Spirit, Flesh, Grace

The Spirit is our very life force. It is that thing in the back of your consciousness that leads you to smile, or to get (erm) aroused. Paul writes again and again about the difference between Spirit and flesh; the difference is between that part of you that is biological and that part that is sentient, between that part of you that occurs without heart (flesh) and that which occurs only with love (Spirit).

LGBTQ people are particularly gifted because our sentience is biological. We are part of the biosphere, genetically created as we are to advance love.

In the church it is the First Sunday in Lent. We have the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2), and Paul’s midrash on it (Romans 5), and the story of Jesus led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4). The focus is on this distinction between Spirit, that which is holy because it sentient, and flesh. We are being reminded that it is by choice that we follow the Spirit.

This story of Eve and the tree and the opened eyes, well, it’s sort of like coming out isn’t it? When I was a boy I knew I loved boys, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to love boys, but I did, but I knew to keep it shut up inside me. Then one day, I ate the proverbial apple (erm) and my eyes were opened and … oh my!!

Grace is that gift of knowledge of love that comes from God. Like when I discovered that being bodily gay was in fact being led by the Spirit to discover my truth; that was grace. That was God calling me to be me. That was grace. In everything, that is grace.

Jesus was “led by the Spirit” to go into the wilderness … he was moved by his connection to creation. Because Jesus was God and was of God and was with God he could not have had any sin, he had only connectedness. And in every test Jesus sent disconnectedness away. He chose life. He chose power. He chose grace.

We are called In Lent to reflect on our place in God’s creation. We who are called to be God’s LGBTQ heirs are called to reflect on the grace of being who we have been created to be, because it is an essential part of the connectedness of everything.

First Sunday in Lent A 2023 RCL (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

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

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.

The Dimension of Loving Reality

We fear the presence of God, and yet we seek the presence of God. We find God, we reject God, we rejoice in God, we rejoice in rejecting God … we are human after all. Psalm 68:1 “O God … eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for your, my flesh faints for you.” Verse 5 “my soul is content, as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips.” We seek God, we rejoice in God, we identify the presence of God with fulfillment in our biological envelopes, in which God has placed us in this dimension of creation. We rejoice in our queerness, we who are God’s LGBTQ creatures, created in God’s own image and charged with the responsibility to walk lives of love.

And yet, we fear the presence of God. In Exodus (3:1-15) we have another version of Moses’ interaction with God in the form of a burning bush. God is faithful, and Moses is faithful, and Moses’ faith is the seal that protects God’s people who are led by Moses’ responses to God. Yet the one line that seems the most critical is “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

It raises the question of why anyone would be afraid to look at God. Can it be that it is because we are created by God in God’s own image, and thus to look upon God is to look without blinders upon ourselves? It is at least in part this rationale that explains how it is that although we seek God, we fear the presence of God, and often we reject God. It is because we fear rejecting ourselves—better not to deal with it at all. “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

In the timelessness of the space-time of God’s dimension of love each day is a new day, each moment is a new moment, there always is the potential of love, of greater love, of love building up. In Luke’s Gospel (13:1-9) Jesus tells a parable of a fig tree that has borne no fruit. The owner is tempted to cut it down but is tempered by a loving gardener who insists instead that it should be tended with love and give more opportunity to bear fruit. This, of course, is metaphor for God’s faith in us as lovingly created creatures who are put here to love. We err each day, we err in many moments each day, but each point in time is an opportunity given by God to turn instead to the dimension of full loving in which love can build from the tiniest bit of tending.

In 1 Corinthians (10:1-13) Paul says “do not become idolaters” and unfortunately too many people miss his point, which is, that we must remember that our faith is in God, who is love, and only in God who is love. If we turn our faith away from God, away from love, that is idolatry, that is the worship of idols. Sadly, the truth is, most often it is ourselves we worship instead of God.

I just had a birthday, one of those with a potentially shocking number. It was a marvelous day this time because almost nothing happened. The celebration, such as it was, was remarkable for the love of those in my life and for the calm nothing-but-love peacefulness of it. I know I am loved, and that I love in return. This is the revelation of the presence of God, of God’s faith in me, of God’s call to me and those I love, of God’s faith in God’s own LGBTQ children.

It is a sign pointing the way to the dimension of loving reality.

3 Lent Year C 2022 RCL (Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9)

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

Glory, Light, Space-Time, Love

My mission from the beginning, now many years ago in a column in the Philadelphia Gay News, was to interpret the message of the Gospel for my LGBTQ+ companions on the way. Just as I grew weary of “romantic” movies that featured only hetero-normativity, I observed that the Gospel was not being interpreted through our eyes, and especially not to us. Over the years and in particular in this space I’ve done my best to interpret weekly the Good News of salvation for all of creation through my own gay eyes and heart and soul. I use a form of midrash and a bit of standard homiletics, and as I do to a live congregation I try to interpret the lectionary through my own life experience.

My own life has been changed and challenged just like everybody else’s. I have learned as I matured (LOL) the true power of love and the true deficit of its absence. I see clearly in the scripture how this message of love has been the message of God from the beginning, and how its revelation is continuous, as though all time were one (as physics asserts) and in every moment we are continually working out the creative power of love.

In 2016, after the election rendered a truly shocking result, I literally lost my muse and had to quit blogging. I was only able to overcome that shock after we moved to Oregon. Here in the Pacific Northwest I was stunned as I had been when I lived and loved here as a young man by the sheer beauty of creation and by the power of the society here that takes responsibility for creation literally. The synergy of love and its constant building up is powerful.

I find myself after two years of pandemic just about shocked into loss of muse again, this time by the war in Ukraine. My soul aches for the Ukrainian people and for their own beautiful slice of creation. My heart is rended by the raw evil of the attempt to wipe out their culture and to deny their very existence. As a human I am frightened, I am fearful, I am worried; and I am aware none of those adjectives embraces the Good News of the power of love. Rather, in this I risk giving myself over to its absence.

We are in the second week of Lent. Our collect reminds us that God’s “glory is always to have mercy.” That mercy—forgiveness yes but more to the point, healing and restoration—is God’s glory is the truth. When have you known glory more powerful than in the hug of a loved one, the arms encircling you, the hearts beating side by side, the warmth of embrace? If that isn’t glory I don’t know what is. And certainly it is both healing and restoration.

The selection from Genesis 15 is the story of God’s covenant with Abram of eternal inheritance. Abram encounters God in a timeless numinous moment heralded by the vision of stars in the heavens (LOL, just like when I take the garbage out each night). Our response is Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio, “God is my light.”

In the letter to the Philippians (3:17-4:1) Paul appeals to the goal of the Good News that lies in life beyond time and space, reminding us that “our citizenship is in heaven,” that Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.” In other words, in all time and space, the Gospel of love exists to be revealed to us in numinous ways when we are open to its reception and when we can shift into that dimension we will and do discover the heaven of healing and restoration. As I read these words this week I thought first of Ukraine and of the power of the faith of the people we are witnessing daily. Then I was reminded that we in the LGBTQ+ community know what it is like to be considered targets of oppression to be eliminated. So, there is a human connection for us, after all.

In Luke’s Gospel (13:31-35) Jesus speaks of his timeless desire to gather children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. It is the power of the dimension of love that brings the gathering of all heirs of God, all children of creation, to healing and restoration. It is this power that restores the outcasts of the world to God’s glory.

We as God’s LGBTQ+ children are defined by the love God has given us in creating us in God’s own loving image. We are called to build up love in all of creation, in order that in that way we might reveal the dimension of glory.

Pray for love, pray for Ukraine.

2 Lent Year C 2013 RCL (Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13: 31-35)

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

Repent in Love

Once upon a time, although it was a moment in reality and no fairy tale, I was in Amsterdam when someone declared the world was about to end for some reason. On the evening in question I was sitting at my favorite bar at the time (alas, it closed some years ago), which was called, ironically “Engel van Amsterdam” (The Angel of Amsterdam). My friend Onno was tending the bar, and we were joking about the end of the world and he said, “the world already ended and we are here in heaven.”

And I knew he was right. Heaven, after all, looks a lot like a gay bar in Amsterdam, where everybody counts, everybody can be, everybody is, and the key: everybody loves. So, in such a heaven, what are the first fruits? Well, love of course. The smiles of those you love, the hugs, the warmth, the delicious bitterballen, the breeze off the canal making you sigh with joy, the gentle afternoon sun setting across the Ij, I could go on and on. The first fruits, of course, are all of the fruits of love, which is what God is. God is love. And the first fruits of you possessing God’s kingdom are the first signs of the love you bring to the world.

Here we are today in Lent, at yet another convoluted moment in real time, as the pandemic seems to be winding down and yet war and violence and destruction are ramping up like some sort of pendulum swing. What are we to do?

The scripture for today begins with a reading from Deuteronomy (26:1-11) in which those settling in God’s “promised land” are tasked to give thanks by offering to God the first fruits of their new life. Those “first fruits” are the products of the love God has given them in creation, of the love with which they have inherited the creation entrusted to them, the lesson they have learned that it is with love that bounty comes. It is a reminder to us to walk always in love, and especially to rejoice in the love that we share in every moment, with every breath, with every heartbeat.

In the letter to the Romans (10:8b-13) Paul writes that of the first fruits the most important is faith in the love we proclaim. “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” How can the word of God be on your lips and in your heart? Simple, God is love, and love is God, and love is in your heart but mostly on your lips when you give love to those around you. You believe in your heart but it is what you say and do that saves you, because it is what you say and do that makes love build up.

In Luke’s Gospel (4:1-13) Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days he is tempted by “the devil.” Except, the devil cannot succeed. How is it that Jesus cannot be tested by “the devil”? Jesus is God, who is love, incarnate. Love fills creation. Love conquers all.

Thus, as I said, here we are in Lent, at the confluence of the love building in a world that has survived two years of pain, on the one hand, and the threat of war, on the other. And yet, we do already live in heaven, if we can remember to walk in love. Lent is the time in the Christian year for introspection, for re-pentance (as I told a friend this week all that really means is to think again, think twice and see the critical importance of love).

The world demands that we love with as much fervor as we can muster. It is in the hearts of the LGBTQ community that God has placed trust in love, for it is love and how we love that defines our very existence. The heaven we occupy is our promised land and the first fruits of the love that gives us life are our dues, our joyful celebration of the lives we have been given. Our faith is the very reality of the words of love on our lips and in our hearts which are our armor in a convoluted world.

Give, however you can, of course. Pray without ceasing, always giving thanks. And repent in love.

1 Lent Year C 2022 RCL (Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13)

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

Hope

Hope and change go together I guess. Having hope means having love in your heart that is dedicated to the future and that has to mean change because more love is definitely a change for the good. Spring finally is here and that definitely is a sign of hope, especially now, one year into the pandemic. A year ago we were just locking down and just learning that it would be over a year before we could reunite with loved ones. Well, here we are, and although it is not clear when it will be possible to travel safely, we have at least some hope based on the rollout of vaccines. Our hope is tempered by newly rising infection rates everywhere.

Our yard is finally “cleaned up” from the exploding tree mess. Bulbs are up, some daffodils are blooming alongside the crocus. Still, the fig tree has no leaves, so we know from scripture that summer is yet a ways off. We have a deranged robin that has been flying into the glass door on our deck for the last three days. A friend suggested it was trying to fend off its reflection so I pulled a screen over the door but now it sits on the screen staring for the reflection. We hope it goes away soon before it does any actual damage to the door, the screen, or its beak. Elsewhere our blue Steller’s Jay is happily hopping around from tree to tree and even an oriole seems to be enjoying the environment. I think, like my houseplants, they are enjoying all the fresh sunshine now that the exploding trees thinned out the canopy.

In another right of spring, the Vatican issued a proclamation about same-sex marriage. Specifically they made it clear they have no intention of blessing same sex unions of any kind any time soon. This is not a change and therefore it is not a surprise. While we commiserate with our LGBTQ friends who are part of the Roman church, because we know how hurt feels, we also invite them to join us in the Episcopal Church, where we have ordained LGBT clergy for decades, where we developed rites to bless same sex unions decades ago, and where once marriage equality was achieved socially we adapted our marriage rite to allow us appropriately to bless any couple who is legally marrying.

In church time we have come to the fifth Sunday in Lent—next Sunday will be Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion and then we will enter into Holy Week. It is the annual moment of embracing hope in every way we can. As we learned last year in the beginning of the pandemic, Holy Week’s season of hope filled our hearts in new and unimagined ways. This year, strengthened by vaccinations and new treatments and the promise of reunions with loved ones we look forward to Holy Week with the highly specific prayers for peace and health and especially renewed and strengthened love.

The collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent asks God to grant us grace to love and to desire God’s love. The simple truth is that love and desire go hand in hand. To love is to desire good things and to desire good things is to bring about greater love. Psalm 51, which was our anthem for the beginning of Lent echoes Jeremiah 31 with the promise that if we can learn to embrace love sin will be no more. To “know” God is to love God, which is all God asks of any of us, that we should love each other. After all, another simple truth that is so difficult for us to grasp is that sin is the absence of loving. The “iniquity” is that feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we know we have failed to love. It is an intimate sign that we have broken the bond of love with God by breaking it with each other. Thus, it is by remembering always to walk in love that we cement our relationship with God by cementing the love we share with each other.

In John’s Gospel (12:20-33) Jesus reminds us yet again that “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” To love properly, the end of sin, is to give up self. On the other hand, to transgress, to hang on to self by denying love, is to give oneself over to sin.

What does any of this mean for us today? It means that we who are LGBTQ people, who are called to love in our very creation in God’s image of love, must find ourselves on the leading edge of the power of loving. We must push past the power of the transgression of reliance only on self if we are to understand the true power and relief and hope of a creation walked in love. We must embrace this pandemic spring with hope.

5 Lent Year B 2021 RCL (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13 Miserere mei, Deus; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33)

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

Angels with Orange Wands

We are at a midpoint in Lent … how is that going for you? Before I was ordained I used to tie myself in knots trying to explain to friends how the process of Lenten fasting worked. Chiefly, I tried to say, the idea is to give up something you will miss so that you will be reminded to think of it each day. Also, of course, is the notion that it should not be something that you ought to give up anyway. The point is to be mindful of the idea of repentance, which means to turn away from those things that disconnect us and toward the one thing that always does connect us, which is sharing God’s love.

The question takes on new meaning in a pandemic. Last year we had just begun our lockdowns, mostly, when Lent suddenly was upon us. We were still giving up everything it seemed, more and more each day. Frankly I gave myself a pass last year because it was just too much to bear. Now we are in the official second year of the pandemic. Isolation and safe behavior have become (I hope) a new norm for most people. We have coped, mostly virtually, with the things we had to forgo in order to live. Still, it is scary enough all by itself.

So this year the question is not what have you given up, but rather, what else have you given up? Haven’t we all given up enough yet?

My husband and I were vaccinated yesterday. Through what can only be described as grace we received a link by email from a dear friend and because we caught it at the right moment we had about 10 minutes in which to make appointments, and we did. It was important to us to go to a drive-up where we would not have to walk a long distance or be indoors. In the metropolitan Portland area that meant the clinic in short-term parking at the Portland airport. We were grateful to get the appointments and relieved a few seconds after booking them to receive QR-codes by email, magically linked to our health-care provider accounts as well.

While we waited the 10 days for our appointment date to come around we read in the newspaper about how people on one occasion waited in line for 5 hours; but in the meantime the process had been worked out well. We were there less than 45 minutes altogether. And the people who shepherded us through were truly angels. We were blessed many times over. They even rang a bell as we drove away; two more vaccinated. Hallelujah!

The true bread which gives life to the world is that bread which feeds the soul; and that is love. When we refuse love we suffer the anguish of our own dark nights. When we give love we receive more love and that builds up ever more love. Thus when we give thanks we give love and we build love. Yesterday as we drove from post to post, angels directed us with bright orange tarmac wands. At each curve, at each new line-up, at each new staging area we were greeted with eye-smiles, thumbs-up, waves, and we were pulled along as though on angel wings by the light from those orange wands. And as, at each point, we called “thanks” and waved back, we could feel the love building in our hearts.

The epistle to the Ephesians (2:1-10) reminds us that when we can understand that the desire of our selfishness is the manifestation of the absence of love we can escape that vacuum. And when we learn, we are no longer “dead through our trepasses” but rather alive in love, with love, through love. Even the simple gift of a wave and a “thanks” is enough of a Lenten fast to bring us to repentance. (8): “For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”

In John’s Gospel (3:14-21) Jesus tells Nicodemus (and, of course, us) that “the light has come into the world.” The light of which Jesus speaks, of course, is love. Love is freedom. Love is fulfillment. Love is responsibility because love comes only when it is given. “Those who do what is true, come to the light.”

This Lent, try this approach to your Lenten fast: look for the angels around you who are pointing you to the light of love.

4 Lent Year B RCL 2021 (Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21)

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

A Temple of Love

It is one of those only in Oregon kinds of days—sun, rain, sun, rain, repeat …. Personally I’m voting for the rain because my daffodils are about to burst forth in yellow glory and I think they’ll appreciate the moisture today followed by the sunny days predicted for the week ahead.

I think we have just about recovered from the trauma of the ice storms and exploding trees. Last week I cleaned up the rear deck that was covered in several inches of moss and sticks and sawdust and whatever else fell with the tree limbs. I arranged the undamaged furniture and then came inside for a three-day allergy and asthma adventure.

We finally are scheduled for our COVID-19 vaccine appointments. We joked that it makes little difference because we live in the woods anyway, but the truth is, it is going to be as much a shock to not be locked down as it was to learn how to be locked down. At any rate, it will be a relief not to worry about every new allergy and asthma event; tree pollen is coming right down the proverbial pike.

My neighborhood online digest had two interesting notices this morning. One detailed six skunks isolated in one neighbor’s yard. I guess creation has been busy while we all were locked down. The other was about a visible gathering of a large maskless crowd; it is a non-denominational religious body.

Life, it seems, is as variable as the pattern of sun and rain. Our job is to keep love foremost in our hearts, no matter what. The problem is, keeping love foremost is often the last priority. It is just plain difficult to experience love when the biological hackles arise. Our natural defense mechanism is to isolate, to throw up walls, to protect. This is why in the Gospels Jesus always seems to be saying the kingdom “has come near” or better yet that “you have to give your life to gain your life” because in order to keep love foremost you must give up your innate recurrent fear.

Religion provides a framework for coping with this dichotomous way of life. We name the power that sustains us, we ascribe honor to that power, and we develop means of trying to achieve or perpetuate unity with that power. We call this power, which is love, “God.” It helps that we can name and even appeal to God for help in staying plugged into love despite our urge to hide in fear. There is power and comfort in our unity with God. And for those all around us who do not subscribe to our faith, our framework still provides a form of stability to our common existence.

And yet we do not always understand who God is. God, who is not human, is neither puppet master or parent. It is we who are made in God’s image—which is love—and not the other way around. And although God wants us to “know” God (to “know” means to be ultimately intimate with) God has no specific form. The characteristics we ascribe to God are a form of human psychological projection. In the end, God is just … God.

The best way to know God is to know yourself, indeed to love your self, in every sense of that term. When you discover the love of your own self you have discovered God. And when you can then extend that love to those around you, then you have embraced God.

In Exodus (20:1-17) God tells us that we must have no other Gods. It means, we must love only love. When we love self, or greed, or pride … then we are not putting God first. God’s laws, given in the “ten commandments” are just mechanisms for loving ourselves and our neighbors as ourselves—don’t hate, don’t hurt, just love.

God’s love (Psalm 19:8) “gives light to the eyes.” God is love, and we as children of God and of God’s love are meant to give love. And we as LGBT children of God, who are not only created in love but defined by our peers by the ways in which we love, we are meant to give the whole world the example of our often forbidden love. What is foolish about love? Nothing is foolish about love. A wonderful story in the news today is about a family of three gay men and their two children https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/us/throuple-three-dads-and-baby-trnd/index.html. The story is testimony to the power of God’s love and the ability of LGBT children of God to demonstrate how the power of love can transcend. If you read the story far enough you will discover how their life looks like your own—cooking, cleaning up, story-time, school—love incarnate.

It is in the Christ event (John 2:13-22) that we have understood the power of love to transcend human experience. Indeed, God’s temple of love resides within each of us. It can be raised in as many minutes as it takes to admit that we who in the past have failed to love, have indeed torn down our own walls and turned to love.

3 Lent Year B 2021 RCL (Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19 Coeli enarrant; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22)

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

The Glory of Love

I have missed a couple of weeks. We have had one of those “interesting lives” you hear about occasionally.

Overnight on the 11^th of February it snowed, total accumulation in my yard was about ½ an inch. As morning arrived some rain turned to ice and it got kind of crusty, but it was ok.

Overnight on the 12^th we had freezing rain. We had been told it would warm up and rain and wash away the snow. But it didn’t. Instead it rained ice. By Saturday the 13^th everything was crusted with about 2 inches of ice.

That night, about 10 pm there was a series of explosions and the internet went out. In the morning we discovered our cable tv also was out. We were fortunate; pretty much everybody else in our city also lost power. For some reason we didn’t lose power. We were to be without internet, however, for 10 days.

That night it did it again—more ice rain. On Sunday morning, Valentine’s Day, we awakened to the sound of a horrible crash and roll. It was a tree falling on our roof and then rolling down into our property. It was the first of five. By mid-day our property was no longer walkable, there were trees down everywhere. When I went outside to look at the damage I could hear explosions all around and if I looked in the direction of the sound I could see trees exploding and limbs crashing to the ground all over the neighborhood. I told one friend later, it was, in effect, really frighteningly beautiful.

The explanation as it turns out was that everything was full of moisture after a typical Oregon winter rainy season. And the ice and 25 degree temperatures were just too much and the trees swollen with ice exploded from inside their trunks.

I guess there are a few lessons intertwined. One would be that the natural event wasn’t about us, but was about nature all around us. Another would be that nature was sort of taking care of itself; self-pruning, as it were, by throwing off the limbs that were too heavy to preserve the rest. Which resonates then with what I wrote above about frightening beauty, and that is that there was mercy in the way nature called us into harmony with the trees, there is mercy in the ongoing relationship we have with the trees, there will be mercy in the respect we and nature display to each other. And that is love after all.

Welcome to Lent. As we turn inward ecclesiastically to prepare for the culmination of salvation at Eastertide we didn’t need to piously give up anything this season because nature took care of it for us. And yet at the same time we find ourselves watching the realization of new life as spring erupts all around us even in the muck left behind from fallen moss and twigs and the powder of sawdust left from the cleanup.

Our Lenten journey today takes us through the covenanting of God with Abraham (Genesis 17:1-16) in which we see revealed the truth of our own covenant with God and with God’s creation. God asks us to walk blamelessly, which means to walk in love. God is God to those who grasp the way to walk in love. We are reminded (Psalm 22:22-30) that God provides not only the opportunity for us to walk in love but also the love that we need. God’s promise (Romans 4:13-25) is that if we can learn always to walk in love we always will have the full power of grace, which is the glory of love.

In the Gospel (Mark 8:31-38) Jesus calls out the demon in Peter’s objection—rejection—of the truth of salvation. Jesus reminds the crowd that to walk in love they must first “deny themselves.” It sounds harsh. But is the path to walking in love. If we are to live a life of love we must deny the demons in us who would convince us to stay safely behind our self-constructed walls, who would have us stow our love rather than spread it, who would have us remain isolated rather than live in the community of creation.

While God and nature have been having their way with us in Oregon time has ticked us through, perhaps shoved us ahead, into the middle of Lent. Our inward journey has brought all of us outward. Not since the beginning of the pandemic have so many of us worked together (properly masked and distanced of course) with our neighbors. We have experienced the power of answering the call to walk in love, we have experienced glory.

My husband and I have been the recipients of much love from our neighbors who helped us dig a pathway through the downed trees, stand up what was left of the smashed fences, liberate our garbage so it could be picked up, navigate the internet crisis, and even try to help us seek vaccinations. We have experienced the power of integration as a gay couple in this community in the forest. We have all done what we could in this time, in these times, to live into God’s covenant. And we have experienced the glory of love.

2 Lent Year B 2021 RCL (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38)

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

Stay home, bring grace, bring order

Usually I try to make a homily out of the stories in the scripture. Usually it’s pretty easy to do, because (as Dr. Corney taught me on my first day of seminary), the scripture is “revelation” meaning it reveals God’s work in creation. It means that what we read in scripture is not prescription, not recipe, but rather, reflection of what is happening in our own lives.

This week the thing that speaks most urgently to me is the collect for 5 Lent:

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Let’s have a look:

-Only God can bring order into unruly wills

-We ask God to grant us (to help us shift dimensions so that we can see) grace

-If we can find grace, we can love what God gives us and desire what God promises

-Among the “swift and varied changes of the world” our hearts might remain fixed on God’s truth

-Which is where we find joy, in the glory that is God’s love.

In this time of trial, and mind you—this is a time of trial—we have to rely on God to bring order. Now, do not think I am telling you to stop thinking clearly, or behaving rationally. Rather, I am telling you to love God, because you know in your heart that if you love God, it means also that you love yourself and everyone in your circle, and that love, if we all can embrace it, will bring order.

We are told to stay home. In Oregon it is working. I suspect that is partially because we already live that way, but more importantly because the governor was forced to lock down the state. Because she did, many of us will live. God will have the opportunity to bring order into our unruly wills.

But of course, we have to pray, pray, and pray, that God will bring us not only grace but understanding about how to work as one. Stay home, and bring grace.

Well, it is Lent so we have this reading about the valley of dry bones; this is read every year at the Easter Vigil … and it always is a reminder of the millions of our buddies who died from AIDS while Reagan Republicans refused to fund research or care. The US government declared “queers” expendable and were glad to see us die. But we prevailed by being true Christians. In Ezekiel 37 God promises to put flesh on the dry bones and breathe life into them. And this God did by saving millions with medications that fought off the AIDS virus.

Psalm 130 describes the life of a Christian in a pandemic:

4 I wait for the LORD; my soul waits for him; * in his word is my hope.

5 My soul waits for the LORD, more than watchmen for the morning, * more than watchmen for the morning.

Surely you know what it is like to sit up with a loved one all through the night, waiting for the morning, hoping that the morning will bring revival and health.

There is, then, a thread through the scripture from Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:6-11) and the Gospel narrative (John 11:1-45). about the raising of Lazarus. The thread is this, as Paul puts it: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” We must understand that for Paul “flesh” and “spirit” mean “not love” and “love.” When Paul says to set the mind on Spirit he means to set the mind on the giving of love.

Did you just receive a package? Say “thank you.”

Did you just receive a text? Say “thank you.”

Did you have a quiet, productive day? Say “thank you.”

Have you just sat down to eat a meal? Say “thank you.”

To give thanks, is to embrace love, which is to set the mind on “Spirit.”

In the Lazarus story we see that it is through the total embrace of the dimension of love that Lazarus is raised from the dead, look at what it says: “Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.”

We must move into God’s dimension of love if we are to conquer this scourge. To stay home is to love, to give ultimate love, to move from self to other. Our hearts must be fixed on true joy of God’s dimension of love.

 

5 Lent (Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45)

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