By Bob Allen
President Obama paid tribute to an African-American Baptist pastor and civil-rights leader who died Easter Sunday at age 96 in remarks at the White House Easter prayer breakfast April 7.
“This morning, we also remember a man of God who we lost this weekend, a man known and loved by many of you — the dean of American preaching, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor,” Obama said. “
“Anybody who had the privilege of hearing him speak knows what power he had. He was a civil rights hero. He was a friend of Dr. King, who used his spellbinding sermons to spread the gospel and open people’s hearts and minds. He taught and mentored countless young ministers. So as we mourn his absence today, we also take solace knowing that he leaves a living legacy and that he is in a better place.”
“I am no preacher,” Obama said. “I can’t tell anything to this crowd about Easter that you don’t already know. I can offer just a couple of reflections very quickly before we begin the program.”
Obama said “Easter puts our earthly concerns into perspective.”
“With humility and with awe, we give thanks to the extraordinary sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Savior,” he said. “We reflect on the brutal pain that he suffered, the scorn that he absorbed, the sins that he bore, this extraordinary gift of salvation that he gave to us. And we try, as best we can, to comprehend the darkness that he endured so that we might receive God’s light.
“And yet, even as we grapple with the sheer enormity of Jesus’s sacrifice, on Easter we can’t lose sight of the fact that the story didn’t end on Friday. The story keeps on going. On Sunday comes the glorious Resurrection of our Savior.”
After his opening remarks, the president introduced Amy Butler, pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, who gave the opening prayer.
“I don’t know,” Butler quipped before inviting the group to pray. “He sounds like a preacher to me.”
At one point the president appeared to veer off his prepared remarks to take a jab at fellow Christians he described as “less than loving.”
“On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love,” Obama said. “And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”
“But that’s a topic for another day,” he shifted gears to sounds of laughter and applause in the crowd.
“I was about to veer off,” he said. “I’m pulling it back.”
Butler, who came to the prestigious New York City pulpit last year after serving 11 years as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, offered the following prayer:
Loving and gracious God, we come here today with gratitude for your way of love — a love that death could not destroy and a tomb could not contain.
With that acknowledgement we also confess that we struggle with the brokenness of our world and the responsibilities we bear to heal it.
You came to proclaim good news to the poor, but too many of your children go to sleep with empty stomachs on cold streets.
You came to give sight to the blind, and time and again we fail to see you in the faces of our neighbors.
We’re Easter people, but so often we live in the reality of crucifixion just shy of resurrection.
Grant us the wisdom, courage and strength to live as resurrection people, not conformed to the realities of this world but determined to transform it as agents of your justice, healing and love.
We pray in the name of the Risen Christ, amen.
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