Enlightening The Eyes of my Gay Heart

Growing up, I often tell young LGBTQ folks now, I didn’t know I was “gay.” The reason I say that is because we didn’t have that in those days. Or rather, I thought gay was what the yuletide was what with decked halls and all that. I didn’t know I could be a man who loved a man for life (or even for awhile). All I saw in the world was or appeared to be heterosexual. So I didn’t know there were any options.

Then again, I knew very well to whom I was attracted emotionally and sexually. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about that so mostly I did nothing. I have now dim memories of times that I came across LGBTQ people and only much later (usually decades later) realized that was what that had been.

Like so many things in life, as I grew into adulthood and went out into the world I began to see things that were new and different for me, and very quickly I began to catch on that there was a whole big chunk of reality I knew nothing about and hadn’t really let myself encounter. So a first step for me was just letting my eyes see things in a different way.

My seeking came from an inner yearning and eventually I began to get past just observing and head for real learning. Somehow or other I came across a news stand someplace (probably in a book store, remember book stores? We used to have stores full of books of all kinds …. And often a huge magazine rack and lots of newspapers too.) and there one day was a newspaper called The Advocate. And boy did I devour every word of that once I got it home.

Now my eyes were really open and I began to see love all around me, especially of the LGBTQ variety. I wanted in and while I worked on that I opened my heart as well as my eyes. And then let’s just say one day I was delivered by an angel and never looked back.

But then a whole new world opened up for me. I remember very nervously being escorted to my first ever gay bar by a group of my new friends. It was equal parts terrifying and exciting. But it also was incredibly liberating. And I kept thinking “you mean this was here all along and I didn’t know about it?” It was both like being shifted into a new dimension, which it was, and like being delivered from exile, which it also was.

And, to cut to the chase, I met my husband and he dragged me to church. And boy was that ever a revelation. There in that bastion of holiness, surrounded by beauty and glory and joy and salvation, there were integrated people of all sexualities, of all races, of all genders, of all ages, of all social stations. I could go on and on. Again I thought “you mean this was here all along?” And, of course, it was. And it is.

Because Christ is king. Christ is king of the dimension of love, where there are no divisions, where revelation is yours if only you will open your eyes, where learning to walk in love is the surest path to eternal citizenship.

The prophet Ezekiel [34:11-16, 20-24] gives the word of God concerning God’s lost sheep, who God promises to rescue, to gather, to feed … to “make them lie down” in rest and relief. And a shepherd will be set over them. And I think of Christ, my king, who brought me back from exile and into a new dimension of being one with God’s creation of me and with and through whom I have been able to live a long life of love.

Like the Psalmist [Psalm 100] I learned to dance and sing and rejoice, not just at church but at that gay bar too. I learned to be joyful with all my heart, to give thanks and to be present with song.

Like Paul writing to the Ephesians [1:15-23] I learned the meaning of having “the eyes of [my] heart enlightened” to know the hope to which I had been called.

And then I understood [Matthew 25:31-46] that the Son of Man has come in glory and his angels are all around us and we have been gathered into the dimension of his love because we have learned to walk in the love given to us in creation by God in whose image we all are created.

And Christ is our LGBTQ king.

Amen.

Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King, Proper 29 Year A RCL (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100 Jubilate Deo; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46)

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

“Wash and be Clean”

We are watching the inexorable march of fascism.

We have seen the near overthrow of our own government

            which is still on-going.

We have seen the self-righteous right take over

            the supreme court and turn the law into dust.

We have seen the right to body sovereignty

            removed.

We can only expect that we will be next,

            first they will re-outlaw our marriages

                        then they will re-outlaw our selves.

And intelligent people don’t have the erm [gumption? cojones?]

            to make their friends and relatives understand this isn’t about the price

            of gasoline

            this is about life and death.

Your girlfriend dead from a coat-hanger abortion.

Your sister dead from carrying a fetus too long until it killed her.

This is my cry.

“Wash and be clean.”

How much more clear could Elisha’s instructions to Naaman

            have been (2 Kings 5:13)?

Naaman wanted magic.

But the magic is within you.

The spirit of God is within you.

God is within you.

God is with you.

God is with gay you,

God is with lesbian you,

God is with transgender you,

God is with queer you,

God is with polyamorous you …

            and you know what,

                        all you have to do is look in the Bible,

            throw it back in their faces,

                        all of us are there in God’s own image.

“Wash and be clean.”

That’s all it takes.

Admit your self

            to your self

                        and be

                                    your own God-given self.

Do it all with love in your heart.

“You reap whatever you sow” (Galatians 6:7).

Have love in your heart in all that you do.

If you do not have love

            get some,

                        any way you can.

If you feel upset or angry or vengeful (as I clearly have been doing)

            think about someone you love

            think about some thing that you love

            think about love

                        get some love in you.

Then

            go out and “wash and be clean”—

            go out and be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer,

                        proudly, loudly, fiercely, boldly—

            remember,

                        you are made in God’s gay image

                        or you are made in God’s bisexual image

                        or you are made in God’s lesbian image

                        or you are made in God’s transgender image

                                    now how could that be? but it is,

                                                you are made in God’s own image

                                                            did you think God really was an old man?

                                                            did you never think God was intersectional?

And wherever you go say to them “the Kingdom of God has come near to you” (Luke 10:9, 11).

Because it has.

Because it is.

Because it is in us,

            the LGBTQ people made in God’s image,

                        we are the keepers of the kingdom of love.

Proper 9 Year C 2022 RCL (2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30 Exaltabo te, Domine; Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11,16-20)

©2022The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Reeling Toward Pride

I think we are all reeling.

Way back in 2004 after we in the US had learned to deal with the aftermath of 2001 and a new kind of changed normality, there was a devastating tsunami in Indonesia that killed 250,000 people in a heartbeat. I was shocked that my parishioners didn’t seem concerned. They were too concerned about stuff, like, you know, post-Christmas sales. It didn’t make sense to me.

I have the same disconcerting cognitive dissonance now. What are we supposed to do? Complain about high food prices, or do something about the fact that you can be killed legally in the US anyplace you go at any time, there is no place that you are safe and six of “the nine” think it’s ok with them. And while we were reeling from that decision came the second half of the one-two punch: now there is no right to the privacy of your own body those “six” have declared that your bodily functions are systems of the state and not yours to manage.

How disgusting is that?

Surprised at my vehemence? Yeah, me too.

But no, I fought in the gay wars in the 1970s so there would be no further need for closetedness only to find millions of 21^st century gay men still marrying women just to hide. I lived through AIDS, not only as a scared young sexual gay man at the beginning but as the only chaplain in a hospital in Harlem who would go to the AIDS “floor” where patients with AIDS were warehoused to keep them away from the white wealthy patients with toenail infections. I watched my “parishioners” on that floor live through stifiing heat (there was no air conditioning in the typical New York 98 degree summer) and there were no custodians, when you walked into the ward you walked through a sewer that just was never cleaned up. I held their hands and prayed with them and managed their deaths with their startled parents and learned what happens when you are too poor to die. And now we are told we have no rights to our own bodies?

Okay, anger is useful if it directs you. But not if it overwhelms you.

We have to remember that the Gospel is a message about love. You see, I keep telling you that isn’t easy. Loving is hard when you are being bull-whipped by the establishment. But, love is critical.

We must love. We have no choice. And the place to begin always is with “love your neighbor as yourself”—begin with loving your self. Your body is your own, God decreed it that way when God created you in God’s own image.

God calls us to strive to be always joined together in the fact of love. Today’s scripture has powerful images of this tougher kind of love. Elisha sticks by his beloved mentor Elijah en route to his passing. Elisha persists as a chariot of fire causes Elijah to ascend in a whirlwind into heaven . Elisha picks up Elijah’s mantle and strikes the water of the Jordan river and as he cries “where is God?” the water parts to show Elisha the path to the new dimension.

Paul writes to the Galatians that we were called by Christ to the freedom of a dimension of love, not “as an opportunity for self-indulgence” but through love, being led to walk in a dimension of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness and self-control.” These are the instructions for loving self as the fortification for “being servants one of another.” This is the mantle of Christ given to each of us in our creation if only we can shift into its dimension.

In Luke 9 Jesus interacts with people who are consumed with everyday things while the chariot of fire whips up whirlwinds of injustice around them. Jesus says ultimately “no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” But mostly Jesus says again and again “Follow me” and “Go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

So these are our marching orders too. Be angry, yes, but just enough to be catalyzed into the dimension of love. It is going to be our mantle to make sure we live in a world of peace, justice, hope, equality and righteousness. The theme of today’s Pride March in New York City was “Unapologetically Us.” San Francisco’s is “Love will keep us Together.” I’d say that just about sums it up.

Proper 8 Year C 2022 RCL (2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Voce mea ad Dominum; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

A Place of Refreshment

I first saw “The Castro”—San Francisco’s famously gay business district—many years ago when I was attending a conference there. I lived in central Illinois at the time, and although I had a large circle of caring gay friends, I had no idea what it was like to experience an entire neighborhood where gay people were in the majority. Of course I thought it was delightful, but then again I was just out for the evening during a conference. Not quite two decades later I was living in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which was a recognizably gay neighborhood at the time, when I experienced an even greater epiphany. I was in the habit of running down to the corner bodega first thing in the morning to grab a newspaper and some fresh fruit, so half awake and not really paying much attention except to the “to-do” list in my head, down I went. While I waited to pay I began to realize everybody else in the store was gay. When I went outside to walk back to my apartment I could see that it looked like everybody on the street also was gay. I had stumbled into the opening day of the Gay Games. I remember having the odd thought that this must be what it feels like to be straight—to look around you and have the sense that you are like everybody else and everybody else is like you. Imagine my ecstatic experience that same evening when a friend offered to take me along to the opening ceremonies—we took the subway up the entire west side of Manhattan and all of the gazillions of people on the train were gay. It was like your birthday and Christmas and the fourth of July all at once.

Later still, after I was ordained, I had a ministry of evangelism in Philadelphia’s gayborhood. That meant that I did what I could to convince all of the neighborhood Episcopal churches to really keep their doors open, and that I engaged in a ministry of witness by helping those churches to be visibly present in the community. That particular neighborhood was not exclusively gay, but it was pretty much the center of gay life in Philadelphia at that time, not unlike the gay villages that used to be so critical in Toronto and Montréal. My ministry took me from the William Way LGBT Community Center to street fairs like the October OutFest in the gayborhood and June’s Pride parade and celebration at Penn’s Landing. I worked at different parishes in Philadelphia over the years but eventually settled at The Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square, where for a decade I served as “Missioner among the Gay & Lesbian Community.” I wrote a column that was a precursor of this blog for the Philadelphia Gay News, so when I went out for a drink or my husband and I went out to dinner in the gayborhood I often was recognized. If I was in collar I often was asked for help of various sorts—it really was a ministry of witness, LOL we might say today—all I did was show up in collar and the rest took care of itself.

Of course, the gayborhood had restaurants and bars but also hardware stores—one was the best place to buy Finnaren and Haley paint, which exists no more but at the time was the best paint for the colonial and neo-colonial structures like the one we bought in nearby Queen Village. I remember after we moved in a lesbian acquaintance remarking that now we lived in “the” zip code—the one shared by the gayborhood. There were clincs and SROs and pharmacies and coffee shops and pet stores and bookstores. It was and still is a real neighborhood with a heavily lgbt demographic. LGBT people voted and swept their stoops and gardened and painted their homes and generally made the place a pleasant place to live and work. I laughed to remember that before I was ordained when I had been asked whether I had a vision of my ministry I said “I see brick sidewalks.” Of course, most of the sidewalks I was treading in my ministry were the brick sidewalks of the gayborhood and western Center City.

Jeremiah’s long narrative prophecy to the exiled people of God continues this week with am exhortation to “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce [29: 5]” and “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile … for in its welfare you will find your welfare [29∷ 7].” I wrote last week about how many LGBT people find that coming out turns into a sort of exile. My experience of the gayborhood, and of the gay village in Toronto, is that there you will meet lgbt people who have come from all over to find a safe harbor, a welcoming home. Is that exile? I suppose it is, even when it is we who seek it.

I know that younger generations of lgbt people are seeking a sense of inclusion, a feeling of integration in which sexuality is just part of the panoply of life and not a deciding factor. In many of the world’s former gay havens the villages have splintered, just because integration means literally that lgbt folks will be living everywhere. It means that some of the critical centers have faded away—even the formerly “gay” bars are now frequently not so gay any longer. It is a sign of progress. But it also means that newly exiled folks just after coming out might have a harder time finding that safe harbor. It’s a good thing the community centers like William Way in Philadelphia continue to thrive.

In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul writes “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him ….” Our gayborhoods, whether demographic centers or simply integrated neighborhoods like the one where I now reside in Oregon, are places were we have been called by God to live a ministry of witness—just by being visible. In these places God has called us to build houses and plant gardens and care for the welfare of the neighborhood. In so doing we live into Paul’s idea that we are thereby presenting ourselves to God in recognition that we are created by God in God’s own lgbt image.

In Luke’s Gospel [17: 11-19] we find a story about Jesus healing ten people but only one remembers to thank him, and that one was a “foreigner”—an exile perhaps. The moral of the story is to remember that God’s richness flows like the mighty Columbia River and creates “a place of refreshment” [Ps. 66:11] experienced by everyone, but it is for those of us who are in the minority, one way or the other, that that place of refreshment brings with it an epiphany about what true inclusion, true integration, true equality can look like. Remember to give thanks for the place where you are living into the lgbt life God gave you.

Proper 23 (Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-11; 2 Timothy 2: 8-15; Luke 17:11-19)

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

Evolutionary ecological cycles

It has been fun experiencing the shifting seasons in Oregon. A few days ago it was summer and very hot; all of a sudden yesterday it got cool and started raining. The light has shifted with the temperature. The cool damp, of course, is critical for the ecological cycle that makes this a place full of trees and green everywhere. The cycle evolves, things change, and because of the cycle of change, life grows and is abundant. Change, this evolutionary cycle, it seems, is critical in all parts of creation.

It also has been comforting to feel more at home than I have in quite awhile. The difference between knowing that you belong and feeling like an outsider can be subtle. For lgbtq people the difference often falls somewhere between knowing you are just being “tolerated” (put up with) to feeling loved and accepted. Somewhere along that line lie the points in between where you know you are not really equal.

Once early in our time in Wisconsin I had to get a simple medical procedure taken care of; Brad was along mostly for moral support but he got bored and went out to find food. When it was all over I asked whether the nurse knew where my husband had gone and she pointedly replied that my “friend” was out in the seating area. I don’t remember the entire conversation any longer (mercifully) but I do remember the third time she said “friend” I said something along the lines of “we’re married, he’s my husband, it’s the law, you had better get used to it.” Oh well. It’s never nice to be snarky, but then again, it’s never nice to have to be snarky to demand equality that ought to already be yours by nature.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the nice lady at DMV who took good care of our little family. This week I took my house guest to the gym with me, and instead of asking me a zillion questions about why I had him along they smiled and gave him a guest pass. Someone asked me how I perceived life in Oregon to be more amenable and I said it boils down to all of these little things. Even just things like Brad and me buying groceries together, which seemed often to discomfit cashiers in Wisconsin.

When the simple things go well you have more energy for giving love as you go.

Of course there is always hope because there is always the process of growth and change, evolution even. Here is where I like the image of the potter at the wheel in Jeremiah 18. Sure you can make a pot and feel like you are done with it. But Jeremiah uses the metaphor to prophesy about how God always is recasting us in the same way a malformed pot can be returned to clay and recast in a better shape. It works both ways too—it isn’t just the “other” who is being constantly recast, it is us too, you and me, changing and growing as we experience life, especially growing in love as we experience equality—the power of the evolutionary cycle.

Love evolves and we grow.

There is a clear parallel between this metaphor of the potter and the “radical self denial”* that Jesus demands of his followers in Luke 14. To live fully in God’s kingdom requires setting aside of self to the point where love can emerge. When love can emerge the shift is radical, the kingdom appears, equality becomes a matter of knowing in your soul that you are loved and accepted because you know in your soul that you love and accept too.

 

*The term “radical self denial” comes from: Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke. The Anchor Bible. (New York: Doubleday 1985), p. 1062.

Proper 18 (Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21: Luke 14:25-33)

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

Vote like your life depended on it because it does*

I’m not going to mince words here. This is probably the most important election in lgbt history. If the Republicans win, we can look at our “equality” being rolled back, we could lose what marriage equality we’ve managed to eke out, we could see an end to health care for lgbt families, we could be looking over our shoulders for the next eight years or longer.

Vote for Democrats. Vote for Hillary Clinton. Vote a straight party ticket—no Republicans, all Democrats. And as I did, vote early (I voted last Tuesday). If you vote early, you can spend the time between now and Tuesday getting your friends, colleagues and family out to vote too.

Let me pause to point out that I am not employed as blogger by any religious organization, and the opinions expressed here are my own.

In most Episcopal churches, this Sunday will see the celebration of the feast of All the Saints. For those who held that feast on its actual day (November 1), the lessons this week* all point to eschatological concepts—the well-known “already but not yet” of Christianity. The idea that heaven is both the future and already here (which, of course, accords with quantum theory just as much as it does with classical systematic theology).

In the scripture we hear about the little-known prophet Haggai, who is building a new temple to replace the one destroyed when all Jerusalem was exiled to Babylon. The people are complaining because the one they remember was bigger or had more chatchkes. You know what? They remembered wrong. The new temple, built by the people of God listening to the revelation of God, can “shake the heavens and the earth” and is filled with splendor.

This is a terrific metaphor for our own time of course. We have built a new temple, after a century of diaspora in the closet. Our temple shook the heavens and the earth, and yet like those marvelous snow globes, when all was said and done all of God’s creation settled back down to normalcy. And boy is that ever a wonderful metaphor. God is constantly making everything new, we are part of God’s constant renewal, and God’s constant renewal is what leads to that “normalcy” that we all remember and love and revere as “the good old days.” These are the good old days my friends.

We have gained marriage equality in much of the developed world, and sort of in the US as well. We have become proud to be god’s LGBT heirs. Are we going to let some folks who remember a less honorable past take that away from us? Haggai tells his people “the Lord of Hosts is with you, [the Lord’s] spirit abides among you. He means us now just as he meant the people of Jerusalem in 520 BCE.

In Second Thessalonians (or should I say “Two Thessalonians?”), Paul reminds us that God chose us as “the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” Believe in the truth. Do not believe the false prophets. In the Gospel, Jesus gets involved in a dispute with some fundamentalist elders, who cannot see the trees for the forest. He says in the end, “God is not God of the dead, but of the living.” It means, God is with us. God is always with us–even LGBT us.

But God expects us to play our part in creating the kingdom. Please play your part. Vote. Vote Democratic. Vote for Hillary Clinton, but also for the whole Democratic ticket top to bottom.

It is worth your lgbt life.

Believe it or not, this text is based on the propers for Sunday, November 6, 2016:

*Proper 27 (Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38)

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

The Circle of Life*

Lately I’ve been sort of culturally discombobulated, and I know why and I know it is politically incorrect to write about it. So I’ll try to be careful. I think the reason is that I’ve been sort of experiencing culture shock by, let’s just say I haven’t been spending much time in the company of gay folks. There, I said it, sort of.

Now I know it’s 2016 and lgbt people have been fully liberated and integrated in society—ok, maybe not so much, but still, things are quite a lot more liberated and integrated than when I was young. I know many young lgbt folks think we don’t need our own venues any more. But I still need the company of gay folks, just now and again. It helps me keep my balance.

For one thing, I grew up in a time when the rest of society pretty much was likely to grow violent if you were detected in their midst. Almost as painful was the cold shoulder, the other approach, where you were simply completely ignored. Now I know those days are sort of over. But still, decades of experience color my own perceptions. Although I came out in 1976, which was awhile ago, I still carry with me pain from exclusion and fear, all from my youth fifty years ago. So you are fortunate if you are of a contemporary generation and do not carry that baggage. But still, sometimes I just like to sit still in a place where everybody is gay.

I think it’s a natural sort of impulse. Families work that way too sometimes, you just feel better in the bosom of your family, even if Thanksgivings can get to be excruciating thanks to family dynamics.

But Christian life is meant to be lived in change mode. The church models a certain kind of life through the liturgical year—we move from Pentecost and the empowering fire of the Holy Spirit, through the long slog summer of Jesus’ ministry, and then when it is cold and grey and snowing we turn inward for Advent, and then Christmas comes and we start all over again, awaiting a new thing. It is like a circle of life, and the church intends us to learn to take comfort in the familiar, but also to use it as a springboard for being constantly renewed. A new thing is happening every day in each one of us. If we are in Christ, then we are constantly new. Not once for a minute, but constantly and forever new.

This is what Paul means when he says: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” We have to take part in the circle of life and participate in building up the family in love, because the world revolves in love and it all works better when we participate. We are to give love outward, to “walk in love,” as Paul calls us to do. We are to participate in the circle of life and love that begins in our hearts and souls.

In Luke’s Gospel (7:36-8:3) Jesus is loving outward. He is invited to a formal dinner, but when he gets there he brings with him some outcasts. He loves them. He shows his love by giving them respect, which they are not shown by the hosts, because they are working women. What a concept, respect. It really is that simple. Give respect to everyone. Even those “other” cultures. It is how lgbt people are called to participate in the circle of life and God’s love.

 

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

Proper 6 Year C 2016 RCL (1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a; Psalm 5:1-8 Verba mea auribus ; Galatians 2:15-21 ; Luke 7:36-8:3)

Belonging*

The first time I went to Crete, to Heraklion, was my first experience of both Greek society and what could be described as New Testament ambience. That is, learning a little bit of Greek and a little bit of Greek ways of being turned out to be really helpful in understanding stories like the one we heard today. On one trip, as usual I flew in from Amsterdam. That means I got up at 3:30 to catch a flight at 6:30 that arrived in Crete about 11:30am. I went directly to sleep for several hours. Then I needed coffee. So I wandered out of the hotel and found (no kidding) a Starbucks— tucked into a corner of a narrow street. It was sunny and warm and I sat outside sipping my coffee and watching people go by. Pretty soon I became aware of two small boys who were playing nearby. They were laughing merrily, so I started to watch and I noticed they had a shiny red top and they were twirling it rapidly so it would spin. Then they would follow it along and when it fell, they would laugh and pick it up and move a little bit and start over. It took me awhile to become aware of the adult a few meters away who was directing them about where to play. And it took me awhile longer still to realize it was all about entertaining people like me in the hopes of getting thrown a few euro coins. About the time I figured it out the manager of the Starbucks came out and shooed them away.

I remembered this when I was pondering that young woman in the story from Acts, who it says had a spirit of divination. My trusty commentary supplied the information that what she was doing was what we would call ventriloquism—throwing her voice—so, you see, it sounded like her prophecy was coming from the sky or even from Paul and Silas, the missionaries. This got me to thinking about how things often are not what they seem, which is another way of saying things often are more complicated than we want to know. Like the two little boys with the top, this young woman was earning money— a great deal of money it says— telling fortunes and throwing her voice.

So an obvious question is, why would Paul mess that up by ruining her gift?

This great story is actually full of drama and interesting, umm, characters. For instance, Paul is our hero, we know he is an apostle of Christ. But we forget that he was an itinerant preacher, homeless and penniless, dependent on living ‘ in the homes of his converts. We forget that he spent his days preaching in the marketplace. Imagine how you would react if you went to the supermarket to buy some lettuce and in the produce section there was a homeless guy preaching loudly at you? That is about how Paul looked to the people of this town. And one more thing, we also forget that Paul had had a stroke—his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, his near death in which Jesus Christ spoke to him directly and set him on the course that would see him create the church we know today, that experience also left him disfigured and unable to speak clearly. We also have the character identified as the jailer, probably a Roman official. He had the tough job of roughing up criminals and responding to the mob scenes in the city. We forget he would have been a soldier representing the occupying authority. He would have been torn constantly between his job and allegience to the Roman government who had control of his life, and the people over whom he had authority.

“That we all may be one.” This is Jesus’ prayer in the garden in that long night of the soul before his Crucifixion. It is his prayer to God for his disciples and for us— for all who have heard his word. In this moment of utter despair, Jesus prays to God that you and Jesus and God and me might always all be one. The hard part for us is to understand that God has already made it so. We all already are one. Whether we like it or not, we are all one, because each one of us and every one of us is created in God’s own image. And there is the key to this puzzle. God’s image is the image of diversity. God’s image is the image of all of us and each of us different as we are and yet together too. So, nice gay and lesbian people like you and me and other “characters” all are one. Jesus said: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us …” And so it is.

But why did Paul exorcise that demon and cause the young woman to lose her gift and her job? The reason was, she prayed for deliverance, constantly. The story tells us she “kept doing this.” The story tells us she knew Paul and Silas had the news of the Most High God, of a way of salvation. For her, salvation meant “healing.” In the New Testament healing means becoming one with the community. Salvation is belonging forever. This young woman, an outcast her entire life, just wanted to belong. Don’t we all, just want to belong? Paul, who knew the spirit of Jesus Christ, made it happen. He made it possible for her to belong.

This is the Gospel in simple terms. That God already has made us all belong. Our salvation is, that we all, already, belong.

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

7 Easter (Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)

Our times are in God’s hand*

Another gap in this blog, due largely to another journey—a research and conference trip to Amsterdam and Florence. I got bronchitis in Amsterdam, and thus was rather out of sorts for the entire time. It was my first trip to Florence, and I managed on the last evening to see much of the historic center of the city. But mostly I coughed a lot and saw the insides of different academic center meeting rooms. Such is the scholar’s life in the twenty-first century.

Last week I traveled to Philadelphia where I am canonically resident (in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania) to participate in the election of a new bishop diocesan. I had never been part of an episcopal election, so I wanted to have that experience while I could. Also, I had been personally invited by several people to take part. Although I moved to Wisconsin in 2013, I remain connected to the diocese where I first heard my call to holy orders, and where I served as deacon and then as priest for almost two decades. It was a bit of a shock to my system—I suppose culture-shock is a good term for what I experienced—to enter the Cathedral Church of the Savior in West Philadelphia for the opening Mass. The music, of course, was almost overwhelming in the way it tugged at my heartstrings. As I looked around I saw so many familiar friends, as it happened all of us who went to seminary together and were ordained deacon together in that very cathedral were present, as were so many colleagues from so many years in the clergy of the diocese. So much life lived together, so many holy moments shared—it was a very powerful presence into which I entered and of which I became a part in a heartbeat. The phrase that flew into my consciousness was how good it was to be back in the bosom of the church.

One way in which clergy are fortunate is to have these experiences of the whole church, or at least of larger parts of it than individual congregations. In seminary our experience of this was constant, the better I suppose to orient us to leadership in our individual congregations. That said, the convention was an amazing experience. There were five candidates, after the opening Mass, the voting began. There were four ballots, each taking about two hours in the end. The ballot would be announced, then we all stood to sing and pray, and then there were ten minutes of silence, following which we were instructed to mark our ballots and hand them in. And then we waited while they were counted (and we gathered, while the candidates were contacted with the numbers before we were). After the second ballot two candidates withdrew. And on the fourth ballot finally there was an election in both houses (clergy and laity vote simultaneously and are counted separately; the successful candidate must be elected by majorities in both houses). (Lest I’ve aroused your curiosity, the facts are available on the diocesan website here: http://www.diopa.org/.)

I was very tired afterward but I was very glad I had taken part in that particular council of the church.

In preparation for the trip I had tried hunting down information about places to eat and was chagrined to discover my favorite haunt had closed. It was a gay restaurant from the old school, with a bar of course. Back in the mid-1980s when we first moved there it was still the sort of place where everything on the menu came with a green vegetable so as to reinforce the community’s nutritional standard. During the first ballot at the convention I got to chatting with parishioners from the church where I last had worked, and from this conversation learned a waiter I’d known there had passed away. Over the past week I’ve mentioned several times to my husband how surprised I was at how upsetting I found that news. We’d been acquainted for almost three decades, and I suppose almost unwittingly I had developed a sort of dependence on his presence. So it was a bit of a shock to learn of his passing followed by a good bit of grieving as well. On reflection I see that his work in the place was as much ministry as job, for decades he loved his customers and tended to them like a flock.

The week ended with my birthday. Another conundrum I suppose, because each year older now is sort of a numerical shock even though I don’t particularly feel old.

Well that’s my news. Today is Palm Sunday, and it is with the remembrance of the Passion that we enter Holy Week. We who are Christians will walk this week together into the deep darkness and then step once more into the light. It is not just a memorial of the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, of course. It is the way of all of life, all of human experience, and in this we learn to hold together in both the darkness and the light. God’s glory is not just in the music and incense but also in the grief, which expresses love experienced together in community.

And what an intersection of community. A restaurant that for decades had nurtured and tended to the gayborhood had been a haven and a loving presence. And a diocese of the church now fully open to the lgbt community.

En route to the diocesan convention I tried to discover whether there were any particular points of view about the candidates from the lgbt community and there were not. At first I was surprised about that, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. After all, the diocese’s formal decisions about full inclusion of lgbt people date back to the 1970s. I was not the first gay priest in the diocese, although I was among the first partnered gay ordinands at a time when marriage equality was brewing as a goal for a distant future. How interesting that that future now is our experience with marriage equality the reality in society and in the church. As I strolled around the convention (there was lots of time for strolling during those long ballot counts) I noticed how many lgbt people were present. Everyone at this event was in a leadership role, so that speaks volumes for not just the presence of the lgbt community in the diocese but also for their sense of belonging and their commitment to the church that has made a commitment to them. At one point I ran into a priest who had been a comrade of sorts in my ministry of evangelism in the lgbt community and we discussed how we had succeeded in not just creating environments that were open to lgbt people but also in finding ways to take the gospel into the community. So there is a lot of good news about lgbt Christians in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, and in the Episcopal Church in general.

I’ll close with a bit of today’s scripture, from which I paraphrase today’s blogpost title. From Psalm 31:14-15a “But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. I have said, “You are my God. My times are in your hand.”

 

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

*Palm Sunday (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:5-6)

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.