My wife made me go to Cursillo. It didn’t sound like anything I wanted to do, and it didn’t sound very “Episcopal.” But as my friend Heyward Gould later expressed, “Hey, nobody told us how much fun this would be.” It was great, it changed my life, and I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter and participant ever since. This sermon I preached at a meeting of the Secretariat, which is what we call the committee that acts as the administrative leadership for the movement in our diocese. It’s based on “The Servant Song,” which includes the lyrics “Won’t you let me be your servant,” and “Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.”
“Let me be as Christ to you.”
A couple of weeks ago, we were here to bury Talma DeLong. Her husband was the director of Camp McDowell before Mark Johnston, so they were running the camp when Cursillo started here.
And that reminded me that I’m coming up on my 30th anniversary of when I served as lay rector. (You have to be pretty old like me to have served as both a lay rector and a spiritual director here!)
But I was young then. So young that my daughter had just been born. So my wife, Barbara, decided that she could not serve on staff with me; she needed to take care of the baby.
But my friends on the secretariat wouldn’t hear of it. A saintly woman named Doris Benson from Guntersville insisted that she be allowed to be an invisible member of the staff.
She would stay in the background and take care of the baby, and the pilgrims would never see or hear them. That meant she wouldn’t get to sing the great songs, and hear the talks, and do all the fun stuff; she would just babysit. And it’s not like she was going to be all that comfortable – we were still in lower camp back then. I was not sure this was a good idea. But she was so joyfully enthusiastic that I finally agreed.
When we got to camp and Talma discovered we had a baby, she decided she wanted equal time. So she would come get the baby from Doris and walk around camp with her. Sarah was teething, so Talma gave her a chicken bone left over from some of Cora’s famous fried chicken – a prized delicacy in those days at camp – and Sarah actually cut her first teeth gumming on that bone.
Since Doris got relieved some from her babysitting, I came back to the Kremlin, which is what we called the Director’s Cabin, to discover that she was giving foot rubs to the staff. She also sorted some materials that came late, and wrote notes of encouragement to the group leaders.
I had been worried that my staff might resent my bringing a baby along, but the opposite happened. Because Doris had such a servant’s heart, the staff felt spoiled; they felt they had a treasure and privilege other staffs didn’t get.
They found, like I did, that when Doris offered to do something, she was so joyfully enthusiastic it was hard to refuse. And she inspired everyone without having to say a word by the example she set for us.
On a Cursillo weekend, we teach apostolic action with the little slogan “Make a friend, Be a friend, Bring a friend to Christ.”
And that’s important. According to the great commission given at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, we are charged with spreading the good news and bringing more people to know our Lord.
But that’s not really what Cursillo is best at. What Cursillo is best at has more to do with the commission in the Gospel according to John: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
It’s not enough to bring friends to Christ. Part of the job of the Church – one of the main reasons we come together as the Body of Christ – is to keep each other in Christ. We’ve got to encourage one another, and support one another, and hold each other accountable.
But that’s not always easy. The reading from Colossians says we are to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, that we’re to forgive one another, and that we’re to be wrapped up in love.
It’s one of the readings suggested for weddings. And I always get tickled when it’s chosen because, right in the middle of it, it says “teach and admonish one another ....”
When I ask couples “What does ‘admonish’ mean?” most of them don’t know.
And when I tell them it means “to fuss at each other,” they start getting nervous.
We’ve all seen relationships get really messed up when the people in them fuss at each other too much.
Of course, it does make sense that if we’re about to mess up our lives by making some big mistake with terrible consequences, it’s probably the loving thing to do to fuss at us so we don’t make that mistake.
But teaching and admonishing must be done very delicately – with all that meekness and humility and patience – or it may do more harm than good.
In fact, it might be better to try to do it without words – by looking for the presence of Christ in one another. We need to demonstrate the presence of Christ in our own lives, and we need to look hard for the presence of Christ in those around us.
But that’s not always easy.
If we’re looking in others for the powerful King of kings in all His majesty and glory, or the charismatic teacher and font of all wisdom, or the powerful miracle worker who calms the storm and walks on water, then we’re liable to be disappointed – and we will most assuredly fall short trying to show this to others in ourselves.
So maybe we should be looking for the servant who washes feet – the one willing to stoop down and do the work no-one else wants to do, the kind of jobs that don’t bring recognition or prestige, the kind of jobs that might get messy or personal – the kind of servant who knows who it is who will betray Him and cause Him all kinds of grief, and yet serves the betrayer as well as the others.
We need to be that servant – not grudgingly or with resignation – but with joyful enthusiasm ... the kind of joyful enthusiasm that’s hard to resist.
And we need to let others be that kind of servant for us, which may even be harder.
And when we find that presence of Christ, we need to be thankful. As Paul says, we need to have gratitude in our hearts: gratitude that is not only felt, but expressed – right out loud.
That’s what I believe we need to be about as the Secretariat of the Cursillo movement, because that’s what I think Cursillo ought to be about. It’s not about making more cursillistas; it’s about demonstrating and discovering the presence of Christ.
It’s about convincing others to let us be their servants, and praying for grace to let others in the name of Christ, be our servants, too.