Freakout Update

We spent a ton of time yesterday speculating on the service at St. John's Episcopal Church, where the Obamas worshiped on Easter Sunday.  We should have saved ourselves the effort, and waited for Brian Schoeneman.

Schoeneman is a long-time Republican lawyer and activist; he is also a member of St. John's.  Writing at Bearing Drift, "Virginia's Conservative Voice," he describes the service and the sermon

Luis was preaching on our Gospel lesson for the day, which came from John 20: 11-18, where Mary Magdalene sees Christ for the first time since he rose from the dead.  She refers to him as “rabbouni” (teacher) and he tells her she must not cling to him.  Luis explained that passage by talking about the dangers of nostalgia, and how Christ was explaining to Mary that she must not live in the past because we cannot go back to the past, no matter how much we may want to.  Christ knew that because he came, died for our sins and was resurrected, nothing would ever be the same again.  Mary and the disciples needed to understand that, and she did – when she tells the disciples of what she saw, she tells them “I saw the Lord” not “I saw our rabbi.”  His sermon was a message of hope, not hate, that he was delivering to our congregation.

He also takes to task the righttist pundits:

Sunday night, I perused the blogs after an excellent Easter dinner and saw that my pastor – my friend – was being accused of being the next Jeremiah Wright.  They called him a “dunce,” an “oaf,” and a “clown,” even going so far as to say that he’s a “false prophet,” or a “fake Christian” pastor, and that he was preaching “Satan’s deception.”

This isn’t a joke.  This is just the tip of the iceberg of the vile hate and disgusting nonsense that came out of people on Easter because of what they thought my pastor said.  Can you imagine someone saying that about your pastor?

Case closed, Breitbart.