By: Pastor David Grousnick

Every four years the president of the United States gives an inaugural address. In it, he articulates his program or his plan of action for his term of office.

See if you recognize the President who made the following remarks:

“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.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1865.

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” – John F Kennedy, 1960.

Luke 4:14-21 reveals the opening moments of Jesus’ public ministry. We might call this his inaugural sermon. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

A good illustration of Jesus’ intentions, as lived out in the real life of another real person, is seen in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

From his earliest days in politics, Lincoln had a critic, an enemy, who continually treated him with contempt, a man by the name of Edwin Stanton. Stanton would say to newspaper reporters that Lincoln was a “low cunning clown” and “the original gorilla”.

He said it was ridiculous for explorers to go to Africa to capture a gorilla “when they could find one easily in Springfield, Illinois.” Lincoln never responded to such slander; he never retaliated in the least.

And when, as President, he needed a Secretary of War, he selected Edwin Stanton. When his friends asked why, Lincoln replied, “Because he is the best man for the job.”

Years later, that fateful night came when an assassin’s bullet murdered the president in a theater. Lincoln’s body was carried off to another room.

Stanton came, and looking down upon the silent, rugged, face of his dead President, he said through his tears, “There lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen.”

Stanton’s animosity had finally been broken. How? By Lincoln’s patient, long-suffering, non-retaliatory love.

Let us remember the soul resurrecting and saving message of Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once made the observation: “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” Take that thought – the institutional church is the lengthened shadow of one Man – Jesus Christ.

We Christians owe it to ourselves and to the world to resurrect this message of Christ from the debris of history.

Now, that is a thought worth living out!

David Grousnick, is the Pastor at the First Christian Church in Artesia