do this, Mr. President. Instead choose a church that relates to your spiritual aspirations and then be unapologetically grounded in it. Personally, I don’t care if it’s evangelical or progressive, integrated or African-American, pietist or activist, whatever; but choose a church, make it your church, and then become involved in its life and work. This will be better, I think, better for him and for the nation, than four years of constantly trying to balance things out.
Another advantage of going to church is he won’t be coaxed into watching the Sunday morning pundits criticize him on Meet the Press.
Now, if President Obama asks me my opinion, I’ll be eager to tell him that there are excellent Presbyterian churches in Washington. The closest one to the White House is New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in walking distance, where Abraham Lincoln worshiped. That was his church. And Lincoln spoke the most profound and sublime words ever authored by an American President concerning faith and civil responsibility; he said:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind-
up the nation’s wounds.
Yes, Mr. President, you might want to think about becoming a Presbyterian. But I know that’s not what you called about, I’d be quick to assure him.
So, let’s move on to other things. President Obama may be thinking his call to me is shaping-up as unproductive, if he wanted my ideas about particular policies and programs. But to re-cycle a line that’s familiar to him, that’s “above my pay grade.” I don’t know how to solve the worst U.S. economy in 50 years, nor the international challenges of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Gaza conflict, and al-Qaeda gathering strength in remote regions of Pakistan. To paraphrase Woody Allen, I don’t even know how the can opener works, how can I know these things? I do have opinions about political topics, of course, all kinds of opinions about all sorts of things. But I’m daunted by the problems we face as a nation, and rather than add to the noise of partisan debate, I’d like instead simply to transmit to President Obama my wish that he receive wisdom greater than his own.
I would encourage him to turn to the Book of I Kings, Chapter 3: a story of Israel’s kingly succession, from David to Solomon. Early in Solomon’s reign – in his new administration, we might say – he went to the temple at Gibeon, to seek the help of the Lord. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon, in a dream. The Lord said to him: “ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said: “an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.” Solomon did not ask for riches or honor, nor for victory in war, nor for the elimination of adversaries, none of the things that might be a new leader’s wildest and more wonderful fantasy. Rather, he asked the Lord for “an understanding mind.”
This sounds simple enough. But it isn’t. It’s hard for any of us to ask for wisdom, humbly. Everyone agrees that humility is of first importance – Thomas More called it, “that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot” – but though we honor it in theory, we’re still inclined to be “know-it-alls” in practice. And humility must be especially illusive for someone who is being lifted-up and regarded by many as superhuman, as a savior, almost.
I look forward to telling President Obama that I happened to be in Chicago on Election Day, at a meeting. I was in Lincoln Park, which with its population of young urban professionals may be among the most Obama-friendly neighborhoods in America. What I sensed there that day, in the coffee shops, restaurants and convenience stores, was no mere, “great, our guy won,” but an expectation that all of the world’s problems will now be solved. Veteran reporter Sandy Grady recently wrote in USA Today that, in her experience of covering eight Presidents, there’s never been one who “carries [such] enormous expectations . . . that he’s the Miracle Man.” To some extent these expectations have been fueled by Obama’s own promises. But this seems to me unreasonable, unfair and childish; and also unwise, if President Obama were to take it seriously. So, I might suggest to him, when he calls, to re-read the Bible, the part about Solomon, who, precisely at the moment of his greatest power and popularity, yet humbly asked God for “an understanding mind,” that he might be able to govern wisely, faithfully and well.
On Election Day evening in Chicago, I purchased a bottle of champagne to bring to a reception I was attending. Everyone in the store was in a lively, celebrative mood. When I put the champagne on the shelf the clerk asked: “Are you celebrating the end of the dark past or the beginning of the bright future?” I made some kind of lame joke, I forget what I said, because I didn’t want to get into it with him, not with other customers lining-up behind me. But what I’d liked to have said is something like: “I believe absolutely that’s there’s a bright future, a light so bright that it will overcome the darkness of the past and present. But that light is not coming into the world on Election Day, not this one, nor any other. That light is the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and it will shine on the day of his coming.”
Our confidence that God can be trusted to fulfill his promises should not lessen our interest in this earthly existence and the affairs of state. God calls us to be co-creators with him in bringing order out of the chaos of this world’s sinful madness. Politics and government are means God ordains by which this holy work may be lived-out. And so as my talk with President Obama comes to a close – because, I’m thinking, he still has a great many more calls to make – I will bless our new President with words Thomas Jefferson spoke in his First Inaugural: “may that infinite power who rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best . . . to enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.”
