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Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached "Bad News" at Royal Wedding says Anglican Bishop

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached "Bad News" at Royal Wedding says Anglican Bishop

By Bishop Felix Orji,
www.virtueonline.org
May 26, 2018

You read me right, my friends. I'm unwilling to acknowledge and countenance any gospel proclamation in Bishop Curry's sermon at Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding last week because there was none.

I have read and listened to his sermon, all I see is a rhetorical flair extolling the beauties of love sprinkled with a nodding and passing reference to Jesus's death as an example of love. That's not the gospel.

That's bad news! Who can truly follow his example? None!!! No one can truly follow his example. They and we need to hear the message of his atoning sacrifice and his enabling grace that comes because of that then and only then can we try to follow his example.

All I see in his sermon is a wasted opportunity to lift high the Cross of Christ before royalty and celebrities who desperately needed the gospel.

Every preacher has few of these opportunities- may be once in a lifetime - to tell the gospel to such an august audience and its high treason to squander it just because he wanted to play to the gallery making sure no one in the echelons of power is offended. He succeeded and is now living "his best life now" in the new lime light glow of acceptance for not rocking the boat.

I wish he had preached penal substitutionary atonement because that is the crux of the gospel. I pray he gets another chance to lift high the king of love and glory who demonstrated his love and glory on the cross to save helpless sinners.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex need Jesus more than flashy talk on love. Bishops and priests who don't have the guts to tell their audience the truth have no business mounting the pulpit. Period.

I'm not making much ado about this for nothing. It was because the church did not preach the Cross this way that she ended up in the spiritual and moral darkness of the Middle Ages leading eventually to the Reformation, thank God. We cannot and should not settle for truncated expressions of the gospel which in my opinion is sadly bezonian. I remember Dr. J. I Packer telling me one day I was with him in Vancouver that one of his disappointments with mainline churches is their love for theological minimalism - just happy with the minimum in matters of the Faith. The result is spiritual poverty and apostasy over time.

Let me repeat myself: I have taken issues with my fellow Bishop - Bishop Curry- and rightly so because Bishop Curry had 15 minutes of golden opportunity to share the good news of the gospel but he didn't. Rather he focused on his charming talk on love which most of us know what he means by it -- heterosexual and homosexual love as equally appropriate before God and he is wrong on that.
But giving him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he meant true biblical love for a moment, Bishop Curry could have stated clearly that as a matter of fact we are all incapable of truly loving one another as God wants us to until Christ transforms us through the gospel as we turn to him in repentance and faith as our Savior and Lord. That's how he could have brought in the gospel that he was ordained and that he took a vow to preach!

But he failed to do so. He assumed that everyone in his audience can just love one another if they tried harder. Well they can't. And even as Christians, we still fall short of truly loving God and loving others hence we need to hear the gospel of forgiveness and promise of God's empowering Spirit through the Cross again and again. I love the good news of Jesus who loved me enough to give his life for me. That's the good news many people need to hear. But he failed to do that. That's what was at issue here. And I'm surprised and disappointed that many Christian people and pastors can't see that.

Bishop Felix Orji is the Diocesan Bishop of the Missionary Diocese of CANA West, which is part of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The Diocese of CANA West comprises parishes in the United States and Canada. There are about 30 parishes and 60 clergy in his Diocese.

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