Can President Barack Husein Obama ever deliver a speech!

I had come to expect it from listening to him on the campaign trail.  Still, to watch him at his inauguration was absolutely mesmerizing.

And it’s not simply that he is good at delivering someone else’s text.  From reading Audacity of Hope, I knew that this man could think and that this man could write.

Listening to him speak from the Capitol on January 20th

proved again that good ideas clearly expressed and passionately spoken can move people.

It’s true that the things he said were light on policy particulars.  He’ll have to proceed differently when he is defending this policy over that policy.  Time will tell how successful he is on that score, but his inaugural was the time for a speech light on policy and heavy on the values that give any policy a point.

The first idea that stood out for me was the theme of common purpose and collective enterprise.  “Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions—that time has surely passed…..What is required of us is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.  This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”

The idea that we’re all in it together was not a surprise. Obama had burst onto the national scene with his speech at the Democratic Party Convention in 2004 at which he said there aren’t (or shouldn’t be) “blue states” and “red states”,only “United States.” 

I am not an American; as a Canadian I sometimes find American patriotism just a bit “over the top.”  But surely Obama is right to say that citizenship is truly possible only if there is a real “we.” Citizenship is about something called the common good and public interest, and not just my interests and what’s good for me.  Of all people, Christians should know this.

As all Christians should also know, common purpose is not a discovery, it is a creation.  When President Obama reminded us that just sixty years ago his own father might have been denied access to Washington restaurants, not just the White House, he gave witness to the fact that social inclusion doesn’t always come easily.  But it can come.  Whole nations can change! 

How about a whole world?  President Obama challenged the country that learned how to see American people of color as part of the “we”, not the “they”, to begin to embrace the new struggle to become global citizens. 

One would like to think that a church which sings “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north” could set the example.  And maybe we can.  But it won’t be without work. The history of the church is marred by church fights and church splits in which one side says the other isn’t really good enough or isn’t really Christian enough.
This leads me to the other theme in Obama’s inaugural speech that really caught my attention.  He said, “God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.”

That’s an arresting phrase.  Is it true?  Can Christians affirm it?  I think so.  It reminded me of words from the rabbi-philosopher Franz Rosenzweig which I also read last week: “The unlimited cannot be attained by organization. Any ‘plan’ is wrong to begin with—simply because it is a plan.  The highest things cannot be planned; for them readiness is everything.”  From God’s side of history, the details may be known.  But for us, even those of us who are certain that God in Christ has won the decisive battle over Satan and that our eternal fate is not a question, a great deal in this life is unsettled.  One of the chief virtues for our times is the capacity to dream dreams bigger than strategic plans could accommodate.  Another is the muscular readiness to pursue those dreams without a detailed map or the promise of smooth sailing.  A third (the greatest?) is a love that dares to build bridges where we’ve not dared to build them before.