Jesus Christ died for sinners, not well regarded religious leaders, according to United Methodist Bishop William Willimon. Speaking April 3 as a guest preacher at the Washington National Cathedral, the North Alabama bishop turned a conventional sermon message on its head and likened a conservative commentator to a modern-day prostitute or tax collector.
“Despite all the ugly unseemly things Glenn Beck has said about you, as a church, I’m glad to be here,” Willimon said to applause from the cathedral congregation. “Hey, it’s America, Glenn Beck, and I think Episcopalians should be as free to be as liberal and progressive and social activist as they please. To heck with Glenn Beck.”
“I can’t stand Glen Beck,” Willimon said from the cathedral’s ornate Canterbury pulpit, pronouncing the conservative talk radio host “Rupert Murdoch’s talking dummy.”
Noting that Beck began his work in radio as a disc jockey, the United Methodist bishop claimed that he should have stayed one. Ticking through a list of Beck’s sins and failures related to his past drug and alcohol addiction, Willimon claimed the Fox News host “laces his televised boo hoo hooying with prayer” and has “a conspiracy theory for everything.”
“This mish mash of hate and foolishness Beck markets to a $23 million empire,” Willimon said. “When more than 200 advertisers refused his show Beck appropriately was picked up by a diarrhea medication.”
Willimon recalled a show by Beck in March of 2009 in which he asked his audience to leave their church if the term “social justice” was used.
“Which Beck says you’re too stupid and blind to see as code for communism and Nazism,” Willimon reported. “Beck’s excuse is, he suffers from ADHD [Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder]. Hey Glenn Beck, I suffer from ADHD, and you don’t hear me standing up in public and spewing out sarcastic venom, do you?” the United Methodist leader shouted to laughter from the congregation.
Willimon said his point was that “Jesus Christ loves Glenn Beck to death.” Noting that the first Bible verse he ever memorized was John 3:16, the bishop paraphrased: “God so loved us nice social activists in my church, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever… “
“No, the Bible says, ‘God so loved the world.’” Willimon said. “Jesus Christ came not just for me and my buddies in the faith. He came to seek and to save, miraculously to heal, the sick.”
Christ died for sinners, and people hated him for it, according to Willimon.
“I’m very fond of Jesus, until I think; do you think that Jesus actually healed Glenn Beck in a more gracious and spectacular way than Jesus has ever condescended to heal me?” Willimon asked, seemingly referring to Beck’s recovery from alcoholism. “Are you prepared to worship a God like that?”
The former chaplain of the Duke University Chapel offered his first church as an example, which he came to as a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School.
“I was condemned by some ignorant bishop to the wilds of Georgia,” Willimon said. “And I’m down there with people that I never knew existed.”
Describing the local population as a “bunch of losers” the bishop described fist fights and fornication, racism and “myopic stupidity.”
“It was a horrendous introduction to the Christian ministry,” Willimon summarized. The recent graduate met with a favorite professor at Emory, whom he poured his heart out to.
“He had appropriate sympathy for my plight,” Willimon said. “It was just outrageous that someone of my training and my talent should be stuck out there with a bunch of redneck losers like them.”
“And then he said, you know, the worst thing of all, Jesus said those whores and tax collectors get to go into the Kingdom of God before us good people, Matthew 21:31.”
Willimon recounted that theologian Karl Barth was once asked after a lecture, “Dr. Barth, do you think that when we die and go to heaven, we’ll get to see our loved ones?” And Barth responded “I really do.”
“And then with a twinkle in his eye, he said, ‘and if I know anything about Jesus, we’ll also probably get to see everybody we hate.’”
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