Bach celebrates Easter: Kommt, Eilet und Laufet!!
The joyful, dancing, triple-beat under four-beat of the first movement was also used in the Magnificat--and, of course, in D Major, the key of joy.
The Lion of Judah! Heaven, lift your drawbridges!!
Celebrate with JSBach.
Let us pray for his soul.
ReplyDelete—Pete Hegseth, US defense secretary, and a leading Christian soldier, would certainly disagree. He probably hums it on his way to work. At a recent Christian worship service in the Pentagon – an irregular event, given the constitution’s dislike of anything smacking of state religion – Hegseth, referencing Iran, prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. Hegseth’s creed is killing. He describes Iranians as “religious fanatics”.
And he should know. His intolerant brand of evangelical Christian nationalism is extreme even by US standards – yet has Donald Trump’s backing. Trump was a Presbyterian until 2020, when he abruptly declared he wasn’t. God knows what he is now.
Exploitation of Christian belief for political and military ends is a long-established, shabby US practice. Yet there’s a darkly obnoxious underside. Implicit in the official demonisation and dehumanisation of the Iranian nation is fear and loathing of otherness, in this case Shia Muslims. In one of his first acts as president in 2017, Trump banned immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries, and has continued in that hateful vein.
For most practising Christians, the misappropriation, distortion and weaponisation of faith to justify death and destruction, sow divisions, excuse war crimes and bomb Iran “back to the stone ages” is deeply saddening. Christians – who celebrate Easter on Sunday – believe Jesus was crucified for the sake of all mankind, for the forgiveness of sins, not for vindictive vengeance, pride and domination.
Pope Leo spoke for many beyond the Catholic church at a Palm Sunday mass in Rome in forcefully rejecting attempts by zealots such as Hegseth to conscript Christianity. “No one can use [Jesus] to justify war,” he said, quoting Isaiah. War-makers’ prayers would go unanswered. “Your hands are full of blood.””—