It was sunny yesterday in otherwise rainy winter Oregon. It was nice. I thought I had been seeing more daylight lately and I was pleased to read in the newspaper that, indeed, last Wednesday had been the first day of more daylight than dark. It is nature’s sign of hope I think. It also is a sign that we are being newly called to action—the action of love.
God’s good news—the Gospel of love—promises salvation to all faithful people. And faith requires action. Love is not in any way about passivity. Even in the face of the absence of love action is required. Action is required first and foremost to keep yourself in the presence and knowledge of love and second to keep yourself actively engaged in love—as Jesus said “love your neighbor as yourself.”
This also is what it means to answer readily the call to proclaim the good news. The good news is love and proclaiming is action. Prophetic action is the action of proclaiming the good news by showing love, by raising up the quantity and quality of love. In today’s scripture we have a reading from the story of Jonah (3:1-5, 10), the prophet famous for his interaction with a whale. But the story we see tells us how Jonah too action to proclaim love. Jonah’s action changed the course of history for those who heard him and listened. We have another example of prophetic action in the act the US Capitol police officer who wore a red hat during the January 6 insurrection to distract the intruders and rescue fellow officers–love, in action.
Look at all the action words in the scripture for today:
-Jonah 3:1-5, 10: Get up, go, proclaim, Jonah set out and went, began to go, cried out
-Psalm 62: 6-14: pour out your hearts, God has spoken once, twice I have heard it, steadfast love
-Mark 1:14-20: Jesus came, proclaiming, saying, passed along [and] saw, said to them, went … farther [and] saw, called them, they left … and followed
To follow Christ is to be active in loving, which is on the one hand harder to do than we think. It is not just having warm fuzzy feelings. It is taking action to be filled with love in order to proclaim love. There is no possibility of passivity for we are called to love in every moment. On the other hand, the good news about this good news is the same thing in another dimension isn’t it?—to love means being filled with love.
Look at Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:16-18)—they were casting a net to catch fish—they were doing their work, following their profession with skill but also with the love of skilled fishermen. They were filled with love and Jesus saw that love in their hearts, in their souls, in their skill, in their teamwork, in the idea of the purpose of the catch which was to nurture people with food. When Jesus called, the love in their hearts led them to follow Him.
In 1 Corinthians 7:31 Paul writes: “for the present form of this world is passing away.” Present past and future all mingle in that statement because it is another kind of prophetic call, it is the call to us to understand that love is dimensional, that the world absent love is in a dimension we are called to turn from, and that the world filled with love is a dimension we are called to turn toward. Indeed, we are called to live in this new dimension of love. The possibility of this shift is eternal in every human soul. To follow Christ is to walk in the dimension of love.
LGBTQ people are well known for prophetic action. By the mere action of having faith and loving each other we are answering the call to walk in the dimension of love. Gerald Bostock, Donald Zarda and Aimee Stephens are the most recent prophets to call forth the dimension of love before the US Supreme Court, who last June ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex.
Take action.
Love.
3 Epiphany Year B RCL 2021 (Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Psalm 62: 6-14; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1:14-20)
©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 