I, like 2 billion other people around the world, woke up a little early on Saturday, May 19, to watch the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. I was partially interested in the liturgy, because I’m a huge nerd, and also because I wanted to hear what the Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, had to preach. While I thought the whole of the sermon was fantastic and well delivered, there was one section that I think is the most important.
“Think and imagine a world where love is the way. Imagine our homes and families where love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way. Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce where this love is the way. Imagine this tired old world where love is the way. When love is the way – unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive. When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty good room – plenty good room – for all of God’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well… like we are actually family. When love is the way, we know that God is the source of us all, and we are brothers and sisters, children of God. My brothers and sisters, that’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family.”
That’s a long passage but this is the heart of our faith, the heart of the Good News. This is a vision of God and humankind reconciled.
Bishop Curry preached the Good News of God in Christ to a world hungry for the reign of God and its justice, but we too are called to preach the Good News in our own way to those in our lives. Bishop Curry is an apostle to the US in this day and age, but we too are called to be apostles, or ambassadors, to our own context. We may never stand on a stage where 2,000,000,000 (that is so many zeros!) people will be listening, but proclaiming the Good News to two people is just as important as preaching to two billion.
How will we preach the Good News where we are? How will we be an ambassador for the reign of God today? How will we incarnate justice in our common life? When will we make love the way?
St. Augustine's Chapel 