America - Dreaming the Possible Dream

Barak Obama's victory speech to the American people was marked by humility. He told them that they had not only returned him to office but made him a better President, thereby making his victory theirs, transferring it to them as a gift.  On the basis of his handling of power until now, I believe he meant what he said when he spoke of what makes the United States of America truly united. It is also what may cause him to be remembered as a great leader. Great leaders never lose sight of the fact that they are there to serve their people. Great leadership reflects the character of the God of the three Abrahamic  faiths who is a God of justice, mercy and truthfulness, and Obama is a man of faith. America's constitution rests on the idea of a people who are 'one nation under God', an idea which is all too often abused and misrepresented, usually to the political advantage of a party or interest group. When God is appropriated by a single party or interest group, in any political context, he becomes what has traditionally been thought of as an idol. He is rendered lifeless, but at the same time powerfully destructive.

Leadership in even the smallest context brings power. Some would argue that those who put themselves forward as leaders want only power and that few have thought about the personal and spiritual costs which wanting power for oneself entails for others and, ultimately, for that person. But being the leader of one people under God means that the American President must not only be directly answerable to God for how he exercises power, but that he must do so in a way which is consistent with what a loving God wants for all the American people.  For Christians, the nature of God is fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, the one in and through whom all things were made, who chose to be powerless in order to win the love of his people. He lived an impossible dream, a dream which took him to the cross. The strangeness of it all is that his impossible dream, the seeming failure of his dying, made our dreams possible. In serving and dying, and rising again, he set humanity free from the need for toxic power in all its manifestations.

The American dream is a dream for freedom from all that is life denying. It is the freedom to become fully human, a freedom willed for all people by a loving God. But for freedom to be possible, to become anything like a reality in people's lives, those who voted for President Obama will need to reach across to the defeated. They will need to be in solidarity with them, as Christ was in solidarity with all of us in his dying. If they do not, the victory which they have tasted will quickly become bitter, as happens when mercy, justice and truth are overwhelmed by the intoxicating effect of pure power, and by its demands. If America is to be truly great it must dream the possible dream and work to realise it from day one of this new administration, by loving the vanquished and serving one another unconditionally. If the American people, as still the most powerful nation on earth, can see its vocation as one of life-enabling service, then peace for our times is perhaps closer than it has ever been.