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Grace Cathedral

Article | February 2, 2025

Preaching Against Hitler: God Speaks to Us in Sermons

Blog|The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young

“O God we long for your truth. Let your spirit help us to understand what we believe.”1

View the sermon on YouTube.

What exactly is a sermon? What are we doing together and what do we hope happens?

1. This might seem like an unimportant question to ask. In the last two weeks 1500 January 6 rioters were pardoned or had their sentences commuted and many wonder if right-wing militias now regard themselves as immune to prosecution. $3 trillion dollars in federal grants were frozen and then unfrozen. A letter went out to 2 million federal employees asking them to resign.2 Hundreds of other government employees including civil servants at the highest level of our justice system have been fired. 25% tariffs are being imposed on our closest neighbors and trading partners.

We see preparations for mass deportations. We hear ominously repeated phrases like, “defending women from gender ideology extremism,” and, “restoring biological truth to the federal government.”3 The trans people in our congregation, among our clergy, and across the land are being singled out, when they are just the sort of humans Jesus loved the most and sought to defend.

In our greater congregation perhaps a few of us might feel thrilled that someone is finally talking decisive action. Others worry about how tariffs will affect our economy. But we also have many faithful government employees who regard their work as a ministry, a kind of calling from God. Others of us fear being deported, or that the government will dismantle and persecute our LGBTQ families. On the surface these may seem like far more important concerns than what I will raise here.

In these days everything seems personal, cruel, punitive and vindictive, even when we are talking about faith. In her sermon about unity at the Interfaith prayer service the day after the inauguration, Bishop Mariann Budde addressed the president directly. She said that LGBTQ children and immigrants are afraid. She pointed out that most immigrants make important contributions to society and are not criminals. Above all she asked the president to have mercy.4

Many people regarded Bishop Budde’s sermon as simply what they are accustomed to hearing every Sunday morning. After all Jesus’ teaching is really simple, “Love God and love your neighbor.” But to the president, who demanded an apology, and his most zealous supporters the bishop crossed a line. One congressman (Josh Brecheen, OK) introduced a resolution against the sermon calling it, “a display of political activism and condemning its distorted message.”5 Another congressman (Mike Collins, GA) posted a video clip of the sermon and said that Bishop Budde, “should be added to the deportation list.”6 A Southern Baptist minister called National Cathedral, “the apotheosis of our civilizational decline” and urged the president to seize it from the Episcopal Church and give it to a more conservative denomination (such as the Southern Baptists).7 During a meeting this week one of our trustees asked if Budde’s sermon might affect the tax exempt status of the Episcopal Church. Somone else wondered if the president might use the IRS to retaliate against Bishop Budde.

This all may be nothing, just an effort to get attention, but I want to take these considerations seriously. We come from different branches of Jesus’ family so we may have a naturally hard time understanding each other. Detractors said that Bishop Budde’s sermon was not biblical, but it focuses on mercy. A form of that word occurs over 270 times in the (NRSV) Bible.

2. What is a sermon? Is it merely a source of comfort, an assurance that, we as a people, are fine just the way we are? Does a sermon simply “affirm our dependence upon God” and “pray for the president” as the congressional resolution says the bishop’s sermon should have done?8

In short, no, this is not what the prophets teach us. From Amos to Zechariah, the Old Testament prophets do not speak like this (Amos writes, “Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people” (Amos 3) and Zechariah says that God, “will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle,” (Zech. 14)). The prophets warn that mistreating widows, the poor and immigrants draws us away from God.

Today we have the perfect occasion for considering what a sermon is as we celebrate The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, also called Candlemas. It all begins with a story. Imagine Mary and Joseph starting their lives together, exhausted because their baby, Jesus, like any other newborn requires constant attention. They worry about his safety, about whether they are caring for him as they should. He interrupts their dreams and disrupts their days.9

Imagine the two of them sitting across the kitchen table. Joseph says something like, “we kept the law by circumcising him. Do we really have to take our one month old baby ninety miles so that we can make a sacrifice in the Temple?” I can imagine Mary replying, “Think of all that God has given us. Let’s keep our promise to God.”

Try to picture the sense of awe they feel as they arrive, seeking God’s blessing in a temple as magnificent as this cathedral. Perhaps they worry how people will treat them there… The Temple means something so different to the prophets Simeon and Anna. It is their home. They worship and fast there night and day. Some of us gathered here today are like this. Simeon and Anna have seen generations of children presented in the Temple. Famous for their wisdom and piety they are righteous and devout. The power of God “rests upon them.”

The Holy Spirit promised Simeon that he would not die until, “he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” “Guided by the Spirit…” he takes the infant Jesus in his arms and praises God in some of the most often repeated words in history. “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see. A light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”10 It seems almost as if Simeon is speaking directly to us when he says, “This child is destined… to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed… and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk. 2).

3. These two thousand year old words could be the most important sermon in my life: The expression of absolute joy as Simeon holds the baby, the acknowledgement of the pain that is an inescapable part of the human condition and the love of God through Jesus, a love that cares too much about us to leave us to our own devices.

I did so much research this week, poring through volumes on preaching that I do not have time to discuss with you. Instead I’m going to share one experience and one idea from the most important theologian of the twentieth century Karl Barth (1886-1968).11

Originally born in Switzerland Karl Barth was already a prominent theology professor in Germany when Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) came to power. Barth began to speak out publicly. As author of the Barman Declaration, he argued against what he called the “false doctrine” that the church, “could or should,” become, “an organ of the state” He said fascism is a religion and that it, “exalted sheer power.” He said, “Anyone who is in principle hostile to the Jews must also be seen as in principle an enemy of Jesus Christ. Antisemitism is a sin against the Holy Spirit.”12 Barth said, “I thought it was right to make it clear with whom I would like to be imprisoned and hanged.”13

Karl Barth was so dedicated to the struggle that he encouraged his friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer to come back to Germany. Bonhoeffer was later hanged shortly before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies. For the rest of his life Barth had regrets about this.

Barth himself was put to trial and sat across from the three judges who convicted him. They banned him from ever again speaking in public. He violated this order and on March 26, 1935 preached at the Second Free Reformed Synod in Siegen, Germany. I have always wondered what he said there.

Let me share what Barth believed about preaching. First, he writes about “the impossibility… of [speaking] about God.” He said preaching is not merely reading or paraphrasing scripture. Instead preaching is how God actually becomes known in our own time and circumstances. It happens in what he calls a, ”personal encounter,” “the concrete encounter of God and man today.” Barth says preaching has to be unconditionally free; it “is the event by which the church becomes the church.” And even more radical, preaching, “is speech in and by which God himself speaks.”14

What is a sermon? It is not an unimportant question. In every moment we all move closer to or further away from God. The inner thoughts of many are being revealed. The stakes are so high. But in Karl Barth’s case we are hearing from a man who, like Bishop Budde, knew what it felt like to preach a sermon that could have gotten him killed. Is what he says true? I believe it is.

Last week many of us listened to Bishop Rios preach from this pulpit. You could have heard a pin drop. All of us felt it together, a flood of God’s love filling us with joy, reminding us that no matter how bad the world gets, we are gathered by the Holy Spirit and Jesus is right here among us.

Earlier I mentioned that Simeon’s words may be for me the most important sermon of all time. Every night as I’m drifting off to sleep I repeat that prayer. They are the last words I have heard every night of my adult life. “O Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised…” And the cares of the world dissipate and I rest in the love of the one who is a light to enlighten the nations.


1 St. Anslem of Canterbury (1033-1109) addresses God saying, “I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but believe in order to understand.”

2 The letters describing our civil servants’ work as “lower productivity jobs in the public sector.” Kate Kelly, Michael C. Bender and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Official Email Urges Federal Workers to Find ‘Higher Productivity’ Jobs,” The New York Times, 31 January 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/federal-workers-opm.html

3 Erica L. Green, “Federal Agencies Ordered to End Initiatives that Support ‘Gender Ideology,’” The New York Times, 29 January 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/politics/federal-agencies-ordered-to-end-initiatives-that-support-gender-ideology.html

4 https://sfbaytimes.com/full-transcript-of-the-2025-inauguration-prayer-service-address-by-the-rt-reverend-mariann-edgar-budde-the-bishop-of-washington/

5 The resolution in part says, “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the sermon given by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde at the National Prayer Service on January 21st, 2025, at the National Cathedral was a display of political activism and condemning its distorted message. Whereas the National Prayer Service is a longstanding tradition in which the United States publicly affirms dependence upon God and prays for the success of our President and Vice President…” https://x.com/RepBrecheen/status/1882482367199150564/photo/1

6 https://x.com/RepMikeCollins/status/1881765967338131546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

7 Do you think it is impossible to confiscate one of the nation’s great cathedrals? Many thought it would be impossible to freeze $3 trillion dollars in federal grants. The author calls Bishop Budde, “a priestess in the neo-pagan cult of wokeism.” He writes, “But now, this magnificent building with its neo-gothic design which once stood as a paragon of American excellence, has become the apotheosis of our civilizational decline and the latest example of how wokeness ruins everything it touches—including Christianity. Yesterday, decent Americans across the country were shocked when a video of Bishop Mariann Budde lecturing Trump, Vance, and their families about “showing mercy” to the LGBT community and illegal immigrants went viral.” Chase Davis, “Woke “Christianity” Causes National Embarrassment at the National Cathedral,” The Center for Baptist Leadership, 22 January 2025. https://centerforbaptistleadership.org/woke-christianity-causes-national-embarrassment-at-the-national-cathedral/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

8 See footnote 3.

9 Presentation (2-2-03) B.

10 Translation from “Evening Prayer II,” in The Book of Common Prayer, 120.

11 Barth’s life decisively changed when many of his theology teachers wrote an open letter supporting German aggression in WW I. It led him to deeply question the theologians of the nineteenth century and their ideas.

12 “[T]he Jewish question is virtually the question for statements of Christian belief.” Mark Galli, Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).

13 Mark Galli, Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017) 72-96.

14 “In relation to God man has constantly to let something be said to him, has constantly to listen to something.” Karl Barth Church Dogmatics Volume I.1 The Doctrine of the Word of God Tr. G.W. Bromiley (New York: T&T Clark, 1936) 52-73.

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