Keep on

Time is, as Einstein pointed out, an illusion. All time is all time all at once. The dimension of love is always not past or future but always now. We must live in it always now.

And, therefore, we must always be one with God. God wants us like a lover. God wants us to be always one with God. We must let God know we are there for God.

The life God wants us to live is a life of love, a life of realizing joy, a life of giving joy.

God wants us to understand that the message of salvation is that it always is always ours. There are no conditions other than that we walk in love in the dimension where God is.

Jesus pronounced “blessings”—promises of acceptance already given—to those who were willing to walk in love. All he asked in return is that they should rejoice and be glad.

My husband gave me a CD called “ExtANNAganza” from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus singing songs from Abba. It is an amazing gift for a whole lot of reasons. Of course, because he knows the music makes me joyful. It is music that just makes you feel good. But it particularly seems to me to be the hymnary of the LGBTQ community.

There are two extraordinary spiritual experiences in my life. I’ve written about them before, I know. But here I go again. The first was at the consecration of The Right Reverend Barbara Harris, the first woman bishop in the church of God (ok, since Joan the Pope) in Boston in 1989. Wikipedia tells me I was one of 8,000 people there that day. The thing I remember the most clearly was the moment in the liturgy when the 8,000 all rose to sing the Nicene Creed in unison. I could never ever have expected such a moment of power to come from the repetition of an ancient rite, I could never had imagined such a diverse crowd of witnesses coming together in the one thing that we all shared. It was almost an overpowering moment.

The other was, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. I had been ordained a priest two months at that point. My friends who had supported my decade-long journey to ordination had all chipped in to give me the gift of that trip. And it had been an amazing couple of weeks, learning about the Netherlands, experiencing the thing the Gay Games gives, which is the sense of belonging no matter what. And now here we all were at the final evening, under the warm summer sky. And as the ceremony opened the strains of “Dancing Queen” began. And 50,000 (count us, 50,000!) queers all rose at once to sing and dance along. I remember my own joy. But I also remember the tears streaming down the faces of those all around me as we all stood and sang and dance. What amazing joy. What amazing reality. What amazing participation in God’s dimension of love.

And here is the message for us now—we must always hang onto that love that we all share, that joy that we alone can bring. Because our joy can change the world.

Look what we have done in three decades since—two lesbian governors, a gay former presidential candidate now in the cabinet, a trans-person in the cabinet—gay and lesbian bishops of the church, even a Roman pope who admits it is wrong to persecute us.

Keep on loving, keep on dancing, keep on creating joy, keep on keeping on.

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL (Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12)

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

Think Again: and Live!

Our job, no matter how difficult, is to be joyful.

“Be joyful all you lands,” God says.

Have joy in your heart. Do what ever you have to do to have joy. Because joy is love manifest. And your job is to love. Your job is to proclaim the Good News, and that is to show joy.

(My husband, has so much joy in his heart, that just being near him makes me overflow with joy. See?)

Yes indeed, we—you and me—we all are those people who have walked in darkness and seen that great light, which is the light of hope, the light of love, the light of joy. We have “increased … joy … [we] rejoice before [God].”

Sing,

dance,

hug,

smile.

 “Sing and make music” however you must—bake cinnamon rolls? grow tulips? make hamburger stroganoff? fix your friend’s broken garage door? hug your beloved? say “thank you” and mean it?

Sing, dance, hug, smile, and make music however it is you do that.

Our job is not to proselytize, our job is not to teach, our job is not to lecture.

Our job is to PROCLAIM with joy. “For the message about the cross … is the power of God”

Jesus told the crowd “repent.” It means, “think again.” That means, “wow, just stop for a moment and think about it.” It means, think before you speak.

Yesterday I was walking up a rainy street in Portland, my knees hurt, I was trying to make sure my walking stick didn’t hit a slick patch. And a woman coming toward me was in my way, and I was irritated by her. She was walking toward me with a walker. And as our paths crossed she smiled at me and said “Hello.” And I was irritated. And I was frightened. And I was captivated by her smile. And I was enthralled by her joy in the small steps she could make and her encouragement for mine. And I “re-pented” and in a heartbeat I looked her in the eye and said “thank you” and “hello” and smiled. And I could feel the both of us stand taller and walk with greater assurity. Joy.

Jesus walked, Jesus called, Jesus saw, Jesus said … and Peter and Andrew and James and John “immediately” re-pented, they “thought again” and they followed him.

And what of us LGBTQ siblings under God? According to The Rev. William Barber II (https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/us/william-barber-christian-nationalism-blake-cec/index.html’) we—queers and fags!–we have the power to unseat those who deny us a living wage, who deny us equality, who deny us a seat at the table, who deny us healthcare. All we have to do is: stand up, be present, be visible, this is called “witness” in theology.

And then re-pent, think again: smile, bring joy, bring love.

Re-pent.

Think again. And live!

3 Sunday after the Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL (Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 5-13 Dominus illuminatio; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Called to See

Every now and again it strikes me how much every day is the same, every week is the same, everything is the same. I wait for it to be evening then I wait for it to be morning then before I know it’s Sunday again. I joke (maybe joke?) with my husband that my entire life consists of making dinner—I plan it in the night, I check the pantry when I get up, I thaw things through the day, as soon as the sun is low in the sky I’m in the kitchen cooking, then we have dinner, then I go to bed and start all over. Time is passing, it seems, but then again maybe as Einstein said, it is just an illusion (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=82388.0 ). But, of course, the science of Einstein’s perception is that the passing of time depends on the frame of reference.

One way to look at it is to think about how we live in a certain dimension in which our synchrony with creation, a kind of harmony, is an eternal reality. In that there is grace, God’s love freely given in the absolute reality of life.

But then it occurs to me that how we tell our stories to ourselves defines the dimension in which we reside. Do I live in a dimension of dinner? Or do I live in a dimension of love and care, one in which my whole being is oriented to my husband’s, and to the things we share. The moments of togetherness, sharing, indeed loving, are the sunrises of the dimension in which we live. The sun sets and the moon rises and our love carries us. The harmony, the synchrony of the two of us in creation is our own dimension of love.

We all are called to tell—to prophesy if you will—about the dimensions of love we create and inhabit. It is their cumulative overlapping stew that is the eternal dimension of God’s love.

Isaiah (theologians will call this “Second Isaiah” Isaiah 49:2ff.) said “[God] called me before I was born … made my mouth like a sharp sword … made me a polished arrow” and (49:6) “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” The Psalmist (40:10-11) “proclaimed righteousness … did not restrain my lips … I have spoken of your faithfulness and your deliverance, I have not concealed your love.” Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1: 9) “God is faithful, by [God] you were called into the fellowship of … Jesus Christ.” John the Baptist (John 1:34) “I myself have seen and testified.”

As I have written and preached many times, we who are seeking to comprehend how God calls us often don’t realize that we already are living the lives to which we have been called. We have been called to be God’s LGBTQ people, God created us LGBT&Q in God’s own image so we might be a light to the nations. We have been called to lead our LGBTQ lives in the light, as a witness to God’s faithfulness to us. We have been called to proclaim our pride in our God-given LGBTQ lives as a way of pointing to the highway of love into the dimension we create by living in and through our love.

There is a reason Jesus said (John 1:39), simply “Come, and see.”

2 Epiphany Year A 2023 (Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12 Expectans, expectavi; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love Propagated

What comes to me today is Julian of Norwich: All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.

It is the first Sunday of the Epiphany, Christmas is past, the New Year has begun, even Congress has calmed down however briefly. The weather is typical for Oregon, some rain now and again, moderate temperatures. According to Farmer’s Almanac the brutally cold December of ice and freezing was the coldest part of this Oregon winter (I hope they’re right; they usually are somehow).

God’s prophecy in Isaiah 42 is that “former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.” The Psalmist sings (29) “God shall give strength to God’s people, God shall give God’s people the blessing of peace.” Peter proclaims (Acts 10) “God shows no partiality,” … and especially that “we are witnesses.” At Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan river (Matthew 3) “the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

The reality of the dimension of love into which God called us in our own creation, in God’s own LGBTQ image, is that all things always are being made new, that God shows no partiality, that we who are God’s LGBTQ heirs are witnesses to this constant renewal that God’s love, created in us so that it might be propagated through us in the love we share, makes the single constant in the dimension of love.

All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.

1 Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL “The Baptism of Our Lord” (Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Rejoice

Happy New Year!

It is such a time of hope, the new year.

I find that in my own life it is the love my husband and I share that is the most important source of life and hope at the new year. Every year now we joke we should toast it early and pretend—“it must be the new year someplace!”—and every year we sit by the fire and listen to music until the magic hour. And then we toast the new year. We wake up to music from Vienna on our favorite radio stations and then we work on our hoppin’ John and collards and corn pones (my husband grew up in the south).

As I give thanks for the love we share, I remember that there was a time in my life when I could not have imagined that I could be married to a man. I recently shared in an online forum that back in the day it wasn’t so much that I was in the closet hiding, it was more that I didn’t know what it was or that it had a name or that it could actually “be.”

LGBTQ people all have some version of, some variation on, this sort of story. For many there is not so much a muddle as the face of oppression and the search for the dimension of love, in which it is blessed to be who we are, created as we are in the image of God, who after all, is all, who is love.

No wonder we enter each year with hope of the fulfillment of the realization of the manifestation of our own creation as God’s LGBTQ heirs.

And so the hope we carry all of our lives is rooted in the love with which we were created and nurtured, it is borne with the love that is in our hearts, it is the hope of the fulfillment of creation. The New Year is a good time to look forward, with hope.

In the church this year this Sunday is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which means roughly “God is salvation.” It is this idea, that the manifestation of salvation eternally is being born among us, because after all, love is our salvation and love is our creation and love is all eternity within and through us. In Numbers 6 God teaches us that blessing comes from joy that love brings into our lives. In Galatians 4 we are reminded that we are heirs of God’s loving creation. And in Luke 2 we have the continuation of the story of the shepherd’s on the hillside tending their flocks when the angels appear to tell them of the birth of Jesus, who is salvation come among us. We forget these shepherd’s were at work, at night! And yet the story is full of the forward motion of the action of their response to the angels’ news—they went to Bethlehem, they saw, they proclaimed what they had seen and heard, and then full circle they returned to their work where they loved and rejoiced—they carried salvation with them in their loving joy.

Christmas is the certainty of the hope of God’s love for all of creation, The new year is a reminder to manifest, to fulfill, to realize, to see, then to “return,” to “proclaim,” to “rejoice,” to love.

The Holy Name of Jesus Christ (January 1) RCL 2023 (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.