Hearing Love

I suppose we hear what we want to hear.

I certainly listen—in the night to trains in the distance, to the rustling of the Douglas firs, especially to the rain, especially to the rain that comforts me. When I was an adolescent living by the Monterey Bay I learned to fall asleep each night to the distant sound of a foghorn, which likewise was a sound that comforted me. It was a sound of human engineering that worked in accord with nature and that idea too comforted me. When I came to Portland to go to college I learned all about this comforting sleep sound of the rain pouring but also landing on windows and roofs and gutters and flowing and the sounds of the rain became my lullaby.

We ask God to hear our prayers and then to grant us peace. The truth is, when our prayers are the voice of the love within us then God’s peace has already been granted, much like the peace of the fog horn or the rain at night. Of course, any conscious interlocution with God is a sign of not only faith but of readiness for prophecy. When we consciously join in God’s eternal conversation we become like God’s voice in creation and this is what a prophet is. God’s prophets are those who viscerally experience—hear–God’s love and speak it aloud. Sometimes we call this witness when it means being present in creation in acts of love. Witness, prophecy—these are just the evidence of the active presence of God’s love working in and through us.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 8:1b) “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up” and “anyone who loves God is known by [God].” Knowledge, say, like gossip, puffs up the ego, which is separated from God because it is self-aggrandizing and that separates us from each other. But love, experienced, felt, taken in like a deep breath and given out like a great cry, builds up. If you don’t believe me, just see what happens when you actually say “I love you” to someone you love.

In Mark’s Gospel (1:21-28) we see Jesus preaching in a synagogue, speaking with authority. Like many such stories, the important bit arises almost as background, as a “man with an unclean spirit … cried out.” Jesus recognizes the torment in the man’s soul—what some commentators call a demon—and commands it “be silent, and come out of him!” The healing takes place with “convulsing and crying with a loud voice.” How like the moments when love can triumph by filling the vacuum of the absence of love. How like moments we all experience every day in our relationships with those we love. The healing action is the action of hearing, of hearing both the suppressed love and the convulsing of the fear of love’s absence.

Oppressed people know all too well how this goes. Once when I was sitting in collar at my church’s booth at gay pride a man came up to me and made fun of my pectoral cross sitting on my chest below my collar but also near a set of rainbow rings. Then he spat at me and walked off. It was a fairly typical interaction with a protester at pride. But it was also an example of hearing the action of an unclean spirit interacting with the fear of love’s absence.

The power of God’s love is ours to build up through our faith expressed not only in perception of love but in the prophetic action of loving. Loving begins with hearing the truth with compassion.

4 Epiphany Year B 2021 RCL (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Take action … Love

It was sunny yesterday in otherwise rainy winter Oregon. It was nice. I thought I had been seeing more daylight lately and I was pleased to read in the newspaper that, indeed, last Wednesday had been the first day of more daylight than dark. It is nature’s sign of hope I think. It also is a sign that we are being newly called to action—the action of love.

God’s good news—the Gospel of love—promises salvation to all faithful people. And faith requires action. Love is not in any way about passivity. Even in the face of the absence of love action is required. Action is required first and foremost to keep yourself in the presence and knowledge of love and second to keep yourself actively engaged in love—as Jesus said “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This also is what it means to answer readily the call to proclaim the good news. The good news is love and proclaiming is action. Prophetic action is the action of proclaiming the good news by showing love, by raising up the quantity and quality of love. In today’s scripture we have a reading from the story of Jonah (3:1-5, 10), the prophet famous for his interaction with a whale. But the story we see tells us how Jonah too action to proclaim love. Jonah’s action changed the course of history for those who heard him and listened. We have another example of prophetic action in the act the US Capitol police officer who wore a red hat during the January 6 insurrection to distract the intruders and rescue fellow officers–love, in action.

Look at all the action words in the scripture for today:

-Jonah 3:1-5, 10: Get up, go, proclaim, Jonah set out and went, began to go, cried out

-Psalm 62: 6-14: pour out your hearts, God has spoken once, twice I have heard it, steadfast love

-Mark 1:14-20: Jesus came, proclaiming, saying, passed along [and] saw, said to them, went … farther [and] saw, called them, they left … and followed

To follow Christ is to be active in loving, which is on the one hand harder to do than we think. It is not just having warm fuzzy feelings. It is taking action to be filled with love in order to proclaim love. There is no possibility of passivity for we are called to love in every moment. On the other hand, the good news about this good news is the same thing in another dimension isn’t it?—to love means being filled with love.

Look at Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:16-18)—they were casting a net to catch fish—they were doing their work, following their profession with skill but also with the love of skilled fishermen. They were filled with love and Jesus saw that love in their hearts, in their souls, in their skill, in their teamwork, in the idea of the purpose of the catch which was to nurture people with food. When Jesus called, the love in their hearts led them to follow Him.

In 1 Corinthians 7:31 Paul writes: “for the present form of this world is passing away.” Present past and future all mingle in that statement because it is another kind of prophetic call, it is the call to us to understand that love is dimensional, that the world absent love is in a dimension we are called to turn from, and that the world filled with love is a dimension we are called to turn toward. Indeed, we are called to live in this new dimension of love. The possibility of this shift is eternal in every human soul. To follow Christ is to walk in the dimension of love.

LGBTQ people are well known for prophetic action. By the mere action of having faith and loving each other we are answering the call to walk in the dimension of love. Gerald Bostock, Donald Zarda and Aimee Stephens are the most recent prophets to call forth the dimension of love before the US Supreme Court, who last June ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex.

Take action.

Love.

3 Epiphany Year B RCL 2021 (Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Psalm 62: 6-14; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Illuminate

One of the problems with our seasonal culture is the recurrence of “doldrums”–periods of weariness I guess you might call them. Sometimes it seems to me Christmas is designed to yield doldrums—we get almost too excited with anticipation to the point that some sort of letdown is inevitable. Then, of course, is the fact that (at least in the northern hemisphere) we are in the middle of winter. I’m happy that, although it is now a little bit colder in Oregon, at least there is a bit more light each day—the occasional bits of sun make the rain seem all the sweeter. Oh well.

Of course, we also are still living in the middle of a global pandemic. Things that used to help us through the doldrums are now deadly. That means we feel like we have shrinking options, not only for picking up our spirits but for life itself. Gayborhoods, once the liveliest of winter gathering spots, had already begun to give way to better social integration of lgbt communities, but the pandemic has devastated the remaining bright spots. For the moment we cannot gather, which means we cannot see each other, which means we cannot manage our collective identity as a jubilant loving subculture.

And then there’s the continuing critical situation in the US government, which of course creates a critical situation globally as well.

Can you tell it’s a gray day in Oregon?

Well, I guess I could tell myself to “lighten up.” As it happens, our eternal call to faithfulness takes just this shape. That is, we must remember, doldrums or no, that the reason we are here is to carry forward the action of walking in love, always. Giving into dreariness is giving in to the absence of love. We are called to “listen up” for the cues in life that remind us to reach into the recesses of our hearts to find the love that lives there, to feel the love that lives there, to pass it along so as to build it up. We are called to walk in love in order that the creation of love might be a mighty cascade.

We have to look up from our winter obsessions to find the cues that call us back to lives of love. Just now I saw a blue bird hopping around in a fir tree outside my window—no winter doldrums for this bird. In fact, I know this bird from this time last winter when I first encountered him. During the summer I wondered where he had gone until one day I saw him in a tree down at the end of the road, and later that day saw him disappear back into my fir tree. I have no real idea what occupies his life but seeing him gives me joy, and seeing him living and indeed thriving gives me hope. Hope and joy are two of the hallmarks of love.

It turns out that our job is to shine with the radiance of glory. We can do that only if we can walk in love. In order to walk in love we must take care not to be overwhelmed by life’s exigencies. Rather, we must overwhelm with love.

The collect for the second Sunday in Epiphany asks that we might be “illumined” and “shine with radiance” of the glory that is God’s creation of love. The story from 1 Samuel (3:1-20) of Samuel’s own call to faithfulness reminds us that God’s call is constant and eternal. God does not let us fail to hear the recurrent visceral call to walk in love. Psalm 139:1 reminds us that God knows us each intimately. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:12-20) reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, which is love, which is within us. We are to tease out this love that is placed within us the better to give it out into the world around us. In John’s Gospel (1:43-51) we see the action of Jesus calling Philip and Nathaniel with the words “follow me” and “come and see.”

What a coincidence, that this week, with all that is happening in the world at large, our call is to shine with the radiance of love, that our own love might indeed build up power enough to shift the dimensions of all creation into the path of love.

We have witnessed the labor pains of the end of a period consumed by the vacuum that opens in the absence of love. It is our job to let none of God’s love, given to us in creation, lie fallow—rather it is up to us, God’s lgbt people created by love with love for love to love, to “come and see” the new dimension of love.

2 Epiphany Year B RCL 2021 (1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 Page 794, BCP Domine, probasti; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Tough Love

I’ve been taking my time putting away Christmas decorations. I told several people I kept having the feeling that Christmas was stolen from me this year. We had lights on the house, a tree, lots of decorations, all the usual food, lots of presents—you’d think I’d have been satisfied. But what we didn’t have was a four week run up of church through Advent—not just the liturgical realities but also the preparations and rehearsals for Christmas itself. We didn’t have friends in or drop in on anybody. We didn’t sing. After Christmas I love the sweetness of the season of Christmas too—the twelve days ending in the feast of the Epiphany, the arrival of the magi, the fruition of the remembrance of Emmanuel “God-with-us” and the launch into the refreshed new year. I was really looking forward to Epiphany this year.

Well, that sort of got taken from us too, didn’t it? We knew it was going to coincide this year with the certification of the Electoral College votes by the US Congress. But we didn’t know what else was coming down the pike. No sweet multi-course meal, no music by the fireplace this year. Rather, it was a tense day reminiscent of other days of tragedy in the world. I spent most of it working on academic research on one computer with CNN open on the other computer and NPR on the radio behind me. The only exception was the hour I spent driving to a healthcare appointment and back—all of that time spent listening to NPR on the radio as well. The capital was “breached,” a mob attempted a “coup,” a vile set of circumstances came home to roost (forgive my nicely mucked up metaphors). Democracy, in the form of the Congress reconvened if shaken returning to the constitutionally-mandated work of certifying a free and fair election, triumphed. But the social fabric remains shaky at best. Everyone is angry or frightened or both.

It seems there is a lot of anger floating about in the world today and much of it landed on us, much of it is still present within us. Preaching a gospel of love often feels futile. People want to believe in love, but it is really quite difficult to understand the concept properly. We love chocolate, we love strawberries, we love the sunshine, we love beauty, we love music, we love each other. Yes, these are all inward ways of comprehending love. But this is not what we mean when we say that we are called to walk in love. To walk in love is to give oneself to the act of always loving—it is an outward action, not an inward sense.

When difficult things present themselves, it is very hard to think about how to work around them by walking in love. Part of it is that we think we are supposed to love some one or some thing that obviously has caused us harm. Maybe, if you can do that it might help. But really, what it means to walk in love through difficulty is to refuse to give into hate, refuse to be embroiled in fear. Instead, we must fill our hearts and minds with the love of God and keep going forward. A psalm comes to mind (23:4) “yea though I walk the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.” In a week like the one we just experienced in the United States, with mounting death from a pandemic that could have been mitigated year ago, with a seditious coup propagated by a sitting president, it is indeed tough to love.

Thus, it is time for tough love. It is time to refuse to be consumed by fear or hate or trembling, but instead to walk in love. How? Not by disregarding the circumstances. Rather, by responding bravely and firmly but always with a loving heart.

Here is where the season of Epiphany can show us the way. In Genesis 1:3-4 God’s creation is defined by the manifestation of light, which was good, because light is love. God’s love shines like the sunlight. The presence of light is the sign of the presence of love. The presence of love separates the dimension of love from the chaos of the absence of love. When we walk in love we walk in the dimension of light, the dimension of creation, eternally.

In the book of the Acts of the Apostles (19:1-7) Paul, arriving in Ephesus, baptizes a group of believers. Now, baptism is new birth by the Holy Spirit given through the action of water. The flowing water is a symbol both of the birth process and of the motion of the spirit, always forward, always cleansing, always refreshing. In Mark’s Gospel (1:4-11) Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan river. As Jesus comes up out of the water he receives a dramatic vision of heaven accompanied by the arrival of the Holy Spirit descending “like a dove” together with the voice of God. Interestingly, it is an internal experience for Jesus, it is not just a response to baptism but also a catalyst to action. It is the acknowledgment of and the catalyst for the creative power of the presence of love.

We baptize children, we baptize new Christians. We forget, easily, that the people we baptize are people who embrace love. What happens after baptism? Many of us forget to walk in love. We pretty much learn to walk defensively, walls up, in fear. We learn to reside with the absence of love. And we forget that when we do that we create the kind of world we have now.

If we want a world that is not ruled by chaos or hate, then we must learn to fill our own world with love, even when it is tough. We must learn to look for, to prize, to nourish the light of love in our lives. Is there an LGBTQ perspective? Only that it is in this that we are truly and fully integrated. Indeed, it is we who are identified by the love we are created to share who can show the way.

1 Epiphany Year B 2015 RCL “The Baptism of Our Lord” (Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Interaction with the Divine

Happy New Year. And, have a happy new year–we sure need one.

The scripture this week—officially the second Sunday after Christmas—is designed to focus our attention on the critical nature of the life of the newborn Savior, who is God with us. Jeremiah, one of the prophets of the great exile, breathes joy. So intense is his faith in God who will bring people back to normality “weeping” with joy, they will “walk by brooks of water,” they will “sing aloud” and “be radiant” and “their life shall become like a watered garden” and they “shall be merry.”

Merry. What a concept.

The metaphorical importance of the use of the prophet Jeremiah is directly relevant to us now I think. Jeremiah (31:7-14) prophesied to people who had been exiled, who had suffered loss of homes and family, who had been isolated and oppressed in foreign lands, who suffered to endure corrupt leaders. God’s people in Jeremiah’s day longed for a return to “normality” in their own homes. It was Jeremiah’s role to prophesy the message, the promise that God had given, which was the promise of return, not to the former life, but to a better future.

How we long to embrace such a promise. How we long to embrace each other once again. How we long to be reunited after being separated by a pandemic. How we long for just leadership. How we long for the society of friends, for our gathering places, for human warmth, for health and security. How we long for just one day with no more worse news.

In the letter to the Ephesians (1:3-6,15-19a) Paul reminds us that despite everything, we must remember that God has chosen us to be “holy and blameless … in love.” In other words, God has given us the power we need to create a restoration like the one prophesied by Jeremiah. If we can embrace the power of God’s love, we can shift into the dimension where we reside as God’s own children, adopted through Christ, to reside in grace freely bestowed. We are reminded to see the world not with our backs up but “with the eyes of [our hearts] enlightened.” Oh my …

It is into the dimension created by this enlightening of the eyes of the heart that we find the riches of the glory of what God has given us, which, is love.

And that is the eternal and profound meaning of Christmas—that love is eternally within our grasp, that we “may know what is the hope to which” God calls us, which is the power of a universe created in love, powered by love, ruled justly by love.

It is no simple task we have been given. It is easy enough to lose hope, to dwell in the doldrums of the constant thrum of worse and worse news, to begin to forget the warmth of the embrace of those we love, the aura of their smiles, the breeze of their laughter.

Like all things spiritual, it is action to which we are called. To love is to live in love and to do that is to banish the absence of love from our hearts. The scriptural example we have is that of Joseph’s actions in Matthew’s Gospel (2:13-15, 19-23). Joseph arouses his family to escape danger not once but three times. But an interesting fact about the scripture is that Joseph never makes a decision without divine interaction. Everything he does follows from “a dream” in which “an angel of the Lord” appears. But it is not only the appearance of the angel but rather it is Joseph’s interaction with the divine, it is Joseph’s response, to go in love.

It is to this kind of divine interaction that we now all are called. It is to the power of the action of love, which begins with the active banishment of the absence of love, to restore God’s will and God’s kingdom among us. Like Joseph, we are called to be active, to act in love, to react by love, to fulfill the prophecy with love.

Happy New Year. May we be merry, may our lives become like a watered garden, may we learn to walk in a new dimension of love.

2 Christmas All Years RCL 2021 (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23 ©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.