The Dimension of Loving Reality

We fear the presence of God, and yet we seek the presence of God. We find God, we reject God, we rejoice in God, we rejoice in rejecting God … we are human after all. Psalm 68:1 “O God … eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for your, my flesh faints for you.” Verse 5 “my soul is content, as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips.” We seek God, we rejoice in God, we identify the presence of God with fulfillment in our biological envelopes, in which God has placed us in this dimension of creation. We rejoice in our queerness, we who are God’s LGBTQ creatures, created in God’s own image and charged with the responsibility to walk lives of love.

And yet, we fear the presence of God. In Exodus (3:1-15) we have another version of Moses’ interaction with God in the form of a burning bush. God is faithful, and Moses is faithful, and Moses’ faith is the seal that protects God’s people who are led by Moses’ responses to God. Yet the one line that seems the most critical is “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

It raises the question of why anyone would be afraid to look at God. Can it be that it is because we are created by God in God’s own image, and thus to look upon God is to look without blinders upon ourselves? It is at least in part this rationale that explains how it is that although we seek God, we fear the presence of God, and often we reject God. It is because we fear rejecting ourselves—better not to deal with it at all. “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

In the timelessness of the space-time of God’s dimension of love each day is a new day, each moment is a new moment, there always is the potential of love, of greater love, of love building up. In Luke’s Gospel (13:1-9) Jesus tells a parable of a fig tree that has borne no fruit. The owner is tempted to cut it down but is tempered by a loving gardener who insists instead that it should be tended with love and give more opportunity to bear fruit. This, of course, is metaphor for God’s faith in us as lovingly created creatures who are put here to love. We err each day, we err in many moments each day, but each point in time is an opportunity given by God to turn instead to the dimension of full loving in which love can build from the tiniest bit of tending.

In 1 Corinthians (10:1-13) Paul says “do not become idolaters” and unfortunately too many people miss his point, which is, that we must remember that our faith is in God, who is love, and only in God who is love. If we turn our faith away from God, away from love, that is idolatry, that is the worship of idols. Sadly, the truth is, most often it is ourselves we worship instead of God.

I just had a birthday, one of those with a potentially shocking number. It was a marvelous day this time because almost nothing happened. The celebration, such as it was, was remarkable for the love of those in my life and for the calm nothing-but-love peacefulness of it. I know I am loved, and that I love in return. This is the revelation of the presence of God, of God’s faith in me, of God’s call to me and those I love, of God’s faith in God’s own LGBTQ children.

It is a sign pointing the way to the dimension of loving reality.

3 Lent Year C 2022 RCL (Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Glory, Light, Space-Time, Love

My mission from the beginning, now many years ago in a column in the Philadelphia Gay News, was to interpret the message of the Gospel for my LGBTQ+ companions on the way. Just as I grew weary of “romantic” movies that featured only hetero-normativity, I observed that the Gospel was not being interpreted through our eyes, and especially not to us. Over the years and in particular in this space I’ve done my best to interpret weekly the Good News of salvation for all of creation through my own gay eyes and heart and soul. I use a form of midrash and a bit of standard homiletics, and as I do to a live congregation I try to interpret the lectionary through my own life experience.

My own life has been changed and challenged just like everybody else’s. I have learned as I matured (LOL) the true power of love and the true deficit of its absence. I see clearly in the scripture how this message of love has been the message of God from the beginning, and how its revelation is continuous, as though all time were one (as physics asserts) and in every moment we are continually working out the creative power of love.

In 2016, after the election rendered a truly shocking result, I literally lost my muse and had to quit blogging. I was only able to overcome that shock after we moved to Oregon. Here in the Pacific Northwest I was stunned as I had been when I lived and loved here as a young man by the sheer beauty of creation and by the power of the society here that takes responsibility for creation literally. The synergy of love and its constant building up is powerful.

I find myself after two years of pandemic just about shocked into loss of muse again, this time by the war in Ukraine. My soul aches for the Ukrainian people and for their own beautiful slice of creation. My heart is rended by the raw evil of the attempt to wipe out their culture and to deny their very existence. As a human I am frightened, I am fearful, I am worried; and I am aware none of those adjectives embraces the Good News of the power of love. Rather, in this I risk giving myself over to its absence.

We are in the second week of Lent. Our collect reminds us that God’s “glory is always to have mercy.” That mercy—forgiveness yes but more to the point, healing and restoration—is God’s glory is the truth. When have you known glory more powerful than in the hug of a loved one, the arms encircling you, the hearts beating side by side, the warmth of embrace? If that isn’t glory I don’t know what is. And certainly it is both healing and restoration.

The selection from Genesis 15 is the story of God’s covenant with Abram of eternal inheritance. Abram encounters God in a timeless numinous moment heralded by the vision of stars in the heavens (LOL, just like when I take the garbage out each night). Our response is Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio, “God is my light.”

In the letter to the Philippians (3:17-4:1) Paul appeals to the goal of the Good News that lies in life beyond time and space, reminding us that “our citizenship is in heaven,” that Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.” In other words, in all time and space, the Gospel of love exists to be revealed to us in numinous ways when we are open to its reception and when we can shift into that dimension we will and do discover the heaven of healing and restoration. As I read these words this week I thought first of Ukraine and of the power of the faith of the people we are witnessing daily. Then I was reminded that we in the LGBTQ+ community know what it is like to be considered targets of oppression to be eliminated. So, there is a human connection for us, after all.

In Luke’s Gospel (13:31-35) Jesus speaks of his timeless desire to gather children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. It is the power of the dimension of love that brings the gathering of all heirs of God, all children of creation, to healing and restoration. It is this power that restores the outcasts of the world to God’s glory.

We as God’s LGBTQ+ children are defined by the love God has given us in creating us in God’s own loving image. We are called to build up love in all of creation, in order that in that way we might reveal the dimension of glory.

Pray for love, pray for Ukraine.

2 Lent Year C 2013 RCL (Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13: 31-35)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Repent in Love

Once upon a time, although it was a moment in reality and no fairy tale, I was in Amsterdam when someone declared the world was about to end for some reason. On the evening in question I was sitting at my favorite bar at the time (alas, it closed some years ago), which was called, ironically “Engel van Amsterdam” (The Angel of Amsterdam). My friend Onno was tending the bar, and we were joking about the end of the world and he said, “the world already ended and we are here in heaven.”

And I knew he was right. Heaven, after all, looks a lot like a gay bar in Amsterdam, where everybody counts, everybody can be, everybody is, and the key: everybody loves. So, in such a heaven, what are the first fruits? Well, love of course. The smiles of those you love, the hugs, the warmth, the delicious bitterballen, the breeze off the canal making you sigh with joy, the gentle afternoon sun setting across the Ij, I could go on and on. The first fruits, of course, are all of the fruits of love, which is what God is. God is love. And the first fruits of you possessing God’s kingdom are the first signs of the love you bring to the world.

Here we are today in Lent, at yet another convoluted moment in real time, as the pandemic seems to be winding down and yet war and violence and destruction are ramping up like some sort of pendulum swing. What are we to do?

The scripture for today begins with a reading from Deuteronomy (26:1-11) in which those settling in God’s “promised land” are tasked to give thanks by offering to God the first fruits of their new life. Those “first fruits” are the products of the love God has given them in creation, of the love with which they have inherited the creation entrusted to them, the lesson they have learned that it is with love that bounty comes. It is a reminder to us to walk always in love, and especially to rejoice in the love that we share in every moment, with every breath, with every heartbeat.

In the letter to the Romans (10:8b-13) Paul writes that of the first fruits the most important is faith in the love we proclaim. “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” How can the word of God be on your lips and in your heart? Simple, God is love, and love is God, and love is in your heart but mostly on your lips when you give love to those around you. You believe in your heart but it is what you say and do that saves you, because it is what you say and do that makes love build up.

In Luke’s Gospel (4:1-13) Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days he is tempted by “the devil.” Except, the devil cannot succeed. How is it that Jesus cannot be tested by “the devil”? Jesus is God, who is love, incarnate. Love fills creation. Love conquers all.

Thus, as I said, here we are in Lent, at the confluence of the love building in a world that has survived two years of pain, on the one hand, and the threat of war, on the other. And yet, we do already live in heaven, if we can remember to walk in love. Lent is the time in the Christian year for introspection, for re-pentance (as I told a friend this week all that really means is to think again, think twice and see the critical importance of love).

The world demands that we love with as much fervor as we can muster. It is in the hearts of the LGBTQ community that God has placed trust in love, for it is love and how we love that defines our very existence. The heaven we occupy is our promised land and the first fruits of the love that gives us life are our dues, our joyful celebration of the lives we have been given. Our faith is the very reality of the words of love on our lips and in our hearts which are our armor in a convoluted world.

Give, however you can, of course. Pray without ceasing, always giving thanks. And repent in love.

1 Lent Year C 2022 RCL (Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.