Quiet, Unyielding Clarity

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of Washington DC was on the front page of American newspapers yesterday. It’s very rare for mainline pastors to find ourselves anywhere near the news.

Why was she in the news? For a sermon she preached, inviting listeners to practice mercy. Mercy is showing kindness, especially to someone who is suffering, or to someone over whom you have power.

Mercy is hardly controversial, biblically speaking. Mercy, I would argue, is the defining characteristic of God, who is “merciful and just, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” God’s people are required to be merciful, as God is. It’s not optional. The prophet Micah says, “what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God?” Jesus was also passionate about mercy. He famously told a story about a Samaritan who stopped and helped a man who was injured and dying; the punchline of the story is, “who is a neighbor? One who shows mercy.”

So the bishop preached about showing mercy, specifically to immigrants who live and work in our neighborhoods and to neighbors who identify as gender nonbinary.

Why was a sermon about mercy news? The President of the United States was in the front pew. And later that night, the President expressed personal outrage at the sermon.

The President is morally deformed. When a human being can't receive an invitation to consider mercy, that person's moral compass is broken. They are lost in a self-referencing moral darkness. That person cannot feel, cannot connect to the vibrating moral chords that are the very way God the Creator binds all of us together. Sympathy, empathy, compassion, justice, and mercy are the way loving relationships function. The President is morally broken. He cannot be trusted to hold power responsibly. He needs our compassion. He needs therapy. He needs a pastor. He needs help. 

Beth and the Bishop

I got to spend a week with Bishop Budde a few summers ago in a poetry and spirituality retreat. She's one of the coolest, most competent religious leaders I've ever met. Did you notice that she didn't need to shout or engage in histrionics to unmask the most powerful man in the world as a moral child? She simply shared the Good News of God's mercy with quiet, unyielding clarity.