Calling for a ‘Be-Attitude Adjustment’

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” ~ Matthew 5:7

Most Americans are likely unaware that our 47th President has a special National Faith Advisory Board that coaches him on spiritual/religious matters. Had he been in charge of planning the interfaith inauguration prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral which was held on Tuesday, he would surely have hand picked one of this loyal preachers to regale the MAGA faithful with the sermon of the day.

The service, however, had already been planned long in advance of election day, way before anyone knew who would be the next POTUS. Therefore, the lot fell to the Episcopal bishop of Washington D.C., the Right Rev. Mariann Budde to deliver the sermon. The service also featured representatives of the Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and other faiths.

Based on the President’s and his devotees’ reaction to the service in general and Bishop Budde’s sermon in particular, it is a sure bet that she will not be receiving an invitation to join that Advisory Board of evangelical elites. Asked afterwards by reporters for his reaction to the service and sermon, the President quipped, “Not too exciting, was it? They could do much better.”

A less tame and more typical response appeared on the President’s social media platform, Truth Social, shortly after midnight. There the Bishop was labeled as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” Stating that the service was “very boring” and the sermon “inappropriate,” he called upon both the Bishop and church to issue a public apology. “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” he asserted.

Other Trump vassals jumped on Elon Musk’s social media platform (X) to add their two bits:
“This is not a church and she is not a pastor.” (Conservative musician and activist Sean Feucht)
“The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.” (Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia)
Newsmax host Todd Starnes stated that the cathedral had become “a sanctuary of Satan.”

So, what was it that the Bishop said that rubbed the President, MAGA faithful and Christian Nationalist zealots the wrong way? What radical, left wing, hard line, woke, nasty and spiteful rhetoric did she assail the President with? It turns out that her great transgression was first to preach on the theme of Unity built around these three foundations:
+ Dignity – Affirm the birthright of all people as children of our one God, honoring the inherent dignity of every human being.
+ Honesty – If we’re not willing to be honest, there is no use in praying for unity, because our actions work against the prayers themselves.
+ Humility – We are most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded without a doubt that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong. Because then we are just a few steps from labeling ourselves as the ‘good people’ and others as the ‘bad people.’

Her second and perhaps most egregious sin was in concluding the sermon by looking straight at the man who in his inauguration address claimed that he had been “saved by God to make America great again,” and reverently ask this ‘man of God’ to show mercy. “In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she pleaded. She then referenced LGBTQ people and migrants, “the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.” They may be undocumented, she stated, but “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

The scripture reading for the day, which was the basis of the sermon, came from Matthew’s gospel account of Jesus’ parable of the wise man who built his house upon rock, and the foolish man who built his upon sand. But given the conclusion of the sermon, the reading could also have appropriately been the verse that sits atop this post, the fifth of the eight Beatitudes that Jesus spoke to his disciples as a Preamble to his ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ For what Bishop Budde was asking for from the President was what I call a Be-attitude adjustment.

The Beatitudes are nothing less than a radical statement of Jesus’ intent to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. This kingdom will bring harmony and justice to all creation and true peace and freedom for all who dare to follow him as his disciples. In the Beatitudes Jesus gives instruction about the nature of kingdom life to his disciples. If, as the President claims and his disciples believe, that God has anointed him to make America great again, then the blueprint for such divinely ordained greatness will be found in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).

Without naming it, it is the fifth Beatitude that the Bishop sought to direct the President’s attention to: Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Showing mercy toward others is an attitude of the heart. It opens a person to receive the offer of mercy that Jesus has proclaimed in his gospel of the kingdom. God’s good requirement has always been mercy. Recall the classic statements of Micah that appear over and over again in these posts: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).

As daily news of the show-no-mercy revenge and retribution agenda of the Oval Office fills the media, I invite you to search on You Tube for the Washington National Cathedral Prayer Service and ideally watch the whole service, or at least scrub to the sermon toward the end of the service. I trust that contrary to the critiques of the Bishop’s detractors, those who have the ears to hear will find it to be an edifying experience and a model of how to speak truth to power in the spirit of unity and the bond of peace.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Amen