Yesterday was my birthday … what a concept! Once upon a time I thought of them as sort of checkmarks on a list; but then I (briefly) had a boyfriend who thought his birthday was a national holiday so I learned to think of it that way a little bit, but then again as I grew more “mature” I just learned to think of them as hallmarks of respect for a life well-lived; then … well, LOL that many decades would take awhile to narrate … these days they are more like accomplishments as in “oh! I made it, again!.”
And there you have it, joy, and love of life, which is love, is the true bread that gives life to the world. We receive as we give.
I love the story in 1 Samuel [16:1-13] about the anointing of David; really it is about God seeking David among his brothers. Of course, he is the least among them so far as they are concerned, but as a gay man through and through I can’t get past the part about God looked for the one who was “ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.” See! What makes you think God hasn’t got gay bones? What makes you doubt that God has created you and me in God’s own image? The truth is more nuanced, of course, and that is that God is all always and that in the scripture each of us can find a recognizable reflection of our own reality. The trick is that the majority community of oppressors has suppressed those passages that reveal the LGBTQ place in creation. (In fact, more radical reading can reveal more of this reality, but even I am sometimes intimidated into suppressing what my eyes see and my reality reveals as God’s gift.)
Goodness and mercy … joy … love … dwell in God’s love for ever [Psalm23]. And whether we count as “ruddy and handsome and with beautiful eyes” we all are God’s LGBTQ children of light [Ephesians 5:9], because what is in our hearts is what God gave us, all that is good and right and true.
We are graced with this very long story from John’s Gospel [9:1-41] about the blind man given sight by Jesus. I think the point for us to take is that the verbs are instructive action verbs: Jesus says “go,” and telling the story, the man says “I went” and “washed” and “received.” It reminds us that love is not passive. It reminds us that there always is forward action in God’s love. It reminds us that we always have a part to play, God’s love is not passive, no love is passive, love is to be had, held, and given in whole. To be healed, to be constantly renewed and made whole, like the man in the story, we have to “go” and “do” to “receive.”
The love we share is the love we receive. The love we receive is the love we are called to give in return.
4 Lent Year A 2023 RCL (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23 Dominus regit me; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)
©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 