Prophets of Love

We were watching an old movie last night and the heroine said “I just want things to stop happening to me.”

I said to my husband “that’s how I feel.”

Peace.

Peace is that place where nothing is happening. Because when nothing is happening, everything can happen.

Well, that’s hard to explain isn’t it?

But first, a note about Amy Schneider, whose forty day winning streak ended this week on Jeopardy!. Yes, she was just one of those people who plays on tv game shows. But, no. She was a heroine of the LGBTQ movement, for showing up, for telling her story about Princess Ozma on national television and for then continuing to show up. This is the essence of prophecy, showing up and being visible and sometimes nothing seems to happen. Prophets bring peace in just this way.

After a couple of challenging weeks, I am really looking forward, with love in my heart, to a fire in the fireplace and tuna casserole for supper (although I am puzzled by the shortage of medium shells in the market!?). I’m really looking forward, with love in my heart, to my husband’s hugs and his laughter. I’m really looking forward, with love in my heart, to peace, to that time and place where nothing is the best loving thing happening, where love can just be.

The essence of God’s creation is love. Love underlies all else. We call that subtstrate in my science. It means everything else rests on its functioning. The way it functions is that we must call it forth to make it visible. We can do that easily, by just being people of love.

Making the supper, knowing your husband will revel in eating it. That kind of thing is what it means to love.

In Luke’s Gospel (4:21-30) Jesus returns to the synagogue of his youth. Everyone is smiling and welcoming him and beaming with pride at this nice young man, now all grown up. That is, until he tells them the truth about love. He recounts this history of prophets who came and found no love and so could build no love. The crowd, without love, notoriously becomes enraged and chases Jesus to the edge of a cliff. The cliff is very real but is also a perfect metaphor for the cliff we live on if we fail to walk in love. Jesus, who has love for them, is protected by the love in his being and they part, like the proverbial Red Sea, for him to pass through the midst of them.

Prophets come from God to show us a glimpse of ourselves. We can see in them the source of love that can be built up for the glory of creation. We can find that peace that passes all understanding if we can see the love the prophet shows us and find just a bit of it in our own selves. All we need is a scintilla, from which to build up. As Paul says (1 Corinthians 13:12) we need only see love as “in a mirror, dimly” for it to begin to build.

At the beginning of the Gospel story (which is also the final line from last week’s appointed scripture) Jesus says “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” As I wrote last week, it is important that it happens in their hearing, in a community sensibility, rather than in their sight, which they might easily ignore. He means, love has come for you, love has come to tell you love is here, love has brought you a prophet to show you the way, love is ready for you to grasp it and to build it up.

In a way, in this time and this world, all of us who are God’s created LGBTQ people are prophets. Our job is to love, to love and to live, in peace, to be seen to be loving people living in peace, to build up the power of love. Even when we understand only as in a mirror dimly.

Epiphany 4 Year C 2022 RCL (Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30)