Rest, Revel, Rejoice

I will be brief today. I know it’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of the church’s cathartic experience of the Passion of Christ. Our logical family is together, and we are celebrating quietly, alone together. It has been a rough couple of years, and we rejoice now that we are together and healthy and happy. We are delirious to be occupied with petty squabbles and normal nonsense.

It is the purpose of the celebration of the Passion, after all, to remind us that there always is resurrection, if we believe in the power of God’s love. We walk in Christ’s “way of suffering”—we do this daily, after all, don’t we as LGBTQ people in the world? We share in Christ’s resurrection in the little things, the smiles, the hugs, the warmth, the togetherness, the opportunity in life to constitute a family of love rather than obligation.

We are reminded to remember to “let the same mind be in [us] that was in Christ” (Philippians 2:5), meaning that we are to focus on love and loving and on giving love and accepting love and living love, no matter what. For it is in this walk in love that we find the path to resurrection.

So like Jesus’ disciples, who “on the sabbath … rested according to the commandment” we invite you to rest, to revel in love given and received.

Easter joy will come.

Palm Sunday 2022 RCL (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:5-6)

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

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)

Right-eous-ness: Sin, Passion, Holy Week, Faith*

Well, there it all is, right there in the title.

But as usual, I digress. There is, as you know, more or less constant babble in “church-land” about this thing called “sin,” and GLBT people are no strangers to the word. We are told that the love we share is ‘sin,’ or even ‘abomination;’ or we are told that if only we would be chaste (that is, give up most of our reason for living) we would be acceptable as sinners overcoming their sin.

Nonsense.

There is only one “sin” and that is to be separate from God. To “sin” is to separate yourself from the intimate love of the one who created you and whose love for you is so vast that nothing can overwhelm it, not even. That is the message of what theologians call the “Christ-event,” which is shorthand for the life, ministry, trial, crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the anointed one. He came to save us by teaching us, exactly, how to stop being people of sin, so we could more fully be the people of God.

Probably the most prevalent form of sin is playing God. We all do it and we all do it all the time. It seems like it must be part of the human condition, to judge. We judge and judge and judge. And yet we are not the judge. God is the judge; indeed, God is the only judge. “He talks too much.” “She would be okay if only she dressed better.” “I get so tired of putting up with people like that.” “Get out of my way.” “I get to go first.” Did you know that was judging? It is, because even to have the thought places you in your own head above the other. This was Jesus’ message, that none of us is above another; only God is above all. “Don’t ask/don’t tell.” “Homosexuals are intrinsically disordered.” “Marriage is between a man and a woman.” That is judging too. And it is equally hurtful. All of this judging seeks to place the ‘judge’ in a position of power, and to place the ‘judged’ in a position of inferiority. And that is painful, no matter the circumstances, when you are the one who is being judged.

What is so hard about “love your neighbor as yourself?” Well it requires real sacrifice. What if you really are angry or weary or beaten down? Well, those are not excuses. Loving each other means leaving behind those emotions (notice I did not say not to experience them, I said to leave them behind). It means at every turn to think about what you are doing. No amount of giving up chocolate for Lent can suffice for the powerful action of examining your own motives at every turn and remembering always to uphold the dignity of every human. Every human.

Paul wrote this: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.” This is the message of Holy Week, this is the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The end of sin, once for all, if only we can learn to walk in love, walk in faith, walk in righteousness. Do you understand that word—righteousness? Try taking it apart. What is “right”? What is “being right” (righteous)? What is “faith (right-eous-ness)”? It is all about being right with God. As Jesus taught us.

Indeed, let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus. Humble yourself in the face of God’s love, empty yourself of foolish, selfish pride, rid your life of the sin of making yourself God. Remember God’s love for you. God made you in God’s own image. Especially if you are gay, remember, God made you in God’s own image. And God is always with you. Think about it–that’s what it means to have faith.

Palm Sunday (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31: 9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14- 27:66).

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.