Remember the 10th commandment?

"Thou shalt not covet"?

This past week, many preachers violated that commandment.

They were coveting the sermon Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivered at the National Cathedral during a service the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration, in which she pleaded with Trump to show mercy to the most vulnerable among us.

(Speaking Jewish right now: If I had been blessed with the opportunity to address the president, I would not have used the word "mercy." I would have asked him to show compassion and to do justice. But that's me).

Many of my colleagues and friends have been debating: Was the bishop appropriate? Was her sermon in good taste? Did she publicly shame and humiliate the president?

I have been struggling with all that as well, and now I think she was totally spot on. And not only because I agreed with her.

Sure, she made President Trump a little uncomfortable. 

Deal with it, Mr. President. That's often what sermons are about. As my colleague and friend Rabbi Rick Jacobs notes: "The job of a religious leader is not to tell those in the pews — whether the usual parishioners or their country’s leaders — what they want to hear. Rather, the job requires clergy to speak the truth of their tradition as they understand it."

Or, put differently, sometimes it is the goal of a sermon to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To "shake and stir" them.

You want to feel all good and comfortable? Go to a spa.

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