Belonging*

The first time I went to Crete, to Heraklion, was my first experience of both Greek society and what could be described as New Testament ambience. That is, learning a little bit of Greek and a little bit of Greek ways of being turned out to be really helpful in understanding stories like the one we heard today. On one trip, as usual I flew in from Amsterdam. That means I got up at 3:30 to catch a flight at 6:30 that arrived in Crete about 11:30am. I went directly to sleep for several hours. Then I needed coffee. So I wandered out of the hotel and found (no kidding) a Starbucks— tucked into a corner of a narrow street. It was sunny and warm and I sat outside sipping my coffee and watching people go by. Pretty soon I became aware of two small boys who were playing nearby. They were laughing merrily, so I started to watch and I noticed they had a shiny red top and they were twirling it rapidly so it would spin. Then they would follow it along and when it fell, they would laugh and pick it up and move a little bit and start over. It took me awhile to become aware of the adult a few meters away who was directing them about where to play. And it took me awhile longer still to realize it was all about entertaining people like me in the hopes of getting thrown a few euro coins. About the time I figured it out the manager of the Starbucks came out and shooed them away.

I remembered this when I was pondering that young woman in the story from Acts, who it says had a spirit of divination. My trusty commentary supplied the information that what she was doing was what we would call ventriloquism—throwing her voice—so, you see, it sounded like her prophecy was coming from the sky or even from Paul and Silas, the missionaries. This got me to thinking about how things often are not what they seem, which is another way of saying things often are more complicated than we want to know. Like the two little boys with the top, this young woman was earning money— a great deal of money it says— telling fortunes and throwing her voice.

So an obvious question is, why would Paul mess that up by ruining her gift?

This great story is actually full of drama and interesting, umm, characters. For instance, Paul is our hero, we know he is an apostle of Christ. But we forget that he was an itinerant preacher, homeless and penniless, dependent on living ‘ in the homes of his converts. We forget that he spent his days preaching in the marketplace. Imagine how you would react if you went to the supermarket to buy some lettuce and in the produce section there was a homeless guy preaching loudly at you? That is about how Paul looked to the people of this town. And one more thing, we also forget that Paul had had a stroke—his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, his near death in which Jesus Christ spoke to him directly and set him on the course that would see him create the church we know today, that experience also left him disfigured and unable to speak clearly. We also have the character identified as the jailer, probably a Roman official. He had the tough job of roughing up criminals and responding to the mob scenes in the city. We forget he would have been a soldier representing the occupying authority. He would have been torn constantly between his job and allegience to the Roman government who had control of his life, and the people over whom he had authority.

“That we all may be one.” This is Jesus’ prayer in the garden in that long night of the soul before his Crucifixion. It is his prayer to God for his disciples and for us— for all who have heard his word. In this moment of utter despair, Jesus prays to God that you and Jesus and God and me might always all be one. The hard part for us is to understand that God has already made it so. We all already are one. Whether we like it or not, we are all one, because each one of us and every one of us is created in God’s own image. And there is the key to this puzzle. God’s image is the image of diversity. God’s image is the image of all of us and each of us different as we are and yet together too. So, nice gay and lesbian people like you and me and other “characters” all are one. Jesus said: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us …” And so it is.

But why did Paul exorcise that demon and cause the young woman to lose her gift and her job? The reason was, she prayed for deliverance, constantly. The story tells us she “kept doing this.” The story tells us she knew Paul and Silas had the news of the Most High God, of a way of salvation. For her, salvation meant “healing.” In the New Testament healing means becoming one with the community. Salvation is belonging forever. This young woman, an outcast her entire life, just wanted to belong. Don’t we all, just want to belong? Paul, who knew the spirit of Jesus Christ, made it happen. He made it possible for her to belong.

This is the Gospel in simple terms. That God already has made us all belong. Our salvation is, that we all, already, belong.

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

7 Easter (Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)

Lydia, the deacon of purple cloth*

The essence of Salvation is vision. The reason we belong to church is to celebrate our Salvation, and the way to do celebrate Salvation is to receive it fully. To do that you have to see it, you have to see God’s love, which is all around you. So the essence of receiving Salvation is having the vision to see what is right in front of you, but we humans are really bad at vision. Often we see what we want to see, and not what we ought to see.

For instance, last week when I was driving up Lake Michigan along Lincoln Memorial Drive, the water was crystal blue in the spring sun, it was shimmering together with the sky, the glory of God was clearly visible in God’s amazing creation. And yet, when that SUV passed me on the right going 75 (the speed limit there is 30) with no hands on the wheel, I had a really hard time seeing that driver as a loving child of God. I really did.

Cats, you know, see motion better than still. The human version of that is that we see the things that get us excited, and we just pay no attention to everything else (a good explanation for both Trump and Sanders campaigns, as it happens.) Now, excitement, there is another spiritual thing. Being excited is just about like being all wrapped up in the Holy Spirit. New ventures especially are always exciting, because they are shiny and new and like a journey at its beginning they are full of hope and promise. Part of why it is so exciting is because there always is risk, risk always makes your heart pump, takes your breath away.

I remember lots of exciting risks in my life. Setting out for college for example. It seemed like the culmination of everything before. But at the same time it seemed like the very risky first step of a long journey. It required me to leave everything behind, and yet instead of loss that became an opportunity for growth. But I remember clearly packing my steamer trunk, and my folks driving me to the airport, and climbing up those stairs (yes, this was pretty much before jetways … ) and turning around at the top to wave bye! Then after that, I do not remember much else. I do not remember the non-exciting part. That part that must have included roommates and classrooms and books and all the rest. I don’t remember any of that because, after the first glimmer of excitement, everything else just fell into place like normal.

When that happens, we risk missing the vision of our own Salvation. Sometimes I think we fail to see that the new beginnings, the exciting risky pieces, are the essence of normal. I know I love regularity and sameness. But God’s idea is that we always should be on a journey of discovery. God intends us always to be moving forward, always to be undertaking new beginnings.

We have a story from the Acts of the Apostles about the founding of a church. It begins with a vision—Paul has a dream in which he hears someone begging him to get up and travel to a new place. So off they went, travelling for a couple of days over sea and land until they got to where Paul thought he had been called. It says the stayed there    for “some days.” That means after the excitement wore off there was a lot of boring stuff.

On the Sabbath they went out to the river to worship in the clearing by the flowing water. There they spoke with a crowd gathered and among them was a woman named Lydia. Now Lydia was about to have an exciting experience. We do not know how it was that Lydia was called to that place at that time. All we know is that she was there, and that she was open to hearing about God. (The story does tell us that she sold purple cloth.) The next thing we know is that she caused the creation of a church. Her “household” were all converted in a blink of God’s eye. You see, “household” would have meant all of her relatives, and their relatives and everyone else living in or working in the compound. They all were baptized, probably dozens at least, and then it says, she made her house a house of welcome, a place of refuge. It says she urged the apostle and his party to move in.

It seems to me Lydia was an evangelist. Lydia was the person with the vision to see God’s love all around her. Lydia had the vision to see that loving God fully was the way to extend God’s love. It also seems to me Lydia was a deacon,      a woman ordained by prayer and the laying on of hands by an apostle in the presence of the waters of baptism. Deacon Lydia immediately caused her household to become a church and opened its doors to the blessings of the apostles. And we read in Phillipians how that church thrived, and it is still there today. Now that was exciting. That was vision.

So, was Lydia a lesbian? It doesn’t go there, we can’t assume that. But we can see that no matter who Lydia was, once the Holy Spirit was upon her she was able to make miracles happen. LGBT people everywhere should look to this vision. All you have to do is receive the Salvation God has already prepared for you. And you do that by loving each other. Even those *#*#*** driving 70 in the right lane with no hands on the wheel while talking on a cell phone. Especially love them.

Just wait for next week, when Paul’s jailer founds a church too!

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

*6 Easter (Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67 Deus misereatur; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29)