The Majesty of Love

I think we are living in a critical time. I think this is one of those times in the history of creation that we can actually make a difference because the gates of heaven are open. Did you ever think what that might mean, that the gates of heaven might be open? It would mean that angels are moving among us, protecting us as they can, comforting us as they must, and moving us as necessary safely across boundaries. It also means that we can move into their realm. How do we do that? By learning to love.

We all know what it feels like to feel love; it’s kind of warm, it’s comforting, it’s tender. As wonderful as it is–and it is wonderful and should be rejoiced–it isn’t what God asks of us. What God asks of us is to give love, which is quite different. Giving love means many things. It means constant outward awareness not only of ourselves but of all around us—all of creation and especially all of God’s people. It means securing justice and maintaining righteousness. It also means thinking always of love, which means not giving yourself over to the absence of love. There should be security and comfort in the knowledge that love builds up, love persists, love grows into majestic beauty.

Do you think about majesty? I had almost forgotten what it meant until I returned to Oregon where I am surrounded by majestic beauty.

Majesty is the immensity of love realized in the eternality of promise and hope. Majesty is the healing power of love given.

Jacob, we are told, had such majestic love for Rachel that he worked and waited seven years to wed her and then apprenticed for seven years more in return for union with her (Genesis 29: 15-28). It is just one example in the Old Testament revelations of God’s manifestation in the world of the majesty of the dramatic power of love that persists above everything.

In return we are to give thanks by which we continue to give love back to creation. Psalm 105 reminds us to give thanks, sing praises, experience glory and rejoice—all ways in which we build up love to ever more majestic heights.

We have help when we need it, not just from those angels sweeping among us, but indeed from God. Paul reminds us (Romans 8:26-39) that God helps us when we are weak, that God’s Spirit intercedes between our cries “with sighs too deep for words” carrying our prayers to God, that God constantly searches our hearts.

Jesus’ string of parables of mustard seed, yeast and hidden treasure (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52) reveal the same truth—that no matter how tiny a bit of love we manage to give, it will yield majestic results.

For we who are God’s LGBT children, created every one of us in God’s own image, our hearts searched constantly by God, for us the manifestation of love is the way we generate love that switches creation into new dimensions. Iconic author Armistead Maupin, a hero of the LGBT community, nailed it: “Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us. We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives” (Logical Family: A Memoir). It is in the living out of this search for and building up of our “logical families” with love pure and simple that we walk with angels through that gate into a new dimension of the possibility of the majesty of love.

 

Proper 12 Year A 2020 RCL (Genesis 29: 15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Let Anyone with Ears Listen!

Weekly pandemic rant: My Dutch friends are going out to dinner. My Canadian friends are going out to bars for drinks. In The Netherlands and Canada, new cases of COVID-19 are in the hundreds per day. In the US they are in the tens of thousands. In sane parts of the world contact tracing and masks have eliminated the death threat. In the US it is still too dangerous for me to see my buddies let alone hug them.

Whose idea was this?

In seminary I became enamored of the writings of St. Paul, who is vastly misunderstood. Reading today’s translations of letters (epistles) that were intended to be read out loud to a congregation and thus were written in an oral style (like poetry, full of elements that help listeners grasp and remember the content) is tricky all by itself. Pile that on top of the cultural differences across millenia and it makes the texts into a bit of a puzzle sometimes. But not today. In today’s reading (Romans 8:12-25) Paul writes/says: “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”

I hope so.

My heart hopes so.

Glory about to be revealed.

Well, that would be love.

We know love in our hearts but we often are weak at giving love outward. It is actually hard work to remind ourselves to set self aside and let our love flow outward. It is only when the love flowing from our hearts builds in community that we can achieve the glory Paul refers to, the revelation of the meaning of the “children of God.” This phrase “children of God” is a metaphor, not as we imagine for naiveté or innocence but rather for the condition of pure love that children possess. God wants us to recover that condition, to live lives in love with life and with God and with each other.

But God’s compassion is not only powerful but also omniscient. Our weaknesses are known and loved and forgiven so long as we keep trying to love. The psalmist reminds us (139) that God searches us out and knows our hearts, even our restless thoughts.  It’s a good thing!

In the story of Jacob’s ladder from Genesis (28:10-19a) we encounter an example of the glory of love, which comes as a surprise for Jacob, who stumbles upon it. “Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place …. ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” Jacob has not before seen the power of the flow of love, but when he manages to shift his awareness into love’s dimension he is utterly transformed by the vision.

It seems we experience awakening from the sleep of self to find we have arrived in the realm of love, surrounded by the field of love, and in that awesome love we see the messengers of God’s love. Signs that are always all around us become manifest and we understand.

The Gospel parable from Matthew 13 is that of the good seed, or, we could say, of the good seed sown among the weeds. The essence of the story is not that some seed is good or that weeds exist, but rather that the good seed is protected by the loving action of God’s creation so that even when it is sown among the weeds it still can thrive and produce manifest love.

God’s love is like the pollen, constantly falling and constantly sowing the earth where it lands. Some of it falls in good places; some of it blows away; some of it falls among weeds. In the end it is the existence of love that matters; the love-pollen sows more love and not even the weeds (the absence of love) can push it out. Love triumphs.

So it is that our job is to find the dimension of love and do our best to live there, to dwell in love, to walk in love, to produce enough love to slow a pandemic, even among the weeds.

A frequent theme of this blog is the idea that we as lgbtq people are born as children of God’s love. We take our identity as created in God’s image from the ways in which we love and from the ways in which we live out our loves. We struggle at once for equality and equilibrium as “just folks” and at the same time for recognition and pride in the love we hold and share and give. We are living in a critical moment then, because in the pandemic we are certainly brought into equilibrium with everyone. But we have the love in our hearts to foil the weeds, to heal creation.

Jesus says: “Let anyone with ears listen!” He means: “Give love.”

 

Proper 11 Year A RCL 2020 (Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23; Romans 8: 12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

Sowing Seeds of Love

Is the pandemic worse or better? I guess it depends on where you are about now. We are experiencing increasing numbers of infections daily in much of the US, including here in Oregon (although the numbers here are still lower than in other parts of the US). On Facebook I can see my friends in other parts of the world reuniting, going out, beginning to take up the new kinds of life that will be required to live in the pandemic until either a vaccine or a cure emerges.

We are still hunkered down.

The question in my heart each day is: “will this be the day we give enough love to bring life back into equilibrium? And each day I wonder where is the love we need to be giving? Where is the love we need all to give to bring each of us individually back into the arms of our loved ones, back into the company of dear friends, back into the simple things in life like sitting on a park bench or getting a coffee or a drink?

There is a lot of “self” (“flesh” as Paul might put it [Romans 8:9-17]) visible in the world right now. Flesh feels good in the moment but it is not in the Spirit, it does not lead to “minds set on the things of the Spirit.” What is the difference between places with rising infection rates and those returning to some version of normalcy? With all deference to all of the potential political comments that could pop up here, let’s focus on things of the Spirit. The difference is that in places where people dwell in the Spirit, where they give love for each other and for the collective all, the Spirit triumphs, and sets people free.

There is no barrier to love except self.

Love can set us free.

Those who love are occupied not with self but with the building up of love, the growing of love, the expansion and sharing of love. Think of how good it feels to hug your pal—now multiply that feeling a million times and then a million times a million. That is the love we need to give right now, in every moment.

All of us are capable of this love, because all of us are created in God’s image, and in that we are already filled with love, because God, who is love, dwells within us. All we have to do is let self step aside and let that love work its magic.

Jesus’ parable about seeds sown in good soil (Matthew 13:18-23) is just another interpretation of this fact about God’s love. The seeds sown in good soil are the seeds of love sown in a world where love prevails. Such seeds must yield more love.

Jesus nails it when he points to “the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields.”

We must hear the word and understand it. We must imagine the warmest hug ever, and then multiply that feeling, as I said. And then we must stand vigil against the weeds and rocky grounds of our own hearts, so that we stay focused on that love. It is we who must sow the seeds of love.

There are sociological theories about the role of lgbtq people in society that point to a calling of sorts, a kind of genetic imperative that the world must yield seeds of love that in turn yield crops of love. One idea is that we are hear, indeed, to give love; that we are well-suited because our very God-given identity is bound up in the love that we share with each other.’’

We must sow the seeds of love, now more than ever.

 

Proper 10 Year A 2020 RCL (Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love is Always the Answer

We are living in a very strange time; one might even say a paradoxical time. As I seem to say over and over, there is the constant cognitive dissonance of this beautiful early summer, on the one hand, and the horrific threat of Covid-19, on the other. There is the cognitive dissonance of ongoing demonstrations by millions for equality, on the one hand, and other millions clogging bars and beaches despite the need to distance to avoid the virus, on the other; and the churning of these two dissonant vortices is itself a source of cognitive dissonance. Then, too, there is the threat to social liberty—after decades of work at gaining equality for gay and lesbian people we find that everything we have worked for is threatened, not alone by the usual oppressive forces, but also by the threat of the virus, which requires a different expression of individual liberty to embrace life but at the same time leads to social requirements like stay-at-home orders that are critical to preserve life itself.

But here we are.

I love with all my heart every day, or at least I try.

Do you?

I hope so.

It is the only way. We must all love, meaning we must all give love. Which means we must all feel love. We must all embrace God’s love, feel it in our hearts, and give it to each other with acts of justice and respect and grace and, of course, affection.

Today’s scripture all points to the conclusion—the eternal revelation—that God’s love, which is eternal, is eternally given to us through the small things that make up everyday life. In Genesis (24) we have the end of the saga of Abraham and Sarah, which in turn is the beginning of the saga of Isaac and Rebekah. It is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham in acts that are turning points in human life. God’s love is complete, God’s love is eternally given, and God’s love is the miraculous action of a woman bearing a child, a child growing into adulthood, a woman with a water jar, a blessing, a camel mounted and ridden, a marriage—miracles of everyday things.

Paul (Romans 7) struggles with the everyday paradox of disconnection—sin—aligned with connection—faith. The eternal battle we all take up in every waking moment between the chatter in our heads that occupies our feelings and prevents us from experiencing the love that is all around us, and the very expression of God’s eternal and eternally promised love that is the tonic that fills the soul like water filling a tide pool when we allow ourselves to feel love. Grace again.

Jesus (Matthew 11) interprets the paradoxical clutter of social forces experiencing that same battle over love. Jesus recites a hymn of thanksgiving that god’s promise of eternal love is complete in the epiphany of Christ, he reminds us that love is best embraced by those closest to God’s gracious will, the “infants” of God’s kingdom. We are (as we learned last week too) the “infants” of the kingdom when we quell the noisy paradox and embrace God’s love fully and purely. It is in this embrace of love that we receive the “rest” Jesus offers to all of us who “are carrying heavy burdens.” He tells us to take his yoke—the mantle of love—and from it to learn to be gentle, humble, gracious, affectionate and just.

In other words, take on the yoke of love and you will find rest. The rest Jesus points us toward is the grace of God, the salvation of creation, which is always and only and eternally the embrace of love. Love is always the answer.

For we who are God’s lgbt disciples, for whom our very identity is the expression of love, the job of life is to embrace the love that is within and all around us, to share it with each other, and in so doing to reveal the march of the miracles of love in everyday life. Life each day is a miracle of God’s love.

 

Proper 9 Year A RCL 2020 (Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45: 11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.