One of the latest homeowner irritations I have faced is a bird’s nest in a place where I don’t want one. It has been an interesting lesson for me, because before I had a chance to react the nesting birds were hatching babies and there was nothing left for me to do but shake my head. The birds needed shelter, and the Zen of my garden was sufficient (I guess) for them to think my downspout by the patio would make a nice home. Last week when our little logical family was reunited after a year and a half of pandemic, we had several evening meals out there, much to the consternation of the parent birds who flew about chirping at us but wouldn’t go to their nest.
Houses—homes—are things of necessity. But they also are buildings of love, built up not only with walls and roofs but with hugs and smiles and warmth and the spoken reminders of love shared among people. It is this building up of love that sustains us and that turns a house into a home.
In 2 Samuel (7:1-14a) we learn of King David’s desire to build a temple that can be a permanent home for God and for God’s worship. Worship, of course, is the action of loving God with praise and thanksgiving. That action is the love that builds up the power of God shared among God’s people. But God will have no confinement because love cannot be confined. God instead will make a “house” of love for David and his offspring. “God ‘will make you a house’ forever” means God’s love, built up, is eternal and wherever love is, there we find a home.
The Psalmist echoes the same theme (89:20-37). Victorious is the faithfulness of the love of God we share; eternal love is as firm as any foundation of stone; the eternity of love is our covenant with God and with each other “as the sun before me … shall stand fast for evermore like the moon, the abiding witness in the sky.”
In Ephesians 2 (11-22) Paul reminds us that it is love that brings us from the far off of selfishness to the proximity of love, that we are citizens through love of God’s kingdom of love, that our foundation and cornerstone is built on love and joined together with love and grows in love.
In Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56) Jesus invites the disciples to “come away to a deserted place” but when they arrive at Gennesaret’s shore they are thronged by the seekers of God’s love. The introvert’s Nirvana becomes the locus of love. It is a reminder that love is not only eternal but omniscient, that the more we love the more we can love.
I don’t know about those birds. But LGBTQ people, created by God in God’s own image of love to be the heirs of love by the building up of the love that defines us, are called to discover our own Gennesaret shores in the bosoms of the logical families we build.
Proper 11 Year B 2009 RCL (2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)
©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 