There were so many mis-steps in Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon at the Royal Wedding that it’s difficult to know where to start. Despite the fact that a billion people saw it, major media around the world are sharing it, and Episcopalians took pride and found joy in seeing one of our own bring the word there are ways he could have avoided a number of serious blunders.

Let’s just start at the beginning.

1. He opened with the egregiously outdated Trinitarian formula, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” There are far more creative ways that he could have talked about the various workplace roles of the Godhead and the sustaining work of the Redeemer. It just seemed unwelcoming.

2. Way too much Jesus. Really. Do a billion people need to be reminded of who Jesus is and the ways we are called to follow? Did they need the reminder to love God and love neighbor given by Jesus? People know more than enough about Jesus and really didn’t need a sermon that spent so much time on him. Besides this was a room full of people of all backgrounds and it seems like Bishop Curry could have chosen selections from world wisdom – these are not all followers of Christ after all and it’s not like we have some commission or the like to “evangelize.”

3. Too much love. Really. I think people have plenty of evidence these days that religion is about love. He could have spent time on any number of other topics without resorting to telling people that God is Love. Again, like with the Jesus thing, people can see everyday in our culture and news that Christianity is, at its heart, a movement of love.

4. Too personal. It’s weird when preachers show us how faith has reached them at a deep level. People need more information about God and these kinds of shows of deep devotion and conviction are confusing. It’s almost as if he was trying to say that Jesus (there he is again) can change who we are and how we see the world and not just tweak how we think about it.

5. Too political. I found it off putting that Bishop Curry wanted to bring uncomfortable things like slavery or Dr King into all of this. Why mix politics and faith? Jesus (oops, too much) rarely if ever mentioned these kinds of issues. If politics is about working out issues in community then it’s a little frightening to have someone say that Jesus (there he is again) has anything to do with the way we treat other people. Shaking hands at the Peace is about as political as we should get.

6. Too long. Really, if you are only preaching the Gospel to all nations then that could be creditably accomplished in four or five minutes.

7. Too predictable. It’s annoying that we can expect the Presiding Bishop to hammer, day in and day out, on Jesus and love. I wish he’d get more creative.

I’m sure that when time passs and the heady rush of the day wears off then people will be more appropriately critical of this personally convicted, Trinitarian, Jesus-proclaiming, socially conscious, and predictable sermon on the power of Love.

Feel free to watch and prove me wrong!

On my drive to work today, as I do most days, I was listening to various podcasts.  Today’s was a Slate interview with the author of the Rolling Stone piece, “An Open Letter to Gina Haspel From Someone Who Was Physically Tortured.” The author was held for two years by Al Qaeda in Syria.  He writes, “I began to wonder: What had happened to the young men who bore the weapons in the torture room to make them willing to induce such suffering in a helpless person?”

I wonder this now in our national culture.  What has happened to make us so willing to induce suffering in the helpless?  What has happened that we are, again, debating the merits of strapping people who are in our custody to boards and simulate drowning them.  This is not a simple matter of getting information.  This is a matter of triggering primal fear in a soul in our custody – it is a matter of subjecting human beings to emotional, spiritual, and physical horror.

These details are from the Intelligence Committee’s report on what happened at Gina Haspel’s black site in Thailand:

“…walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial hold, stress positions, cramped confinement, white noise and sleep deprivation—continued ‘in varying combinations, 24 hours a day, for 17 straight days,’ through August 20, 2002. When Abu Zubaydah was left alone during this period, he was placed in a stress position, left on the waterboard with a cloth over his face, or locked in one of two confinement boxes. According to the cables, Abu Zubaydah was also subjected to the waterboard ‘2-4 times a day … with multiple iterations of the watering cycle during each application.’

The ‘aggressive phase of interrogation’ continued until August 23,
2002. Over the course of the entire 20-day ‘aggressive phase of interrogation,’ Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, at depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet…”

There is a point at which a people lose their collective soul not through actions they commit but through the actions they willingly allow to be committed on their behalf.  We are fast reaching that point.  We are reaching the point where our leaders are mortgaging our soul for the sake of cheap points scored in political gamesmanship.  We are reaching the point where an inveterate liar who is now our commander-in-chief is appointing people to high position who have broken not the will of the enemy but the souls of barely-eligible-to-drink-and-vote men and women by making them shatterers of bodies, minds, and spirits.