Nonconventional Joy

These wonderful stories from the Acts of the Apostles are often considered to be about the founding of the church but it is clear that they are really about how the Gospel of love spread (did spread, can spread, does spread) from household to household, primarily through nonconventional populations. That’s an academic way of saying the people we see being baptized and embracing the Gospel in these stories are the outcasts of their time and place. This is surely directly a call to LGBTQ people. Look at what it says! Last week (Acts 16:13-15) we had “Lydia the woman who sold purple cloth.” She listened and understood and heard the message and her whole household was baptized. This week (Acts 16:16 ff.), we have gone out from Lydia’s household in Thyatira to Phillippi and now we meet a carny, described as a “slave girl who had a spirit of divination.” Later, after a fantastic earthquake comes as the climax of a prison hymn sing along, the suicidal jailer receives the Gospel and invites the whole community into his household. Does any part of this story ring any bells for you? How about a pride fest? How about a gay bar? How about drag and dancing queens? What do all of them have in common? They all have embraced joy and full out humanity as life’s path.

So it is to the people who embrace joy as life that first Jesus and then his apostles appeal. And it is these LGBTQ people who were and are the first missionaries of the Gospel, the first apostles of love.

The Revelation (22:12 ff.) reminds us that the reward of a life of love is to know timelessness. Jesus always is coming, Jesus always has come, Jesus always is to come; love always is coming, love always has come, love always is to come. Time is not linear, time is all at once. That is how love is forever both the beginning and the end. Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John (17ff.) points to the same idea, that love is all and love is always timeless. We must learn to embrace love in all things. We who love are love.

Where are we in this timelessness today? Are we on a linear path or are we living in the timeless reality of God? In the United States it is a holiday weekend—Memorial Day. COVID is rising relentlessly again even as people ignore means of mitigation, every other day it seems I learn another friend of mine has succumbed to it, after more than two years of careful avoidance. War in Ukraine plods on. The week just past in which we planned a remembrance of the murder of George Floyd we wound up sandwiched in what surely is timelessness between mass shootings in a supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Texas. One of my cooking magazines is filled with references to queerness even as the threat of institutionalized violence against a woman’s right to choose hangs over us. How do we choose love in this time, in these times?

God’s eternal message to us is that we need to learn, to practice, to constantly improve, to appreciate truly how to love. It is this sense of love within us that is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. We must embrace joy, we must follow the example of the LGBTQ lives we have been created to live by learning not only to lead lives of joy but to spread our love. Love builds up. Love help us! Amen.

7 Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97 Dominus regnavit; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)

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

Hospitality Reveals the Pathway

The weather is beautiful here, at last. Sunny, warm, late spring still not quite summer but hints of summer. The constant rain is gone now. No matter how showers reappear, we have the promise of warm evenings under the stars in nature’s magnificent canopy of tall firs. We will trade in the tv and the fireplace for the grill and the firepit. I was on the patio for several hours yesterday cleaning winter away from the furniture and our wildlife companions kept up a constant chatter the whole time. I told my husband after months of abandoning the outdoors to them it’s time to remind them we live here too. We do that by sitting outside, by tending the gardens, by being gently present with them in nature.

God calls us to live in harmony, to experience love in the goodness of nature, the better that we might build up that love and extend it not only to each other but into all of creation. This is God’s message, this is the Good News about love—that we are blessed so long as we return the blessing always.

In Acts 16 we are reminded that the nascent church in the days after the resurrection of Christ was not only not established but it was the province of regular everyday people called to love. Paul has a vision that leads him and his companions to discover a woman, “a dealer in purple cloth,” who is open to receive the Good News. She not only receives the news but invites Paul and his companions on the way into her household, and the Good News spreads thus through hospitality, through the building up of love through sharing and living in harmony with creation.

Psalm 67 reminds us that love rescues us, love blesses us, love shows us the light, love comes to us. We give thanks for love at all times. Love gives so many blessings that all the earth is in awe.

The Revelation (22) reminds us that God is love, that God’s angels are love. Love carries us to where we can see the clearing, the opening in the forest, the beginning of the pathway to the dimension of love. Once we can see it we can attain it by simply taking the first step of loving over and over, each first step leading to the next.

In John 14 (23-29) post-resurrection Jesus soothes his companions with the reminder that love is the true power. Love is the answer, love is the Good News, love is the way. Love is everything. As the angels sang to the shepherds at Jesus birth, thus on the eve of his ascension he says to his disciples “do not be afraid.” Just have love.

We who are God’s LGBTQ people, created in God’s image to be the visible power of love in creation, we are called in the present time to be the very household of love, to be bold in our own love, to inhabit creation in harmony, to use our hospitality to build up the dimension of love.

The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67 Deus misereatur; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29)

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

Finding the Gate

What if we knew what love really was? Not warm fuzzy emotion, but the hard work of building up good in creation?

What if we knew that the old way—the way we were before we learned this hard lesson about love—had to pass away before the new way—the way of building up love, could take over?

What if we just tried to love out, not love in? Do you know what I mean by loving out? I mean have love in your heart, be happy, be joyous, be gracious, smile.

To “know” God is indeed the key to everlasting life. God is love, to know love is to have a full reciprocal relationship with love, which is God. To be in relationship with love is to embrace eternity. This is the gate into the dimension where love reigns and life, which is just love’s expression, must be eternal.

Finding this gate, walking forward on this path, requires first loving yourself. It is why it is so critical for LGBTQ people to be fully who they have been created in love’s image to be, by which I mean it is critical that we embrace our LGBTQ selves fully. It is crucial that we are empowered by our LGBTQ selves, that we take pride in who we are, that we demand not just social equality by justice, for justice is the manifestation of the power of love in community.

We give thanks and praise to God, who is love, who calls us to love, who has through love given us strength in our calling as God’s LGBTQ people. Hallelujah.

When we can turn to the dimension of love there we can live into the new heaven and the new earth intended for us, the old ones of misery and injustice and oppression can pass away.

In other words, it is all up to us to embrace love.

This is the eternal message—embrace love. Love is the beginning and the ending and the power and the glory of our eternal LGBTQ lives.

5 Easter Year C 2013 RCL (Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148 Laudate Dominum; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35)

Love, By Name

What is God trying to tell us now? And why doesn’t God just send us a text so we’ll know what God is up to?

It’s a good question. How are we supposed to know what we are supposed to do?

The answer, of course, always is, we are mostly already doing what we are supposed to do, what we are doing is what God has called us to do. Unless you are troubled by what you are doing, in which case you are maybe needing to reconsider what it is that you think God has called you to do. Most of us, day by day, soup by sandwich by roast by cake by granola, we are doing what God has called us to do. Instacart, Telehealth, Zoom, we are doing what God has called us to do.

A theme in today’s scripture is being called by name by God.

My own calling(s) were more intimate than that, no names required. When I was 5 years old and beyond I was called to go to church with my grandmother, whose father had been a pastor. Grandma knew even then that I was called to follow in her father’s footsteps. I loved going to church, and I especially loved the shared intimacy of knowing God together with my beloved Grandma. She rocked me in her arms as a baby, she famously rocked me in her rocking chair in the basement through a tornado, she gave me quiet space where an introverted child could thrive, she taught me to teach (she was a teacher), she taught me to cook, she taught me most of all to love and to love being loved. And she took me to church. I remember sitting beside her too small to see over the pew so I colored the bulletin. Then I remember growing taller, and eventually singing with her from the same hymnal. Her favorite hymn was Holy Holy Holy and that was indeed the processional hymn at my ordination to the priesthood. My husband and my mother and brother and cousins all sat in the front row next to a chair reserved for Grandma, who had passed in 1972 but we all knew she was there with us. I felt her strong arms and her powerful spirit as I knelt at the bishop’s feet and the priests pressed down on me during Veni Creator Spiritus, I felt her warm smile and her applause as the bishop and my best friend stood me up and turned me around to great applause as “the newest priest.”

When we hear God’s voice we know we are called to what we do.

Even in the tough times.

Even in the trenches.

Even in the hurtful moments. Especially in the hurtful moments. We were called to love each other, even when it doesn’t work out. And, even then we are called to continue to love each other.

I know, it’s “Mother’s Day.” My mother passed in 2010, and my husband’s mother passed in 2018. We joked yesterday “did you send a card.” We loved our mothers and they loved us and we still love them and they still love us.

But on this Mother’s Day what we all are called to do is: keep Ukraine uppermost in our prayers, constantly; keep liberty uppermost in our prayers, because the liberty of LGBTQ people is now more seriously threatened than it has been in decades; and, keep love uppermost in our prayers, because it is love that calls us each by name. It is love who knows our voices, it is love that raises us up, it is love that powers the great multitude of the saints before the throne.

I still say, as I have said for decades now, that this white-robed army of martyrs singing before the throne of God is the choir of all of my friends who died from AIDS, the white robes are those hospital gowns they died in. They were all perfectly joyous children of God, they all loved perfectly, and they were all called before their time to go to God. And they were all acolytes and choristers and beautiful hearts and powerful souls, all called in their white hospital gowns to go before God and sing “hallelujah.”

The Revelation says “God will wipe away every tear.”

In the meantime, we are no sheep. We are the disciples. It is we, who like Peter are called to pray and love and heal by calling all of God’s children by name.

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30)

Take the Reins, Love

God is always with us, it is only we who fail to see. Jesus, God, Love, is always in our midst.

Jesus is with us in every thing and at all times. It is only we who fail to turn to the dimension of love who fail to recognize him.

In the resurrection on the beach story at John 21 Jesus comes to the frightened disciples who have been working all night on the sea. Even as he appears to them, he has already prepared breakfast on the shore for his friends, he has prepared to nourish them in body and spirit. In the story Jesus finds the fish for them, Jesus feeds them, Jesus tends them and Jesus brings them relief.

The same truth is echoed in the story of the conversion of Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9. Jesus is with Saul who is persecuting the faith, Jesus is with Saul in his mortal illness, Jesus is with Paul in his conversion, Jesus is with Paul in his recovery and Jesus is in the nourishing food that is the metaphor for healing in this story.

Jesus is with us too. Jesus is with us in the pandemic, Jesus is with us in the dark nights of the soul, Jesus is with us in our loving relationships, Jesus is with us in our broken relationships Jesus is with us in the puzzlement and confusion, Jesus is with us in the passion, Jesus is with us in the gentle smiles and the angry moments too. Jesus is always with us in the reality of our lives. And yes, Jesus is with us in our LGBTQ lives, the ones we are called to by being created LGBTQ in God’s own image.

It is God, Jesus, Love, who feeds us, nourishes us, nurtures us, heals us. This is love, this is why we must learn to turn to the dimension of love. If we can learn to live in that dimension we can rejoice, dance, sing, pray, worship and we can feed, tend, nurture and follow.

We, the weary workers in the boat, the hungry friends on the shore, we are called to take the reins of this challenge—to love.

3 Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 9:1-6, (7-20); Psalm 30 Exaltabo te, Domine; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19)

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