Justice, Love, Salvation

Sometimes you have to take a chance on love.

Sounds like a song lyric, doesn’t it? But it is just the honest truth about God, and creation, and being LGBTQ+ and reality. Love defines us, and if we aren’t willing to take a chance on love then we risk the purgatory of that vacuum dimension where love never is. When we take that chance, when we give just a little bit of love, it comes back a thousand-fold, and we thrive in what the scriptures call heaven on earth, otherwise known as your real life.

God, who is love, always helps us, even if we try just a liitle bit, God helps us to sure footing on God’s foundation of loving-kindness. God is always with us, we are most in God’s grace when we seek to walk in love. The point is, take that chance, let down your wall, love, and you will receive grace a thousand-fold.

When approaching scripture it is always important to understand that it is intended as a form of revelation, and neither as history or as instructions. The story [1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49] about David slaying Goliath in the midst of a pretty unpleasant battle is intended to be revealing because—wait for it: because David who walks on the fundament of the love of God always wins over the vacuum dimension absent love.

The Psalmist [Psalm 9:9-20 Confitebor tibi] sings of God, who is love, whose love is known as justice.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth [2 Corinthians 6:1-13]: that today, now, this moment, with every breath, is the day of salvation. Salvation is now. If we can accept it. If we can walk in love. We must live with wide open hearts, as the hearts of children, open to joy and love.

I remember well my first days in seminary. We were all extremely spiritually hyped up. After all, here we were beginning the real journey to the priesthood. We ate together and worshipped together and learned together and lived together (albeit in our own apartments in the close). A couple of days in I was going to get my mail when I ran into a couple of people from my class. They said “I saw you were out until 8:30 last night then your lights were on” and I was sort of shocked. It suddenly became apparent to me that living in community meant living fully in community.

If you are LGBTQ+ you probably, like I did that day, recoil at the idea of living “in community” because that means living in the prying eyes of judgmental people. So, that was a challenge for me, to accept the love of my new friends and to stop being afraid of their love.

At a couples workshop the leader asked us to introduce ourselves to the group. My husband was sitting on the floor between my legs, and I patted him on the head and introduced him as my puppy, which was a tenderness between us. You should have seen the shocked looks on the faces of all of the heterosexuals in the group. They were stunned I could be so rude; and yet, I thought (and he thought) that I had been perfectly loving. So you see, living a life of love is always a challenge. It isn’t as easy as just having happy thoughts and saying “I love you” or even just “thank you” all the time.

Love is tough work. We who are God’s LGBTQ+ people are, indeed, just folks some of the time, but we also are the real loving people God created us and called us to be, and our lives take shapes that are different from those of other folks. We live integrated into the community, sort of, but also we live in our own ways of loving of which we should be proud and for which we should demand the justice of acceptance.

Love is tough work but it is worth it because love is the only path to salvation.

In Mark’s Gospel [4:35-41] exhausted Jesus gets in the boat with his disciples to escape the crowd by crossing to the other side; he falls asleep even as a storm comes up. They panic, awaken him, and forgetting all about love because they have given themselves over to fear, they reproach him. Weary, but understanding, and loving, he stops the wind. Then he reprimands them gently: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” As Mark tells it, the disciples miss the point, that it was their fear that opened the door to the vacuum of the absence of love.

Faith is trust that the power of love in action fills the void and wipes out that vacuum. Love is the power that saves. Love is the power that brings salvation now. Love is the power known in God’s justice.

We have that very power in the love we share, the love we experience, the joy we bring to each other and to those around us and by extension to the whole of creation. We are called to have pride in our LGTBQ+ lives and the love that defines them.

For Pride 2024 The Episcopal Church has unveiled a new pride shield (https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/episcopal-church-unveils-new-pride-shield-in-celebration-of-lgbtq-inclusion/ ). The shield is an attempt to integrate and celebrate the power of God’s LGBTQ+ people and of God’s love lived out as justice.

The design retains the upper-left blue corner of The Episcopal Church’s shield logo and incorporates elements of the traditional Pride flag as well as the Progress Pride flag and Philadelphia Pride flag. In their use of black, brown, pink, and light-blue diagonal lines, the latter two flags represent intersectional progress in acknowledging people who are often overlooked by the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement: communities of color; the transgender community; and the many thousands harmed by anti-LGBTQ+ policy—from those who lost their lives in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s, to those still disproportionately impacted today.

In June 2023, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry issued a video message of encouragement to “all of my LGBTQ+ family members,” noting, “I believe deep in my soul that God is always seeking to create a world and a society where all are loved, where justice is done, and where the God-given equality of us all is honored in our relationships, in our social arrangements, and in law.”

Proper 7 Year B RCL 2024 (1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49; Psalm 9:9-20 Confitebor tibi; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41)

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

Logical Families of Love

Summer has almost come to Oregon. Our roses are blooming; no wonder Portland was long ago declared “Rose City”–roses absolutely love the climate here. Their beauty attracts not only the wonder and love of humans, who, in loving them, build up love, but also, of course, bees … every time I go out to clip flowers I get to mingle with bees buzzing merrily around. It is God’s creation, which is intended to be a synchrony, and when things work in sync, life is filled with love.

Amazing love.

Glorious love.

Grace, which is the gift of love.

The love that dwells in our hearts, which leads us to sing thanks and praise, is the pathway to eternal life [Psalm 138].

We live in a complex multiverse. In one dimension you and I are God’s graced, gifted, LGBTQ+ people, living lives of love, giving love with every breath, building up love. It is critical that we continue to build up love, so that the dimension in which we live is filled up with love and has no room for a void.

Wisdom is experienced love in action, the very voice of love. That void I mentioned above can occur in other dimensions where love is not so prevalent, such that there is space for fear to intrude; fear rejects wisdom [1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)].

Grace is love realized in action [2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1]. Grace expands to more and more people as love builds up. As grace abounds, thanks abound, and more love is built up. Love, which is eternal, cannot be seen but renews “our inner nature … day by day … we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” which is the firmament of love.

Jesus builds an edifice on love, on walking in love, on love realized which is grace, on experienced love which is wisdom. Mark’s Gospel [3:20-35], which is pretty straight-forward in its narrative, tells it like it is: “The crowd came together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat.” Wow. That’s love for sure.

As Jesus goes love builds up and the people who realize the power of that love crowd around him. In Mark’s Gospel the dimension of love in which Jesus is operating is distinguished from others by an inside-outside continuum. We learn that Jesus’ biological family, “standing outside,” live in fear that obscures wisdom and grace. Jesus, inside the dimension of God’s love, reminds the crowd that it is those who walk in love who are really family.

I suppose it is inevitable to talk about logical or found or chosen family here. It is Pride month after all. We owe the term “logical family” to Armistead Maupin, who used it to describe families like those portrayed in the series Tales of the City. In Logical Family: A Memoir (HarperCollins, 2017) he wrote:

Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us. We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.

Logical family is the gathering of those we love, who love, us, with whom we journey through our lives.

Let me show you some pictures.

This is my biological family gathered on the occasion of my ordination as a priest in 1998 (June 13, 1998, Trinity Memorial Church, Philadelphia):

It’s a pretty typical American family. That’s my brother with his hand on my shoulder and my Dad (his father, my step-father), then my husband to my right (your left) and his father, that’s his mother peaking over my mother’s shoulder, seated is my Dad’s wife, all the way to the left are my aunt and her husband and two cousins and one cousin’s wife and son. Some of us are related biologically, all of us are related through love. Many in this picture dwell with God now, but the love that binds us is eternal.

It is more difficult to portray my logical family, there are so many parts of it! First is a picture of our closest friends on the occasion of the blessing of our relationship in Urbana, Illlinois in 1986 (that’s us in the middle, our best friends Tom on the left and Harry on the right):

Here is a picture of more logical family gathered the evening before my ordination as deacon (June 21, 1997):

If you look closely you will see that the same two guys from 1986 (Tom and Harry) are in the photo from 1997, along with new friends, and my brother and my mother (lower right) (I’ve just been presented with the stole that will be given to me in ordination, which Tom is holding out of the frame).

This is some of our family of love, this is an example of the family we live eternally with in God’s dimension of love.

What does your family look like? Just look around you to see, to know, to receive grace and wisdom from those who occupy God’s dimension of love with you.

Proper 5 Year B 2024 RCL (1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15); Psalm 138; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35)

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

Rejoice, Dance, Sing, Love

I have a priest-friend (like me, a gay man) who likes to say that people need ritual. It is a topic that comes up in Anglicanism with regard to the level of ritual employed in worship. Some churches are highly formal about their ritual and others eschew it altogether—except, in those places they always replace it with some ritual of their own. Maybe there is no Great Litany in Procession, but there is likely to be a procession of flowers, or a circle of hand-holding, or some other formality that arises as a community expression of joy.

The same is true in the secular world. If you want an obvious example just look at the Olympic Games. Not only is there a highly stylized ritual procession of athletes—the “opening” ceremony—but there also is ceremony before, during and after each event, from the introduction of the athletes, to the formality of the competition, to the medal award ceremony. It is a formal way of the community giving thanks and rejoicing.

I have been fortunate in my ministry to be involved in ritual from the beginning. I was ordained on a Saturday morning, served at my first mass the next morning, and the morning after that found myself processing into the General Convention of the Episcopal Church with a zillion (ok, maybe 30 or so) other clergy to music by Handel. What could be more grand? I remember the moment because the exhilaration was profound. Later in my ministry I was blessed to serve at a church where the organist was so terrific that, as I mounted the steps into the pulpit to preach, the improvised music had just enough of some music that was individually profound (for me, often the strains of the hymn “General Seminary”) to get me to the point of tears as I reached the lectern. The beauty of it was that it moved me into soul-space from which my sermons then could proceed unfettered by ego (or traffic noise from outside).

In my secular life I was most profoundly moved I think in the gay discos of the 1970s. I loved to dance, I loved the music, for sure. But what was profound was the joy, the happiness, the smiles, the singing along with the dance. The energy on the dance floor was profoundly a ritual of rejoicing, of thanksgiving, of love freely given, of justice even if just for a moment. There are lots of other examples too, of course. What about the ritual of the drag show? Costume, ceremony, formal stylized events—it was my great and profound privilege to be a good friend of Madame Michelle DuBarry, Toronto’s famous drag queen and Empress VI and XXVI of the Imperial Court of Toronto. And, we can’t forget Pride and its parades. The whole point is a ritual of community rejoicing and, well, pride!

It seems the ritual of joy is a responsibility of LGBTQ+ life. It is not just an expression, it is a calling, to create a dimension of love and rejoicing that lifts the whole community.

In Advent as we experience the changing seasons around us and are reminded of the solemnity of the Christmas experience we also are called on this Sunday to step back a bit and rejoice, to give thanks, to experience love in community. Gaudete Sunday it is called (or Rose Sunday, if you will). We light the rose candle on the Advent wreath, rose vestments appear, we give thanks for grace and mercy. We know that grace is love freely given, that mercy is justice freely given, that love and justice are the same thing, because justice is love in action. And in the relief of the rose vestments and the lighting of the rose candle we know from the ritual of rejoicing that Christmas is coming. We know that love has indeed come to help and deliver us.

Isaiah [61:1-4, 8-11] prophesies that God’s good news takes the form of being “clothed with the garments of salvation … the robe of righteousness.” A ritual metaphor of righteousness, which is right-living, walking in love. The robe of righteousness is the glory of love worn as adornment. Creation’s glory springs up with thanksgiving, as the earth brings forth its shoots, as the rose candle symbolizes hope. The Psalmist [126] responds in praise. “Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” Praise is joy expressed with the body, laughter, shouts, happiness endorphins are released physically; it is something God gave us in creation. We are intended to be joyous, to stir up love. We are called to rejoice.

Paul reminds us [1 Thessalonians 5:16-28] to “rejoice always, [to] pray without ceasing.” Part of joy is prayer, remembering to give thanks to God; remembering to feed the Spirit with joyousness; remembering to use joy to feed the body—no wonder we create ritual.

John’s Gospel [1:6-8, 19-28] tells us (as Mark did last week) about John the Baptist, who “came as a witness to testify to the light.” John quotes Isaiah when he says “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord.’” We all are called to witness to love, to testify to the joy God has given us. The wilderness is the noise of the world. Our voices of joy call love into our presence, making clear the pathway for the coming of God into our midst. It is in the rejoicing to which we have been called that we find the pathway into the dimension of love.

3 Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28)

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

Ever More Pride

It is high summer in Portland. This weekend is “Portland PRIDE.” There was an (I think successful) attempt to make a difference–a 48-hour drag show–this past weekend. This Sunday there will be a dinner cruise on the Willamette River hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It should be an exciting event all around.

We need to remember the importance of Pride: first, it helps us provide witness that we are here and we are proud, and second, it helps us build up our own pride in our own selves. In fact, that is the main point isn’t it? “Love your neighbor as yourself” begins with having pride in your own self.

We went on a quiet dinner cruise the other night with some friends from college days. The food was great and the views of Portland from the middle of the Willamette River are always going to be stunning. Not to mention it created for us a time to relax and enjoy dinner with people we love.

As we sat down my husband excitedly patted my knee … he had noticed (as had I) a young gay couple being seated at the next table. We smiled and laughed. I said “we looked like that once upon a time.” I suppose they were in their early to mid-20s (just like us when we met 45 years ago). As we were getting ready to leave after the cruise I spotted a couple of bears arm-in-arm, maybe in their early 40s.

So, I thought to myself, our love is not so quiet anymore. Hallelujah! I took comfort in seeing both couples. I wonder whether they saw us. I hope so.

God asks us to “know and understand” how love works, and gives us both the grace and the power to know and to understand that we might continue to walk in love.

There is a long story in Genesis [25:19-34], a continuation of the history of the blessings of Abraham, in this case the blessings of Isaac, whose wife Rebekkah has twins. You can read the story; it has its ups and downs, and I think we are to take from that that even God’s chosen have ups and downs and have to cry a bit and pray a lot. But in the end it all works out. I think the key to the whole story is in Rebekkah’s prayer—she went to inquire of [God] and [God] answered.

There you have it. Ask, and you shall receive.

God gives us the tools we need to be loving people, to let our own lives be “a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path” [Psalm 119:105, 112]. What a concept, eh? That your life should so light up the world?

Sounds like Pride again doesn’t it?

Paul, oh my, Paul. I bear his name (it is my middle name). He tells the truth [Romans 8:1-11]. “There is no condemnation.” Repeat that to yourself, over and over, and let it sink in that there is no condemnation. The law of love, if you can always walk in love, has set you free to lead the life God created especially for you to live. If you can remember always to walk in love, and to reject your animal instinct to isolate yourself, then you have been already given the tools you need to live in the Spirit. And when you live in the Spirit, God dwells in you. And you have “received a spirit of adoption;” you are, indeed, “children of God … heirs.”

Matthew’s Gospel recounts a day of preaching for Jesus [13:1-9, 18-23]. Jesus has to get in a boat because so many people had come to hear his simple message of love. He told stories. He pulled no punches: “let anyone with ears listen.” His parable of the seed is all about faith, and all about the power of the persistence of love, which always wins.

God loves you.

God loves us.

God created us, as we are, in God’s own image.

God wants us to do a special job, which is to show that family comes from love.

May Pride be with us all always.

Proper 10 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23)

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

Welcome, Pride

Happy Pride. Again.

Try to be happy, try to have pride. I know it is kind of tough these days to hang onto good feelings as we see daily that we are becoming again a persecuted minority.

But let’s hang onto the fact that it is sweet to be LGBTQ. God created us deliberately and with purpose as God’s LGBTQ people in God’s own image … never forget that, and never stop being proud of the LGBTQ person God created you to be. And remember you are called by God to be who you are!

This week there were a number of uh-oh moments for us … a seminarian at Nashotah House (https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/06/30/document-reveals-nashotah-house-rescinded-seminarians-acceptance-because-he-was-gay-married/ ) an actual accredited seminary for candidates to ordination in the Episcopal Church,! was turned out for being a “married” gay man. The reason was “traditional [sic] Christian beliefs.” This means, they think being “gay” and “married” means you are having lots of hot sex. It also means they are really wrong about Christianity and homosexuality. And then there is the woman who claims she is a Christian and so cannot make a wedding website for a gay couple, although as it turns out, it was a straight man who didn’t actually ask her to do anything, who she cited in her lawsuit (https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/colorado-web-designer-court-filings/index.html ). This person seems very confused about many things, but it is clear that her “Christian beliefs” also are not correct.

Back decades ago when I was ordained, and when I began writing a column for the Philadelphia Gay News which morphed into this blog, I tried to lay out the facts (check this out if you want: https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2009/10/ ). Here, to bolster us, is a reminder that in the Old Testament, which we as Christians read because it is the revelation of God’s acts in the world, the two most revealing and profound love stories are those between David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Orpah. And, as we see in today’s scripture, the New Testament, which is the scripture of Christianity, reminds us that “the law” has passed away and that we are saved from sin by grace.

Okay, that’s an outline, but you know what? This is not news to theologians. Every theologian for centuries has known this. The only reason some so-called “Christian churches” keep this up is for the same reason they insist (again incorrectly) that women can’t be leaders. It is to preserve the hegemony of white heterosexual males.

Yes, God tests us and yet God also provides [Genesis 22:1-14]. If you are in a loving relationship then you know that this is true. End of story.

Pride is not just about feeling good, it is about giving thanks for the lives we have been given. It is about rejoicing in life. It is about singing with joy in thanksgiving [Psalm 13].

Ok , here we go with the Christian truth [Romans 6:12-23]: Remember: “sin” isn’t about eating chocolate or even having hot sex; sin is about disconnection. If you disconnect yourself from the love of others you have allowed the absence of love to prevail in your life; if you disconnect yourself from the love of others you also disconnect yourself from the love of God. It is a circle of love. You are called to engage it. Don’t let go of it, don’t break the circle of love, that is the only sin, and that is the sin that God became human in Jesus to free us from.

And here [Matthew 10:40-42] is the absolute truth: “welcome” is the whole Gospel. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Be proud of who you are.

Be proud of the love you share.

Be attentive to the ways in which you allow yourself to be disconnected or to break the circle of love.

Sing praises for the proud loving life you have been given.

And welcome everyone.

Proper 8 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13 Usquequo, Domine?; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10: 40-42)

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

Pride, Revelation, Responsibility

The anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion is June 28, which is next Weds. This is why “Pride” always fell on the final Sunday in June (until it didn’t). For years I never experienced Pride, I just wasn’t there then …. And then one year I was in San Francisco for the American Library Association and trying to get from one committee meeting to another there it was in my way … San Francisco Pride. OMG I might have said! Was I shocked? Yes, but not because of what I was seeing; I was shocked to realize I had blown off this responsibility for so long. I never made it to that committee meeting; I joined the ragtag bunch on the fringe of the parade (ok, we were just invited to join if we wanted and march along) and eventually there I was at Market and Castro—another name for “heaven” if you were a gay man at that time.

Back in real life I discovered “Pride” in Philadelphia was always on the wrong day (in theory so as not to compete with the big Pride in New York City). Nevertheless, and decades later, the day after I was ordained a priest it was Pride in Philadelphia. Bishop Walter Righter (who had famously been tried and acquitted of heresy for ordaining a gay man) was the parade guest of my diaconal gay outreach ministry, and all of the dozens of family members who had come to my ordination came along.

I said my first mass as a priest, we sang Te Deum Laudamus, I gave my mother a rose (my brother and I had spent hours the night before wandering around Center City looking for that rose!) and then everybody went to the parade. Bishop Righter was seated in a convertible, I was marching just behind him. At the end of the parade we went into Christ Church Pine Street to a planned Evensong where I preached. Then we all gathered at my house in exhaustion, and … in PRIDE of course! I’ll never forget my college friends exchanging reminiscences of the day with my 70-something Dad who had taken his paraplegic wife the whole route in her wheel chair alongside my brother and my mother (Dad’s ex!). How’s that for parental love?

God’s love is the sure foundation, for sure!

Sometimes. normal things are the things that are the most significant catalysts. Like my Dad taking his wife in her wheel chair to follow me on a gay pride parade the morning after I was ordained a priest. You couldn’t make a movie about this sort of thing, nobody would believe it. But there it was, God incarnate, love incarnate, love in action, love generating love. Not unlike God hearing the voice of Hagar’s outcast son and providing first life-saving water and then an eternal blessing [Genesis 21:8-21].

And oh my that Evensong, we sang and sang and sang and sang and sang … and prayed. And rejoiced. We gave thanks for God, for love, for each other, and for God’s having brought us to that moment. Love, supplication, God will answer [Psalm 86:5-7].

This all happened in 1998. Three weeks later I went to Amsterdam to the Gay Games and my life was changed again and again, almost daily. I couldn’t believe I was finding myself in a place where everybody was like me, instead of the usual reverse where I was the outcast. It was exactly what I was called to do: to look, to see, to receive the revelation, to reject the state of disconnection, which is sin and to be born over and over in total connection. Alive to God in Christ [Romans 6:1b-11].

[Matthew 10:24-39] “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Be proud! Be proud of who God has made you to be in God’s own loving image, be proud of the love you share, be proud of those who love you in the form in which you are.

Proper 7 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Inclina, Domine; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39)

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

Pride, Prevailing Grace

We are in Pride month, we are on the eve of “Juneteenth” … is it a coincidence that celebrations of liberation coincide?

They are the evidence of grace, which is the work of God’s love in and among us. Grace always prevails.

The hard part is that “prevail” part … unfortunately, it means there often are struggles. Pride is about LGBTQ people saying we are proud of who we are and more importantly, we are ready to proclaim our creation as people created in God’s image. Juneteenth, well, it is a celebration of the end of the enslavement of people in the United States, but as we know, it was the end of the beginning … we could hardly say that black people have equality in the US today. Just as we could barely choke it out that some of us queers are sort of equal a little bit sometimes.

But look at what God asks of us—to “proclaim with boldness the truth” and to “minister justice with compassion” [collect for Proper 6].

God appeared to Abraham “as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day” [Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)]. Theophany at high noon while you’re sitting on the front stoop? Not only does Abraham not realize this is God, God does nothing but appear and the sit down in the shade of the tree.

God drops in and waits for hospitality. What a concept!

Abraham begs pardon of the visitors and throws open his home and his larder. The whole household rushes to make a meal–they bake cakes, they roast a calf, they even make cheese! and then they stand by while they partake of hospitality.

And then grace prevails. Then, God says that Abraham, who is 100 and his wife Sarah who also is 100 will have a baby. And they do!

I love this story. At first Sarah hides, then she laughs, then she sings with joy. Abraham did not recognize God, but did the right thing anyway. How much does that sound like real life? How much does that sound like a pride parade? Laughter, song, tears of joy, and grace … not to mention the heat of the day.

We are called to follow the examples of Abraham and Sarah, to be hospitable—to walk in love—and to “offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving” [Psalm 116:11, 10-17], to sing praises to God and to creation.

Paul [Romans 5:1-8] reminds us that it takes perseverance. That although grace prevails, it is not without the hard work of walking in love that we realize grace. Paul writes that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint” because we are after all made of love at the core.

Sounds like Pride to me again. I am (erm) “mature” enough to remember when it was a crime to be me, to remember when I dare not express my love in public, to have known the joy of both dancing queens and marriage equality. I am wise enough to know that this fight has been fought over and over and over and that we must not now give in to the voices that would oppress and suppress us. We must walk in love, offer hospitality even in the heat of the day, and sing praises to God. We must march with joy and pride. Most of all we must persevere.

And grace will prevail.

Jesus goes on a campaign from town to town and he sees that the need is immense so he ordains his disciples to act as well in his name, to heal, to cure, to bless [Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)]. He gives them quite specific instructions, which, as we can see, match the actions of Abraham in the unknown presence of God.

And here is the sum for today: it is in hospitality that we will find that God is in our presence. When we open our hearts to the possibility of love we can see that God is with us always and that grace has indeed prevailed.

And, finally, is Jesus’ perfect advice about those who will not receive God .. shake the dust off your feet and move on … and when you find a welcome sing praises and give thanks.

Proper 6 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1, 10-17 Dilexi, quoniam; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23))

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

Trial-and-Error Faith

It rained Friday. It wasn’t supposed to. But, I kept praying “please rain.” And then, to help it along, I got the car washed.

But it rained. It hadn’t rained in 21 days and no rain was forecast for any time soon. And then there it was all night and all day about ½” which is really terrific for my arugula and basil and zinnias and lettuces not to mention the roses which are blooming in abundance.

And there’s another thing: I had heard all my life how impossible it was to have roses, and then I went to a friend’s house about 10 years ago and WHOA! the whole yard was filled with giant rose bushes taller than me and all blooming and blooming … so I got a couple just to see; this was when I was still back in the Midwest.

Then I moved here. Portland. It’s the “rose city,” right? So I planted roses, in pots and in the ground, and what do you know they actually enjoy being in my garden and they keep blooming and blooming.

I always have enjoyed them, but at first I wondered why they just bloomed once and quit.

Then a family crisis led to clipping roses every day to try to bring some joy; and what do you know, they kept blooming and blooming.

So now I clip the flowers and bring them in and we have beautiful vases of roses in our house. And in the gardens they keep on blooming, putting out new feelers and ever more clusters of blossoms.

It seems to me this is an example of faith, especially of the kind of faith that requires trial-and-error, and of course, it is an example of God’s faithfulness in creation.

In Genesis [12:1-9] we have this story about Abram (later he will be called Abraham) answering God’s call. It’s a long story but what I think is critical is that he just keeps going, he keeps trying one thing and then another, and especially at each step he keeps giving thanks. He “built an altar to the Lord” and then “he moved on” and then “he pitched his tent” and “built an altar to the Lord” and on and on he “journeyed on by stages.”

That’s the revelation of scripture about real life, isn’t it? We just journey on by stages. But what was the key for Abram? The key was gratitude, giving thanks, but more importantly being thankful; every time Abram pitched a tent he built an altar and gave thanks.

I’ve experienced a series of little miracles lately … I now laugh when they come because, of course, it gives me such joy, but also because I see how it works even if only in a mirror darkly (as Paul might have said). Some, if not most, have come from my singing praise without even thinking about it, not to mention healthy doses of trial-and-error. So trust me, don’t forget to give thanks and especially to sing your thanks as praise, as Augustine is said to have advised prayer sung is twice prayed.

Play the harp, the psaltery, the lyre, the trumpet, sing a new song, sound a fanfare … of loving kindness, which fills the whole of creation … [Psalm 33]

How funny, it is Paul here [Romans 4:13-25] who reminds us Abram was 100 years old when this story began! But the story is all about inheriting love through righteousness, which is walking in love. And it all rests on faith, which is the faith in knowing that love is the power of the universe, that love works, that love creates, that love gives, that loving creates more loving.

In Matthew 9 [9-13, 18-26] Jesus reminds the crowd that it is not about the establishment, but rather, it is about those who have fallen aside, those who are disconnected, those who need to heal, those who need healing. For Jesus, “healing” is not just about illness of the body, it is about being cast out of the body of Christ. He tells the woman with sores that her faith has made her well. He raises the daughter of the synagogue’s leader by offering love. He takes her by the hand to guide her back into the community.

And so Jesus takes us by the hand. It is a good moment for us to remember that it is we, God’s LGTBQ heirs, who are taken by Jesus’ hand and brought, in loving, into the community of all creation. It is in our pride in the loving selves God has made us in God’s own image, it is in our colorful diversity, it is in drag, in joy, in songs of praise, and indeed in our outcastness, our differentness, our oppression—it is in all these ways and uncounted others that Jesus takes us by the hand and shows us that healing is in the way of love.

Jesus takes us by the hand and reminds us that it is our faith, however trial-and-error it seems, it is our faith sung in songs of praise that makes us well. It is our faith that we are God’s LGBTQ heirs who are called to heal creation with the love that overflows in our hearts.

Proper 5 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:1-12; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26)

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

Plumb Lines, Pride, and Optimism

Summer at last. The rain is mostly gone, thanks to the extra months of it everything is gloriously green, the gardens are beginning to produce. We’ve had a good run with arugula and lettuces, and from the flower gardens we’ve had roses in abundance for awhile now but the tomatoes and peppers are coming along just fine. The chore of mulching is at hand, now that the bulbs mostly have passed. After that, just a little pruning and we can relax and enjoy the gardens the rest of the summer. Optimism. It feels good to feel optimistic.

Optimism has been sparse the last few years, between the pandemic, the fluttering economy, and war in Europe on the one hand, gun violence, violence perpetrated on our persons by the right wing Supreme Court and the near constant terror of the 45^th president’s so-called administration, on the other. It feels good to feel optimistic. Optimism is a sign of the presence of love, of the approach of hope. We have to hang on to hope as we navigate this quagmire shoal armed as best we can with love.

God called Amos to a life of prophecy using a very real metaphorical plumb line. It says “[God] was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in [God’s] hand.” (Amos 7:7). God tells Amos it is a reminder that God has set a plumb line in the midst of the people. That line is the opening to the dimension of God’s love. One way is the way of the kingdom of God, the other is the abandonment of love and the pathway to disaster. The plumb line is a pretty terrific reminder that building is incremental and dependent on care and attention to detail. We are called to walk in love always, not just occasionally, and to be attentive to the power of love given to us at all times.

Regarding the plumb line with respect and choosing the dimension of love bears fruit and brings strength, not only for endurance but also for the joy of a world functioning in the dimension of love (Colossians 1). Jesus reminds an inquisitive lawyer (LOL) that the only law is that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

Attention, care, caution, adherence to the plumb line, choosing always the dimension of love. The good Samaritan makes the right choice, to offer hospitality and healing regardless of politics or social standing (Luke 10:30-37). There’s that plumb line again.

The only law is to love your neighbor as yourself and that law has a requirement of loving yourself. The plumb line is in your own heart. The law of love emanates from our LGBTQ hearts, from the love that defines our lives, and it builds up with care and attention. Pride month might be over but the love of ourselves that is the gateway to a community where we all walk in love begins with our own pride in the LGBTQ people who God created us to be. Let’s begin there and hang onto hope and optimism as best we can.

Proper 10 Year C RCL 2022 (Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37)

©2022 The 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.