Rector's Blog: Listening for Love

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Each week in our Banquet service there is a time in the liturgy where people in the congregation are invited to respond directly to the homily - to ask the preacher questions, or make comments, or share their own connected story. Last week I was particularly moved – and convicted by one person’s comment.

She recounted a story of a time recently when she had been confrontational with someone she knew over a racist comment that person had made. And she was wondering if her speaking up was unloving, if she should be sorry. She was not worried that she had said something cruel or unkind, mind you. Simply that she had been curt and forthright in holding someone accountable.

I preach about love a lot. I do this because I believe in the Christian teaching that God is Love. And if God is indeed Love, as our tradition holds, then it is the most important, most powerful thing there is. Love. And since our world doesn’t believe that, those of us who do believe it have a responsibility to keep saying it and trying to live and breathe that truth in our daily lives.

So I was preaching about love. Specifically, I was saying that our baptism is an inauguration into the lifelong vocation of spreading Love, of partnering with God in the healing and reconciliation of the world. This is the foundation of our lives.

At the conclusion of the Homily, she raised her hand. And she said, “I know I’m supposed to love, but I feel like I acted with hate recently and I want to know what you think.” She then relayed the aforementioned story. A racist joke made in an email thread among family and friends, and her response, which was essentially that she wasn’t going to be party to any racist nonsense and asking to be removed from the thread.

I kept waiting for the part where she was mean or hateful. It didn’t come. What she shared though, was the deep anger she felt during and after this experience. And she wondered about that anger, and if it was incompatible with love. That anger and that confrontation, was that hate?

I am not a psychologist or a sociologist, and I’m not going to tell you anything that others haven’t said before – there is nothing new here – but I have to tell you an experience I have in my work as a parish priest: In our current cultural context more women are engaged with church than men. So, I work with and alongside a lot of women – both on our staff and in a pastoral capacity – and I have seen time and again women who feel guilty of being angry. They have been taught their anger is shameful. They have been taught that being confrontational is unladylike and unattractive. Which would not be so awful if women were not so relentlessly and overwhelmingly bombarded with the false idea that their value lies in their attractiveness and acceptability to men.

I remember being at a clergy gathering centered on racism in The Episcopal Church once. A colleague got up to speak and she began by saying, “I want to speak freely to this group but I’m afraid of being labeled an angry Black woman.” She took a breath and continued, “But I am a woman. And I am Black. And I am angry. And I have reasons for my anger.” I had not heard that before. Again, I’m not saying it had never been said before. I’m saying I hadn’t heard it. And then I couldn’t unhear it.

First a word on anger: Anger is not anti-love. And it is a misguided understanding of love that makes us equate anger with hatred. As I wrote last year, God gets angry. And God is Love. Our Scriptures paint a consistent picture of a God who gets angry when they see people in positions of power marginalize and oppress the powerless in God’s name. God’s anger is not arbitrary but is inflamed by injustice and inhumanity. And God’s anger is not hate. It is an extension of love.

My parishioner’s expression of anger was an expression of love and an act of courage. And it reminded me of all the times I had sat on my thumbs and kept myself from confronting friends or family when they dehumanized others, because I didn’t want to rock the boat. Didn’t want to be unpleasant myself.

When we deny ourselves the natural emotion of anger as a response to injustice, marginalization, or dehumanization, we are denying the voice of God that stirs within us. And when I deem a woman’s anger unattractive, unseemly, undesired, I am denying the presence of that same God that dwells within them.

The reason I preach about God’s unconditional love for you every week is because I believe our culture conditions you to disbelieve it. I figured if you have a voice in your life that keeps saying it maybe that will move the needle a little. But it’s only empty words if I don’t follow it up by seeking to love you unconditionally myself. Likewise, all my words of respect for women are mere virtue signaling if I am not willing to follow them up with actions, with listening, with being willing to hear something for the first time and not unhear it, with recognizing God’s presence in a woman’s anger and, instead of shutting down, allowing myself to be challenged, convicted, and transformed by it.