BAFFLED? THIS IS WHAT IT ALL MEANT
DURING his almost 14-minute speech, Michael Curry, the first black Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, made many Biblical and modern references. Here, HARRY MOUNT explains them . . .
THE SONG OF SOLOMON
QUOTING from this book of the old Testament, he said: ‘ Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.’
The phrase had earlier been delivered during a reading by Princess Diana’s sister, Lady Jane Fellowes. The words set up the bishop’s themes of ‘ fire’ and ‘love’, for they extol desire and sexual union.
The Song is also often interpreted as an analogy for the closeness between God and Israel, and Christ and the Church.
‘FIRE’ AND ‘LOVE’
THE Bishop mentioned ‘love’ 58 times and ‘fire’ 20 times.
Fire is typically associated with Hell, but he was referring back to the Song of Solomon’s description of love as ‘flashes of fire’ and ‘raging flame’.
He also deliberately echoed Paul’s First epistle To The Corinthians, a favourite reading at weddings, which says: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.’
At another point, he said: ‘Love is not selfish and self- centred. Love can be sacrificial, and in so doing, becomes redemptive.’
MARTIN LUTHER KING
THE American civil rights leader, murdered 50 years ago, was a Baptist minister, named after Martin Luther, the German father of the reformation.
The bishop quoted from a sermon — known as ‘Loving your enemies’ — that King delivered in Alabama in November 1957. ‘We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world a new world, for love is the only way.’
MATTHEW, MARK, DEUTERONOMY AND LEVITICUS
He THEN delved back into the old and New Testaments — recalling Jesus’s summary of the teachings of Moses drawn from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
He quoted Christ from Mark’s gospel: ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.’
The Bishop went on to quote from Matthew’s gospel: ‘on these two, love of God and love of neighbour, hang all the law, all the prophets, everything that Moses wrote, everything in the holy prophets, everything in the scriptures, everything that God has been trying to tell the world . . . love God, love your neighbours, and while you’re at it, love yourself.’
CHARLES MARSH
FEW in the chapel would have heard of this religious studies professor at the university of Virginia. But the Bishop quoted him, saying: ‘Jesus began the most revolutionary movement in human history, a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live that love.’
This comes from the white academic’s book, The Beloved Community, which analyses the role of faith in the American Civil rights movement.
In other works, Marsh has written about the religious and moral contradictions of his Protestant upbringing in a Mississippi town, where, at the time, the vile, racist Ku Klux Klan was operating.
‘BALM IN GILEAD’
THIS phrase, which he used, comes from a black slaves’ spiritual song. He said they sang ‘ even in the midst of their captivity’. Gilead is a mountainous area in Jordan mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah in the old Testament: ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wounds of my [God’s] people?’
In the slave song, the balm of Gilead is taken to mean the healing power of Jesus’s love.
OLD TESTAMENT PROPHET AMOS
NOT mentioned by name but quoted. ‘When love is the way, we will “let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook”.’
Amos was one of the 12 minor old Testament prophets, active in the 8th century BC, who wrote about justice and God’s great power and judgment.
He was often quoted by Martin Luther King.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
A FRENCHMAN described by the Bishop as ‘one of the great minds, great spirits of the 20th century’.
This roman Catholic priest, scientist, scholar and mystic said that fire was ‘one of the great scientific and technological discoveries in all of human history.’
Born in 1881, Chardin was also a palaeontologist who helped discover Peking Man in China, a human ancestor, reckoned to be 300,000 to 500,000 years old.
Chardin was awarded France’s highest honour, the Legion D’Honneur, for his actions as a stretcher-bearer during World War I.