Homily by UU Minister (retired) on Bishop Michael Curry's Homily at Royal Wedding

  

"Bishop Michael Curry, on the occasion of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, opened his homily with an invocation to a "loving and liberating God." 

Consider that theological assertion, and then consider the history of his people, and finally, consider the audience he was addressing. He is the descendent of enslaved Africans. The ancestors of his audience, which included the British Royal Family and assorted other aristocrats, were the perpetrators and perpetuators and profiteers of the Atlantic slave trade. In their house, and to their faces, set as is their custom, into bland non-committal, Bishop Curry told them that God was all about liberation. 

Bishop Curry was there in the role of spiritual teacher, the one with spiritual authority. Given the protocols of Christian worship, Bishop Curry had the authority to speak as long as he needed, without interruption, and without rebuttal. All his congregants could do was roll their eyes, or grimace, or, as Prince Harry did, give an odd half-smile, as though he was aware both of his bride's frank and undivided attention to the Bishop, and his family and friends' discomfort. 

Bishop Curry was there because somewhere back in time, the enslaved Africans were converted to Christianity by the enslavers. It was an unlikely event with an unlikely consequence. 

At the time, Christianity was the glue that held the world together. It was the religion that undergirded European political and economic power. It was the ideology that authorized the conquest of the New World and the genocide of its peoples. It was the religion that justified the kidnapping, enslavement and ruthless exploitation of the people from Africa. 

Christianity was the user manual for the operating system of the world. It was the religion of humanity's highest strata. 

But then, Christianity fell into the hands of humanity's lowest: the people who were considered disposable commodities, mere property, tools by the economic, social, and political systems of this world. 

The conversion of the enslaved Africans set off a slow-motion explosion that still sounds along the ages.  

The Africans turned the Christianity they were taught upside down, backward, and on the back of the beat. They turned it from the sanctification of the earthly powers over them to a source of their own spiritual power to resist their oppression and exploitation.

Out of the elements of the old Christianity of Constantine, the Africans created a new, and truer, Christianity. From the user manual for the operating system of the world, they created a guide to hack, and subvert, and overthrow "the powers and principalities." 

If one is inclined to think in terms of humanity's salvation story, it was a turning point, as significant as the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh's Army, or the resurrection of the Christ to expose the rotting roots of Roman power. The conversion of the enslaved people set off a slow-motion explosion that will someday end the supremacy of the white European Empire over all of Creation. Surely, it was a work of God, the loving and liberating God whom Bishop Curry praised. 

So, let's grab a screen shot of the scene yesterday, one frame in God's epic movie of salvation and the reconciliation of humanity to God's self and to each other. It is the stuff of fairy tales, as every commentator commented. So let us name the fairy tale, and tell the whole story. 

An errant, somewhat rebellious prince, the younger brother, has traveled the world and met his bride, Meghan Markle, an accomplished actress and a strong, spirited, and independent woman. They fall in love and are to be married in the castle of the Prince's family, with the Queen and all her court looking on. And in the middle of this glittering ceremony, a holy man rises to speak. His message is delivered with loving grace. But just by presence, the fact that he was chosen to re-present the Gospel of Jesus to that congregation, conveyed that  all of this (the castle, the chapel, the glitter, the hats and dresses, the cars and carriages),  all of this was built by a power that is spent, and  all of this is doomed to fall, to be replaced by the power of love, the kind of love embodied that day by the love of the prince and his bride for each other, an expansive, inclusive, adventurous, and liberating love. 

And then, the choir sang like angels. 

It is the stuff of fairy tales, the revelation of ancient curses, the naming of the inexorable movements of human history, the parting of the dreary veil of the present to reveal a more brilliant future. In other words, it was a wedding; and it was church. "