Jesus Dismantles Washington’s Favorite Religion
Today's readings strip away our titles and leave us with a towel and a basin — the only authority Jesus ever claimed.
Dear friends —
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each meditation will explore what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully in the midst of American civic and political life — not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the Cross.
Lent is a season of repentance, renewal, and resolve.
It is a time to confront our idols, strip away our illusions, and allow the light of God’s redeeming love to search and purify our hearts.
I hope you will walk this forty-day road with me — as your brother and fellow sinner — embracing prayer, sacrifice, and deeper conversion, and allowing the God of liberation to claim every corner of our lives and our public witness in an age of creeping authoritarianism.
“Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” (Isaiah 1:16–17)
We love titles. We love them so much we have turned them into a national religion.
CEO. Senator. Bishop. Influencer. Expert. We print them on business cards, stitch them into email signatures, and wield them like shields against the terrifying possibility that we might, in fact, be ordinary.
In Washington, where I spent the first decade of my professional life full time, your title was your identity.
Lose the title, lose yourself.
And then Jesus — as he always does at the worst possible moment — walks straight into our credentialing ceremony and says: stop it.
“The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus does not merely criticize the scribes and Pharisees for hypocrisy. He dismantles the entire architecture of religious status. Don’t call anyone “Rabbi.” Don’t call anyone “Father.” Don’t call anyone “Master.”
You are all brothers and sisters — every single one of you — and you have one Teacher, one Father, one Master, and it isn’t you.
This would have been shocking enough in first-century Palestine. It is equally devastating in twenty-first-century America. We have built a culture — and, God forgive us, a Church — in which authority is performed rather than lived.
