"Biblical Touchstones for Public Service"
It's true that I used to be a Presbyterian minister and then, as I sometimes say, I "fell from grace" and went to Congress. I remember the first week I was in Congress, an old-timer came to me and introduced himself to me thusly, "Hello, son." I said, "How do you do, sir." He said, "What's your name? Mine's So-and-So." (I don't remember who it was.) I said, "I'm Bill Hudnut." He said, "Where're you from?" I said, "Indianapolis." He said, "Where's that?" So I told him and then he said, "Well tell me, what'd you do back in real life?" I think there's another whole sermon in that question. I said, "Well, back in real life I was a preacher." You'd have thought I had kicked him right in the shins because he sort of hunkered down and clapped his hand to his forehead and said, "Golly, you guys are taking over this place!" I did a little quick arithmetic and thought about myself, Father Drinan, Andy Young, and a couple of others and I said, "Yes sir, there's five of us clergymen in the United States Congress and 289 of you attorneys - we're really taking over!"

The point I want to make is, that I think that whether you're in the pulpit - as I was as the Pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis for several years, or whether you're in politics - as I have been since 1972, if you're a Christian and if you're really serious about your faith, you're going to try to make an effort to relate the insights and precepts and concepts of Biblical religion to what you're doing. This is true all through life, it's not just true if you're in politics. So I'd like to talk with you about the subject of Biblical touchstones for Public Service, or for any kind of service, because I believe that the Bible is a book of resources that can help you and me live a better life.

Now, how is that possible and what are these precepts? I'm sure that you could make up a list of ten touchstones that you think are important. I'd like to mention a half dozen or so for your thought. The first one is GRATITUDE. The Psalmist talks about his cup running over with goodness and mercy, he says, "Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who healeth all thy diseases and forgiveth all thine iniquities."

Jesus told a story about the healing of ten lepers. Most people think this is a very happy story, and indeed it is, because He commanded them to go down and wash by the riverside and they would be cleansed, and they did that. But the sad thing about this story, according to Scripture, is that only one of them came back and threw himself at the feet of our Lord and said, "Thank you." The other nine went running off across the river and into the trees and were never heard from again. Ninety percent of the time people forget to say thanks. Nine times out of ten you and I fail to express appreciation.

I think it's important for us to recognize that William Wordsworth was right when he said, "The religion of gratitude will never mislead us." If you and I stop to think about it, irrespective of our circumstances - we may be shut up in a private room, we may be out in the public eye (as I am all the time, in front of thousands and thousands of people, and on television every day), regardless of where we are - gratitude can help us to lead a happy and a healthy life. Christianity has what you might call an affirmative and appreciative approach to life. You and I have to take time each day to thank God for all the blessings. "God daily loadeth us with benefits," said my father almost every day as we were growing up.
I have a lot to be grateful for, not everything of course, because things don't always go right in a big city. If you want to have a tough job, become a big city mayor. Lyndon Johnson once looked around the Oval Office at the end of a long, hard day and he saw a sea of glum faces on his advisors. He said, "Cheer up people, things could be worse. I could be the mayor of a large city." Not everything always goes as well as you'd like. The trash doesn't get picked up, the snow doesn't get plowed, sometimes people walk off the job, sometimes there are terrible conflicts of opinion that paralyze a community for a while. In it all and through it all, we've got to say, "Thank you, God, for so much. Thank you for so many blessings. Thank you, God, for life. Thank you, God, for work to do. Thank you, God, for our kids and our home. Thank you for our family. Thank you, God, for church, for city, for friends, for neighbors, for crisis, for school, for challenges, for mountains to climb and valleys to go through. Save us, oh God, from a sour and dour approach to life. Help us to keep it all in a healthy perspective." Gratitude is what I would call a Biblical Touchstone for Public Service.

The second is Love. We all know the story of the Good Samaritan and we all understand its meaning - that we've got to avoid walking by on the other side of the road and not helping out wherever our lives touch the lives of other people. We've got to get under the load of life and give a little lift - bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. I chose this topic because we're in a political season now and the election is just around the corner and we're going to be voting for president. I think it's important to try to set into a Biblical perspective some of the things that those of us who make our living in politics are trying to do. There's an urgent need for leaders today who understand themselves as servants of others - as public servants, as burden-bearers, if you want to put it that way. Public office is indeed a public trust and a public servant ought to be just that - a person who serves the public. At the heart of our democracy, it seems to me, lies the concept of government as service - that is, as government bearing the burdens of people, government trying to help out, government saying people count and human needs are important. It's government "of the people and by the people and for the people," as Lincoln reminded us.

When asked by somebody what the chief difference was between the form of government that the Founding Fathers had established on this side of the Atlantic and that of the Old World, Alexander Hamilton said, "Here, sir, the people govern." I think it's important for us to recognize that we have to ask ourselves what good can we do where we find ourselves in life? Whether it be the mayor of a large city or President of the United States, or an alderman or not even in politics - in television or in business or as a homemaker or as a teacher, etcetera, etcetera - what can I do to help out? Poor Richard in his Almanac said that the most important question we can ask on earth is, "What good can we do on earth?" We're here to express love in action. Alan Paton wrote Cry the Beloved Country, a story about the very vexing problem of race relations in South Africa. He said something very profound in the introduction, "I look forward to the day when we shall realize that the only lasting solution to our grave and profound problems lies not in the love of power; but in the power of love, without which life is an intolerable bondage, condemning us all to an existence of violence misery and fear." Love, as well as Gratitude, is a Biblical Touchstone for life.

A third one, I think, is Conscience, let's call it "keeping the faith." Paul stood before King Agrippa saying, "I have not been disobedient to my heavenly vision. I've tried to keep the faith as I understood it." Or, as Lincoln said, "With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, we strive on to finish the work we are in." This thing of integrity is very important. "Politics is not an amoral field fenced off from the customary canons of ethical behavior," as Senator Paul Douglas once remarked. Henry Clay wasn't far off the mark when he said, "I'd rather be right than President." All of us are called to be true to the right and to stand up for things as God gives us to see them.

I think it's important for us to recognize that God alone is Lord of the conscience. You won't always be right and must not always think you're right, but you must always try to do right. "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God?" We are asked every day to search our conscience and live by the light that God is giving us. "Dear Father God," we used to pray when we were little, "Let us walk today and live by the light that God gives us." I think that's important. We've got to try to do what is right. And that's the job of the Christian Church - to try to uphold what is right for people.

I like what de Tocqueville said when he came to America way back in the 1830's. He toured our country and when he went back he wrote a famous book on American Democracy. He said, "I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers and it was not there. In her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there. In her public school system and her institutions of higher learning and it was not there. In her democratic Congress and matchless Constitution and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard their pulpits flaming with righteousness did I understand where the true greatness and genius of America really lies." Then he said something very profound, "America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good America will cease to be great." You and I are called to live out our days as well as we can with the light that comes from God as we search our conscience and prayerfully examine what is God's will for our life. Conscience, as well as Gratitude and Love, is a Biblical Touchstone of Public Service.

Then fourthly I'd mention Humor. A lot of people don't think of Christ as a humorous person, but Elton Trueblood, the great professor down at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, wrote a whole book on the Humor of Christ. "God sits in His heaven and laughs," said the Psalm. "Do not look dismal," said Jesus according to one translation. Carl Sandburg, in his famous biography of Abraham Lincoln, has a chapter on "Lincoln's Religion and Lincoln's Humor." They are linked together. Why? Because, as my professor Rienhold Niebuhr once said, "Humor is the vestibule in the temple of faith." Humor is good therapy, it's good medicine, it helps lighten the load and brighten a dark moment and relieve tension. The Bible understands that, the Bible is not a humorless book. It's not a superficial book, it's not a jocular book, but by the same token, it understands that humor can save us from becoming bitter, it can help us not to cry and it can keep us from taking ourselves too seriously.

Biblical humor is not a way of denying the tears and the heartaches of your life or mine, but rather it is a way of affirming something stronger and more ultimate - meaning beyond the flux of events - it is an ocean of light and love which flows over the ocean of darkness and death. So we speak of Humor, as well as Conscience and Love and Gratitude.

Another Biblical Touchstone is Hope. I think this is very important. Hope is to the human heart what air is to the wings of a bird - it lifts us, it buoys us. Or, to use another metaphor, when my father and brother and I were touring Scotland looking for ancestral names in the old cemeteries over there, we noticed the symbol of the anchor in many of the tombstones. We recognized a lot of the other symbols - a spade, a cross, maybe occasionally a Star of David - but we were puzzled by the anchor until we realized that in the Book of Hebrews hope is called the "Anchor of the Soul," then we realized why there were anchors on those ancient tombstones. Jesus calls us to not give up hope. He is a person who went about communicating a hopeful message - saying to blind people, "You can see." Saying to deaf people, "You can hear." Saying to lame people, "You can walk." Saying to outcast people, "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." There was a healing always in the presence of Jesus, He could point us through the darkness to the light. That's what Biblical faith does, it says that the crooked can be made straight and the rough places can be made plain, and the glory of the Lord can be revealed, and mountains can be brought low, and valleys can be exalted. The New Testament teaches us that light can shine in the darkness and not be overcome by it.

You and I are called to live out our days with a believable hope, not a cock-eyed hope that "every day in every way things are going to get better and better," but somehow with the belief that, with God's help, our lives can be changed from something negative to something positive. With God's help, doing the best we can, we can have a positive impact for good on life, in our communities, in our circle of friends, wherever we find ourselves. People are divided according to how their hearts tilt. Some people's hearts tilt toward despair, others tilt toward hope. How does your heart tilt? It seems to me that it should tilt toward hope. So we speak of Hope as another Biblical Touchstone of public service, and of life for you and for me.

Finally, let me just say that I think that Grace is also very important. There's Gratitude, Love, Conscience, Humor, and Hope, but maybe above all, there's Grace. Because you and I are not perfect, we're frail, fragile, finite, feeble children of God who are called to "do our best and leave the rest." We are also called to recognize that we are not perfect and we cannot puff ourselves up like "Little Jack Horner" and say, "Look what a good boy am I." It doesn't work that way when you recognize that kneeling before the Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, you have a lot to confess by way of short comings. "The good that you would you do not, and the evil that you ought not - that you have sometimes done - you do." Our salvation does not lie in the good that we can do, or our works, it lies in our faith - or better yet, the apprehension of God's grace which comes into our life, which we receive through faith.

There's a parable in the New Testament about some workers who went out and worked in a vineyard. Some worked one hour, some worked three, some worked five, some worked a whole day. Paradoxically, when they all came in, the master of the vineyard paid them all the same. At first blush, that offends our sense of pro- priety and of what's right, but really that's not the case at all. That parable was pointing us to the fact that the final determinate of our salvation is God's mercy and not our merit - all were paid equally, all are loved equally - you and I. The ground before the cross is very level.

The Good News is that underneath are the Everlasting Arms. The Good News is that, regardless of dis- appointment, or grief, or problems, or frustrations, or whether you come in first in an election or second, or whether you win, or whether you lose, or whether you make mistakes, or whether you fail in something, or whether you're defeated in something, or whether there's a deficit that you're running, or whether you get bad publicity, the Good News is that God loves you, and God forgives you, and God accepts you, and God lifts you up to Him.

Dr. James Stewart, in his great book A Faith to Proclaim, tells a story about a boy who ran away from home to be a soldier during World War I. He went from bad to worse and fathomed most kinds of sin until, in his regiment, he was deemed to be utterly incor- rigible. When one of the officers as a last, daring experiment, made the reprobate his servant, an almost magic transformation began. In the end, he threw his life away most gallantly for the man whose trust had changed him. As the darkness came down after the enemy attack, and his life was ebbing out, there came to him, by some strange whim of memory, the words of a prayer he had learned years before at his mother's knee and had quite forgotten through all the reckless years of sin. Now, gasping for breath, he began repeating them. The stretcher bearer heard them - as of a tired child at the end of day - "The day is done. Oh, God the Son, look down upon Thy little one. Oh, Light of Light, keep me this night and shed around Thy Presence bright." And on the scarred face of the man whom no one loved there was a light like the radiance of Heaven and the words were trailing off into silence, but the last words came, "I need not fear if Thou art near, Thou art my Saviour, kind and dear. So happily and peacefully I lay me down to rest in Thee." Can you doubt that our Lord was there on the other side to meet him when he crossed the river? Yes, at the end of the day we speak of Grace.

It's the same with us as it was with that young lad. At the end of the day when the sun sets and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over and our work is done and the evening finally comes, nothing remains for us to do but throw ourselves on the mercy of almighty God, confess our sins and shortcomings, ask for forgiveness, and rest ourselves in the comforting assurance that the dear Heavenly Father loves us with an everlasting love that never lets us go. That is all we know and all we need to know.

Let us pray. "Oh Thou Eternal God in whom we live and move and have our being, as we seek to live out our days under Thy guidance, help us to be Grateful. Help us to be Loving. Help us to be persons of courageous convictions and to keep the faith. Help us to have a sense of Humor. Help us to keep Hope alive on the hearth of our hearts, and help us to understand that we are saved by your Grace which we receive through faith. And having helped us to all this, might it be possible that at the end of the day we could hear you saying to each of us, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant in whom I am well pleased."

Amen.

Interview with William Hudnut
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Bill, in your autobiography, Minister Mayor, you talk about the three roles of an effective mayor - Cheerleader, Consensus-builder, and Facilitator. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean?

William Hudnut: Well, the role of the mayor is multi-faceted. "Love is a many splendored thing" and so is being the mayor of a large city. There are a lot of different roles that you play. Sometimes I use the metaphor of an orchestra leader, sometimes I use a basketball coach - at least that seems to help people in Indiana. But a mayor is a cheerleader in the sense that the Mayor helps to identify positive things in the community, is an ambassador in the community - trying to promote a good image for the community - is out there in front just like a cheerleader. The Mayor is a consensus-builder who serves - if I may use a theological term - as an agent of reconciliation, trying to overcome the inevitable polarities that plague urban life and bring people together in the spirit of the Good Book that says, "Come, let us reason together." The Mayor also, it seems to me, in various different ways, tries to live out his days in such a way that he can point people toward the future and give them something positive to hang on to. As Facilitator, you try to make things happen. I spend all my time trying to make things happen - hopefully they are positive. And I try to prevent bad things from happening by being pro-active. A mayor plays many different roles.

Hardin: Unfortunately, racial issues play a very big role in Chicago politics today. As followers of Jesus, we know that this is wrong. You've faced some of these issues in your tenure as Mayor of Indian- apolis. How do you deal with this?

Hudnut: Well, I think it's obvious that from a Christian point of view, as Billy Graham has said, "You are supposed to be color-blind." In Christ there is no east or west, no north or south, no black or white. It's important to try to be judiciously fair in your treatment of everyone when you're a public servant. I think, secondly, you have to recognize that there is a special agenda that characterizes the minority community that they are particularly interested in - whether it's jobs or housing or better education or better transportation. You have to give your attention to some of these issues and not ignore them. The third thing, as an agent of reconciliation you have to work diligently at bringing people together. I spend a lot of time trying to keep the community from falling apart, keeping the police department and the minority community from squaring off against each other. You've just got to be sensitive to it and work at it full-time. You also, in my opinion, have to be strong for equal opportunity and affirmative action. You've got to support it loud and clear because equal opportunity doesn't bubble up from the bottom - it has to come from the top down. The Mayor is the C.E.O. and the Mayor of a large city has to take a strong stand on things like affirmative action and equal opportunity. In a society where the average black family makes about half of what the average white family makes, where the average female gets about 59 cents for every dollar that the average male makes for comparable work, there's something wrong - and it won't be rectified without taking pro-active action.

Hardin: You're serving an unprecedented fourth term as the Mayor of Indianapolis. How have your views of effective city government changed during this lengthy period?

Hudnut: I'm grateful for the opportunity of serving three terms and I'm now in my fourth and I don't think that they've changed all that much. Perhaps I've become more capable, hopefully, as time has gone on. It seems to me that what you have to do is to recognize that the Mayor plays these different roles that we've talked about, that the Mayor is an orchestra leader in the community - trying to bring harmony out of the potential dissonance and urban cacophony that characterizes the modern scene today. The Mayor is also the manager of a very large enterprise. The manager of a multi-million dollar business, if you want to put it that way. The Mayor in this day and age has to be a deal-maker, and he has to deliver basic city services, and he or she has to also do these things like cheerleading and reconciling that are so important. All of this is part of the challenge and the responsibility and the opportunity of being the Mayor of a large city.