It’s in Obama’s Blood

      

As I was reading a few Newsweek articles on line, I followed a link to Andrew Romano’s blog with this Friday posting: “Obama to Jewish Floridians: ‘Don’t Vote Against Me Because of Who I Am’.” The point was that Barack Obama, campaigning in Florida, has a problem getting the Jewish vote. Blogger Romano provided background with the January comments by a local teacher after a Guiliani event at a local shul. She insisted “that Obama, a Christian, was ‘Muslim.’ ‘He has it in his blood,’ she said when [Romano] corrected her. ‘You can’t take away what’s given to you. It’s given to you for a reason, and that’s who you are. That’s who he is.’”

 

Setting politically positioning and Jewish-Muslim issues aside for the moment, Christians should argue vehemently that this teacher was wrong – and she’d be wrong from a center-of-the-faith point. When Obama was baptized into the Christian faith, he acquired a community of relationships not based on blood. “As many of you as were baptized ito Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).

 

Of course it can and will be argued whether Obama is living by this Christian truth. Our record as Christians is not always something to be proud of. On any day we should admit this new reality in Christ often has a long way to go to take root in our lives. But still it’s not so simple that someone should be able to write off Obama as a Muslim because it’s “in his blood.” Recently a wise pastor reminded me of the wonderful line from the now-deceased Lutheran pastor-leader Nelson Trout who insisted about Christian baptism that it was the “water thicker than blood.” Maybe Christians should come to Obama’s defense that he has not the proverbial ice water in his veins but baptismal water – and that fact cannot be taken lightly. In fact, Obama’s baptismal reality offers hope to the world that blood relationships are not ultimate or final.

 

Vajda and Baptismal Song

     

His name was Jaroslav Vajda (pronounced VY-dah), a name not exactly destined for rolling off the tongue in easy recognition. But the poetry that rolls off thousands of tongues in congregational song is his gift to the world.

 

This evening I was surprised to read of Vajda’s death, probably more surprised to read the news in my small hometown paper than surprised that he died. After all, he was full 89 years of age, for last forty of which he wrote wonderful hymn texts. Years before I knew how to pronounce his name, Vajda was my favorite hymn writer. What glorious words he wrote for congregational singing! “Now the Silence” filled the room with restrained reverence at Holy Communion. “God of the Sparrow” bespoke awe, wonder and love in a simple vocabulary of creation. And then there is “Go, My Children, with My Blessing,” a beautiful benediction for so many occasions of heart and life. Actually he wrote enough hymns to sing through the whole church year.

 

Jaroslav Vajda lived and wrote out of the Lutheran community, and those commitments are apparent. I confess to a special appreciation for the warmth and power of baptismal references so integral to his work. In my previous congregation, I jumped at the opportunity to get the limited rights to “See This Wonder in the Making” so we could add this song text in the back of our hymnal. Using the beloved and beautiful Swedish folk tune for “Children of the Heavenly Father,” Vajda contributed simple and lively images for baptism. How I would have loved to see this hymn in our own ELCA’s new Evangelical Lutheran Worship book.

 

“Go, My Children, with My Blessing” is in this book, as well as five other Vajda hymn texts or translations. (Concordia Publishing House bought the rights to Vajda’s hymnody, I understand, so the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod probably has easier access.) This hymn is rich with baptismal imagery and washes the singer with life in God through words like these: “In my love’s baptismal river I have made you mine forever.” Vajda knew that Christians can proclaim the faith, and they can pray it too, but at a deep and powerful level, the truth of faith must be sung.

 

I love how Vajda himself says it in the Reformed Worship periodical. “Why then do I write hymns? To stir up my own awareness of God’s will and mercy, to express my own need for him and to begin to render some genuine appreciation for his love, to review my place in his plan for me and for humanity, to refresh myself with his love so as to be able to feed others with it, to experience his forgiveness so that I can forgive others, to taste his peace so that I can be its instrument for others still at war with him, with themselves, and one another, and to look forward to God’s ultimate goal for me, for which I have been redeemed at so great a cost.”

 

My local newspaper article about Jaroslav Vajda had the headline, “Sing him to heaven.” To which I must say Amen!