Bound Up In Charity
Bound Up In Charity
by Pastor Mike Von Behren
Did you know President’s Day doesn’t fall on a presidential birthday—true, it used to. The Federal February holiday started out as George Washington’s birthday, February 22, but the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 moved it so that it’s always on the third Monday of February, right in between Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, and Washington’s.
As I’m writing this the nation is hearing another inaugural address, now from the 46th president of these United States, which means 30 have come and gone since Abraham Lincoln’s last inaugural address. Perhaps recalling what he said in that address would still be helpful to us all these years later:
“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.”
Those words, spoken just a few months before his assassination, are inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial where sits a statue of him looking out over the national mall. In that statue one hand is clinched in a fist of determination to preserve the unity of the nation. The other is open as a symbol of charity and compassion toward the people and leaders of the American South. Although many were calling for retribution from the secessionists, Lincoln sought healing, to bind the wounds of the nation with charity toward all.
That made him quite unpopular at the time, so much so that many of his political advisers feared he would lose the election in 1864 and not make a second term. They urged him to get out on the campaign trail, to beat his political opponents. Lincoln’s response was characteristic of his rural Illinois humor, “I cannot run the political machine. . . I have enough on my hands without that. It is the people’s business – the election is in their hands. If they turn their backs to the fire, and get scorched in the rear, they’ll find they have to sit on the blister.”
For all his fine qualities, Lincoln is not without his own flaws. In Portland, last October 12, a riotous crowd toppled a statue of Lincoln, not unlike the one that graces our downtown at Main St. and Monroe Ave. The protesters spray painted on the base of the statue, “Dakota 38.” It was a reference to 38 Native Americans executed on one day in Mankato, Minnesota under Lincoln’s order the same week that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect announcing freedom to those in slavery. Although the legitimacy of their convictions and the circumstances of Lincoln’s leniency toward those who were not executed that day are still matters of debate—303 executions had been ordered by the then Minnesota Governor—it remains the largest mass execution in our nation’s history. Native peoples of America still find it hard to see how Lincoln’s “charity for all” extended to their ancestors.
You and I know one who has “charity for all.” Both of his hands are open showing nail marks to his disciples in John 20:20. Those are marks of his own execution. Only three were ordered that day, but his brought the charity of God to every person, and the clemency of God to you and me—and President Lincoln too! Jesus Christ is the one who calls us to bind up wounds with charity and fills us with the power of his Spirit to do it. The scriptures call this “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).
There is a desperate need in our society today for that kind of healing. The task before us is to bring it, to bind up the wounds of others with our charity toward all. It’s an overwhelming task, but it’s God’s task. It’s his mission. So one more statement of Lincoln’s might give us direction as we set ourselves to it. These are the impromptu words he told his fellow townspeople of Springfield, IL as he boarded the train bound for the Capital to attend his first inauguration. He said, as the news reporters have recorded it:
“I now leave . . . with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will be well.”
In Jesus,
Pastor Mike
(All the Lincoln quotes in this article are taken from: Phillips, D. T. (1992) Lincoln on leadership: Executive strategies for tough times. Grand Central Publishing.