Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
Abraham Lincoln Points the Way: A Memorial Day Sermon

Abraham Lincoln Points the Way: A Memorial Day Sermon

Last updated on: May 25, 2014 at 12:14 pm by James Ford

Abraham Lincoln Points the Way: A Memorial Day Sermon 2014-05-25T12:14:59-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Abraham Lincoln Points the Way
A Memorial Day Sermon

A Sermon by

James Ishmael Ford

21 May 2014

Bell Street Chapel
Providence, Rhode Island

Text

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was a guest of a tribal chief ‘living far away from civilized life in the mountains.’ Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, ‘But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock… His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.’

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals

Jan and I’ve been to the nation’s capital three times. One of the few things we did every time was visit the Lincoln memorial. If we go again, one of the few things we will surely do again, is visit that shrine. And I believe in a way different than any other monument in our capital it is a shrine, a holy place. The Memorial is patterned on the Parthenon and like the Parthenon it stands as an enduring symbol of the dream of democracy and freedom. However instead of the goddess Athena, at the heart of this monument sits Daniel Chester French’s statue of a worn, exhausted Lincoln gazing out at the Republic which he preserved and redefined, washed if not thoroughly enough, of its founding sin.

While many of the monuments in the capital are impressive, I think particularly of the eloquent sadness of the Vietnam memorial, the only other monument in the capital that even approaches the significance of Lincoln’s, to my mind, to my heart, is that of General Ulysses Grant, sitting atop a great war horse, not with a sword outstretched leading a charge, but also exhausted, slump shouldered as if worn down in a torrential rain, or carrying a horrendous burden, significantly with his back to the halls of Congress, facing out, standing ready to defend the Republic, Lincoln’s republic.

For me too many of Washington’s monuments have that sense of Roman triumphalism about them, an aura I find somewhat distasteful. While massive, no doubt, the worn figure of Lincoln within that great monument frozen in white George marble standing at the end of the long reflecting pool sings another song. On the walls flanking the statue are the complete texts of his Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural. For me they rank with the Declaration of Independence as the documents that in fact justify America. Inspired by the one, Lincoln wrote the other two. He really is that important to what it is that our nation might be. Jefferson’s document and Lincoln’s two present the aspiration of what we can be.

I vividly recall the last time I stood before that statue, a cold and blustery day; the wind whipping right through me. Nonetheless I stood back into the open so I could drink in the whole image. I’m not massively sentimental, but I felt my eyes welling wet. Today, the Sunday of our Memorial Day-long weekend, I’d like to reflect on why. There are many reasons that Barack Obama used Lincoln’s bible for both his inaugurations. I think this a worthy moment to reflect on them, a thread running from what led to that monument, through President Obama’s small gesture and into our hearts, telling us how we can preserve and expand, how whenever we drift away at the failures and pettiness, and sometimes dangerous and foolhardy and even self-destructive actions of our government, there is something at the heart of it all that is worthy, that calls us back. Today I want to speak of that heart, the spirit that informs our republic, often forgotten, too often, but still, always, a burning coal, the dream of what we might be, and at our best, are.

Unitarian Universalist ethicist and theologian, Ronald Engel frequently used the term “Democratic Faith” to suggest our religious principles and those that informed the founding of the Republic each draw from the same sources. UU minister Joshua Snyder underscores how this vision which he thinks can be summarized by the slogan of the French Revolution’s call to liberty, equality and fraternity, and which I find summarized nicely as freedom, tolerance and reason, speak to a “larger tradition, of which we Unitarian Universalists are but one institutional incarnation.” I’m acutely aware my deep resonances with those UU principals speaking to an inherent worth ascribable to every individual and our intimation of interdependence as an insight held by many more than simply we UUs. That dual insight of the worth of the individual and our profound interconnection are the essence of a Democratic Faith.

Joshua suggests, “Lincoln stands in this larger tradition even if he does not stand in our own institution. And so,” Joshua suggests, Lincoln’s “views are of interest to us.” Or, should be. I know I read these words in Joshua’s sermon on Lincoln, and I felt a deep recognition. I thought of that cold, cold day staring at Lincoln’s statue, and those deep emotions that bubbled up from I know not where. I do know how I felt a deep sense of gratitude that there are guides for us all around, not only our own exemplars, the Thoreau’s, the Fuller’s, the Emerson’s, the Peabody’s the Parker’s, as precious as they all are; there are so many more who’ve drunk deep from the well of freedom, reason and tolerance, ready to share that wisdom waiting only our willingness to notice, to pay some attention.

One of the things that most impresses me about Lincoln is his raw humanity, how he carried the many hurts that marked his life. On the web I found some of Bill Clinton’s remarks transcribed from a talk, it feels like he was speaking extemporaneously, that touched on Lincoln’s wounded humanity. “It’s really interesting. Lincoln had, you know, serious depression problems. And when he lost a son in Illinois; then he lost a son in the White House; then his wife lost three of her half brothers fighting for the Confederacy. Then, she suffered all of her trauma. And then he had all the blood of the Union streaming from his decisions.” I read this, particularly “all the blood of the Union streaming from his decisions,” and I felt that same feeling as when staring at his statue in Washington. A trembling. I don’t like it when I can’t quickly put words to feelings. But sometimes, that’s the way it is. And here it was.

When I encounter things like this, stews of complex and often contradictory feelings rising as some image presents I feel a need to look closer. And I think, I feel there is something here. Lincoln not only was informed by great personal suffering, his actions, which continue to seem to me to have been right, nonetheless led to a flood of blood across this country. Many, many died or were maimed, maybe a million people. People were forced to do things against their will, their property taken, their lives impoverished. While others were freed from bondage; best estimate seems to be four million people. What about that, all of it?

And also, what about the shifts along the way? Lincoln was a moderate, not a radical. Early on he believed the Constitution would not allow the abolition of slavery where it already existed, and his first election platform only called for slavery to be blocked in new territories. I have friends who think he really was just a political hack that got lucky, at least so far as history is concerned. What about that?

I think the “what about that” is how there was a nimbleness in Lincoln’s character, which allowed him to address the changing conditions as they arose. And I consider this a prime lesson. I look inside myself and I try to find that nimbleness. And you know, I suspect I find it in myself only as I hold my own opinions more lightly than I sometimes do. Not without passion, but lightly. So, for instance, while I was in the position to be one of the principal religious voices in the run up to achieving marriage equality here in Rhode Island, during the struggle I tried hard, not always successfully, but constantly, to recall how those who were opposed to it were not evil. Rather they were caught up in stories of tradition and faith that otherwise had much value, but they couldn’t untangle this bit of blindness and hatred from the wiser parts. And, you know, given different circumstances, different life experiences I could have been one of them. Each of us could have been. The truth is we are all woven of the same stuff, our individual histories only slightly different.

Sharing the same stuff, we all also share the sins of oppression. My hands are not cleaner than anyone else’s. In the case of our struggle for marriage equality I’m just more fortunate in winning just enough perspective to see a bit more quickly than the majority how these patterns of the past were oppressive of human dignity. And I think that’s so for most all of us in this room. It’s hard to rise above one’s conditioning and the stories we’ve been told since childhood. Without good fortune and good friends at the right moment, it’s extremely difficult to gain that broader perspective. That acknowledged there is a way. I try hard to commit to being open, to being ready to be surprised, shocked and edified, to hold things lightly, passionately but without crushing them. This is a spiritual discipline I find in Lincoln’s personality, and try to find in my own.

My old friend and colleague Tom Schade, for years a minister in our congregation in Worcester, now retired and writing provocative blog postings on our liberal tradition has “come to be drawn by the picture of Lincoln as someone whose positions kept evolving as time and the river flowed toward him. Adherence to principles matters a lot,” Tom acknowledges. But. “I think it more important to be able to see what is the right thing for this moment in time.” Tom sums his point up by quoting one of his mentors. “Sometimes, you have to put aside your principles and just do the right thing.” I read this and immediately I returned to standing in the cold and staring at that statue. This is an audacious assertion. This is a dangerous assertion. And it is the only hope we have of moving beyond the status quo, beyond what was always right to a new right, to a newer and broader vision of justice and care and engagement.

Here we come back to that call to openness, to not following one dogma or another as completely and unassailably true. As an example the late UU theologian and minister Forrest Church observed, “Abraham Lincoln was not a believer in humankind’s intrinsic goodness. Though non-doctrinal in theology, he stood squarely in the Puritan tradition of self-judgment, believing that we are united not by righteousness but by sin.” I think about that, and it causes me to pause. I think our vaunted UU confidence in humanity’s goodness needs to be tempered. For most of us, certainly for me, I think we need a little more self-judgment.

There is just too much evil in the world to pretend something like sin doesn’t exist. Sin is a difficult term for us, I understand. But if sin can be seen as turning away from the good, the openhearted, the insight of the value of the individual and how all individuals are related; then we open the doors to change. Lincoln’s approach was not to vilify his opponents as the only sinners, but to acknowledge his own complicity, our communal complicity in the evils of the world. Nor did he stop there. Instead he offered a next step, toward that nobler possibility which is also our inherent potential, which is always in our hands.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address delivered bare months before his assassination is a summary of what I think we can hope for in our lives, both our interior investigations, and in our manifestation of that interiority. It spoke to how we might engage our lives. It spoke to the deep currents that make the American experiment something worth defending, as well as how that should be done. He spoke to how we might approach the great questions facing our nation and world today, shadowed by terrors and visions of terrors yet to come. Here we are in an era of war and prejudice, of extremes of wealth and poverty. We must be engaged. There is no place to go where we are not connected. Our choices are only how we will engage, passive or active, standing against the current, or using the current. Lincoln, shadowed by his own death, a prophet of Democratic Faith, tells us how we might do it.

“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 a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I read those words, again and again. And the bitter cold of that time in Washington cuts through me once more. And, of course, I tremble. These words speak to a world in turmoil, a broken and bleeding world. And. And. And. They speak to the possibility of something deeper that may guide us through the horrors of it all, toward something dreamt of from the dawn of our humanity. It is the wisdom of a Democratic Faith.

On this day, this Memorial Day Sunday, may we think of these things.

And, I have my hope for us all. An aspiration. A prayer.

May we rise to the occasion; because nothing less than the fate of the world depends upon it.

That much. That much.

Amen.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 23, 2014

World Turtle Day

Next Post

May 26, 2014 Occam Cuts His Way Through

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the prophet that confronted King David about his sin with Bathsheba?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Isaiah Elijah Nathan Samuel