Preaching to the royals [Updated]

Well, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are married, so we can all exhale.  I elected not to roll out of bed at 4 am to watch the live coverage.  When, pursuant to the invariable custom in our home, I did emerge from behind the bedroom door to be beset by starving cats at the still-ungodly morning hour of 6:30 or so and switched on NPR for a spot of news, already there were reactions to the homily being reported.

The homily can be viewed here.  I highly recommend watching it.  It was preached by the Right Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (I hope I have that honorific and title correct; apologies if that's not quite right).  Bishop Curry is African American.  It seems fair to say that he preached from the African American preaching tradition.

The initial media comments I heard were a little on the snarky side: they implied that the homily was too long; and there were one or two suggestions that Curry was trying to steal the show (presumably from Markle's veil, which, based on the few seconds of footage I caught, was sufficiently long to exert a gravitational pull which no television camera could long resist).  The gist of it all was that what Curry did was somehow unseemly, that it just wasn't done in that borough.

Some effort was made to show that the royals and their posse were aghast at the spectacle of this black person in their chapel.

Don't believe any of it for a minute.  Curry is of the same communion as the Anglican Church which the Royal Family theoretically represents in some way, shape or form.  If I'm not mistaken, the Anglican Communion is the third largest communion in Christianity, encompassing something like 100 million members, with a sizable presence on every continent and clergy drawn from those local areas.  The Anglicans can, and do, do multicultural.  I doubt anyone in the chapel thought Curry was exotic - save possibly those media talking heads whose shadows have never darkened a church doorway.

And I thought the homily was pretty good.   It was a little bit longer than your typical wedding homily, but this is not a typical wedding.

As for the royals and the others in attendance: they seemed fine with it.  Harry and Meghan listened semi-attentively and politely (all the royals seem to be pretty well trained in courtesy).  Judging from the congregation shots, some people were listening, some weren't.  I didn't see anyone actually reading a bulletin or checking their Instagram on their smartphones, but except for that it was about what one expects when one watches people listening to a homily.

Preaching at a wedding is interesting because, unlike a parish Sunday mass, a wedding congregation is not a cohesive faith community that gathers week after week.  A typical large wedding assembly would include folks from many different faith traditions and some from no particular tradition at all.  The wedding preacher can't assume a shared faith background, or any particular level of faith formation.

And these factors are further complicated by the fact that this is not just any wedding; this is a royal wedding.  The gathering would include, besides the royal family and the various earls and baronets, a galaxy of politicians, celebrities, media personages and other high-profile types.  And of course the audience would include tens of millions of people watching worldwide.

What does a preacher say to such an august gathering?  Even the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church may be forgiven for feeling a bit like Peter and the apostles before the Sanhedrin in Acts 5.  And the answer is: do what Peter did.  Proclaim the Good News, even to that group.

And that is what Curry did.  He spoke of love.  Not just the love between Harry and Meghan, but the possibility of love to bring about justice, to transform the world.  Curry spoke approachably, he spoke passionately, and he injected just the right, light touch of erudition. He invoked Dr. King, African American spirituals, and Teillhard de Chardin.

In my view, it was the right message, and it was delivered well.  Please watch it if you can.

Update 5/21/2018: Over at Pray Tell, Kimberly Long has posted about Bishop Curry's homily, covering some of the same ground we've covered here but with some additional insights as well.  And in the comments to Long's post, Deacon Fritz Bauershmidt provides a link to this take by Rev. Robert Hendrickson, who blogs as A Desert Father.  Hendrickson's post provides one of the finer instances of tongue-in-cheekery that I've encountered - I recommend it.