The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry preached February 13 at a memorial for the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The service at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City is available on the cathedral’s website. The sermon begins at about the 1:18 mark.
The presiding bishop said that when he was a young priest serving in Southern Ohio in the 1980s, he and a group of Episcopalians drove to Columbus to hear Tutu speak.
“These were the dark days,” Curry said. “The memory of Stephen Biko and the other martyrs was fresh. These were the dark days when police were killing young men. People were disappearing in the middle of the night. These were the days when as James Weldon Johnson said, ‘hope unborn had died.’”
He continued, “As best I can remember, he ended it by saying ‘I believe that one day my beloved South Africa will be free. I believe that one day she will be free for all of her children. Black, brown, colored, White, Asian, all of her children. I believe that one day my beloved South Africa will be the land of all the rainbow children of God. I believe it. I haven’t seen it. But I believe it. Because I believe in God. And I believe that God has a dream for South Africa. And that nothing can stop God’s dream.’”
— Kirk Petersen
Kirk Petersen began reporting news for TLC as a freelancer in 2016, and was Associate Editor from 2019 to 2024, focusing especially on matters of governance in the Episcopal Church.
