Nearer now*

We have to admit it was a pretty interesting week for gay people in the United States, and especially for those of us who are or who hope to be married. I am cynical enough that I had suspected sending the issue of our right to marry to the Supreme Court was only inviting disaster. And I have to admit I was wrong, sort of. The good news is that the decisions they made in our favor acknowledge that we exist and that we deserve equality under the law. Make no mistake, the dissenting opinions go more in the usual direction of pointing out that we are not born gay and our sexuality therefore must be controlled by heterosexuals. And while there was some positive decision-making on their part, there also was a good dose of side-stepping the issues—failing to decide California’s Proposition 8, for example, which allowed them to avoid admitting that we have a right to marry.

Still, it is progress, and we had better take it and run with it. I remember right after Brad and I were married in Toronto, we were introduced to a young gay man who said something like “good for you … we have that right and we had better use it or they’ll take it away from us.” He was on to something. Not only that, his point accords nicely with Jesus’ role in Luke 9, where it tells us he “set his face” to go to Jerusalem—nothing like the stern look of a young prophet who has made a firm decision! Jesus is en route, moving ahead, not stopping, and not looking back. He ignored the unwelcoming villagers and excoriated his disciples for complaining. Don’t stop now, don’t look back, was his message. Then a follower wants to join him and Jesus reminds him there is no stopping, no resting place along the way. The next guy wants to go home and put things in order (by burying his deceased father no less!) but Jesus says no again, don’t stop, don’t turn back, keep going is the message. And finally the last follower wants to say goodbye to the folks at home but Jesus says “No one who … looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And that is the message.

The kingdom of God is the kingdom of justice. It is the kingdom of righteousness, which means all is right with God and within, and righteousness is the flower of the seed of justice. Equality is the garden where justice blooms, and in the kingdom of God, equality, justice and righteousness demand constant attention. Equality, justice and righteousness demand constant awareness, constant motion, and constant motion forward. There is no turning back.

That’s a good message for us, spiritually and otherwise  this week. We have marriage in 13 states now. Thirteen countries have made marriage legal and in some of them it has been long enough that it has become normative. This is true in the Netherlands where I marvel each time I meet two young men who are planning to marry. They plan for a year or more, they make sure they have their finances and their romances in order. And they enter into marriage with a maturity that would make Americans blush.

We all are fit for the kingdom of God, because God has made us heirs of the kingdom by creating us in God’s own image, and that means God’s own lgbt image. Don’t look back, don’t stop, not now, the kingdom has come even nearer this week.

*Proper 8 (2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

God is waiting for you in the silence*

I am in Portland, Oregon this weekend for the fortieth reunion of my graduating class at Lewis & Clark College. It has been a long time since I visited Portland, but it looks about the same to me even though I’m well aware of the phenomenal growth the city has experienced in just the past few years—let alone four decades. One thing that surprises me, although I’m sure it shouldn’t, is the substantial and substantially visible gay and lesbian population. It looks like Portland is a good place for lgbt people to live. I have seen that confirmed all through the weekend’s events as well. I suppose it makes sense that people I know would be lgbt affirming people. But on the other hand, I don’t remember it that way from college days.

Of course, as we discussed over and over at yesterday’s events, the early 1970s was a different time. The overriding feature of the era was the war in Viet Nam, and that’s pretty much how we all remember it. We brought the college to a brief halt the day after the shooting at Kent State. We remember the day Roe v. Wade decision was announced by the US Supreme Court. We remember LBJ’s passing almost as well as we remember Nixon’s demise. It was a tumultuous time altogether.

I kept trying to articulate to my friends last night how it was that I felt in those days about my sexuality, and I didn’t really succeed at saying it quite right. I probably won’t get it right here either. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t out, although I wasn’t. And it wasn’t exactly that I didn’t know, because I think I did. It was more that it didn’t have a name or an existential reality for me. I didn’t know just exactly what sort of thing it was so I couldn’t quite imagine what to do with it or about it. Coming to terms with it was more a matter of understanding than anything else. But as I tried to articulate this, what I kept coming back to was the idea that it was visibility that was critical for me. After college I went to graduate school at Indiana University, and then took up my first job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In both places my work and my social life were predominantly in the context of the music community, and gay people were prominent in that community. It was as I met attractive men with engaging personalities and watched them socializing together and listened to their stories that I began to understand my sexuality. And once I understood, then I was able to begin to explore. Well, maybe all of that should have happened in my adolescence, but it didn’t—not in those days.

I do remember coming out clearly. I won’t tell that story here, but I will recall that it was not thunderous or calamitous at all, except maybe in my own head. I remember that my friends and even co-workers greeted the news with smiles and understanding (not a few hinting they’d known all along). I felt like I had been welcomed to my own reality. Except that, by shifting my existential being just a tad, I had entered an entirely new dimension. And I would say now, looking back, that that was just exactly what happened.

There are two powerful stories about shifting dimensions in the scripture appointed for today. In 1 Kings 19 we have the wonderful story of Elijah’s search for God on the mountaintop and in Luke 8 we have the story of Jesus casting out demons called Legion. Both are pretty dramatic stories. The Elijah story narrates a theophany as God comes near preceded by wind, earthquake and fire—but it is the “sound of sheer silence” that announces, if you will, the presence of God.

The magic of theophany is in their metaphorical power. As revelation they tell us directly about the experience of God. But as reflection they allow us to look back into our own lives for the moments when God drew near. Wind, earthquake and fire—that reminds me of the time of seeking before I came out. In 1 Kings it keeps saying that there was wind but God was not in the wind. I think that’s about right. There were powerful forces buffeting me but God was not in the forces. God was in the sound of sheer silence that was left after the disruption ceased. God is always near, and God is always tending to us even in those powerfully life-altering moments. And we can find God’s real presence in the silence, when we set aside the disrupting distractions.

In Luke 8 Jesus casts demons out of a man who has so many his neighbors have shackled him. So powerful are these demons that when they are cast out they land in a herd of swine who promptly leap into the sea. It reminds me of the lonely nights and the emotion-filled times that preoccupied me before I came out. And when I had come out, it was as though the demons had not only left me but, indeed, run off into the metaphorical sea to drown. My life was healed because I was no longer cast out, but in the warm smiles and understanding hugs of my friends I was made free. This is the power Jesus shows us. We have the power to be healed if we can give up the deceptive disrupting distraction of letting demons overpower the reality God has made for us. God has made us lgbt in God’s own image. As Jesus says, we are to continually declare how much God has done for us.

There is one more tantalizing passage in today’s scripture, in Galatians 3 where Paul catalogs the dichotomies of human existence and says they no longer matter, we all are free in Christ. And we are free in Christ because we are one in Christ. We are one in Christ because we all are the children of God, made in God’s own image.

In the U.S. we’re holding our breath waiting for the Supreme Court to announce decisions on same-sex marriage. It is a little bit like huddling in the cave waiting for the wind and earthquake and fire to pass. Whatever they decide, remember that God is in the sound of sheer silence, looking for you, waiting, for you.

* Proper 7 (1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a; Psalm 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Reconnected*

Life’s storms swirl around us. Last Sunday was peaceful and sunny and cool in Milwaukee—LGBT Pride was kissed by the sun and blessed by God. The week saw torrential rains more than once, and those caused lots of delayed travel, and that caused lots of gnashing of teeth. Drama. Life is full of drama even in the best of times.

Lots of drama this week in the scripture. In Luke 7:50 Jesus says to the woman (identified as “a woman in the city, who was a sinner”) who has been bathing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair: “50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Jesus uses words like these at the end of most of his healing events. It points out the action inherent in healing, which is to bring peace into a chaotic void. Like a metaphorical thunderstorm, the things in life that keep us back hound us with battering winds and driving rain and distract us with noise and lightening and frighten us with seemingly unrestrainable power—how ever will I survive this?—we ask ourselves in the midst of it. And then, when it has passed, there is peace, stillness, and in that stillness is the knowledge of the presence of God and the certainty that we are not just in the presence of God but that we are indeed together with God. Jesus’ words also literally point the hearer (in this case, the woman, the Pharisees, and us) in a new direction, in the “way” of peace. The phrase “go in peace” is an instruction, but also literal direction for new life. She is literally reconnected with God; now she is instructed to turn in the direction of connectedness.

Ah, then there’s that word: sin. We are first told that the woman is a sinner, and then we hear Jesus announce that her sins are forgiven. We have to remember always that sin is separateness from God. Jesus is not telling the woman that he has forgotten her past. He is announcing her present, togetherness with Him, in which there cannot be separateness from God because Jesus is God. The Pharisees in the story act surprised, in fact they are playing their part as bigots well! They continue to look down on the woman, and, indeed, on Jesus, not grasping that God is in their midst. And so that is the contrast. The woman is without sin because she is with Jesus. The Pharisees remain mired in sin because their bigotry prevents seeing that God is right there with them. The difference between sin and togetherness with God is ours to create, ours to perceive. Apart from God we find ourselves tossed and turned in the maelstroms of life and together with God we go in peace. The difference is ours because it is only we who can separate ourselves from God.

We separate ourselves from God whenever we seek to make ourselves Godlike by making our priorities most important. In the Old Testament lesson Ahab who has not just the presence of God but the favor of God to be a king to God’s people—Ahab falls into the vortex of selfishness and rearranges lives to suit his own will, actually taking the life of Naboth so that he, Ahab, can have Naboth’s fine vineyard. What is the sin here? The sin here is putting God aside with the action of playing God. We do the same whenever we seek advantage over another of God’s creatures.

In Galatians Paul writes that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” He means that he has put aside his tendency to sin, to separateness, and is now at one with God because Christ, who is God, lives in him. He has been crucified with Christ because the action of dying to sin is wrenching. It might mean putting aside treasured desires, it might mean yielding pride and what used to be called vainglory in order to weather the storm and come back to center, to that place where your faith has saved you and you now can go in peace.

For GLBT people it sometimes seems like all of life is one long storm, one long and lonely maelstrom. The false prophets cause the whole world to swirl with our condemnation. But it is they who have no faith, who have separated themselves from God, and obviously, it is they who have no peace. If we stand firm in the knowledge of God’s love for us, and in the certainty of God’s love in creating us just as we are in order to love just as we do, the it is we whose faith saves us. It is we who are connected, and eternally reconnected as children of God.

Go in peace.

*Proper 6 (1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

God’s promise is forever*

I apologize that I’ve missed posting the last couple of weeks. First we moved from Philadelphia to Milwaukee. Then I went to Rio de Janeiro for work for 10 days. Then I was recovering from all of the above. Here’s a picture of Ipanema, the famous beach in Rio, which was just outside my hotel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose one of the things on my mind is how jumbled life has been of late. We’ve done pretty well at transplanting ourselves but we both would tell you it has been tough. The last time we moved was almost three decades ago, so it isn’t just the cultural difference or the matter of everything being different, but also the physical demands, which are different at 30 than they  are at 60 (trust me!). ..

But it reminds me of these “widows” in the stories as well as of Paul recounting his conversion. In 1 Kings Elijah is commanded by God to go to the home of a specific woman, identified as a widow. When he gets near the town he finds her “gathering sticks.” So, we learn, not only is she a widow, which means she has no means of support and no inheritance to rely on (in other words, no family but her son), but she has to gather weeds outside the gates to eat. As she works, she fills her head with worry to the point that when Elijah speaks with her she bursts out in anger. In the second part of the story, after she has trusted in God and Elijah has fed everyone, her son (in other words, the very last hope she has) becomes deathly ill, again she lets her anger and anxiety overwhelm her and it all bursts out when Elijah speaks to her. As I said, the other stories are similar (which is why the lectionary brings them all together!).

It is hard enough, sometimes, just to get through life, without the additional burdens that membership in creation sometimes brings (weather, for instance) or in society (jobs, politics, housing, family) and sometimes it can all seem overwhelming. And that is the lesson—if you let it overwhelm you then you will fail to see the grace of God staring you in the face. There are lots of morals to these stories, but the message for us is not to let worry or anything else overwhelm our sense of the very presence of God in our lives. As Psalm 146 says (verse 5), God keeps God’s promise forever.

Today is Gay Pride in both Philadelphia and Milwaukee. The rainbow flags were flying over the lakeside festival as I drove past earlier today and it was beautiful. It was a reminder that my family—my husband and me and the love we share—is blessed by God. That whatever else preoccupies us, God has brought us together and made us one, and that is God’s promise to us forever, and that is the gift of being God’s gay and lesbian children.

Psalm 146 vs. 9 “The LORD shall reign for ever, your God … throughout all generations! Hallelujah!”

*3^rd Sunday afterPentecost or Proper 5 Year C (1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24); Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.