The first time I heard Bishop Curry speak was at the Festival of Homiletics in 2009. I believe that his sermon was titled, "We are family." That man can preach. This year he was scheduled to preach the first morning of the festival, and Jan really wanted to hear him. Knowing of his dynamic preaching and learning of his nomination as a candidate for Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church made me want to hear him again as well. But I had signed up for a workshop in another venue at the same time with Andrew Foster Connors on "Building a Sermon that Agitates," and in the 3rd venue Nadia Bolz-Weber was preaching and Sara Miles was giving a lecture. How to decide? In the end, I decided to go with Michael Curry. Though I wish I could have heard the others, I have no regrets. Did I mention that that man can preach?
Now that I have some distance from the festival, many of the specifics of both sermon and lecture have deserted me, though I did take a few notes during the lecture that I will share. Bishop Curry likes to use songs in his preaching, and the lecture, which was really more like an extended sermon, was titled, "Just tell the love of Jesus." He used the line from "Balm in Gilead" and exhorted us to tell the love of Jesus. He said that the opposite of love is not hate but selfishness - placing myself in the center of the world instead of God. He suggested that if we spend our time loving God and loving our neighbor, then there's no room left over for selfishness - and "when I love you, I love me too." His delight in some of the things that he said almost rivals the joy I have seen on the occasions I've been in the presence of Archbishop Tutu.
Bishop Curry said that when we love God and love our neighbor, we become our true selves because we discover the image of God in ourselves. He talked about God being a unity that embraces diversity, a community of love in Godself and that the reason we are here is that God is love and the nature of love is to make space for the other. Interspersed between all of his great one-liner nuggets of wisdom, Bishop Curry told stories and wove scripture and quotes into the fabric of what he was saying. It all tied together, each piece building on what had come before. He has a way of speaking with every increasing passion, building up, up, up, and then ever so gently bringing it back down because we simply wouldn't have been able to sustain listening to that level of exuberance the whole time. Masterful.
He talked about justice and how it needs to be done because that's what love demands, but that the end result must always be reconciliation. Close to the end of his lecture, he told the story of Attorney Barbara Winters who heard gun shots ring out on her way to work in Ottawa last October, and, using her medic training, tried to save the soldier guarding the war memorial who had been shot. Several others had also come to his aid. As he lay there dying, Winters kept telling him that he was loved, that his family loved him and that all the people working on him loved him. "You are so loved," she told him. That was what he got to hear as he left this world.
You are so loved.
"Love can transcend this world from the nightmare it often is to the dream God has for it..." Bishop Curry ended by singing "There is a Balm in Gilead" and having us all join him. It was very powerful. What he said wasn't new and innovative, but the way in which he took us on a journey of words and emotion truly inspired me. On our break I went up and introduced myself to him and told him where I was from and that I'd be praying for him as he engages this journey of the presiding bishop election. He told me that he'd gotten a speeding ticket in our diocese. When I told him that I work with people in recovery from addiction, he said, "Ah, then you know the balm in Gilead, don't you? Keep doing what you're doing."
Thanks, Bishop Curry. I have never heard any of the other candidates for presiding bishop preach, though I have read books written by a couple of them. I also don't get a vote. With no offense or disrespect intended to the other bishops, however, I think that the Episcopal Church could use a strong dose of Bishop Curry's inspirational presence. He told the love of Jesus on that Tuesday morning at the Festival of Homiletics. And I, for one, am grateful.
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