Bishop Michael Curry shares the keys to love in a pre-Memorial Day message

[June 01, 2022]   On Sunday, May 22, Trinity Episcopal Church held a special service. The Most Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, preached and helped celebrate the Eucharist.”

Bishop Curry presides over the Episcopal Church Diocese of the United States. He is the first African American Bishop to hold that position.

With Curry’s great oratory skills, he has prioritized speaking out on issues of social justice including race relations and marriage equality.

Millions heard Bishop Curry deliver the sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle in 2018.

On a ‘Talks at Goldman Sachs’ segment the bishop spoke about his faith journey. He grew up in a time when religion was booming, and faith was a given. Bishop Curry’s father was an Episcopal Priest, and his grandmother was a “dyed in the wool” Baptist.

In North Carolina, where some of Curry’s family grew up, everyone was religious. He said faith was how people navigated through rough terrain and life.

When the bishop was in middle school, he lost his mother and learned more about how to navigate rough times. His father and the grandmother who helped raise him navigated by a power greater than themselves. Bishop Curry said they depended on God, who has the capacity to help us through even the darkest midnights.

Bishop Curry’s grandmother was a powerful influence. She was a sharecropper’s daughter who cleaned houses and raised three children that all graduated from college. For the Bishop’s grandmother, education was emancipation.

The Bishop’s father told both him and his sister that they needed to do what they were supposed to be doing.

When Curry went to college he was leaning towards government work and considered going to law school. He saw himself as the future mayor of Buffalo, New York.

During his junior year of college Curry took a course where he read some of Martin Luther King’s writing. As he did a research thesis in Boston, Curry soon realized he could have an impact as a religious leader.

In 1978, Curry graduated from Yale Divinity School. He worked with a crisis contact ministry.

A church community in Winston Salem, North Carolina was the bishop’s early ministry.

During Bishop Curry’s ministry in North Carolina, he helped bring clergy from East and West Winston Salem together. He said at the time, those groups coming together was revolutionary.

Building these relationships is what Bishop Curry said led to the crisis contact ministry. Food banks and other safety nets like ecumenical summer day camps for children spun out of the crisis response pastoral care the bishop was a part of.

In 2000, Bishop Curry was elected eleventh bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina.

Since 2015, Bishop Curry was elected as the 27th presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church.

On Saturday, May 21, 2022, Bishop Curry helped preside over the ordination of the 12th Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield.

At Sunday’s service, Bishop Curry began his message with a passage from John 14 that has Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. Here Jesus shares some of the deepest things that are on his heart.

In this passage, Jesus said to Judas (not Iscariot), “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.”

As Bishop Curry said, we may mess up, but God will make his home with us. Love leads to God and to each other. This love is the key to our relationship with God and with each other. Love is the key to making life here on earth better. It is key to getting into Heaven, where Bishop Curry said people have a great time.

To explain this love, Bishop Curry talked about the old Spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead.” One of the verses says if you are discouraged and feel the pain, the Holy Spirit can revive your soul. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Paraphrasing another verse of the song, Bishop Curry said if you cannot preach like Peter and cannot pray like Paul, just tell the love of Jesus. He [Jesus] died to save us all.

The song ends with the lines: There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the wounded soul.

Again, the Bishop said love is the key. It is the key to life with God. It is the key to life with each other. It is the key to now and unto the day of eternity.

Bishop Curry then referred to John 14 where Jesus said he [Jesus] and the Father will make a home with them. The bishop said, that is a home I want. I want to say God is at home with me. As Jimmy Stewart said, it does not get much better than that.

Most of the message centered on love, which Jesus continually talks about. Bishop Curry said this love is powerful.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the people “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

In passages from Matthew 22, Luke 10 and Mark 12, Jesus tells those he is speaking to that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. Jesus said that is the first and greatest commandment. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.

To Bishop Curry, everything God was trying to say in the Hebrew Scriptures, and is now trying to say to us through the Holy Bible, hangs on love. Love and you will be close to the kingdom of God. Love and you will live.

In other words, Bishop Curry said love and you will find life. Love is the key.

The well-known verse John 3:16 reminds us that God loved the world so much that he gave us Jesus. To Bishop Curry this love is why there is Christmas and Good Friday.

We are coming up on Memorial Day when we remember those who have served and given their lives for the cause of freedom.

Bishop Curry’s father-in-law served in the navy and was at Pearl Harbor. At one point, his [the father-in-law’s] mother screamed from the kitchen, “There is something wrong with my baby.” She knew something had happened to her son though she did not hear anything for a week or two. Fortunately, her son was injured but not killed.

As Jesus said, greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for a friend. Bishop said Memorial Day is about the kind of love where people give up their lives.

Firefighters go into a building to save someone who he or she does not know. Bishop Curry said that is love. A law enforcement officer protecting people also shows love.

Love is the key to life with God. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Love has the power to lift and liberate when nothing else will. Love has the power to heal and save when nothing else will. Bishop Curry said it is not because of the simple power of love. It is because love is like the river spoken of in Revelation that flows from the very throne the heart of God.

Though Bishop Curry was born in Chicago, his family moved when he was three. He grew up in Buffalo, New York. Bishop Curry has been a diehard Buffalo Bills fan through thick and thin. Bishop Curry remembers when the Bills lost four Super Bowls in a row.

After their fourth loss, a parishioner called the bishop to express condolence. The parishioner said Bills stands for Boy I love losing the Super Bowl.

Talking about the recent tragic shooting where 10 people were killed at a grocery store in Buffalo, Bishop Curry said seeing that brings him deep sadness. Knowing it was done for hate also brings sadness. [This sermon was delivered the Sunday before the Uvalde, Texas massacre of 19 elementary school children and two teachers that took place on Tuesday, May 24.]

Love is the key. Bishop Curry said hatred, jealousy and bigotry do not work - love does.

If the Buffalo Bills win a Super Bowl, Bishop Curry is convinced it may mean Jesus is coming back. Even if they never win another Super Bowl, the bishop said he has never been prouder of them.

Players on the Buffalo Bills team were due to come back for early training next week, but Bishop Curry said they all came back early. The Bills donated money from the Buffalo Bills Foundation and have raised money to care for survivors of the grocery shooting.

The theme the Bills have chosen is stop hate, end racism and choose love. Love is the key to life with God and all of God’s children.

In concluding his message, if you cannot preach like Peter or pray like Paul, Bishop Curry said to just share the love of Jesus. Jesus died to save us all and that is the balm of Gilead. It is the balm of Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

[Angela Reiners]