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.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 