UNSOLICITED
ADVICE
Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle
Congregational Church of Union, UCC
January 18, 2009
This
sermon that I’m preaching here this morning is being recorded so that it can
be part of a Library of Congress collection of sermons and orations from around
the country on the occasion of our inauguration of a new President. In addition,
I am going to try very hard, although with little confidence of success, to
somehow have these words I will speak find their way to President Obama so that
perhaps one day, fairly early in his term, he might read them. Therefore, I have
structured much of this sermon, dear friends, as if I were addressing these
words directly to our new national leader. Now recognizing, of course, that in
reality, I am probably not, my hope is that even as I am addressing HIM, there
will be value as you listen in to what I have to say, a value that will be
certain should he never hear or
read a thing I say today. For, you see, assuming that it is just us up here in
little Union speaking and listening to this, along with those few who, over the
years, might get excited by a little inaugural research and who will want to see
what people were talking about in the year 2009, assuming all of that, I believe
it to be important for all of us both to take seriously and reflect upon deeply
the beginning of a new era in American government, an era marked by those events
we celebrated this past week, events that have marked our national transition, a
transition to governance by our new national leader, the 44th President of these
United States.
You
see, my friends, underlying this sermon is the conviction that the American
Presidency is important, that the actions and words of our President can make a
difference in how we live our lives and how we respond to the challenges we
face. Likewise, there is a wisdom in Teddy Roosevelt’s observations about the
‘bully pulpit’ of the Presidency, containing the recognition that the
President indeed DOES preach from a pulpit and while his job must never be the
promulgation of faith the way you’d express it here in church, he or she has
that enormous capacity to express common national values, beliefs so often
espoused by people of faith, deep seated convictions that can lift our spirits,
spur us on to noble action, and, quite often, even serve as balm, a balm to heal
our common wounds.
This
is all a fancy way of saying that leadership is important and that the office in
which we have inaugurated Barack Obama( a couple of times, actually, courtesy of
Justice Roberts!)...this office is truly one of great significance, as
exemplified over and over again in the many examples of what this man’s
predecessors have said and have done. Through Abraham Lincoln’s inspiring
guidance as we sought to rid ourselves of the curse of slavery, to Jefferson’s
lofty egalitarian idealism, to Reagan’s directive that a mighty wall come
tumbling down to JFK’s clarion call that we must do more than we ever shall
ask of our beloved country, to LBJ’s commitment to equality under the law and
his deep respect for Martin Luther King , from FDR’s declaration that fear
would never reign victorious and through actions that caused happy days to
return to this land, to Presidents Ford and Carter as they moved us beyond
national disgrace, to Richard Nixon who changed the way we looked at China, to
Clinton in Oklahoma and President Bush the younger speaking from rubble in lower
Manhattan’s Ground Zero articulating for us our national pain, all the way
back to a George Washington standing on the steps of New York’s Federal Hall
on his inaugural day, making clear that indeed we were a nation both free and
independent, the power of the presidency, its capacity to set the right course,
to act as God’s servant to both nation and world, its potential to lift people
up from despair and to imbue them with a sense of common purpose and collective and individual promise has been both remarkable
and, oh, so very real.
And
so now, President Obama, you take your place among those blessed with the kind
of power to shape the course of history, an enormous kind of task for which you
most obviously have prepared your entire life. I read your first book, DREAMS
FROM MY FATHER.! You might not have known you were going to be President, but
you knew you wanted to be headed for something very big! In the days ahead, as
has been true in the most recent past, you’ll have no shortage of people
offering you all sorts of advice. Everyone will have an opinion of what you
should or should not be doing. Some will find you too liberal, others too
conservative, still others, sadly, will have to be won over because they still
don’t trust the color of your skin! So, then, today, I’ll take my place, a
small town New England Pastor, deigning and daring to give you some UNSOLICITED
ADVICE, just days after you took that oath of office, all kidding aside, promising
to defend our Constitution, vowing to ‘faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States, SO HELP YOU...GOD!.’
Indeed,
where to begin? Most certainly NOT with my suggestions for balancing the budget
and putting people back to work. And not with a 5 point plan for solving the
problems in the Middle East. You have advisors far more skilled than I in those
specific areas, economists and international relations experts I cannot claim to
be. But I’m a Pastor and so instead I will offer you what we call in the trade
pastoral advice, advice less about technical solutions and more about spiritual,
YES...SPIRITUAL.. decisions.
And I’ll start with a phrase your two beautiful little girls may
know pretty well if they have ever seen THE LION KING. I’ll start with Mufasa
to Simba: REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE!
You
see, Mr. President, God has worked through the nuances and the details of your
life to bring you to this moment and it’s your job in turn to bring to this
moment the peculiar strengths that have marked your life. It’s what we all
have to do, be we Joe the plumber, Bob the preacher, Mary the accountant or Bill
the grandpa, be we working, disabled or retired, married, single, divorced, gay
or straight. We take our strengths, the gifts we have been given, and the
experiences, good or bad, that have shaped our lives and
we use them to serve, be that at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC or 976
Buckley Highway, Union, Connecticut.
You,
Mr. President, have lived a remarkable life. Born of a black father from Kenya
and a white mother from Kansas, you grew up in Hawaii, the 50th of
our 50 states, in a nation in which the thought of an African American President
seemed to most a far away and distant dream. Celebrating your Inauguration just
a day after we celebrated the life and vision of Dr. King, we must not ignore or
gloss over the implications that come from the fact that, in you, we have our
first black President. Your
understanding of your identity as a man of color in a nation often less than
friendly to those who have shared your pigmentation, the child of biracial
parents in a land where states’ rights would have denied your parents the
right to marry in certain American places and, as you said Tuesday, your father
the right to eat in restaurants around the corner from where you now live in the
capital of our nation.... THIS is all a serious part of who you are, realities
from which you should not run away, any more than any of us who have been shaped
by the peculiarities and the history of our own heritage.
BUT
THERE’S MORE TO YOU THAN THAT. Which
leads me to this.....REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN...Someone with your
intelligence and background could have made an awful lot of money as a young
man, yet, for whatever compelling reason... you found it important to go to
Chicago, a place where you had never before lived, a city I happen to
love....you went to Chicago to try to do something to help people who needed
homes and food and jobs. Yet, while you were there, something happened to you
and you described it in a speech I heard you give to a church meeting right here
in Hartford, Connecticut in 2007...in words that went like this:
It wasn’t until after
college.....when I went to Chicago....that I confronted my own spiritual
dilemma. In a sense, what brought me to Chicago in the first place was a hunger
for some sort of meaning in my life....
You then speak of your work
with church people on Chicago’s South Side and you spoke about yourself
saying:
I came to realize that
something was missing, that without an anchor for my beliefs, without a
commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always
remain apart and alone.
And then you speak of a sermon
you heard back then in old Chicago and what the preacher said:
And, during that
sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins
could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish
myself, He would accomplish with me if I put my trust in Him.
AND THEN, MR. PRESIDENT....
you walked down the aisle of that church and you affirmed that YOU HAD MADE THE
DECISION TO FOLLOW CHRIST.....Born of a nominally Muslim father and an agnostic
mom, raised without a rearing in Christian doctrine, no Sunday School, no Youth
Group, you made a personal choice and this is what you said:
‘
....................... Kneeling beneath the cross on the South Side, I felt
God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to do His will, and I dedicated
myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.’
In
this, the most powerful job in the world, really, NEVER FORGET that you are a
Christian, that long ago, when you were quite young but also very knowledgeable
and traveled as well, you knelt under that Cross and you chose to follow Christ.
Though you lead a nation whose people are comprised of many faiths and none at
all, though your task as President can never include your attempt to govern this
land as a theocracy, PLEASE remember what you believe, do not lose sight of the
values of Jesus that you chose to guide your life. Be MERCIFUL. Be JUST. Be a
PEACEMAKER. SET GOOD EXAMPLE. Continue to be a good husband and father! Let the
words of Matthew 25 guide your Presidency- Don’t neglect the poor, the needy,
the hungry and the homeless. Remember
what the Bible calls‘the least of
these’ REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE. REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN.
And,
at last, REMEMBER WHAT YOU BELIEVE. You have received the accolades and acclaim
attributed to rock stars. Some have unwittingly raised you to so high a pedestal
your detractors fear you have an unhealthy Messiah identity. As hard as your
days and your decisions will be, you will also have a lot of perks, access to
all kinds of good things in this life, a standard of living way above the
average Joe or Jane, amazing wealth, really, so much more than your Kenyan
ancestors, so much more than those
for whom you organized on Chicago’s streets. And
a great deal of power. You’ll fly in as
good a plane and helicopter as any in the world, be waited on hand and foot,
your every need quite easily satisfied! You’ll be the envy of many, even those
who find your policies and politics despicable and flawed.
You
will have a public relations staff ready to launch into a defense of your every
move, dedicated to making you look good even when you’ve done something wrong.
Heck, they’ve made past presidents believe they were waging peace when they
were fanning the fires of war and doing good as they walked through evil’s
door. Please don’t forget what you believe. Don’t be content with your press
clippings when people still suffer. Don’t get so big and haughty that you
forget everyday people who shaped your life so significantly, those people you
met along the way as you brought their case to those in power, who now look to
you, the most powerful man in the world!
Never
allow yourself to get so caught in the glitz and glitter of the image that’s
been created and minted on all those commemorative coins—so caught in the
temptations of those trappings that you forget that there was once a time when
with little money in your pocket and a cracking old car, you drove a long way to
Chicago to try to make a difference in peoples’
lives, never forget that night when you stayed on the streets of New York
because you had nowhere to live, all those days when lost and in search of
life’s meaning, you, by your own admission, did some downright stupid things,
doing that you have worked to have your own precious children and others like
them avoid!
You
know, my friends, I hope he gets his hands on this someday. I really do. But,
most importantly, I hope something else as well. In the incredible, nearly
impossible job that is the American presidency, Barack Obama, self professed
Christian, has to do exactly what each of us must do each and every day of our
lives. As we face the enormity of our own challenges, we, like him, must always
remember what we believe, we must always remember that which we have chosen and,
putting it all together, we have got to remember exactly who we are and may I
say, WHOSE we are as well.. At the beginning of this new administration ,in the
glow of an inspiring and uplifting series of inaugural events, we
pray that President Obama will lead us well and that he will use his unique God
given, spirit shaped gifts to guide us as a country, to guide this nation so
much in need of hope, a land that hungers for healing, part of a great big world
that longs to overcome its ridiculous
divisions, as this very moment signifies to that world that YES WE CAN, a world
tired of war and craving for something that might somehow resemble that which we
call peace. AMEN+
At the conclusion of the sermon, the congregation sings WE SHALL OVERCOME