On occasion, people have asked me how I can believe in God, despite the lack of evidence for a divine being. And on occasion, I have replied: I have evidence, but perhaps not in the sense you might understand. I have seen people and communities come back to life long after they were supposed to be dead. I have seen the power of the resurrection at work in my life.
Now, let us be clear: to be resurrected is not the same thing as being reanimated. Nor is it an apparent death followed by a return to the same old same old life. Though the image of a bulb flowering in the spring is a common one, it's not really a resurrection.
To be resurrected, as Christians speak of it, means to be brought into a new way of life, a new way of being. In the same way that John speaks of a "new heaven and a new earth" in the book of Revelation, to be resurrected means to have a new body.
But more than that. To be resurrected means to have a new mind, "the same mind as Christ Jesus,"
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
This is the power that I have seen: the power of people to become humble even as they are dying, and the power of communities to reinvent themselves with the hearts of servants.
Now, friends. Barack Obama is not the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Let's make that perfectly clear. He's not even a dimestore messiah. He's a very human politician, with all the faults and foibles that involves. And he has not worked any sort of religious miracles in our nation.
But what he has done is almost as good. He has reimagined American politics, almost single-handedly. He built his campaign on the idea that citizens not only have something to say, they have something to contribute. More: they not only have something to contribute, they have ways to serve that go beyond standard political tropes. Obama built his campaign on the idea that what we do as people and as a nation matters. After a generation of the neo-conservative message of security for its own sake, consumerism for its own sake, partisanship for its own sake, he told the American people that there was more to their lives than shopping and fighting in wars.
And he built his campaign on the idea that there is still a future for us as individuals and for our country. Without blessing our imperfections or looking away from them, he told voters that things could be different, and that they could help make them so, if they chose to serve.
No man who can bring out nearly a million people to hear him speak will escape comparisons to cult leaders. Obama hasn't in the past, and he will not in the future.
But no man who ran this campaign, no man who ended it on such a solemn and purposeful note, is completely without power, and I don't mean just the political variety. Barack Obama has demonstrated an ability to change this nation. What is more, he has shown his intention to continue to change it. He will not deliver us a new heaven and a new earth, but he has given us a breath of fresh air. I'll take that as one more piece of evidence that the rest is possible, and certainly that we may be headed for a new way of life. And for that, we owe Obama not veneration but simple thanks, and hope for more to come. America is ready to bloom again, and he helped make it happen.