In this week of the Presidential Inauguration, an interesting article from the Smithsonian Institute Magazine popped up in my feed entitled “A brief history of presidential inaugural speeches from George Washington to today” (Claire Jerry, published 1/14/2025). Being the history-minded person that I am I clicked on the link. The article cited the work of two academics, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Campbell and Jamieson see presidential inaugural addresses as a whole as being a written genre unto themselves. As they have studied these speeches from past presidents, they have noted that almost all of them have sought to achieve five particular objectives:
1. Unification of the country after an election.
2. Celebration of the nation’s communal values.
3. Establishment of political principles or policy goals for the president’s term in office.
4. Demonstration of an understanding of executive powers and constitutional limits.
5. A focus on the present while incorporating elements of the past and future.
An inaugural address is the first time a new chief executive gets to speak directly to the American people about their vision for the next four years, to establish the tone for their term in office, and to highlight the collective unifying nature of democracy. Most of these speeches are uplifting, aspirational and visionary. Most call us to be our better selves individually and collectively as a nation. Because I am good at going down rabbit holes on the internet, I spent one evening reading a whole bunch of inaugural addresses from past presidents. Most did seek to achieve the objectives laid out in the article I read. Most did offer a vision of what America could be if we embraced our best values and became what we so often aspire to be.
Here are a few of my favorite examples. The first and perhaps most famous example I have came from the second inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War. You will likely remember these words:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. . . . Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said 3000 years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ 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. (March 4, 1865)
Or there are some more recent examples that I found from the past 75 years. President Eisenhower said in his inaugural address of 1953:
We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. . . We hold all continents and peoples in equal regard and honor. We reject any insinuation that one race or another, one people or another, is in any sense inferior or expendable. . . . The impoverishment of any single people in the world means danger to the well-being of all other peoples. (1/20/1953)
How about some words from President Richard Nixon in 1969:
In this past third of a century, government has passed more laws, spent more money, initiated more programs than in all our previous history. In pursuing our goals of full employment, better housing, excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas, in protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life—in all these and more, we will and must press urgently forward. . . . No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. This means black and white together, as one nation, not two. The laws have caught up with our conscience. What remains is to give life to what is in the law: to ensure at last that as all are born equal in dignity before God, all are born in equal dignity before man. (1/20/1969)
Then there is George W. Bush’s words in 2001:
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and circumstance of their birth. . . . America at its best, is compassionate. In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise. . . . Where there is suffering there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens, not problems, but priorities. And all of us are diminished when any are hopeless. . . . Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do. And I pledge our nation to this goal: When we see the wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side. (1/20/2001)
Whether or not you think these men were sincere or actually did work that helped achieve any of these aspirations is not the point today. The point is that all of these leaders were seeking to call us to be our best selves individually and collectively. Their words remind us of who we say we want to be as a nation and the gap between who we are and who we say we want to be.
This morning, during this week of the presidential inauguration, in our Gospel reading, we heard Jesus’ inaugural address from the Gospel of Luke. Like the inaugural addresses of our presidents, these first public adult words of Jesus represent the heart of his message and mission. Jesus is invited in his hometown synagogue to read Scripture. What he reads is no accident. He makes a deliberate choice to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And the words he reads are profoundly radical:
“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 let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus, the Messiah, the agent of God’s mission is not here to save souls, or to teach people how to appease an angry God, or to save people from hell. Jesus, the Messiah, the agent of God’s mission is here to bring justice to those marginalized by the kingdoms and systems of this world. “The year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the Jubilee year from Leviticus 25. Every 50th year the playing field was supposed to be leveled—financial debts would be forgiven, slaves would be free, land redistributed. It was meant to be a way to allow people to begin again, to keep anyone from having so much that others were prevented from having what they needed to survive. It was probably never practiced, but it is part of Jewish scripture, and it was a part of Jesus’ inaugural address.
Some have tried to spiritualize this passage and to say that Jesus is talking about the “poor in spirit” or the “spiritually oppressed,” but the Greek doesn’t support this and neither does the rest of Luke’s Gospel. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is singularly focused on the material wellbeing of those living in poverty and justice for those marginalized by the systems of the world. Jesus aspires to nothing less than to be the agent of the Kingdom of God, God’s dream for the world, right here and right now. The vision he casts is not for the future, but for today. It is fulfilled right now.
Now, of course, more than 2000 years later we know that this vision has not been achieved, just as the visions from the presidential inaugural addresses I shared have not been achieved. Does this make all these inaugural addresses, including Jesus’ inaugural address worthless? I don’t think so. I think our leaders need to provide us with aspirational visions or they aren’t leading they are ruling. I think we need to be challenged to try to be our better selves. This is what true leaders do. We follow Jesus. Jesus is our leader. The good news that Jesus proclaimed, and thus the good news that we must proclaim as Christians must be good news to the poor and marginalized, the captive and the oppressed or it is not good news, and it is not the Christian message. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not following Jesus.
Jesus’ inaugural address was bold in what he laid before his hearers and before us, but his words and actions truly made a difference in human lives. Just as the words and actions of anyone who has sought to follow these words of Jesus have made a difference in the lives of countless human beings throughout the last 2 millennia.
The work Jesus began is not finished. It is far from finished. Indeed, in many ways right now we are losing ground in the fight to feed the hungry, protect the marginalized, free the captive, and release the oppressed. We need to take to heart the words of Jesus now more than ever. It takes a village—or a body as Paul says—to continue this liberating work. Each and every one of us who claims to be a follower of Jesus has a contribution to make to this mission. We are to continue Jesus’ work. The time for justice is always today. The work begins now.
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Amen.
