The Most Rev. Michael Curry opens his Week Seven chaplaincy last Sunday in the Amphitheater. Curry concluded his sermon series, via video, Friday morning in the Amp.
“I want to rename the parable in Matthew 25. Some call it the parable of the judgment of the nations, some the parable of the sheep and the goats. I want to call it the parable of the beloved community,” said the Most Rev. Michael Curry.
Curry, who had a prior commitment that necessitated his leaving prior to Friday’s morning worship service in the Amphitheater, delivered his sermon via video. It was titled “We are Family,” and the scripture text was Matthew 25: 31-40.
He reminded the congregation of the music group Sister Sledge and their song, “We Are Family.” He quoted the lyrics, “We are family, I’ve got all my sisters with me.”
“We are family. We may be dysfunctional, but we are family,” Curry said. “And when the king said, ‘If you did it for the least of these, you did it for me,’ he said we are family.”
In Curry’s fantasy of how this parable might look, after all the nations came before the king for judgment and justice, people heard they had gotten into heaven, and they sort of galloped off to heaven.
The interesting thing about heaven, he said, was that there was no particular religion that got in. Curry imagined that someone stopped and asked, “Why did I get into heaven? I don’t remember feeding the hungry or clothing the naked or visiting you in prison.” Jesus’ point was when they did those things to the least of the people, they were doing for family.
“We are family,” Curry said. “We’ve got all our sisters with us.”
He continued, “The biblical witness for God’s original dream is not that we grouped ourselves into collections of self-interest, but we would be one people, we would be God’s family. This is Jesus’ way of saying what matters to God is that we care for each other like family.”
When Curry was getting ready for college, his father told him to remember one thing. “I probably rolled my eyes, but he said, ‘Treat every girl like you would want your own sister to be treated. Treat every boy like you would want your brother to be treated. Treat every woman as you want your mother to be treated. Treat every man as you want your father to be treated. Treat people with the same honor and respect you want to receive. Show them you are their brother.’ ”
Curry repeated, “We have to treat each other as family. We may be dysfunctional, but we are family. God made us and dreams that we will live as a family. There is plenty of room in the kingdom for all God’s children.”
Tom Goss, a lay leader at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Maryland, presided. Melissa Spas, vice president for religion at Chautauqua, whose grandmother served as librarian at the Smith Memorial Library and whose father ran the Chautauqua Utility District for 35 years, read the scripture. The prelude was “Reverie,” by William Grant Still, played by Rees Taylor Roberts, 2024 organ scholar, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir sang “Ubi Caritas,” music by Ola Gjeilo, text in North Italian or Burgundian, circa the eighth century. The choir was directed by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and accompanied on the piano by Roberts. The postlude was “Toccata,” from Symphony No. 5, by Charles-Marie Widor. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and services was provided by the Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund.
