Somehow it seems fitting to me that in this Holy Week, when we ritually remember what is at the center of the Christian faith, we as a nation hear a speech from a presidential candidate that also reminds us of our essential humanity.  It gives me hope.

If you didn't hear Barack Obama's speech, or haven't read its text, I encourage you to do it.  It is posted on video and in manuscript at http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords  It is, I think, one of the finest and most honest political speeches I have ever heard.

It is true that I am an Obama supporter.  I don't ask or encourage the congregation I lead to vote the same way I do.  But there is an overlap between my political views and my faith, and this year I feel as though there is a candidate who shares the values I see in the Christian tradition I follow:  compassion, justice and religion in its root sense, which comes from the Latin word religio:  to bind things together. 

A quick excerpt from Obama's speech, this part about his experience in his own church in Chicago:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

First United Methodist Church of Sacrmento will never have quite the same style as a black church on the south side of Chicago, but what I hope for, in our worship and in our work together, is maybe just a quieter version of what Obama is talking about here--that sense that the church is the vessel that carries into the future, into a community and world that look different than they ever have before, the stories that bind us together and give us courage and strength and spirit for our own transformation and the transformation of the world.