Tuesday, January 4, 2022 (today’s lectionary)
Memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God. Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
Our kids ran around the yard of our house in Waynesville, Illinois. Sometimes they sang Bible memory songs we learned from the Navigators. One stuck in my mind then and it hasn’t left since, not for the last thirty years. I can’t share the melody with you, but here is what we all sang:
“First John 4:10, this is love.
“This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice, for our sins.
“First John 4:10, this is love.”
Consequently, for all of us, this chapter of 1st John is one of our favorites. Other favorites of mine are Romans 1, Philippians 1, and several psalms, and all because I spent some time memorizing those chapters. The Bible gets into your blood that way, I guess.
You could memorize French verb declensions (is that the right word?) or multiplication tables, and they would get into your blood too. They have into mine. 9×7 is 63. But I really appreciate the time I’ve spent with the Bible, making 3 x 5 cards and laminating them, then carrying one or two around with me all day. Over several years I memorized the first eight psalms, the first three chapters of Romans, and the first two chapters of Philippians that way. So sweet.
The mountains shall yield peace for the people, and the hills justice. Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
During his Kentucky and Indiana childhood, Abraham Lincoln’s family had basically one book, the Bible. Along the way young Abe discovered how much he loved to read, and so he read the Bible. (The lawbooks he discovered later never carried the same weight.) I’ve been listening to Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, which according to Ronald White was Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. He was inaugurated on March 5, 1865, just forty-one days before his assassination. In his speech he previewed the biblical basis for his plans to heal the divided nation.
When Jesus saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.
It was just a five-minute speech, but like his speech at Gettysburg the words were unforgettable.
Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. (It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge NOT, that we be not judged.) The prayers of both could not be answered.
Lincoln picked his way through the minefield of blame by refusing to split the nation, refusing to blame only the south for slavery.
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove, shall we discern therein any departure from (His) divine attributes? Lincoln wondered whether the Civil War, which ravaged both sides, might be “the woe due.”
And he knew that penance (our word is reparations) was called for, or might be. God is in charge of justice.
(What if) God wills that the war continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword? As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
I think the Bible passages Lincoln absorbed as a child nurtured his soul and his conscience all his life. In spite of his tendency toward depression, he shook off criticism and often reciprocated with warmth and grace. God is love. Lincoln learned how to love. We can all do likewise, Jesus told us so.
In his speech, Lincoln pours out his love, as did Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. Like all love, his does not lack firmness, but it is devoid of anger or bitterness.
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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish and just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
Jesus fed his thousands of listeners with just a bit of bread and fish. They were hungry, and they ate a lot, much more than Jesus started with.
The Lord has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, and to proclaim liberty to captives.
We too can follow that instruction, that command, that path – and wonderful things will happen.
(1 John 4, Psalm 72, Luke 4, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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