Take a Chance on Love

I know I write about ABBA’s music from time to time; the reason is that their music seems so prescient about LGBTQ+ love and lives …. it often seems sacred to me, not just (and not least) because it is so full of life and love, but also because it is so clearly aware of love, love’s pitfalls, and love’s glory. “Take a chance on me” for example …. who among us hasn’t had that anthem tell part of our story?

As God’s LGBTQ+ heirs it is our call to let love rule our hearts; that means the part where you are a little bit broken, a little bit hurt, a little bit vulnerable. Until or unless you can reach that dimension of vulnerable openness you cannot push through into the dimension of love where the answer to “take a chance on me” is “lay all your love on me.”

Take a chance, indeed. In his letter to the church at Rome [Romans 14:1-12] Paul wrote “welcome those who are weak in faith.” In other words, take a chance on them, love them, and take a chance on love. He also asked “why do you pass judgment? … we all will stand before the judgment seat of God.”  It is inevitable that we will be tempted to pass judgment. As in yesterday driving to the supermarket, I had to pull over three different times to let tailgaters go past me. Let’s not tempt love by telling you how I judged them, but see? I keep telling you, this walking in love stuff isn’t easy.

What is easy is to judge and to demand that people should conform to you. What God calls us to do is to resist judging, to just love and not give energy in the absence of love. Pull over and wait, and when they’re gone, enjoy the first blush of fall color in the leaves and the joy of being with the one who 45 years ago took a chance on me.

In Matthew’s Gospel [18:21-35] Jesus is asked how many times one must forgive before one can give up. He uses a mathematical formula that was intended in his time to be beyond the imagining of his listeners. There is no specific number of times one must forgive, of course; rather it is that forgiveness is always hard hard hard and yet must always be forthcoming. Because if we cannot forgive we are not only not walking in love, but we have left the dimension of love. Jesus offers a metaphor of eternal torture … well, when have you chosen not to forgive and how often are your tortured by that? It is all about how love comes from God to you and from you goes outward and not about those whom you are tempted to judge.

Our lectionary has us following the history of the generations of Abraham, which now on the retelling of the actual Exodus event [Exodus 14:19-31] are called “the army of Israel.” This is the famous parting of the Red Sea, and the exodus of Israel from captivity in Egypt.

The point here, as always, is how to shift into the dimension of love. Yes, this is a written account of events that were experienced in real time and recorded after centuries of oral history. But that is not what scripture is about. Scripture is for our enlightenment about the revelation of God’s action in creation. What did God do in the Red Sea but open the door into a different dimension? Israel found the door and passed through it. Those who could not did not do so well.

As indeed will we if we cannot find the door. But, if we do find the door we discover a passageway of miraculous love. And when we pass through we discover a life of love. We discover those who will take a chance on love.

It is no accident that LGBTQ+ people explain coming out as a kind of exodus. Coming out is not just escape from a closet, it is passing miraculously and perhaps perilously through a doorway into a different dimension where love prevails on a higher plane. Tough but life affirming. Scary but joyous. You know the rest.

Hallelujah! When Israel came out from the Red Sea, when you or I come out into the light of the dimension of love the mountains skip like rams and the little hills like young sheep … ‘tremble’ at the presence of [God’s love][Psalm 114].

Proper 19 Year A 2023 RCL (Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love is All You Need

Awhile back when we were excited that our family would be all together in mid-September I ordered a bunch of DVDs from a postal DVD service (you know who I mean). For some reason it kept wanting me to order Yellow Submarine (The Beatles 1968) so I did. For years now, when I am without a parish, instead of worrying a sermon and going to bed at 7:30 I make pizza (I make wonderful pizza) and we have movie night. I thought Yellow Submarine would be fun and we would all sing along. Well, it didn’t show up, so we didn’t get to watch it together.

Yesterday, six weeks late, it showed up, so we watched it with the last pizza Margherita of the season. In the first 30 seconds I quickly was transported back to the psychedelic 70s and blurted out “this would be better if we were stoned.” (I do date back to the ancient days of the Age of Aquarius after all, but not to worry we forged ahead with our consciousness unaltered.)

Interestingly, as the movie went on I could see there was one firm message embedded in the movie, in the music. It is this:

Love, love, love …
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
Nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy
All you need is love …
Love is all you need …

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul Mccartney
All You Need Is Love lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

All you need is love, indeed. It seems it is not news now, even though it seems every day to be news to new generations, that we are surrounded by grace. Grace is God’s gift of love. Grace, therefore, is justice and unity and abiding love. Love is always a possibility, therefore grace precedes and follows us always. But it is up to us to grasp it. It is up to us to make sense of it. It is up to us to nurture grace with love.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
All you need is love …

On the other hand, it is pretty common to have an inverted view of reality such that we see ourselves but not the role we play. Like a forest for the trees idiom we bear down on our own situation without remembering to see how we fit. This is a polite way of saying we make ourselves miserable by forgetting that it isn’t God who has abandoned us rather, it is we who have abandoned God. We “look” for God, but in reality God is always with us in the living out of love. To find God all we have to do is love

God is always present. God always has been present. We always have been in the presence of God. Love always is potential. Love always has been potential. We always have been in the potentiality of love

Loving, living in love, walking in love—loving requires boldness. Boldness in loving is the doorway to grace and mercy. If we hear Christ’s commandment to love one another as ourselves we hold confidence and pride firmly as hope. Hope is our invitation to grace.

You can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy
All you need is love

The parable of the rich man (Mark 10: 17-31) places us in the context of grace and hope. Love is always potential and grace is always near. Hope is always justified in confidence. But we must love. To love we must give up those things that bind us. To love we must give up those things that blind us. It is those things that bind and blind us that cut us off from the love we are called to live. Who is last and who is first? Those who give love are always first.

The LGBTQ community of love is first because so often we are last. To be fully the LGBTQ people God created us to be in God’s own image means “giving up” the closet that binds us and blinds us so that we might live boldly the lives of love intended for us. It is love that defines our community. It is living in the boldness of loving that opens the doorway to grace and mercy. We can indeed learn how to be us, all we need is love.

I remember as though it were an old movie how it was when I came out as a gay man. The smiles of my brothers in the gay community were a reflection of the relief in their hearts that I had given up the blinding binder to live in the community of love and loving. The hugs that greeted me were an expression of welcome and joy that I had learned how to be me.

One, two, three, four
Can I have a little more?
Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
I love you …
Look at me
All together now …
All together now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
All Together Now lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

All together now: love is all you need.

Proper 23 Year B 2012 RCL (Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15 Deus, Deus meus; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

A Pillar of Forgiveness

We are living in a time rich with metaphor; my friends have no end of designators for the year we are all living through. I’ll spare you the specifics but let’s  just say it sure is a challenging time. A week ago we were living in a richly beautiful forested environment. Then we had two days of outrageous winds, accompanied by power outages. But at least we had brilliantly starry skies those nights. But the day after the wind died down we awoke to yellow skies, then yellow and black then thick smoke. We haven’t seen the sun or anything very far in front of us for days now. The wildfires ravaging forested Oregon have had an amazing impact on the whole of society (see for example https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2020/09/11/oregon-fires-riverside-beachie-creek-clackamas-county-estacada-molalla-colton/3472415001/ ). We are essentially “locked down” again; businesses that were slowly reopening are closed now so employees can stay safely home. We are encouraged not to drive, so as to keep roads clear for firefighters, emergency vehicles and (of course) thousands who are having to evacuate their homes. Curfews are in place at night. Our emotional state is pinned to a fire evacuation map, with its moving targets of “be-ready,” “be-set” and “go” zones.

Parks are closed to prevent accidental incineration. We aren’t to water the lawn or the garden so as to preserve water supplies for firefighting. Our COVID-19 masks turn out to be somewhat useful for filtering the smoke too—perhaps this is nature’s way of getting people to mask-up the better to control the pandemic. What an unsettling thought!

Our hearts go out to each other as yet once again in a year of constant wrenching shifts, everything shifts yet again. We retreat into our faith as best we can where we have one constant—God, who is love, who is centered in the heart. We pray that God’s love will protect us and preserve creation. We pray that God’s love will be shown, is being shown, to everyone around us—the firefighters on the front lines, many of whom have had to evacuate their own homes; the evacuees everywhere; people with underlying conditions that make the smoke content in the air a danger; and most of all, those of us who are frightened. We pray that God, who is love, will fill our centered hearts, the better for us to love in every direction in every moment. Love is always the answer, even in this time of more trial.

The Old Testament reading from Exodus today (Exodus 14:19-31) is the story of the parting of the Red Sea, the famous incident when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. They safely walked across the sea while God’s power and an “army of angels” held the water aside. They escaped oppression but arrived safely on the other shore to take up wandering in a wilderness. It is an amazing story, filled for sure with metaphors that fuel entire systems of faith.

I know from my own experience that LGBTQ people of faith often turn to this tale to help understand our own coming-out journeys. The parallels are unmistakable—the captivity of the closet, the oppression of self, the dispiriting loneliness of exile, the longing for belonging, the moment of truth, even the arrival of God’s army of angels lighting up the dark nights of the soul, the passage into the full embrace of LGBTQ life as God-given, all followed by wandering in the spiritual and emotional wilderness en route to new life. And yet as we all know, the metaphor extends grace and peace and especially hope, as we begin to discover the full possibility of lives of love lived in God’s love shared among God’s people created as LGBTQ in God’s own image. The meaning of the revelation is inescapable—God and God’s army of angels and God’s love all are ours when we embrace living and walking in love.

Curiously, I find myself drawn to a single clause that might otherwise go unnoticed Exodus 14:19-20): “the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them … and so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night.” Of course, we can understand this metaphorically as descriptive of the time in which we live—everything from COVID-19 to racial reconciliation to political divisiveness to the wildfires—all are like the dark of night, and certainly in all we discern God’s army of angels–the firefighters on the front lines, many of whom have had to evacuate their own homes; the evacuees everywhere; people with underlying conditions for whom the smoke content in the air is a danger; and most of all, those of us who are frightened—everywhere we look we see God’s angels, and the love in their hearts does light up the night. After all, the cloud, which is God, and God’s army of angels, who are certainly among us, do indeed light up our lives. God’s love is in the immensity that lights up not just these nights but all nights of the soul.

Well, pillars and clouds aren’t the only metaphors in this week’s scripture. Psalm 114:7 “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord.” The power of love is such that the presence of God causes quaking. In Romans (14:1-12) Paul reminds us that “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves … we are the Lord’s.” We do not live for ourselves; our lives are part of creation, we are part of the power of love. Our lives are intended to be full of the love of God, and it is our destiny to spread God’s love among us and through all of creation. It is important for we how are LGBTQ folk to remember that our lives are an important part of creation, instruments of love. Not only do we belong to God, we are part of God’s army of angels.

Matthew’s Gospel today is about forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35). Forgiveness is the ultimate act of giving love after all, because it must come from your heart. God, who is love, is centered in the heart. True forgiveness is like the rain we all are praying for; it bears no price, its function is to clear the way for love to proceed in every direction from heart to heart, from God to God’s army of angels, holding back the sea, shining in the darkness, trembling at the immanence of God, making space for love. Even in a time of wrenching shifts, even in a time of fire, especially in a time of reconciliation.

We must forgive … the fire, the virus, the separation, the oppression, the exile, the loneliness, the fear … we must forgive all of it for the love to flow in and from and through us again. Indeed, that pillar of cloud born by God’s army of angels who open the way to love, is a pillar of forgiveness. We must forgive if we are to continue to receive God, who is love, who is always centered in our hearts.

 

Proper 19 Year A 2020 RCL (Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

The Dimension of Love

Do you ever think about when you were born? I bet it isn’t right up there on your personal top hit chart.

I was born in 1952, in what was then called Queens General Hospital in Jamaica, today in the borough of Queens. When I started commuting from Philadelphia to Long Island University in Brookville I saw the hospital from the window of the LIRR. I thought, oh wow, that’s where I was born. I was 40 when that happened.

Now, if you were born down the street from your parent’s house, you probably had this experience when you were 2 and sort of spaced it. For me it was pretty exciting, seeing this great and famous hospital outside the train windows and thinking that one day I had been a tiny being nurtured into life there.

Was I born of Spirit?

One of the really difficult parts of understanding Christian theology is understanding this odd language of flesh and Spirit. To be born of the Spirit has everything to do with love. To be born of the Spirit is to be a person who has discovered the multiverse in which love is the only law that matters. To be born of the Spirit is to be a person who lives constantly by giving love from your heart. This is why Jesus says to be born of the Spirit means a second kind of birth, because it takes a conscious shift in your being to move from the dimension of self to the dimension of giving love. As Nicodemus asks (John 3:4) “how can anyone be born after having grown old?”

Jesus says that thing about the wind blowing—(John 3:8 “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit”)—do you ever stand outside in a fresh wind and bless it? I do. Especially since returning to Oregon, where I live surrounded by centuries-old fir trees towering higher than skyscrapers. When there is wind they not only rustle, they positively dance, a ballet of creation, a truly amazing wonder of God’s world. I think this is Jesus’ point about being born of the Spirit—Spirit is a dimension of its own and it swirls dynamically through creation always but only when we have chosen to give love do we tune into it, notice it, join it. And that shift is a kind of new birth.

In Old Testament times such shifts in dimensionality were described as literal movement. Look at Genesis 12:4 where God promises Abraham multitudes of blessing in return for ultimate faith—“Abram went, as the Lord had told him;” a shift, a movement, a conscious act of faith, choosing the dimension of God’s love. As Paul affirms then (Romans 4: 13), God’s promise is revealed in the righteousness of faith. Righteousness is a metaphor for a way of standing in faith, for that conscious movement that shifts dimensions from self (flesh) to love (Spirit). This is why Paul says it all rests on grace in which the promise of eternal blessing is guaranteed to everyone who shares the faith.

Movement, this shifting dimension, is something well-known in the lgbtq community. We call it “coming out.” For some of us it is the simple realization of true being, a kind of revelation that emerges from a lifetime of experience but seems uncannily simple once experienced—not unlike my epiphany looking out the window of the LIRR one day and seeing the place of my birth—a moment, a sudden slight shift in dimension, a new life of grace. For others of us it is a gut-wrenching experience driven by loneliness or despair or exile or dispossession but then coming as a revelation of the “exodos”—ancient Greek for “departure” but also the “way out” sign all over modern Greece.

Like the biblical Exodus, the way out is also the way in, the way into new life, rebirth in the lgbtq Spirit of love, where God’s guaranteed blessing is available to all who have faith, to all who give love. Either way, the way out must come from looking within, from realizing the truth of who God has made us to be, each of us and all of us in God’s image.

Birth from above, new life in the dimension of God’s love, is the way into the realization of God’s promised blessings to all who have faith.

 

2 Lent Year (Genesis 12:1-4a); Psalm 121 Levavi oculos; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Mustard Seed of Love

I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with the concept of defining lgbt experience. Especially when it comes to reflecting on scripture, as I do to write this blog, I puzzle over just what in lgbt experience is a match for the references in the text; it is sometimes particularly tricky to match lgbt life with the stories in Jesus’ parables. No end of navel-gazing can be inserted here. There always is the old saw that if it is my experience and if I am gay (and I am gay) then it is a gay experience. So, getting the car washed, planting tulip bulbs, doing the laundry—are those gay experiences when I am the gay person in question? I guess so, actually, because it is a matter of backdrop. That is, the tulip bulbs aren’t particularly gay nor is planting them, but having a home where I can do that is a gay experience, at least for me. In fact, having the kind of life where there is sufficient stability to allow mundane things like everyday errands to happen is still a rare experience for lgbt people. We still struggle to achieve equality in the quality of life. Our lgbt friends in some parts of the world still risk their lives just getting up every day. Although in the ostensible developed west there is a façade of equality and acceptance, as we all know, too often it really is just a matter of bare tolerance. It’s okay to plant your tulips, just don’t look too gay when you do it.

Last Sunday’s scripture included a passage from Jeremiah that was recorded as a prophetic text; it is essentially the instructions for buying a house. The details are fascinatingly like they remain today. But the prophetic meaning of the text is that when and where righteousness and justice prevail God guarantees stability in the lives of faithful people; security returns like clockwork when the fulcrum of righteousness holds and the scales of faith and faithfulness are balanced.

This week’s scripture includes passages from Lamentations 1 and 3; a “lonely” “city that once was full of people” refers to an ancient exile; the response is that God is good to those whose hope expresses their faith because it is in that hopeful faith that salvation is encountered. In Luke’s Gospel (17: 5-10) Jesus gives a series of examples of the encounter of faith in ordinary life. The very power of faith, of course, is in having it. The grace of salvation is in the life of hope and atonement—a priest mentor of mine* used to delight in pronouncing that “at-one-ment” to remind us that it is we who must remember to remain one with God by living our lives in faith.

Exile, of course, is a common experience of oppressed peoples of all stripes. Lgbt people are no exception—we experience exile from family and community when we admit our God-given sexuality. Sometimes that exile is metaphorical being realized in dour faces and tight-lipped utterances. Sometimes it is more tangible—millions of lgbt children are thrown out of their homes or separated from family. It is one reason the Exodus narrative is such a powerful metaphor for us—we dream of a return to a life of equality and stability even when it involves a powerful journey filled with trials. How “lonely,” then, are the homes from which lgbt people have been exiled? The passage from Lamentations reveals the grief of post-exile: “the roads … mourn,” “children have gone away,” “all … majesty [has departed].” Indeed.

The response in Lamentations 3 is hope and faith and the faithfulness of daily life. “Life goes on” we say as we get through each day hoping, building, waiting eagerly for our own personal Exodus, our own personal return to equality and stability. Here is where Jesus’ examples of faith “the size of a mustard seed” (so tiny as to be imperceptible, yet powerful enough to produce miracles in the physical world) remind us that it is in living life to the fullest—getting the car washed, doing the laundry, even planting tulips—that we best express our lgbt faith in the God who created us lgbt in God’s own image.

People in faith communities often look for majestic signs of powerful theophanies—thunder and lightning, or volcanoes erupting or great tsunamis. The reality is that theophany—the meeting between us and God—takes place in our hearts. The reality is that the mundane life is the very place where theophany counts. It is in doing the laundry and taking care of business by building stable lives that we create around us a sea of equality based in the love of God that is in our hearts, even when it is expressed with a gentle smile while planting a tulip bulb. It is the force of that mustard seed of love that propels all of creation toward righteousness and justice and the time when “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jeremiah 32:15).

 

Proper 21 (for September 29, 2019): Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6: 6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Proper 22 (for October 6, 2019): Lamentations 1:1-6; Lamentations 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*The Rev. Charles O. Moore

Keep coming out*

We keep coming out. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that and thought that but I know it’s constantly true. Coming out is a life long process. The deeper we get into life, the more revelations we discover, the more we keep coming out.

I only remember some of my pre-out life. Although I remember clearly the moment I knew I had to come out, I don’t remember being so much closeted before that as confused. When I grew up there was no “gay.” There were no mature gay people to whom I could look for role models; or at least, if there were, they were unknown to me. I knew I was interested in other boys in a very deep way from the very first, but I never understood that that was somehow different from the way other boys felt, or that it was very much the way most of them felt about girls. And when I dated girls and went through all of the “normal” phases, I had no way to know that the lovely friendships we developed were not the norm. Until one day, at about age 24, I knew. It hit me like a ton of bricks. And I knew I had to come out. I was pretty decisive about it too. I did my research, which was more difficult in those pre-Internet days. I remember going to my first adult book store and feeling like I’d discovered gold. In those days there were several gay newspapers, notably The Advocate, and I bought several such things and devoured them. They had advertisements for books that I ordered and those I spent hours with as well.

The hard part was figuring out what to do. As it happened, I didn’t need to worry too much about that. One day I was talking to a guy I barely knew at work and I just blurted it out and he laughed and said “let’s get coffee.” The rest was history, as they say.

I don’t know, of course, what anybody else’s story is like. I know that I have had the impression that today’s younger generations are better informed and more likely to know early on what’s happening. But somehow I suspect that ton of bricks is a pretty common experience. It is like a rebirth, or an awakening, a realization of what is right that takes your breath away. And it is a moment in which freedom is born in your soul.

In Galatians 5 Paul writes about freedom; he says “for freedom Christ has set us free.” He means, of course, that in Christ all of God’s children are set free from the burdens of the Old Testament law; he even says (14) “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” But he also says “don’t be self-indulgent” and later “don’t devour each other.” He means, freedom means standing firm, being decisive, knowing your own truth, and being decisively people of the Gospel. Being people of the Gospel means loving your neighbor as yourself. But in order to do that you have to love yourself. In order to love yourself you have to know yourself. Realizing Gospel freedom is born in telling yourself the truth about yourself. And that must lead, in my experience, to the life-giving decision to come out, to be the lgbt people God created us to be.

There is more of course, because freedom is not freedom from responsibility or community. Being free means living into the world God created us to inhabit, the kingdom of heaven, which as Jesus always tells us, is already here, if only we can see it.

Today will see the gay pride parade in New York City which has become a sort of international beacon of light for the lgbt community. Millions who are out will parade, or gather to watch the parade, or see it later via media. Millions more, who are not yet out also will be there, maybe a bit farther back on the sidewalk or down the street or watching from a venue along the route. For them, it is important that we keep coming out, keep being role models, keep showing the world who God made us to be.

When pride celebrations are over and the doldrums descend, we have to keep coming out in our communities, by which I mean every place we inhabit. The carnage in Orlando is just more evidence that we have to take our freedom as God’s lgbt people seriously. And in a quiet moment today we should take time to remember those gunned down that night. And while we’re at it we should remember all of our comrades who passed during the AIDS pandemic.

Then celebrate the freedom God has given us to live lgbt lives, celebrate your pride in who you are. Keep coming out.

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*Proper 8 (2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62)

Calm, proud, insistent, equal*

In so many ways glbt people are just like everybody else. In fact, increasingly lgbt folk are being integrated into the larger community and with that comes both benefits and drawbacks. The benefits of course are all associated with being “normal” and part of the “crowd.” It’s great to just be one of the folks and not to have to even think about how you are maybe a little bit different. For those of us who grew up knowing we were “different” and likely going to get in trouble for it, this new kind of inclusiveness is a blessing. The simultaneous drawback, of course, is that we are in danger of disappearing into the woodwork. This would be a good thing, if true integration were just around the corner, but the fact is that true integration is still not quite here. That means, we need to be visible, because the squeaky wheel still gets the grease.

I suppose marriage equality is an example—whoever of my generation thought we ever would be allowed to marry? And now we are required to file federal income tax returns as “married”! We are having to learn to say “my husband” and not “my partner.” Not only are we having to get used to saying it, we have to get up and keep up the nerve to remind everyone else too. In the fall I joined an organization that presented me with the dreaded form on which to record not only my name, but my spouse’s name as well. At first I left it blank, not thinking about it; or, rather, thinking “that’s for heterosexuals.” The woman processing the form sent it back to me by email and asked me to fill it in. I was going to be upset about it until I noticed her email was very carefully worded. She had not said I should identify my “wife,” but rather, she had said “spouse” repeatedly. “Oh …” I thought, and filled it in. Recently I was receiving brief medical attention for a minor problem, and the receptionist who filled out my “record” didn’t blink when I replied “married” and gave my husband’s name. But the nurse who followed kept asking about my “partner.” The first time I said “my husband” was out in the other room. But when she responded pointedly that she would look for my “partner” I said, “he’s my husband; you’re going to have to learn to say that, because marriage is the law now.” I was proud of myself. Calmly, but insistently, I had stood up for us.

Sometimes I want to shake the community up, I want to scream “stand up for who you are and wear your rainbows with pride.” I get angry when I hear young gay men say they don’t want any of that “pride &X@$.” I want to remind them that once upon a time—like, still in most of the world!—there was no equality, no integration, only oppression.

But spiritually it is important to be who God has made us to be, and furthermore, to be so insistently, and calmly, and visibly. This, after all, is what God is calling us to do. God made us gay, God loves us just as we are, God calls us to testify to the glory of God just by the simple act of being gay. So go out to dinner with your spouse, or to the hardware store, or wherever it is you go together (yesterday we had to take our new iPhones to the Apple Store, and the pleasant young man who worked with us picked up right away that we were married!). Let the whole community see that you are gay and normal and equal and integrated. For God who created the heavens and stretched them out has breathed life into you, God has called you in righteousness, God has taken you by the hand, God’s soul delights in you—so that you can open the eyes that are blind to oppression, and bring the prisoners out of the dungeon of the closet.

Psalm 29 says “The voice of the LORD is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders … The voice of the LORD is a powerful voice; the voice of the LORD is a voice of splendor. It is God’s voice, calling you to equality. The final verse of this psalm is: “The LORD shall give strength to his people; the LORD shall give his people the blessing of peace.”

Baptism, of course, is how one becomes a Christian. The practice of ritual washing in moving waters, as a sign of the cleansing of sins, apparently preceded Jesus’ ministry. But it is clear from Mark’s Gospel that Jesus was sent by God to be baptized by John, and for just this reason—to open the eyes of all who are blind, to bring all prisoners out of their dungeons, to show the glory of the power of God’s which is the blessing of peace. God has ordained this sacrament of baptism for all of God’s children to give us the real experience of God’s grace received in the power of God’s voice thundering with your own blessing of peace.

It often is said that God’s time is not like human time, and that for God a thousand years last but an instant. In church time we have the odd experience that Jesus, an infant just days ago, now is a grown man baptized in the river. It is a reminder that sin is not a thing we do in time but an attitude with which we live. It is a reminder that salvation is not some future goal but a living reality in every moment, ours freely given by God requiring only that we accept it by glorifying God, which we do by being the people God has made us to be—glbt, calm, proud, insistent, equal.

*1 Epiphany (Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11)

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Very married*

What a surprising week for gay Americans. To be honest, I had been guessing the SCOTUS would choose to let the circuit court decisions stand rather than take the cases for states that had voted marriage discrimination laws. It made sense to me that the conservative majority would not want to be associated with a decision in favor of marriage equality, even if they knew they could not stop it. But what I think is most interesting is that by this narrow precise decision concerning a few cases, the court has allowed society to transform itself. In simpler terms, although the court’s decision was to let stand decisions overturning discrimination, the effect is the utter transformation of the majority of the United States of America into (mostly) a land of marriage equality (35 states and the District of Columbia by current reckoning).

Christians often catch the “God is love” theme from the Gospels without understanding that it is not about smarmy greeting card love, but rather about justice and equality. For what is God’s love if it is not a guarantee of life, equality, and justice? God’s glory is in the glimmer of justice known, experienced, and lived.

Finally I could say to my husband, “well, dear, now you’re really stuck with me.” For a gay American born in 1952 I cannot imagine a more glorious thing to say. (For the record, we were married on May 31, 2008, at City Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; we have been together 36 years.)

Someone posted a reminder of National Coming Out Day on Facebook the other day. I always remember that the date of that event is October 11. Of course, for sixteen years of ordained ministry in Philadelphia it coincided with the lgbt street fair known as OutFest. We would sit at a table replete with symbols of the Episcopal Church, make sure a collared clergy person was always present along with some savvy normal-looking parishioners. Hundreds would stop by our table to ask questions about the church—everything from “do you know one with good music?” to “will you baptize our baby?” But I always thought our real impact was on the thousands more who walked by about twenty feet away, slowing down to read the signs, looking us in the eye with frightened longing. I always knew those were the people for whom our quiet witness was most effective. Just before I left Philadelphia I finally met someone who came to church and said casually “I used to walk past you at OutFest; it took me years to get up the nerve to come here.”

Witness, faith worked out in justice, is righteousness made into the transformative power of God’s love.

But the real reason I know October 11 is National Coming Out Day is that when I was a young lecturer at my first academic post the local lgbt group announced “wear jeans on coming out day” as a sign, a witness, of the presence of lgbt people throughout the whole community. I remember it because I was not yet “out,” not yet certain what “gay” really was, not yet certain whether that was a term that described me. And yet I wore jeans every day (ex-hippy that I was and still am). So I remember being terrified that whatever I did would be a lie in some way. I worried about it for weeks. And when the day came I called in sick (this was before computers and email!). The power of my emotional upheaval made a permanent impression on my psyche. And yes, by the following October, I had come out. The rest is history, as they say.

In Matthew’s gospel (22:1-14) Jesus tells the parable of the wedding feast. At the very end, when finally the rabble joyously constitute the guests at the feast, one man refuses to wear the wedding gown and is thrown out. “For many are called but few are chosen.” Of course the parallel of the jeans is not lost on me. Until I ponied up and put on my jeans I was relegated to the exile of outer darkness. Once I became the gay man God had made me to be, once I had put on the robe of righteousness by acknowledging and rejoicing in the gay man God had made me to be, I was once again admitted to the feast. Who’d ever have thunk such a critter could become a priest?

But you know what, today I am very married. That is the transformative power of God.

Proper 23 (Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14)

©2014 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

An organic whole*

Creation is an organic whole. I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone. I read this week that the ozone layer has begun to recover, more than two decades after we stopped using ozone-depleting chemicals. The Milwaukee paper today has a cover story about algae blooms in Lake Erie; they’re a problem in all of the Great Lakes, and problems in the lakes signal problems in the environment and presage problems in life all around those lakes, not to mention reverberations worldwide from changes in the socio-economics of the region. It’s a bit like chaos theory, which most of us learned about in Jurassic Park. Everything is connected.

If everything is connected then it follows that a disturbance in one place can lead to a domino-effect of disturbances along the line. This is the reasoning glbt liberators have used for decades to encourage coming out. People who do not come out harm themselves for sure, by not reaching personal fulfillment. But they also harm those around them, entering into relationships based on false pretenses, as well as bringing harm to the rest of us who are gay who are seen as somehow odd for having come out. When all glbt people stand up in society for just whom God has made us to be, there will be no room for oppression or suppression. Paul writes to the Romans (14:7) “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.” Paul’s focus in this passage is on unity with God, living into life with God. But lest we live fully into life with each other we cannot be one with God.

The other side of this coin, to mush a metaphor, comes in Matthew’s Gospel (18-21-35) where we hear Jesus repeatedly telling his disciples that they must forgive and forgive and forgive and then forgive some more and it must come from the heart. Without the opening to God created by the flow of love among people there can be no space for justice. Without forgiveness there can be no room for everything, which is interconnected, to thrive. Forgiveness must come from the heart and must flow among us, but of course, it does not mean we must be doormats.

Yes, there must be marriage equality. Yes, our families must be respected as such. To that end we must continue to stand up for ourselves. A former mentor used to say repeatedly that the most important thing gay people did in the church was to show up and be visible, as a witness to their faith among the whole congregation. So, yes, we also must find a way to forgive, and with forgiveness in our hearts continue to show up and be visible. Creation is an organic whole.

*Proper 19 (Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35)

©2014 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Let anyone with ears listen*

What a week just past. Sometimes we should just stick with the scripture. To wit:

In Genesis 28 Jacob leaves. It says he left and went. It sounds rather like one of those critical moments in life, one of those things that presses on your soul, and then in the telling of the story it becomes simply “he left … and went.” But in leaving and going he found a place where God is and was. Of course, it was in his vulnerability, sleeping on the ground, exhausted on his journey, that he discovered God always is at hand. It was in his vulnerability that he discovered the very gate of heaven.

It is a metaphor, of course, for every life lived. For we who are lgbt people, it is a metaphor about how our lives are led in a constant state of coming out; we always are having to leave and go. And it is in the leaving and going and coming out that we find in our moment of vulnerability that God has opened the very gate of heaven to us, right where we are.

In Psalm 139 we are reminded by the psalmist that we are in relationship with God and that the relationship is mutual. God searches us out, God knows us, God discerns our thoughts, God traces our going out and lying down, God is everywhere, and the very gate of heaven is right where we are in every moment, God opens it to us. God knows our prayers, our needs, our very essence. Did you think free will meant your thoughts had no consequences? You may think what you will, but bear in mind your thoughts are universal and are always part of God’s very consciousness.

Our very being as lgbt children of God is embraced as part of God’s universal omniscient omnipotent consciousness. Open your hearts and thoughts to God with gladness; God rejoices in the searching out and knowing of you.

In Romans 8 we are reminded that in our adoption as children of God we are the first fruits of the Spirit, of the whole of creation that has been groaning in labor pains that we might be born as children of God, and in the realization of our childhood, in that moment in which we cry out “Abba! Father!” full in the knowledge of our salvation in the arms of our loving God—it is in that moment that we know truly that it is in hope that we are saved. “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?”

Paul focuses on the split between flesh and Spirit—he means that we must be aware that God is searching us out and knowing us, that God is with us on our journeys, that the gate of heaven always is opened to us, if we can get past our own selfishness. Lgbt people hold their breath when these passages come up because, as we know, so often we are falsely held out as “flesh” for our sexualities; but the thing to remember is that all of humanity is sexual, even heterosexuals[!]. For every human the question is how to remain constantly in awareness of our relationship with God so that we can find our salvation, in the hope known in God’s embrace. Yes, as we know, even lgbt people are children of God finding hope in God’s embrace.

In Matthew’s gospel chapter 13 Jesus tells a parable about sowing good seed in a field where an enemy later sows weeds. Of course Jesus is telling this parable to his followers to give them an example to internalize about good and evil. But the story is much richer than that after all. It says first and foremost that everything is always all mixed up. There is good seed among the weeds (which is the rather more optimistic version of the interpretation; but if you need a concrete example you should see my garden). The righteous, the good seeds, grow up and shine even among the weeds. Not even the enemy’s weeds can so choke out the righteous that God and God’s angels cannot find the children of God.

Certainly lgbt people know all about being mixed up in fields full of weeds, and other distractions from the fullness of life we yearn for. All of the scripture here tells us that God has, in fact, guaranteed our very salvation, our very hope, our very destiny as God’s own. Do not be obsessed about the weeds, instead leave and go, keep coming out, unto that place where you find the gate of heaven.

What a week just past—we began with a world obsessed with the World Cup, we end with a world in mourning at the tragic loss of life in an airliner shot down, and in the latest round of apparently constant war in Gaza. Everything is always all mixed up, indeed.

“But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” [Matt. 13:43]

*Proper 11 (Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23; Romans 8: 12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)