OK, I admit it! I recorded the Harry and Meghan wedding and watched it later in the day. All the women in the family were at a lets-watch-the-rerun-of-the-wedding brunch. It too was very formal. Everyone in sweats, flowery hats, and flutes filled with bubbly. I was home alone, so why not get in on the social event of the year.
The Brits know how to do pageantry like no one else; no red carpet for them. The swells walked down the middle of the road from the castle to the chapel, the better to be seen. There’s Fergie. There are George and Amal. There is Prince Harry with his future-king brother. Is that Elton John? The Queen and Phillip rode to the chapel; they are in their 90s after all.
Like all major events of this type, we knew what to expect. We’ve seen it before. Pomp and circumstance, bishops in bejeweled copes and miters, trumpet fanfares for the Queen, organs bellowing Bach and Faure with a little Mozart mixed in for good measure. The men donned morning suits and the women wore Givenchy, Armani, and Alexander McQueen frocks with plumed fascinators atop their heads. If we’ve seen one royal wedding, we’ve seen them all. Until . . . !
A descendant of slaves and sharecroppers, Chicago born, Buffalo raised, a graduate of Hobart College, Yale Divinity School, and Wake Forest, the Primate and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US rose to say a few words about love to the bride and groom, and he lit up the world. “Two young people fell in love, and we all showed up.”[i]
I’ve spent a lot of time in churches over the years, but I’ve heard very few sermons, homilies, exhortations, that really got my attention, made me sit up straight, pay attention, listen to the nuance, feel the cadence, or shout “Amen.” Bishop Curry’s plea for love in the world was a spellbinder, one for the ages, historic!
Remember Tina Turner’s question – What’s love got to do with it?[ii] Michael Curry took us on a fifteen-minute journey that answered that question, with a passion seldom heard, seen, or felt in staid, traditional worship spaces, or denominations more accustomed to the classic, the ritual, and the quiet.
Bishop Curry lifted up Martin Luther King Jr.; ‘We must discover the power of love. And when we do that, we will make this old world a new world.” He lifted up Scripture; “Love your neighbor as yourself” and think of the difference that would make in the world. People listened. “Love God, love your neighbors and while you’re at it, love yourself” and think of how that would change the world.
He asked us to imagine, “Think and imagine a world where love is the way, imagine homes and families where love is the way, imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way.” Our nation is divided; pundits look at the warring camps and write about the differences, and they ask why. I look at statistics and ask why we aren’t as one. I search the web for reasons and ask why. I read editorial columns seeking rational and logical explanations for our separations. I listen to the talking heads for inklings of sanity, never satisfied with the answers. The answer might not be in reason, or in statistics, or in rationality, or in logic. The Bishop would tell me I’m asking the wrong questions.
The Primate asked the right question and answered it when he challenged us to imagine governments and nations where love is the way? When love is the way, would a child go to bed hungry anywhere in this world, again? If love were the way, would we have the school shootings? If love were the way, would we have homelessness? When love is the way, “we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook,”[iii] he told us.
The questions are easy and the answer, it seems, is easy to imagine, if you let it be. Why do nations fight one another? Why does talk-radio and TV ferment hate? Why do congressional leaders seek to ensure that the other party loses on every score rather than fight for the common good? When did disagreement become the basis for dislike and hatred? When did other ideas become the enemy? When did we become this way?
What’s love got to do with it?
Evidently, everything!
