Moving the Furniture

I know it isn’t Lent yet. Mercifully it’s still a ways away. Maybe what I’m experiencing is a prelude to spring, which also is still a ways away. Yesterday we had some of those hunky moving guys come clean out the garage and take away several pieces of furniture we had been tripping over. And then, once that was done, I moved my desk. In fact, I moved my whole study around. It’s quite surprising how refreshing it is. Almost like having a new life. Everything is the same, except everything looks different. Perspective shifts. I see things in a different light with a different emphasis. Fascinating ….

Just to be clear, I don’t like where my desk is now, and if I manage to get this online I’m going to move it again. But that will just shift my perspective yet again. I might be on to something here ….

There is a strange kind of synergy between how you feel and how you are and how you are going to be. It is all about love, of course. If you can fill your heart with love, you can win. I know my husband feels loved because I’ve been telling him constantly lately. It’s amazing how it can change your whole life, your whole perspective, just to tell someone you love them.

Today’s old testament scripture is about the calling of Isaiah (6:1-13). It takes place inside a glorious vision of heaven—that place where love dwells in abundance—with six-winged seraphs and smoke and hot coals and the ordaining of Isaiah thus (vs. 6-8):

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

I remember the first time this was read aloud in chapel when I was in seminary. We all suspiciously looked around, looking each other in the eye, to see who felt like this was their own story too (all of us, of course).

The metaphor of the cleansing by burning coal is important because it involves not just interaction with God but challenge and pain and cleansing and renewal and commission all at once. In my own case, I had been an active but not very prominent member of my church. My husband and I sat in a pew near the front, right behind our best friends. When I first told my rector I thought I was called to the priesthood he sent me away (three times in fact) to pray over it. When I finally convinced him, he sent me to the bishop, and only then did the whole process commence. A committee of parishioners (most of whom had never made my acquaintance) was appointed to work with me prayerfully to discover my call. After several months, as I was about to go to a diocesan retreat, one of the members of the committee lit into me (see the parallel there?) by asking how a [epithet for gay man] dared defile the church by pretending to be called to the priesthood. To say I was shocked is understatement. It was no less stunning than would hot coals have been. In the moment my heart sank and I prepared to be turned away. My rector just looked at me and raised his eyebrows and I knew it was up to me to speak the truth. I said a bit shakily (but I got it all out): “I know I have been called to proclaim the good news and to serve as a spiritual leader.”

The meeting broke up. Nothing else happened. Here I am in my 24^th year of priesthood. (And, yes, that person was at my ordination and among the first at the altar to receive the new priest’s blessing. We subsequently worked together for many years in the diocese.)

Nothing like moving the furniture, in reality or metaphorically, to shift your perspective, to show you what is truly important, to bring you back to the good news of God’s love given to all in creation and restored in salvation.

Ultimately it is grace that sustains us. It is grace, which is love, that nurtures us. It is grace, which is love incarnate in those we love and in those who love us that literally sustains us in all things. Without the smiles and the “I love you” there is nothing else.

The reading today from Luke’s Gospel (5:1-11) is the story about the catching of an abundance of fish. Simon Peter and James and John were exhausted from a night of failure to catch anything when Jesus commandeered their boat to preach from. Defeated and frightened, we can almost imagine their raised eyebrows when Jesus says to let down their nets. The catch was so immense, almost overwhelming, that all were amazed. But Simon and James and John were shocked, stunned. Their perspective was shifted, and in that moment they were called and commissioned.

And so it is with all of us every day. We have to constantly see shifting perspectives to experience the grace of eternal love. Each day is a new opportunity to move life’s furniture, to say “Here I am; send me!”

5 Epiphany Year C 2022 RCL (Isaiah 6:1-8(9-13); ; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11)