An organic whole*

Creation is an organic whole. I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone. I read this week that the ozone layer has begun to recover, more than two decades after we stopped using ozone-depleting chemicals. The Milwaukee paper today has a cover story about algae blooms in Lake Erie; they’re a problem in all of the Great Lakes, and problems in the lakes signal problems in the environment and presage problems in life all around those lakes, not to mention reverberations worldwide from changes in the socio-economics of the region. It’s a bit like chaos theory, which most of us learned about in Jurassic Park. Everything is connected.

If everything is connected then it follows that a disturbance in one place can lead to a domino-effect of disturbances along the line. This is the reasoning glbt liberators have used for decades to encourage coming out. People who do not come out harm themselves for sure, by not reaching personal fulfillment. But they also harm those around them, entering into relationships based on false pretenses, as well as bringing harm to the rest of us who are gay who are seen as somehow odd for having come out. When all glbt people stand up in society for just whom God has made us to be, there will be no room for oppression or suppression. Paul writes to the Romans (14:7) “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.” Paul’s focus in this passage is on unity with God, living into life with God. But lest we live fully into life with each other we cannot be one with God.

The other side of this coin, to mush a metaphor, comes in Matthew’s Gospel (18-21-35) where we hear Jesus repeatedly telling his disciples that they must forgive and forgive and forgive and then forgive some more and it must come from the heart. Without the opening to God created by the flow of love among people there can be no space for justice. Without forgiveness there can be no room for everything, which is interconnected, to thrive. Forgiveness must come from the heart and must flow among us, but of course, it does not mean we must be doormats.

Yes, there must be marriage equality. Yes, our families must be respected as such. To that end we must continue to stand up for ourselves. A former mentor used to say repeatedly that the most important thing gay people did in the church was to show up and be visible, as a witness to their faith among the whole congregation. So, yes, we also must find a way to forgive, and with forgiveness in our hearts continue to show up and be visible. Creation is an organic whole.

*Proper 19 (Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35)

©2014 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Justice and love*

The world is a scary place sometimes but the world also is a wonderful place and these two poles—beauty and fear—exist simultaneously all the time. Around the world hurricanes and earthquakes and acts of savagery are going on twenty-four-seven. But in my backyard there seems to be a convention of cottontail bunnies hopping around in my newly refurbished lawn. They’re eating something I suppose, but it sure looks like they’re playing to me. Last night while I was cooking dinner I was watching them out the window and it was both the manifestation of all of the childhood books about bunnies I ever read and way better than anything on television. It was odd I thought, that as I finished cooking and was wiping up the counter they seemed to finish eating and hop away. That made me wonder whether they had been watching me! Maybe I was the entertainment for their dinnertime! (Unfortunately, their brown coloring against the garden colors at dusk makes it almost impossible to get a good picture of them.)

This week there is a cluster of scripture appointed that includes God’s instructions to Moses for the first Passover, a psalm of praise that moves rapidly from praising God with dance and song and timbrel and harp to rejoicing in justice—beauty and fear all in one, as it were. Paul’s letter to the Romans explains the relationship between law and love, in which we are instructed to move from reliance on law to salvation in embracing love. Matthew’s Gospel has instructions for adjudicating disagreements in the church. This passage has a curious clause that I never noticed before (or, rather, I never paid attention to before), where Jesus says those who refuse to reform should “be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Of course, that is a dichotomy isn’t it? Because Gentiles were not part of the Jewish community of Jesus’ followers and tax collectors were the hated agents of the occupying Roman government. But, didn’t Jesus sit down to eat with tax collectors and heal Gentiles on the road? Even the reviled, even those who persecute us, even those who refuse to repent, must be embraced in our love, it seems to say. Those are tough instructions in any generation.

There is a lot of detail in scripture and too many people are too hung up on that. The texts in the Bible contain the revelation of God’s action in the world. They are not sets of instructions, nor are they like a cookbook or a rule book. Rather, the revelation in each case must be teased out through interpretation, and that interpretation cannot be done once for ever but rather must continually be reembraced, revisited, realized by each generation of believer in each new context.

The critical point that emerges is that God is love, and we, born of God, also are to be love, and that for love to thrive there must be justice. The precondition for God’s love is justice. The two go hand in hand. The God of love is also the God of justice, just as the psalmist sang.

And so this week we have (again) confusing Federal court adjudications about marriage equality, one circuit declaring two state bans on equality unconstitutional (and we must stop saying they are bans on “gay” marriage—they are bans on equality in marriage), another Federal court declaring they are reasonable. Even the courts that declare these laws unconstitutional then “stay” their decisions meaning the result is continuing injustice. Marriage equality, it seems, is still a tough slog in the US. The world is a dichotomous place.

Our God, who is love, demands justice for all of God’s creation. It is in justice that love can thrive. But remember that Jesus teaches us to embrace even those who insist on injustice, tough guidance but real, because it is only in love and respect that justice can be found. In other words, keep the faith.

Proper 18 (Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20)

©2014 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.