By now, I imagine most of you have heard or even seen our Presiding Bishop’s sermon at the Royal Wedding. In listening to Bishop Curry, when he spoke of the “power of love”, I wondered if he would quote the song by Huey Lewis and the News. When instead, the Bishop commended, “God’s gracious love to His entire world, and given supremely in the sacrificial, redemptive love of our Lord Jesus Christ”, I found my heart stirred. This was a superb proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus at the center of our lives. And this was being delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Bishop Curry’s preaching was reaching in one fell swoop as many as who heard Billy Graham in his own lifetime.
The Word preached was about our Christian faith in Jesus. It was preached infectiously, joyfully, captivatingly. The Bishop quoted the Song of Solomon and the Gospel of St. Matthew. The latter concerned our Lord’s Summary of the Law:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as your self. On these hang all the Law and the Prophets.
How refreshing! And all this on television!!
In quoting Dr. King and Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, Bishop Curry held before us the essence of the Gospel. He effectively quoted from the Negro Spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead”, with its words “to make the wounded whole… To heal the sin-sick soul”. This is a message we can take to our hearts. These are words about the Great Physician.
This sermon touched our world as I have rarely seen it occur, and newscasters around the world discussed it. It also obviously moved the Royal couple, Harry and Meghan. You can be sure the Queen loved it behind her stoic face. She speaks about her faith in Christ fervently.
The Gospel is not that we have to love harder to save the world, but receive the love God gives to us centrally in His Son, who died that we might live, and now continually in the Holy Spirit. Jesus alone died for us, was raised from the dead for us, ascended for us, and through Him we receive the Holy Spirit from God the Father.
The day after the Royal Wedding was the Feast of Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. How serendipitous! Or was it? The first clear gift of the Holy Spirit is proclaiming Jesus is Lord. We witnessed the gift of the Holy Spirit at the wedding. It was a Pentecost moment.
