We pray, with our hearts and souls and minds, for all those who have experienced the earthquake and aftershocks in Turkey and Syria.
We wonder what the *#*$ is going on with “objects” that need to be shot down over North American airspace.
We marvel that this creation of God’s can deliver at once so much beauty alongside so much devastation. We pray, with our hearts and souls and minds, for everyone, everywhere.
We hope for grace.
Grace is that moment when, unprompted and yet in an instant moved by the Holy Spirit, you realize unity with God. Grace–those moments, those ultimate gifts of love unmitigated and yet just there—is always unexpected and yet joyfully welcomed. You see, we experience grace when we are fully open to the dimension of love.
Grace is unexpected because we fail to be aware of God with every breath, with every moment, in every heartbeat. We forget God. And then when we are troubled we ask God “why?” but the answer always is that God always is there for us, it is we who forget to be there for God. Because to be there for God means to be there for each other first. And so grace seems unexpected when we realize it because it always is there if only, if only we can reach out for it, by loving, with our hearts and souls and minds. And this is all that God asks of us, that we experience God’s love as a life-force, that we receive God’s love in equilibrium with how we give God’s love. As Moses said to God’s people “choose life” and the “land God swore to give” is ours, we already are there if only we can see it, in God’s dimension of love.
And then in those moments of unexpected grace we give thanks given as an utterance, as an ejaculation, the proverbial “OMG” moment–true gratitude when thanks is given with an “unfeigned heart” comes when we have arrived in the dimension of love.
Paul address the church at Corinth as “people of the flesh, as infants in Christ” because they have not yet found the open door into the dimension of love. They have had a glimpse in the fellowship, in the singing, in the joy. But yet, Paul needs to remind them that God has created them explicitly to be the field for planting, the building up of creation. We are the hope and future and past and foundation of God’s love which is creation. It is in us that God intends to manifest and realize the dimension of love.
Yes—in us. In we, who are God’s LGBTQ children, created in God’s own image, and imbued with God’s love, because we are the creatures in creation who are created specifically to be defined by the love we are created to share. We are the fertile ground, we are the concrete superstructure, we are the future and past and foundation of God’s love.
That warmth in your heart when you hug the one you love–that is the life power of the universe that God has given you.
Jesus wants us to give thanks freely “with an unfeigned heart” for which we must have a clean Spirit, and so in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells his listeners not to approach the dimension of love until they are free of anger and spite and any emotion of the “flesh” (as Paul would put it), until they are free to receive the love that is going to be the water and air and life stream of the dimension of love.
We approach Valentine’s Day, the annual celebration of love, in a world that is at war, reeling with famine, grieving lives lost in natural disaster, at fear of flying objects.
But one thing is certain—God’s grace, which is love.
6th Sunday after the Epiphany Year A RCL 2023 (Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37).
©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 