God's Law Preached at the #RoyalWedding - Secular Media Loves It?

Well, this weekend we were out of town and in a hotel room on Saturday. We were going to an amusement park that featured all kinds of construction equipment that you could ride, and my toddler absolutely loved it.

But as we were getting ready for the day, my wife had the TV on the royal wedding. She was interested in seeing what it was all about. I'm not that interested in that kind of thing at all, but I did overhear a few pieces of the Reverend Michael Curry's sermon, which I thought was pretty interesting.

The snippets that I heard were pretty good. He's talked about redemptive love. He even quoted some scripture, which I thought was interesting. So overall, I thought it was interesting, and I made a mental note to check into the guy because he had sort of the Dungeons Dragons type garb on for a priest, and so I figured he probably was a mainline guy, which means that you never quite know what you're going to get with the mainline guys.

Jesus’ Summary of the Law at the Royal Wedding

But anyway, here's the section of the sermon that I heard that I thought was interesting. He says, Jesus of Nazareth on one occasion was asked by a lawyer to sum up the essence of the teachings of Moses, and he went back and he reached back into the Hebrew scriptures to Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.

This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself, and I was like, this is amazing. He's actually quoting words from Christ, which I wasn't really expecting from the royal wedding, and then not only does he do that, but he also recognizes that love your neighbor as yourself comes from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Old Testament code.

I'm like, wow, is this guy like a theonomist or something? What's going on? This is pretty interesting. Like I said, I made a mental note after the amusement park. I wanted to check into this guy and see what he was all about, because what a platform to be talking about Deuteronomy and Leviticus, two of my favorite books in the Bible that never get talked about, really.

Media Praise and the Sermon’s Public Reception

I looked him up, and so I went on Google, I typed in Bishop Michael Curry, and then look at all the praise that this is all getting. Look at this. The full text of his sermon on NPR, that is unbelievable.

Here's CNN. A black bishop delivers a passion and soul in a powerful sermon. Wow. Vox, Fox News, Time Magazine. Look at all this coverage of this sermon that I thought was pretty decent is getting. Look, we got USA Today, NBC News.

Just amazing. It talks about how this guy stole the show and how he was just an amazing sermon. I'm over here thinking, wow, this is so crazy. A sermon. I don't really know too much about the guy, but he quotes from Leviticus.

He quotes from Deuteronomy correctly, I might add, and talking about the love of God and redemptive love, and maybe not as explicit as I would like. He didn't break down the gospel in the sermon, but it's a wedding, and if it was me, I would have the preacher

Well, we did, actually. My wife had our pastor preach the gospel at our wedding, but some people, whatever. It is what it is. It is not a perfect sermon, but I thought it was pretty good. Here's Time Magazine, CNN, Vox, all these things talking about how this guy stole the show.

Why the World Loves a Vague Sermon on Love

Then, of course, I discovered the reason why. The reason why is because when Bishop Michael Curry talks about love, he is talking about something very, very different than evangelical conservative Christians are talking about.

Bishop Michael Curry is pro-gay marriage. His denomination is squishy on abortion. They all think it's good for women to get abortions just because they want them, but if they really need them, whatever that means, then it's okay for some reason.

I don't know, but the point is that when Bishop Michael Curry is talking about love, I can be very generous and say he means exactly what I mean when I talk about love, but that would be doing a disservice to the bishop himself because he wouldn't define love the way I would.

I would define it very strictly, biblically, and all of that. I don't think that the bishop would. You can't be pro-homosexual marriage, same-sex marriage, and understand what love is. You just can't.

You can't be squishy on whether or not it's okay or loving to murder a child, a baby. You can't be squishy on that and know what love is. These kinds of things, we have to be honest about this sermon.

We know what he means. We know now why Time Magazine and CNN and Vox and NBC, all of these news organizations, we know why they like this because they know what he's saying. They know what the bishop is saying.

He's defining love the way they would. He's defining love the way the world is because the world doesn't like theonomic sermons like God's law, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. They don't like that kind of thing.

The reason why Time Magazine and CNN and ABC and NBC and all this nonsense, the reason why they love it is because they know what he's saying. He's talking about the kind of ishy-squishy emotional love that they all talk about.

Let's just be honest here. Look, if you're a reformed guy and you love this sermon, I suppose you can like it and pretend that he's defining these terms the way that you would, but let's not be silly about it.

Let's not be naive about this. This is not how we do this. This is why I'm talking. It's so important to find these words. The other thing about this guy is he's a social justice warrior. There's no question about it.

You look into Bishop Curry and he's a social justice warrior. That's what his whole life is about. Again, he's not defining justice. He's not defining social justice biblically the way that the scriptures would.

He's quoting from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, but he's not actually believing all of it. He believes the stuff that he likes. He believes love your neighbor as yourself, but he doesn't define love the way Deuteronomy would.

He doesn't define love the way Leviticus would. Don't get crazy if someone starts quoting this sermon. Don't call them heretic. Don't get all uppity. Look, the words of the sermon are okay as long as you just ignore everything the man has ever said about these topics in the past.

Do I like this sermon now that I know about Michael Curry? Not as much. I mean, it's very vague. It could be interpreted a few different ways, but now that I know about the man, I know what he was saying and the world certainly knows.

All you got to do is Google it and they're ranting and raving how awesome it was. Look, if the world is thinking a sermon is great, there's a good chance it ain't that great.