“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” said Jesus of Nazareth in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:7. Apparently, the Predator in Chief, our nation’s first felonious president, did not get that memo. Nor did his followers, including a so-called pastor named Lorenzo Sewell, who claimed that the Right Reverend Bishop Mariann Budde was a heretic who should not be allowed to preach the gospel in his response to her sermon at the National Cathedral earlier this week. In typical Trump fashion, he claimed that the service was not very exciting — my dude, it’s a sermon, not “reality” TV. He later went on a vitriolic late night rant about the Bishop on his Truth Social platform. It should be clear now for all to see that MAGA world knows nothing about Jesus despite their holier than thou claims and theocratic ambitions.

I watched the entire sermon yesterday. There was nothing but Christlike love preached by Bishop Budde to the assembled congregation that day. She used her prophetic voice to tell the President and his supporters to follow the teachings of Jesus and the Bible by seeing the inherent worth and dignity of all people, to be honest in both public and private discourse, and to be humble because we are all imperfect human beings. She then asked without equivocation for Trump to be merciful to those who are justifiably afraid because of the hateful, often violent rhetoric of Trump and his supporters towards immigrants and LGBTQIA people who are targets of the Christofascists and Trump himself. For preaching the actual Gospel, the Right Reverend Bishop is now receiving death threats.

Trump supporting Christians have been claiming that she did not preach the gospel, but rather made a political speech targeting Trump. This is absolute nonsense so let me dispute it briefly here. To see the inherent dignity and worth of all people is to enact the golden rule – Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31. To be honest in all our communications is to follow Colossians 3:9-10 which states, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator,” and Ephesians 4:25 where the writer tells his readers, “So then, putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are members of one another,” as a new rule for life in Christ. From the Hebrew Bible, see what Proverbs 11:3; 12:22; 19:1 say about honesty.

Humility too is something the Bible has much to say about. Bishop Budde reminded us that we are all fallible, prone to mistakes, and even sin. That sounds a lot like Paul in Romans 3 — no one is righteous and all have sinned and fallen short of the God’s glory. Colossians 3:12 says Christians must clothe themselves in humility, along with compassionate hearts, kindness, and meekness. Proverbs 11:2 states that with humility comes wisdom, while the prophet Micah said, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” These are only a few of the many passages of the Bible that directly call humans to be humble. Alas, Trump appears to be pathologically incapable of humility due to his malignant narcissism and delusions of grandeur.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Jesus calls his followers to be merciful. That is straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak. Judging from the reactions of MAGA Christians and pundits like Laura Ingraham on Trump News Network, aka Fox News, the real problems they have are with Jesus, Paul, the prophet Micah, the writers of Proverbs, and whoever wrote Ephesians and Colossians (most scholars agree that it was not Paul.) Luke 6:43-45 is apt here because of the vitriol spewed by Trump and his supporters. “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” We’ve heard Trump and his supporters loud and clear for over eight years now and their fruit is putrid, their treasure evil.

I’ll end by admitting that I often have trouble seeing the humanity of Trump and his supporters. I am blinded by their fascism, lies and obfuscations, and hatred of the marginalized. I struggle to love my enemies as Jesus also commanded and exemplified. Bishop Budde’s sermon spoke to me as well. May her words lead to repentance for all who need it.