Atmospheric rivers, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, ice storms, … what a way to describe what we pray for today as “in our time … give us peace.”
Of course, time is not ours, time and space, which are one, are God’s. Creation just is. Justice is, love is, and it is up to us to reflect and reveal and respond, to understand that we live in all time. Thus, peace is the power of love, which comes from the power of our response in loving.
Moses [Deuteronomy 18:15-20] proclaims that God will send prophets like him, who will be “from among your own people.” Prophets are those who are called by God to call us all into love and away from disconnection. We are taught to think of the prophets in scripture, Moses and Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and people like that, when we think of prophets. We forget that Rosa Parks and Jim Obergefell are prophets. Undoubtedly there are prophets in your life, people whose truth is definitional for you.
So we forget that we too are prophets when we walk in love in response to God’s call to us to live into the love with which God created us as LGBTQ+ people in God’s own image.
Paul draws a distinction between knowledge and love in 1 Corinthians [8:1b-13], between acting from the heart and soul, loving, which builds up more love, as opposed to acting from conventional wisdom, which builds up more fences. When we act from love we build up more love. When we build up love we cannot be disconnected from each other or from God. When we show the love we have for our LGBTQ+ lives, the joy builds up the whole connected community of humanity. Building up love is the prophet’s call.
A CNN piece this week reports that “Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ at much higher rates than older Americans … ” (Nicole Chavez, CNN, Jan. 25, 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/us/gen-z-adults-lgbtq-identity-reaj?cid=ios_app). It is because of us, because of our lives as prophets of love. Gen Z adults have grown up in a world of loving possibilities, in which we, God’s LGBTQ+ prophets, have filled creation with our love, in which the example of the possibilities of our love, given us in creation by God, is visible, palpable, and loving.
It is because our love is visible, as a form of prophetic witness, that so many have been able to step aside from the strictures that bound them [the “knowledge” that puffs up in Paul’s words]. Have you seen any of the Showtime/Paramount+ series Fellow Travelers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_Travelers_(miniseries) )? Among other things, it is a pretty accurate representation of those times not all that long ago; of the dangers and trials of LGBTQ+ life in a time before the prophecy of those of us who follow still the exodus call of Stonewall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots ). Drag queens at Stonewall Inn leading the charge—more LGBTQ+ prophets.
In Mark’s Gospel [1:21-28] Jesus is confronted by a “man with an unclean spirit.” Jesus understands completely that this is a case of a human emptied of love and thus overwhelmed by the vacuum inside. Jesus loves, calls out the truth, and love rushes in. The unclean spirit, the vacuum in the absence of love, creates a void, a vacuum in the consciousness of creation. Jesus voids the vacuum and fills the man with love. Love fills up the void, love builds up the kingdom. Love leads the way for prophets to gather creation together.
It is the comprehension of the power of our own LGBTQ+ love that makes us prophets. Our love fills the void, our love builds up.
4 Epiphany Year B 2024 RCL (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)
©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 