Alpha and Omega*

[John 18:37] “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

[Revelation 1:8] So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and who is to come, the Almighty.

[2 Samuel 23: 6-7] But the godless are all like thorns that are thrown away; for they cannot be picked up with the hand; to touch them one uses an iron bar or the shaft of a spear. And they are entirely consumed in fire on the spot.

 I hope you are feeling restored. We are. For all of our carrying on about turkeys and football and shopping, I have had an American moment this year. Thanksgiving has been a moment of pause and of the giving of thanks for the love I share and for his full recovery from the medical establishment’s foolhardiness. And we ate turkey, and watched movies (we’re gay – remember? – no football in our house!), and made turkey soup and had sandwiches, and tonight Mexican pizza—jack cheese and black beans and green chiles—for relief from the monotony of turkey dinner. “I like turkey dinner” Brad kept saying. I was grateful to hear it. And he ate the whole pumpkin pie leftover. I was thrilled. And for these small things I am thankful to God.

So it is time to turn to Advent, and to the darkness that gives us space for contemplation before the annual celebration of the birth of our savior. I am so grateful to my colleagues in seminary who introduced me to so many approaches to Advent. I have learned to savor the season, much as I savor the weekend after Thanksgiving as a time of quiet. Advent is about getting ready. Are you ready?

Are you ready to hear the truth? Jesus is the king of heaven who came into the world as a human so that everyone of us who could hear his voice could belong to God’s truth. Not just “would hear” but “could hear.” Are you one who can hear but refuses to listen? Advent is for you. Stop, sit very still, watch the gray clouds on the horizon, look at the sea all gray below the cloud cover, and listen, listen, listen, for what God is saying to you. Do not be like the thorns that are thrown away … instead, just listen.

And you will hear God saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” That means the beginning and the end, and that means, all things. That is God’s truth. Nothing else is God’s truth. You are gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered, and you are made in God’s own image. And you hear God’s truth, which is that God and no human is all things. God has made you to be one of the precious who hear God’s voice, who know God’s truth. The truth is this, that God loves you. And all God wants from you is that you should love God too. And the best way to do that is to love one another.

We celebrate this moment of pause – in the church it is the feast of Christ the King – because it is time to turn to Advent, to turn inward, to think carefully about how we listen to God and to the truth that Jesus came to give us.

Pray. Listen. Give thanks always. The Alpha is The Omega.

* Proper 29 Christ the King (2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-13, (14-19); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved

Provoke One Another*

My favorite waiter is a sort of lapsed Roman Catholic. I doubt he has been to mass in decades, although really I don’t know. I do know he has a sort of terror about apocalyptic scripture; every year as Advent approaches he gets scared about the lessons he would hear were he actually to go to mass. I find it humorous and also a little awe-inspiring. I always try to tell him what I’m going to try to say here, but he doesn’t believe me.

Jesus is very clear in this Gospel (Mark 13:1-8), that as the decision-point approaches there will be wars and famines and earthquakes.

Well, 2000 years on we still are having wars and famines and earthquakes. What you need to try to grasp here is that that is not the important part of Jesus’ message. The important part is the last phrase “this is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” You see, our whole lives are made up of sequences of wars and famines and earthquakes. Trials come and go. It is the nature of human existence. And yet, how often do we fall to pieces in the midst of these trials, thinking it somehow is the end? Instead, we must see these trials as beginnings, as places in life where we begin to see the truth about our existence and our relationship with God, which is our relationship with each other.

As it says in the letter to the Hebrews “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without ever wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.” We must understand that through our trials our love for one another deepens, and as a natural consequence of that, our relationship with God strengthens.

LGBT people in America have just won several important victories. We have won votes for basic marriage equality in three more states. An out lesbian has been elected to the United States Senate. It is a kind of morning, like a new day, except it is the result of something like a cross between a war and a famine and an earthquake. And so we see it is the beginning of a birthpang, of justice. Justice my friends is the one thing God always delivers.

So “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds … and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25). Yes, indeed, let us consider how to provoke one another to love.

It is Thanksgiving in America. As a citizen of the world, I always am surprised to discover how little people in other countries understand what this week means to us. And as I grow older and older I understand ever more just how important Thanksgiving is for us. Because it is our once-a-year time to pause, and consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Happy Thanksgiving!

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Proper 28 (1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10: 11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8)

Giving is loving*

To give is to act out our relationship with God. If we think we are God, then we are likely to think we need not give, because our pride has shut off our capacity to understand what is required of us as citizens of God’s kingdom. But, if or when we understand that we are truly God’s children, and heirs of God’s kingdom, then we understand fully what our responsibility is. And then when we give, we give of what we have, and usually without restraint. I am writing metaphorically here … I have been giving more than I have for a few weeks now. But I comprehend that this is required of me, and I am surprised each day that when I reach the end of my rope, suddenly more appears, with which I am able to go on giving.

We joke in the Episcopal Church about this gospel story about the widow’s mite, because it always comes at the precise time the parish is asking us to pledge money for the coming year. It’s a shame. Because it distracts us from understanding this bit about giving as something that comes from the soul, like a spiritual exhalation. When we inhale, God gives to us, when we exhale, we give back to God. And that is how it ought to work. When we understand that love is the manifestation of God, we see that that is indeed how it works. The widow gives all that she has, because she knows the love of God, and she knows that the best way to return God’s love is to give. And she probably does not even think that she is giving away all that she has, she thinks rather that she is giving what she can, and all that she can, and that the word all is the important part. She withholds not a penny. This is what God asks of us daily, and I’m not talking about parish pledges. I’m talking about loving each other. God calls us to give, from the well of love that we have.

If there is any particular way to spin this message for the lgbt community it is simply to remind us all that it is how we love that defines us as a community. It is owning up to the right to live in love as God has called us to do that gives us a social identity. And the love that we live, is the love that calls us to give.

Love.

Give.

Because giving is loving, and loving is embracing God.

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Proper 27 (Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9 24-28; Mark 12:38-44)

Where you go, I will go*

Brad, my husband, and I have been together for something like 34 years and a bit. We lose track of the exact number sometimes, because like most couples we’ve had moments when we were less together than others, and because after three decades memories are less precise. Still, it has been a blessing. I remember walking with him on the beach in Galveston shortly after we met, but when we were both clear that something momentous was working in us. He said he thought we would last a long time because we had a similar world view. I guess he was right.

The past two weeks have been a bit of a trial. He had pneumonia, the critical kind, and wound up in intensive care. I wound up at his bedside, listening to each breath, watching every tick or eye movement, wishing I could just take him home and give him something to eat. He is fully recovered now and will come home later today, by the way, or I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.

I think one thing that kept coming to me all during the ordeal was how the two of us have become everything for each other, real family. I know this has been palpable for both of us since our marriage in Toronto, on our 30^th anniversary. We thought we were making a political statement, and we thought we were making a wise decision, but we both were stunned to discover how different it felt to be married. We are family.

So instead of looking at the displaced propers for All Saints that most Episcopalians are using today, I wanted to stick with the propers for this Sunday, the 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost, not in the least because the opening lesson is the story of Ruth and Naomi, and the trials that made them a family unto themselves, and the beautiful song that Ruth sings to Naomi: “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” It should be read at every same-sex wedding, heck, it should be read at every wedding.

There also is a reading from Hebrews that rather gruesomely compares the theology of sacrifice made by Christ for sin—disconnectedness from God—for all humanity, with the sacrifice of goats and calves and bulls and heifers. Let’s just be clear, in Christ we are all connected with God forever through our humanity which we share with Jesus. Mark’s Gospel story for today is the story of Jesus giving the greatest commandments, to love God and to love one another. At the end of the story Jesus tells a scribe, who has understood that to love God is to love one another and to love one another is to love God, that he is not far from the kingdom of God. We need to understand that in the love we share for each other we can see and touch the palpable presence of God, who is always within us as love.

Several priests came to visit us and to pray with us during this. One friend said she could see Brad change as the prayers were said over him. As the process went on I became more insistent in my own prayers, and gave up the formulas I’ve memorized over the years for more precise demands. “Jesus do this now!” (Fill in  your own blanks there.) What do you know? It worked. It works. Our salvation is that we already are with Christ. Our knowledge of Christ who is God is palpable in the love we share.

*Proper 26 Year B (Ruth 1:1-18; Psalm 146 Lauda, anima mea; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind*

On Saturday October 20 I wrote the post that appears below. I went to bed early, as I always do on Saturday, planning to post it on my way to church early Sunday morning (I like to sleep on it, as it were). At 3am the hospital called to tell me my husband was unable to catch his breath so had been moved to intensive care. I went to be with him.

He’s recovered now; I’m en route to bring him home. But I want to post this anyway. How little did I know how God answers us out of the whirlwind:

Well, I’ve been there this week. Between chaotic people and a husband in the hospital I feel like I’m living in the whirlwind. What is GOD saying to me, out of this whirlwind? Good question. Actually, I like this GOD from Job who dares to say “who the H are you?” I think we need to think about God in that way more often. Like James and John in the Gospel, we tend to think God is “ours” and is always working for us individually, and that is why we have the temerity to pray for things for ourselves. But of course, Jesus’ rebuke is the reminder that God is the God of the universe (this is echoed, of course, in the Psalm and in Job (which is an echo of the Psalm) where we learn just how God created everything). When we pray, first we should listen, and second we should respond to what God has given us. That, is effective prayer.

My husband is sick this week, in the hospital with pneumonia. I was out of town, and he got febrile and had chills so he went in. I always feel powerless when he is ill, because I am. But also because when I was a hospital chaplain among people with AIDS they so often died of infections they got in the hospital. So I always go through the same set of prayers—fix him, make him well, and bring him home quickly. But what God is asking of us is that we should take responsibility for God’s kingdom. We, glbt people, are called by God to love with all our hearts so that the love we share for each other will lift the rest of society like a peak in whipped cream. We are to love with every ounce of our glbt being, and in so doing our love lifts the whole world.

Boy do I love Brad. I am not whole without him. Last night I went over to the hospital even though I’d been 12 hours flying home. He said “you need to rest” and I said “no, I need you.”

Enough said.

GOD answers us out of the whirlwind. Listen.

*Proper 24 (Job 38:1-7, (34-41); Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b Benedic, anima mea; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved