After listening to and reading the complete text of Obama’s speech yesterday, I guess my overwhelming reaction is disappointment. He had an opportunity to really advance the cause of racial reconciliation and healing, and I think he instead chose to punt.

It’s unfortunate that he was forced into this spot because his pastor’s sermons are now being volleyed around the media. Those remarks forced Obama to defend an indefensible position, while at the same time try to turn the whole ordeal into something positive.

In looking at the text of his remarks, here are my reactions:

First, Obama comes off really disingenuous when he tries to equate the anger that Jeremiah Wright manifests in his sermons that is, no doubt, the product of his life experiences with the racial prejudices that his grandmother harbored.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

What? Of course you can disown Rev. Wright. He’s your pastor. He’s not your grandmother. You made a choice to be a part of his congregation and to sit under his teaching. You made a choice to ask him to officiate at your wedding. You made a choice to call him your spiritual mentor. You did not choose your grandmother. Regardless of the nature of either relationship, I’d hope that Barack Obama would have the moral courage to tell him pastor and his grandmother that their racist beliefs make him uncomfortable. I don’t care who is spouting ignorant nonsense. If you’re going to be president, then stand up and speak truth to power.

It seems that Obama wants to dismiss that notion by saying, “Hey, people are angry. Black people have a reason to be angry. White people might even have a reason to be angry. It’s okay to be angry.”

But what do we do with that anger? Do we let it become manifest in angry diatribes from the pulpit? Do we let it linger beneath the surface in public and speak of it openly only when we’re among people who can identify with that anger? That seems to be Obama’s suggestion:

For the men and women of Rev. Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.

To me, this is the most troubling passage. This seems to be a justification of the victimhood mentality that is so pervasive in our nation today.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that America’s legacy of racism and intolerance has left a deep scar. I cannot begin to understand the deep and profound pain that African-Americans felt and continue to feel because of our nation’s long track record on race relations.

But to bundle up all that pain and anger and resentment, and then to try to tie-in the same feelings that white Americans might also feel because of their experiences, and to then channel that anger towards what?

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.

But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans, the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Rev. Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

Ahh, yes! Society CAN change. That’s what’s so great about America. Society has changed over the last 225 years and even over the last 50 years.

The wealthiest black people in the world are African-Americans. Home ownership and median income and education and opportunity have all sky-rocketed in the last two generations. Barack Obama is an example of that change. He’s a hugely successful, well-educated black man. But how did he get to where he is today? No doubt through hard work, dedication, the support of his family and community, and by not making excuses when he was faced with the inevitable roadblocks of ignorance and racism.

So is that how we overcome the problems our society is now facing?

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed.

Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

So the solution to the ongoing racial divide in America, according to Barack Obama, comes down to the government spending more money to take care of people’s problems.

My reading of the Scripture referenced here has nothing to do with government programs. I don’t expect the government to be anyone’s keeper. In fact, I’d argue that if we’re encouraging the angry, resentful, downtrodden Americans that Obama identifies with to find solace in universal health care, welfare, and public education, then we are doing al of those people a huge disservice.

If our goal is truly racial reconciliation and healing, then I think it’s time to take our anger and ignorance and pain and cover them with forgiveness and charity and love. It means taking all of those painful memories of the past and the present daily injustices and reimagine them not simply as therapeutic but rather as sacred, as Frederick Buechner writes.

If Jeremiah Wright had taken his anger and taken it to white Americans and said, “Look, here is what I’ve been dealt as a black man born in America in the twentieth century. It’s been unfair. It’s been painful. And I can’t expect you to understand it. But I want to show you how all of that pain has been healed by my faith. I’ve received beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. And that came not from the government, but from a high power. Now, I want to share that power with all of my white brothers and sisters who need that same powerful healing. I want to show you what the Lord has done.” Imagine that testimony. Imagine the power in those words to bring reconciliation.

Instead, Obama wants to blame the failing schools, blame the health care system, blame the war for why we can’t move forward.

If Obama wants to bring about change, then maybe we should change the way we talk about our problems and begin to acknowledge that change begins in our own individual hearts and minds, and it doesn’t spread through political campaigns or the ambitions of a single candidate.