Obama's sober sermon

Obama's inaugural address will be the subject of opinion and analysis for some time. As Arianna Huffington pointed out, "The new president and the throng that turned out to cheer him and hear him today were on two very different missions. The crowd had come to celebrate. Obama had come to deliver a sober sermon."

He could have taken the expected road of poetry and soaring rhetoric, that he does so well, and raised his already 80% approval rating. He could have quite justifiably reveled in the historic moment of being the first African-American president.

Instead, he began with "I stand here today humbled by the task before us." This was going to be a call to responsibility, to common purpose, to growing up. Indeed, after quickly laying out the problems facing our nation, he said:

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. . . . our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.

Arianna, commenting on this, wrote: "There was something very powerful about watching this relatively young man, one of the youngest to ever hold the highest office in the land, telling the people of America to grow up."

It was not celebratory, and some were disappointed. But it was what we needed to hear. It was not gloom and doom; it was sober and challenging. It was not without optimism; but Obama made it clear: our success as a nation must be earned.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

Not until four paragraphs from the end did he mention this moment in our racial history, and then only with one sentence. But it was a powerful reminder, and it was enough:

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

And in the end he did not quote Lincoln but George Washington.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Celebratory? No. Necessary? Yes. Optimistic? Far more so than empty promises or self-congratulations. Because it might just work, if we will.

Ralph