Dropping in on Obama

Like Lincoln, President Barack Obama speaks the language of faith. Like Lincoln, he is not infallible. Unlke his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama knows this.

It seems inconceivable that Jesus might embarrass Obama if he were to walk into the Oval Office, the way he might have embarrassed Bill Clinton with an intern or Richard Nixon muttering antisemitisms.

Christ Jesus teaches the values, which have no value if he has to impose them. His teachings were not recorded by Jesus. He once wrote on the ground, with his finger, while Pharisees were testing him with a question about a woman caught in adultery. (There’s no reference to a man who might have contributed to the adultery.) Christians may wonder why Jesus wrote only in the shifting impermanence of dust. Nobody knows what Jesus thinks about the way his words were written down by others.

If the incarnation is to offer Jesus as fully human, then the miracles should be (1) natural events that people might emulate; (2) dramatic events intended to provide memorable lessons; (3) important events which so overwhelmed the biblical writers that they were described in terms reflecting their awe.

In a couple of hundred words, this is pretty much the religion of Jesus:

• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22 NRSV

• But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

• When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6 NRSV

We’ve added curlecues, exclamation marks and liturgies to this. We’ve liturgized candles and incense, which were practical necessities in Bible times. We’ve built a religion industry, but few of its executive officers would be at ease in the presence of Jesus who might say something like "You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone."

We have produced millions of words to claim exemptions and exceptions from those couple of hundred words. We’ve been influenced by ecclesial lobbyists to accept or not accept ancient ferocities, destruction of enemies, sexual and hygienic proscriptions and other speculations about human evolution during the quick soundbite of history that’s memorialized in the scriptures.

The study of evolution suggests that we have not been at this for very long. Humankind’s spiritual dimension in just coming out of the ooze, not sure whether to swim or crawl. The best is still to come.

Inauguration: Don't forget Truman

My ticket to the presidential inauguration is colorful and in good condition. Its only flaw is that I already used it, 60 years ago at the inauguration of President Harry Truman. I shivered, along with everybody else who watched the Jan. 20 ceremonies outside the Capitol. As a journalist, I noticed that arrangements had been made for the relatively new medium of television.

I was registered at Washington’s Hamilton Hotel. It seemed like a good idea to watch some of the television coverage, so I asked for a TV set in my room. I was lucky enough to get one of the few sets available. It was wheeled in and I was charged a rental fee equal to one-half of my room rate. The room was $8 - the TV was an additional $4.

The ticket entitled me to a seat across the street from the White House reviewing stand. I think I remember - 60 years is a long time - that the parade lasted for seven hours.

It was a double-decker, with thousands of marchers on the pavement and armadas of military planes overhead.

At the time, I was the 23-year-old editor of a national labor paper, and I was gung-ho for Truman. At another time, I was a reporter on a daily published by William Randolph Hearst. My assignments included dredging up comments from advocates of Gen. Douglas MacArthur for president. I covered Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy during their 1960 campaign visits to Hawaii, which had just become a state. I wrote Spiro Agnew’s biographical sketch for the Official Inaugural Program when he became vice president. That was before it was disclosed that his term as governor of Maryland had something in common with later Illinois disclosures.

While I was a journalist in Honolulu, a kid with a Kenyan dad and a Kansas mom was enrolled in a local school. After he grew up and delivered a breathtaking speech at the Democratic National Convention four years ago, I wrote a July 5, 2005 op-ed column for a Florida newspaper suggesting that Barack Obama could become president in the Lincoln mode.

I don ‘t have a ticket this time, but I have a TV set.