Awkward Blurting Prophecy Love

Love builds up, which is how there is such power in being in a community of people who walk in love. This is why the LGBTQ community clings to its identity as a community of people who are created by love in love for love. The one thing we all know when we see each other at pride festivals or LGBTQ film festivals or at the LGBTQ community center (or dare I say it? even in the bars) is that we all know in our hearts what it means to love. And we all know the cost of that love. And we all know the value of that love.

We who are God’s LGBTQ heirs are born of the stuff of love, which is how we are connected to creation through eternity, which is how eternity is our inheritance. We have the tools to be people of love but it is up to us to learn to use them.

Jeremiah (1:4-10) relays the story of the revelation of his role as a prophet of the God who is love. God tells Jeremiah he was conceived as love for love to love and given in his birth the words of love. Jeremiah keeps saying “I am only a boy” but God keeps reminding him God has given him the words he needs. Like the awkward Noah, tumbling into love with Benjamin who blurts out “it’s safe to let someone love you” (Benjamin 2019 ). Noah is a prophet here, as indeed are we all when we let ourselves experience love, blurting along in our childlike way the truth God has given us.

Luke (13:10-17) tells the complex story of Jesus’ healing of a woman in the synagogue on the sabbath. The “leader of the synagogue” is indignant that Jesus has “worked” on the sabbath. Jesus (angry Jesus, hurray!) reminds the crowd that the sabbath is God’s day, love’s day, and therefore there is no better time for healing, which is the imparting of love. We have to remember that healing has multiple meanings in the Gospels, not just sudden wellness but more importantly restoration to the community. Not unlike how we now are trying to learn how to rejoin our communities after three years of quarantine and lockdown.

What Jesus means is that there is no one time but there always is all time and every time for love. And Luke tells us the crowd rejoiced. Hallelujah. Hurray for awkward blurting prophecy love.

Proper 16 Year C 2022 RCL (Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17)

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