Watched a video of Bishop Michael Curry at last weekend’s Royal Wedding. I didn’t get to watch it live. I did not read up on all the news leading up to the wedding or the post-wedding analysis. That’s okay.
And, oh how stirring that sermon was! He called for people to imagine a world that was different because of love.
Thanks to the internet, I found the whole sermon transcript; I’m thinking of this portion:
That’s what love is. Love is not selfish and self-centered. Love can be sacrificial, and in so doing, becomes redemptive. And that way of unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love changes lives, and it can change this world.
If you don’t believe me, just stop and imagine. 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.
That is a good word. It brings people together around a common vision, around our common humanity. I though it was quite appropriate for the immediate and the global audience that’d hear this message.
How to speak in the real world
I also know that there are some Christian pastors and theologians note the insufficiency of Curry’s sermon, how it might give inspiration and motivation, but doesn’t have the spiritual truth, depth, and power to really affect the change it’d take to create this new world that we could imagine.
While I might think this is appropriate to share an inspirational message in a public square, in a pluralistic world. It’s a good thing to be winsome and persuasive in this way, the Bible has a place where it says to make the Gospel attractive. That does raise the question, then, is it a Gospel if it is incomplete?
Oh, goodness. I don’t know. I don’t think people can hear a message and understand the message all sufficiently to respond in faith. It’d got to take multiple repeated exposure to the Christian Gospel message before someone can understand, before someone can accept, someone can believe.
Of all of the stories and testimonies I’ve heard about how people come to believe the Christian Gospel as their faith and truth, with very few exceptions, it almost always involves a personal relationship with people that have demonstrated and expressed love in a tangible way.
Underneath it all, what changes people, as Bishop Curry invited us to imagine, that love is the way. Indeed, yes indeed, love is the way.
Let love be always on my mind
I pray that love would fill me each and every day, each and every moment. There is no better motivation and attitude to take me through the day. And to express it through my words and actions. I confess that I don’t love enough. Can anyone love too much? Well, there is one, his name is Jesus. Renew my mind and fill my heart to be a little more like Jesus today. Tomorrow. Amen.