Rejoice at the rainbows*

“I have set my bow in the clouds.”

When have you seen a rainbow? One of the reasons I love the Netherlands is that you see rainbows all the time there. That’s because it rains a lot, but also because the sun shines a lot. Sometimes when both happen at once, you get really dramatically pretty rainbows. One of the most dramatic I have seen was over Amsterdam’s Museumplein one afternoon—just an ordinary Tuesday afternoon I think—when coincidentally the Concergebouworkestr was rehearsing Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. I had been waiting for the tram, and I heard the music, and wandered over there to see the orchestra in action. And just as they got to those amazing great gates of Kiev, here came the rainbow … the sun sparkled, and the whole plein erupted in applause and shouts.

Wow. What if every act of God could result in applause and shouts?

I love the ordinariness of the scripture this week. In the first letter from Peter we have a very direct and straightforward set of facts—Christ suffered for sins, was put to death, was made alive, proclaimed. And now you are saved. What more is there to say? In the Gospel there also is direct, straightforward language. Jesus came from Nazareth, was baptized, heard the voice, was driven into the wilderness, came back to Galilee, and proclaimed the fulfillment of God’s will.

Jesus says “repent.” I bet you think that means you should feel bad and stop doing something. That is not true. To repent is simply to turn, to re-turn, if you will, to God. Remember … remember God. That is how we repent. What is the best way to repent? The best way to repent is to remember God by re-specting each other … I divide that word that funny way on purpose because I want you to think about it. That means “do it again, as you did it before.” Remember the last time you gave someone your total and absolute utter respect? That was the last time you re-pented, the last time you re-turned to God. Re-capture that feeling.

Plain, straight-forward, direct: love God, my friends. Stop the madness, listen to the music, re-spect each other, and rejoice at the rainbows.

*1 Lent (Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15)’
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Dazzled, transfigured*

When you were ever transfigured? Well, no point in begging that question, the answer for me, clearly, is when I came out. That first day, I will never forget it.

I had been working on it for a long time. We forget today how times have changed. I really can’t explain that part clearly here, except that I knew there were gay people and they were pretty happy and I was probably one of them and I just couldn’t figure out how to get from here to there. And then I had a terrible cold I think and had to stay home from work (it was probably the time I had walking pneumonia). So after I left the doctor’s office I stopped at that adult book store that I had never dared to visit before. You know what? There was a really nice young man working there and we had a nice conversation. I never saw him again … who knows, maybe he was the angel sent that day to guide me to my destiny … Still, I bought an Advocate which in those days wasn’t yet a slick magazine, but was a newspaper for gay men from San Francisco.

I went home and devoured that newspaper, and I subscribed to it, and I ordered some books from ads in it. And I eventually started to get used to the idea that it was possible to be one of these gay people. (Okay, sorry, context is everything—this was 1974.) And I began to get comfortable with gay men, who after all in a school of music were all around me, and I began to say yes when they invited me to things, like “come over we’ll bake cookies” and stuff like that. How overtly perverse! And then I fell in crush with a guy who was completely oblivious to me. We ate our cookies and went home (yes, they were really just cookies). The next day I encountered one of his friends on the steps of my library, and he asked me what was on my mind and I told him, and he took me home and the rest was history! Still is! Hurray! Too bad I didn’t write down the date.

But that day, I was transfigured. I became everything I was meant to be, not just scholar, but gay man, and sexual being. It was glorious. I was so brilliant not even Tide or Cheer could’ve made me more brilliant (ok, that’s a gloss on the Gospel, so if you’re curious you’ll have to go read it, I can’t do everything in one blog post!). And you know what, I still am. And there are no more closets to be built like Peter wanted to do to contain his prophets. And there is only God’s reality, to which we have been called, in glory.

So my friends, celebrate who you are. You, too, have been transfigured by God.

*Last Sunday after Epiphany (2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50: 1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Keep your eye on the prize*

Were you expecting a Valentine’s Day message? May I be the first to point out that Valentine’s Day is not a holy day of any kind …. Sorry. (Actually, that day is the feast day of Cyril and Methodius, but I digress ….) Love and saccharine are all very nice, but not very realistic. In fact, although my husband and I always share cards and do something special on the occasion, I think we both rather think of it as a heterosexual thing, slightly foreign, sort of like Canadian thanksgiving.

Not to worry … for glbt Christians, this week is full of hope, for as Paul says, “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it” [1 Cor. 9:24-25]. The prize, of course, is salvation, eternal life in unity with God and with each other. We already have been given this as a gift from God. Our job is to claim it. To do that, we have to refuse to be distracted, and learn to keep our eyes on the prize. We have to learn to run in such a way that we win.

Justice and righteousness go together, in the Old Testament we are told repeatedly that they kiss each other. Without both, salvation cannot be realized. So that means that, assuming we all are already right with God (righteousness), we are going to have to focus on justice. For gay people, that means, we have to demand equality. We are children of God, under God. We must not let society oppress us, and especially we must not let society use our own faith to oppress us. And, we must be careful when we fight oppression, that we understand what we are doing. It is too easy to get distracted.

Every year at the various gay pride events, we have to deal with bands of roving protestors. We always are told to ignore them, that to pay them heed is to honor their outrageous claims. And despite that, always some gay people follow after them engaging them in debate—debate which we cannot win, by the way, because if we allow ourselves to be sucked into a debate about the legitimacy of our very being, then we already have lost. No my friends, this is not the way to learn to run so we win.

We have to demand justice. We have to demand that we are given the same rights as everyone else. We have to demand that our gay lives are honored in society. Marriage? Yes, absolutely. And remember, don’t let them call it “gay marriage”—it is either marriage or it isn’t. Adoption? Absolutely. Family? Absolutely. Justice demands equality, which demands equal treatment in society. Period. No qualifications, no questions.

What about church? I want to cry sometimes about all of the gay and lesbian people who subject themselves week after week to churches where they are oppressed, told they are inherently evil, told they cannot even, simply be. My friends, those are not Christ’s churches. Remember, Jesus warns his followers to stay away from those who pretend faith. Jesus tells the leper he heals in this week’s gospel to keep his mouth shut, and the guy ignores him. The upshot is that Jesus is swamped, his ministry is threatened, by one whose faith is pretended.

My church–The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia (www.htrit.org)–is gay affirming. No one tells you to be apologetic. No one asks you to pretend you’re a mis-shaped person. We believe in you. And we believe in God, who created you. Join us if you can, or just keep coming back to this blog. But above all, keep your eye on the prize, which is Christ Jesus.

*6 Epiphany (2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.