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.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 