Look to the Rock

https://episcopalnews.ladiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3184371



(from 2017)

Bishop Michael Curry recalled the dispersal of Israelites during the Babylonian exile: “This is what the prophet said: ‘Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father and to Sarah, who bore you.’ Look to the rock.”

While acknowledging current political uncertainty and ambiguity, Curry emphasized themes of unity, love, and building relationship: “It is fitting that we should be observing the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King at this moment and this time. We need him seriously now.”

Curry evoked the image of the “Sankofa” bird, a Ghanaian symbol “that reminded people that the way into an uncertain future is by knowing how to look back and to glean wisdom from the past and strength from the ancestors so that you can go forward in uncertain and ambiguous times.”

He recalled the 1991 discovery of a colonial-era slave and free African burial ground in lower Manhattan, now a national monument. Etched into one of the surviving wooden caskets, workers discovered the symbol of the Sankofa, which translated to English means roughly “go back and get it.”

“The Hebrew prophet understood this,” Curry said, referring to Isaiah, who preached during the Jewish dispersion. “The prophet (Isaiah) knew it … he was doing Sankofa. Look back to the wisdom of the past. Bring it into the present to go into future. This was at a time when Jewish people found their world disrupted. Their world had been one way one day, and the next, a nightmare.

“These were days when as James Weldon Johnson (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”) says, these were the days when hope unborn had died … and it is in this context that the Hebrew prophet spoke to his people. Listen to me, you who seek God’s dream in the midst of a nightmare … you who believe in love.

“Look to the rock whence you were hewn and the quarry whence you were dug. Look to Abraham. Look to Sarah. Look to Martin. Or, better yet, look to Jesus. The truth is … we ignore the wisdom of the past at our peril.”

You can find another version of his sermon, here.