An Easter Message for Obama's Ears

President Obama and his family walked across Lafayette Square to attend Easter Sunday service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.




The presider was the Reverend Luis Leon, who also gave the closing benediction at President Obama’s second inauguration. 

Mr. Obama & Rev. Luis Leon at DC's's St. John's Episcopal Church 

Unlike at the ceremony on the Mall, where Leon’s stated goal was to bring people together, Leon chose to preach politically partisan on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.  Leon preached from the pulpit:

The captains of the religious right are always calling us back, back back. For blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants  to be on their side of the border...What you and I understand is that when Jesus says you can’t hang onto me, he says you know it’s not about the past, it’s not about the before, it’s not about the way things were but about the way things can be in the now.

Really? Please cite some contemporary examples of captains of the religious right calling blacks to be at the back of the bus.  Leon did not do so during his Easter sermon.

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The Easter message can be understood with its  parallel to the Jewish Passover. The children of Israel were freed from their slavery in Egypt by Yahweh’s power and they were put on the path to the Promised Land.  Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross conquered the ultimate wages of spiritual slavery to sin–death.  

It might be worth considering if Rev. Leon’s sermon  was truly uplifting or perpetuating continued political bonds dressed up in Easter finery or spurious scriptural sanction.  The answer may be found in Rev. C.L. Bryant's documentary Runaway Slave.   Alas, the message might not be a revelation as much as a lamentation.

SEE MORE at DCBarroco.com 

Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi Excerpt

Pope Francis gave his first Easter Blessing to the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square for the Urbi et Orbi.  His remarks resounded in the message of the Resurrection:

We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom. The love God can do this!

This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell - to the abyss of separation from God - this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.

This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and we are his glory: the living man (cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).

Dear brothers and sisters, Christ died and rose once for all, and for everyone, but the power of the Resurrection, this passover from slavery to evil to the freedom of goodness, must be accomplished in every age, in our concrete existence, in our everyday lives. How many deserts, even today, do human beings need to cross! Above all, the desert within, when we have no love for God or neighbor, when we fail to realize that we are guardians of all that the Creator has given us and continues to give us. God’s mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can restore life to dry bones (cf. Ez 37:1-14).

Pope Francis' message of humility and the love of God transforming our lives is an interesting contrast to the Easter message by Rev. Luis Leon that President Obama heard.   Unlike the sermon at St. John's Episcopal, Pope Francis's fuller remarks  failed to include smack talk about sports however considering the trouncing the that Jumpin' Jesuits of Marquette experienced in the March Madness Elite Eight, perhaps it was better to pray for peace.

h/t: Whispers in the Loggia