Wednesday 17th January 2021: Progress is Possible

 I think we all need reminding of the positive changes that have taken place in our society within our life- times.  I read one such story in the pages of The Church Times last week.

It was written by the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Michael Curry.  I often tune in to Bishop Curry’s sermons from Washington Cathedral; he overflows with passion, integrity and humour!

His Chicago family were originally Baptists; often the home for Black American Christians.  Yet his mother started going to her local Episcopal church and invited her boyfriend along, eventually they would marry and become parents to the boy who would grow up to become the most senior bishop in the USA.

Bishop Curry says his father was, at first, a reluctant Episcopalian.  At that first service, which included Holy Communion, his father was amazed to see both black and white people go up to the altar to drink from a common cup.  These were the 1940’s and Martin Luther King was still in seminary with Jim Crow being alive and well.  These were days of segregation and active prejudice – but not in this church.  Curry’s father couldn’t believe his eyes, the common cup passed from black to white as a matter of course, no fuss.

Bishop Curry wrote in last week’s Church Times: When my father told that story he said: Any church in which Blacks and Whites drink out of the same cup knows something about the gospel that I want to be a part of…

Stories like this matter, because they are real.  They make the past, and the integrity of those who lived that time, holy ground.  And they inspire us for days to come for in these challenging days, when it can at times seem so overwhelming, we need to hear that progress is possible.