LGBTQ+ Prophets Building Up Love

Atmospheric rivers, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, ice storms, … what a way to describe what we pray for today as “in our time … give us peace.”

Of course, time is not ours, time and space, which are one, are God’s. Creation just is. Justice is, love is, and it is up to us to reflect and reveal and respond, to understand that we live in all time. Thus, peace is the power of love, which comes from the power of our response in loving.

Moses [Deuteronomy 18:15-20] proclaims that God will send prophets like him, who will be “from among your own people.” Prophets are those who are called by God to call us all into love and away from disconnection. We are taught to think of the prophets in scripture, Moses and Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and people like that, when we think of prophets. We forget that Rosa Parks and Jim Obergefell are prophets. Undoubtedly there are prophets in your life, people whose truth is definitional for you.

So we forget that we too are prophets when we walk in love in response to God’s call to us to live into the love with which God created us as LGBTQ+ people in God’s own image.

Paul draws a distinction between knowledge and love in 1 Corinthians [8:1b-13], between acting from the heart and soul, loving, which builds up more love, as opposed to acting from conventional wisdom, which builds up more fences. When we act from love we build up more love. When we build up love we cannot be disconnected from each other or from God. When we show the love we have for our LGBTQ+ lives, the joy builds up the whole connected community of humanity. Building up love is the prophet’s call.

A CNN piece this week reports that “Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ at much higher rates than older Americans … ” (Nicole Chavez, CNN, Jan. 25, 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/us/gen-z-adults-lgbtq-identity-reaj?cid=ios_app). It is because of us, because of our lives as prophets of love. Gen Z adults have grown up in a world of loving possibilities, in which we, God’s LGBTQ+ prophets, have filled creation with our love, in which the example of the possibilities of our love, given us in creation by God, is visible, palpable, and loving.

It is because our love is visible, as a form of prophetic witness, that so many have been able to step aside from the strictures that bound them [the “knowledge” that puffs up in Paul’s words]. Have you seen any of the Showtime/Paramount+ series Fellow Travelers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_Travelers_(miniseries) )? Among other things, it is a pretty accurate representation of those times not all that long ago; of the dangers and trials of LGBTQ+ life in a time before the prophecy of those of us who follow still the exodus call of Stonewall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots ). Drag queens at Stonewall Inn leading the charge—more LGBTQ+ prophets.

In Mark’s Gospel [1:21-28] Jesus is confronted by a “man with an unclean spirit.” Jesus understands completely that this is a case of a human emptied of love and thus overwhelmed by the vacuum inside. Jesus loves, calls out the truth, and love rushes in. The unclean spirit, the vacuum in the absence of love, creates a void, a vacuum in the consciousness of creation. Jesus voids the vacuum and fills the man with love. Love fills up the void, love builds up the kingdom. Love leads the way for prophets to gather creation together.

It is the comprehension of the power of our own LGBTQ+ love that makes us prophets. Our love fills the void, our love builds up.

4 Epiphany Year B 2024 RCL (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)

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

Ready to See

We are having a winter storm. It’s pretty humorous, now, for someone who grew up in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin … and literally walked a mile through 8 feet of snow to get to school. Yes, we really did that. I remember it as fun, comforting even, to walk through the corridors of nature gleaming white with the glory of God on each side of me as I traversed the path given to me in my birth.

So, we are hunkered down. Mainly because we live in Oregon, and there is a sheet of ice under the snow, so we don’t want to risk a fall, and … it will melt tomorrow.

But for today I have to say I give thanks to God and to God’s creation for this quiet day of peace and calm and reflection. (It’s a secret, but I really love the snow; it brings such quiet and such peace.)

I ironed. Yes, I ironed all the table linens from Halloween to the present. I love ironing, it is for me a time of reflection, a time to engage in a ritual action that frees my body from my mind and that frees my mind to be in touch with God. And when it’s all over I’ve got nicely ironed table linens, and some revelation as well.

Try it.

We have a lesson from 1 Samuel [3:1-10(11-20)]; it is, of course, critical to all clergy. I remember it was read at Morning Prayer the first day I was in seminary. Was that a coincidence?

Three times God calls Samuel. Three times Samuel tries to convince himself it isn’t God calling him. Then finally Samuel gets it after Eli tells him to pay better attention. And now Samuel is fully afraid, but also knowing who is calling he is actually ready, now fully available to God.

I just watched the last episode of The Crown the other night. Wasn’t that about “being ready?” Philip says to the Queen “you were born ready.”

Well, I tossed and turned all night after that because, it is my story too. I was born to be a priest. I knew it from the earliest moment. My grandmother knew It too and nurtured it in me, but unlike Eli she didn’t push, she just nurtured. After all, she was the daughter of a pastor. She recognized the signs, she knew the truth, she knew I would hear the call eventually, as did Samuel. She knew, that like Samuel, God would be with me and “let none of [my] words fall to the ground”

Psalm 139 begins “God, you have searched me out and known me.” God is within us, God is all around us, God is us, we are in God … and this is how we know that all thoughts are known by God. And this is how we know we must learn to control our thoughts. God has given us the gift of free will. I remember my Grandmother sitting me down one day after church when I was about 4, and she said, “God gave you the gift of free will, don’t ever forget that.” Wow, 68 years ago, and I remember it now. God, Grandma, searched me out and knew me, and knew my thoughts, and discerned my rising up from afar. God’s works are wonderful and I know it well.

In John’s Gospel [John 1:43-51] Jesus, just baptized, has gone to Galilee, to those working the fishing boats. To those whose hearts were open to God he said “Follow me.” Then Jesus used “snowballing” a research sampling method we use today. Once he had engaged Phillip, he asked Phillip to bring his friends. Nathaniel was next. And when Nathaniel questioned the call, Philip said simply “Come, and See.”

This is the essence of evangelism, that we invite people to come and see. Come and see Jesus working in your life. See what it means to be person who loves. See what it means to be ready for God to be in you.

2 Epiphany Year B RCL 2024 (1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 Page 794, BCP Domine, probasti; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51)

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

The Wind, the Dove, the Holy Spirit

Just like that we are back to work. With a theological snap of the fingers time shifts. With a secular roar the uproar we were living through just a few weeks ago comes streaming back. Winter is really here along with atrocious news and astonishing behavior. At least the days are longer now, teasing us with daylight a tiny bit at a time.

Just before Christmas we rejoiced at the advance toward marriage equality (okay, a baby step) taken by the Roman church leader. This week (of course) we learn of “backlash” in various parts of the world. Fortify yourselves my LGBTQ+ readers, we are in for another round it seems. Let me refer to this post from October 2009 (near the date that year of National Coming Out Day in the US and in Philadelphia the date of the OutFest): https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/jesus-said-feed-my-sheep/

Then again, what better fortification might we hope for than the blessing of “a wind from God” sweeping over the face of creation?

Metaphors are a hallmark of oral culture. In our literate age we have the ability to store and retrieve anything whenever we want it, and so we don’t need to remember it or even to find it remarkable. But in oral culture history relies on the ability of listeners in community to remember and pass along the collective truth. Metaphor makes that more palpable, more operational. In Genesis the appearance of the Holy Spirit is described as “a wind from God” that “swept over the face of the waters” [1:1-5].

Echoed and sung in praise by the psalmist [Psalm 29]: the Holy Spirit is perceived in the powerful splendor of the voice of God that is like thunder on the mighty waters.

[Acts 19:1-7] Paul encounters some disciples in Ephesus. I love this line. What can it mean that Paul, passing through “interior regions” found” some disciples? Of course it is a sign of the universality of the new dimension of love, the door to which opened in the ministry of Jesus. Disciples, people of the good news of the power of God’s love are everywhere! In this story, these loving disciples have not heard about a Holy Spirit. Paul learns it is because they have become followers through the “baptism of John.” Paul lays hands on them in the name of Christ and they receive the Holy Spirit.

[Mark 1:4-11] John, as we see in Mark’s Gospel, proclaims a baptism of repentance “for the forgiveness of sins.” Repentance means literally to “think again.” A baptism of repentance is a formal way of anointing–with the very real water of the very real river–the action of remembering how people have disconnected from each other and therefore also from God.

Like the followers at Ephesus, people receiving “the baptism of John” are identified as having made a very real conscious decision to re-turn to God, to undergo a process of internal renewal to eject whatever within them has disconnected them.

Jesus is baptized by John in Mark’s Gospel, but also, he is in that moment connected directly with God as only he sees the “heavens torn apart” as “the Spirit descend[s] like a dove”—a metaphor for truth—and hears the very real loving voice of God.

We who are God’s heirs, created in God’s own loving image as LGBTQ+ people, have felt the wind of love that sweeps over creation, we have sung the praises of the love God created us to realize, we have seen the dove of truth that tells us the truth that the love we share is God-given, and we eternally receive the Holy Spirit.

1 Epiphany Year B 2015 RCL “The Baptism of Our Lord” (Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11)

©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.