The Passion story is *such* an explicitly political story - that it's explicitly *anti-political* doesn't make it any less political. I've heard sermons and discussions that discussed it as a political story in the historical sense and the general sense, but never really putting it in terms of modern contexts like imperialism and nation-building. Probably because you *couldn't* do it without being really explicitly political about current issues and what Christ would have said about them.

As to what Pastor actually preached, see my response above to stellar_dust - he did it in a way that made his political position clear without openly politicizing the story itself. He's done that a few other sermons that I remember staying a awake through - doing parallels about current events without ever quite preaching politics. Honestly, everybody at the church knows his opinions on this sort of thing, so everybody who can't put up with it left years ago - he's incredibly politically & socially active; the current controversy is not that his preaching is too political or too slanted, it's that he's too busy meeting with Congressmen and social justice organizations and the boards of various NGOs to actually do the pastoral and congregational work we pay him for.