Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, on reconciliation, healing and hope – The San Diego Union-Tribune

It took about 10 minutes for the ultimate frozen chosen to thaw. The royal audience at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle actually laughed a little.

Then there was more laughter. More nodding heads. More knowing smiles.

After Bishop Michael Curry stepped down from the pulpit on that spring day in 2018, many of the people attending and the estimated two billion watching discovered what many of us on this side of the pond already knew: The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is one of the best preachers of his generation.

Media reviews cemented the verdict for this son of an Episcopal priest and descendant of slaves.

Stunning.

Amazing.

Brought down the house.

Readers will soon get a chance to sample several of Currys more-recent homilies, courtesy of a new book featuring sermons delivered during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic at the Washington National Cathedral, home of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and a spiritual beacon for many of Americas faithful.

Reconciliation, Healing, and Hope: Sermons from Washington National Cathedral, due out Feb. 22, includes five of Currys sermons, along with dozens of others delivered by an array of speakers who sought to bring solace to thousands of worshippers who had turned their couches into pews.

The book was inspired by the cascade of cards and letters thanking the cathedral for these sermons, a sentiment reinforced by a survey of new supporters that singled out the importance of this preaching.

Reconciliation, Healing, and Hope begins and ends with sermons delivered by Curry from Pentecost Sunday 2020 to Pentecost Sunday 2021 (Pentecost is the post-Easter holy day thats generally regarded as the birthday of the Christian church).

So how does he do it? Whats the magic formula for weaving the right words together to persuade and inspire hearts and minds in 20 minutes or less?

The 68-year-old prelate, the first African-American to head the Episcopal Church, says he starts with a question: Who is the audience and what do they need?

What is the deep yearning of the human heart that brings us together at the time? he tells me in an interview from Pittsburgh, where he was in town for a funeral service.

Then comes the challenge to make the message relevant to the world outside the walls of the church. For that, he turns to the late theologian Karl Barth, who taught that preachers should hold the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

Consider this excerpt from the first sermon in the book. Like other houses of worship across the country, the National Cathedral had been shuttered by the pandemic and uncertainty prevailed. Then, just days before he was due to preach, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer as the world watched.

Curry had a perfectly good sermon already written. He threw it out.

To avoid it is to deny Christmas, he says of that terrible scene and the furor it unleashed. Christmas is about God coming into the world. Not God avoiding it.

And so he turned his attention to two pandemics plaguing this country.

This past week, we have not only had to endure a pandemic occasioned by a virus a viral pandemic but weve had to endure and face a spiritual pandemic: the roots of self-centeredness, where one person can look upon another person and despise and reject them, and not even behold them as a fellow child of God.

We have seen once again the unthinkable become thinkable. Its caused great pain or better said, increased the great pain that was already there ...

There is a part of us that just wants to throw up our hands, and in the words of the Psalmist cry: How long? How long, O Lord? How long? And yet, we are not victims of fate. We are people of faith. We are not doomed and condemned to continue our past into our present and future.

We need not be slaves of fate. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus. This Jesus taught us that love will make a way out of no way. He taught us that sometimes you have to take up the cross and follow in his footsteps and that if you dare to follow his way of love, you will find Gods way of life.

May 31, 2020

Curry is not afraid to put himself in the sermon or his whole body. His hands, his arms and his facial expressions are extensions of his words, punctuating, cajoling, beseeching. His cadence is lyrical at times, repeating phrases and words like a composers rhythmic refrain.

He credits a parish he served early on in his career, where the faces he stared into each Sunday ranged from domestic workers who may or may not have known how to read to well-educated professionals.

They made me learn how to preach and how to use everything I could genuinely, including my very self, to communicate that message to a diverse group of people of different educational levels, different life experiences, he says.

It was one of those domestic workers who became a Sunday morning compass for getting it right.

At the door, if the sermon spoke to her, she would say, Oh Lord, you preached this morning, you preached this morning, he remembers. And if the sermon didnt speak to her, she would say, Thats a nice robe you have on today.

Asked why he often makes the message personal, he quotes Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest perhaps best known for his Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, who described preaching as the communication of truth through personality.

You dont need too much of the person because the sermon is not about you, Curry cautions. But to be authentic means its got to be the communication of truth through you, through the lived experience.

It may be as simple as personalizing a scholar you are about to quote. Or as intricate as putting a human face on the Golden Rule.

I was probably 16 or 17. I was getting ready to go off to college. I was in the car with my daddy, and he said something to me what he had said to us growing up. He said, When you get to college, you treat every girl the way you want somebody else to treat your sister. I remember thinking, Man, you have just ruined all the dreams I had for college.

But I knew what he meant. He said, Treat every girl the way you want somebody else to treat your own sister because that girl is your sister. Treat every boy the way you want somebody else to treat your brother because he is your brother. Treat every woman like shes your mother, because she is. Treat every man like hes your father, because he is. Treat them like you want your own family to be treated because they are your family.

Show them the same love, honor, care, dignity and respect that you would want for your own. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This is not rocket science, but it is world changing. He said, If we did that, if we did that, then every child would have access to quality education. If we did that, then there would be justice and equality for everybody in this land and around the world.

May 23, 2021

His attempts to persuade sometimes come with a spoonful of confession. When the mask wars erupted, he admitted it isnt fun to wear the facial covering. But he wears it anyway.

The possible miracle could be that if I wear it to protect you from me, and you wear it to protect me from you, or the virus within, we get protected and we all win.

Its a small sacrifice, he added, that actually may be a symbol of what it means to love.

Sharing your own reluctance can make you vulnerable, he admits, but it also makes you genuine.

Im not talking about pretending to be something else. Im talking about opening up yourself both to God and to God in front of other people.

A Chicago native who was raised in Buffalo, Curry has been an Episcopal priest since 1978, the same year he got his masters degree from Yale University Divinity School. He served churches in North Carolina, Ohio and Maryland before being elected bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina in 2000.

Fifteen years later, he was elected presiding bishop, becoming president and chief executive officer of a mainline Protestant denomination that operates in 17 countries and counts more than 1.7 million members. The Episcopal Church is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Curry already had distinguished himself as a champion of civil rights, womens ordination and LGBTQ equality along with something youve probably already picked up on: an unwavering conviction that God is love.

That love remains his epicenter.

Im telling you, that is the key to any kind of preaching, Curry declares, with more than a little excitement. You can do that in two minutes or you can do it in 15 minutes. But just do it.

He mentions the biblical story of Lazarus, who was brought back to life from his own tomb by Jesus. When Jesus noticed that Lazarus was still wearing his burial cloth bindings, he called out for someone to unbind him and let him go.

Unbind preachers, Curry says, and let them go to be the vessel, the instrument, for Gods love, to pour through them and communicate to other folk.

Hes getting warmed up now, leaning closer to the Zoom camera as he talks.

Thats when preaching happens. And thats how preaching comes alive. And it is vulnerable. It is risky. It is not acting.

If COVID-19 doesnt cause another postponement, folks here will get a chance to hear from Curry up close and personal later this year, when hell be the featured speaker at a Good News Festival hosted by the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego on Dec. 9-10 at the Town and Country Resort Hotel (Details: thegoodnewsfestival.com).

You can bet hell be bringing up the love word.

I am convinced, he tells me, that the decision to live by the way of sacrificial love is going to be the decision that is going to make or break us.

Let me bring this to a conclusion. A few years ago, I was listening to public radio on a Sunday afternoon, probably in the summer. I suspect I was on vacation. There came a broadcast about a man named Norman Gershman, who had recently published a photographic essay and published a documentary on the Muslims of Albania ...

As Nazi armies advanced toward the small country of Albania, messages were sent by couriers to the Albanian foreign ministry. You are to identify all Jews living in Albania, provide their addresses and any contact information.

It so happened that the foreign minister of Albania was a Muslim, a member of this small community. And in the spirit of Harriet Tubman, he organized an underground railroad, if you will. He sent out word to the small I want you all to hear me to the small Muslim community in Albania.

It said, The Jewish people are to be your people. They must live in your homes. They must sleep in your beds. They must eat at your tables. You are to treat them as members of your own family, for that is who they are. And the Muslim community of Albania saved 2,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

May 23, 2021

Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: sandidolbeecolumns@gmail.com.

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Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, on reconciliation, healing and hope - The San Diego Union-Tribune