Hearing Love

I suppose we hear what we want to hear.

I certainly listen—in the night to trains in the distance, to the rustling of the Douglas firs, especially to the rain, especially to the rain that comforts me. When I was an adolescent living by the Monterey Bay I learned to fall asleep each night to the distant sound of a foghorn, which likewise was a sound that comforted me. It was a sound of human engineering that worked in accord with nature and that idea too comforted me. When I came to Portland to go to college I learned all about this comforting sleep sound of the rain pouring but also landing on windows and roofs and gutters and flowing and the sounds of the rain became my lullaby.

We ask God to hear our prayers and then to grant us peace. The truth is, when our prayers are the voice of the love within us then God’s peace has already been granted, much like the peace of the fog horn or the rain at night. Of course, any conscious interlocution with God is a sign of not only faith but of readiness for prophecy. When we consciously join in God’s eternal conversation we become like God’s voice in creation and this is what a prophet is. God’s prophets are those who viscerally experience—hear–God’s love and speak it aloud. Sometimes we call this witness when it means being present in creation in acts of love. Witness, prophecy—these are just the evidence of the active presence of God’s love working in and through us.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 8:1b) “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up” and “anyone who loves God is known by [God].” Knowledge, say, like gossip, puffs up the ego, which is separated from God because it is self-aggrandizing and that separates us from each other. But love, experienced, felt, taken in like a deep breath and given out like a great cry, builds up. If you don’t believe me, just see what happens when you actually say “I love you” to someone you love.

In Mark’s Gospel (1:21-28) we see Jesus preaching in a synagogue, speaking with authority. Like many such stories, the important bit arises almost as background, as a “man with an unclean spirit … cried out.” Jesus recognizes the torment in the man’s soul—what some commentators call a demon—and commands it “be silent, and come out of him!” The healing takes place with “convulsing and crying with a loud voice.” How like the moments when love can triumph by filling the vacuum of the absence of love. How like moments we all experience every day in our relationships with those we love. The healing action is the action of hearing, of hearing both the suppressed love and the convulsing of the fear of love’s absence.

Oppressed people know all too well how this goes. Once when I was sitting in collar at my church’s booth at gay pride a man came up to me and made fun of my pectoral cross sitting on my chest below my collar but also near a set of rainbow rings. Then he spat at me and walked off. It was a fairly typical interaction with a protester at pride. But it was also an example of hearing the action of an unclean spirit interacting with the fear of love’s absence.

The power of God’s love is ours to build up through our faith expressed not only in perception of love but in the prophetic action of loving. Loving begins with hearing the truth with compassion.

4 Epiphany Year B 2021 RCL (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.