Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent

I've been following with some interest the furor surrounding a few sermons given by The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ (and church community of Barak Obama). In a mere two days, Mr. Obama's responses have progressed from distancing himself from the Rev'd. Mr. Wright's comments on issues of race in America and the September 11 terrorist attacks to "denouncing" those statements. This morning, I read that the Obama campaign has announced Mr. Wright's departure from the campaign's "spiritual advisory committee" so as not to be a detriment to the campaign itself.

I've read excerpts from several sermons in question and watched an ABC News report that played the videos of those same segments. The pastor's comments did indeed contain some highly charged rhetoric; words that some would hear as pastorally insensitive, inflammatory or even, "anti-American". And yet, I wonder how it is that Mr. Wright's sermons are heard as politically reckless and dangerous and the words of Jesus from the Gospels are not?

If Jesus' message of liberation was merely a "spiritual" one, he could have been easily written off by the religious/political leaders of his time -- just another milquetoast do-gooder with his head in the metaphysical clouds. Instead he was crucified. His words were too dangerous for public consumption. He had to be silenced. To be sure, Holy Week is about more than first century politics...but the salvific significance of Jesus' death has to take into account the political context of the time.

Whether or not I personally agree with the content of these sermons preached by Mr. Wright is immaterial. This pastor wasn't running for public office, rather he was engaging in a particular sort of conversation with and for the congregation he served at the time. This entire episode challenges me as a preacher. Is the purpose of the pastoral pulpit simply to give an interesting history lecture? To provide a motivational talk? To spout pious platitudes that are irrelevant (or incoherent) to most people in the pews, but are at least benign and pose no challenge to the systems of power that are unjust or oppressive? To practice a practical Gnosticism in which peoples' "spiritual" concerns are abstracted from the rest of their lives? To buttress a tame and manageable civil religion of good works?

I remember a classmate of mine in seminary joking that the best sermons clothed perfectly forgettable content within a dramatic and entertaining delivery. Perhaps my friend's joke was closer to the truth than either of us would care to admit.