Presiding Bishop Michael Curry gave the sermon at the Royal Wedding (no, not the other one that just happened. Harry and Meghan’s).
During that address, he talked about the power of love and quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He wasn’t just talking about romantic love, but “any form, any shape.”.
Love can be sacrificial. And in so doing, becomes redemptive. And that way of unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love can change lives and it can change this world.
If you don’t believe me, just stop and think and imagine a world where love is the way.
Imagine our homes and families when this way of love is the way. Imagine our neighborhoods and communities when love is the way. Imagine our governments and nations when love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when this love is the way. Imagine this third old world when love is the way. No child would go to bed hungry in such a world as that. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing book. When love is the way, poverty will become history.
Bishop Curry is the first Black leader of the Episcopal Church, a denomination that has seen attendance drop nearly a quarter in the last decade. A new report emphasized that the church must “equip ourselves to minister effectively in contexts in which there are multiple social norms and the weight of discrimination and privilege in society present themselves to us in our congregations.”
And that’s not the only major issue Bishop Curry is addressing.
Curry is preaching on the radical power of love at a time when it seems vitriol and cruelty are higher than ever (see also: politics Twitter).
Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic that cruelty is the point of the Trump administration’s policies.
Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
In this time of political division, what is the role of religious leaders in bringing us together? Can someone like Bishop Curry stay apolitical?
Produced by Paige Osburn. Text by Gabrielle Healy.
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