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.

LGBTQ+ Witnesses to Love

The Acts of the Apostles tell the story of the new church as it was being formed, after the resurrection of Christ, and before there was any serious structure. In fact, “church” here means the community of faith much more than it means any sort of organization. We see in these stories the “acts” of love performed by those who followed Jesus’ ministry and who therefore receive from the risen Christ the gift of the Holy Spirit—God’s love—to be communicated forward for the purpose of building up God’s kingdom.

So the structure that mattered most then as now was the structure of witness. The new apostle [Acts 1:15-17, 21-26] had to be a person who literally was a witness. Now, witness can mean many things—so not just that the new apostle had seen the events but also that he was present and visible to all of the followers and to the new converts as well because he too had received the Holy Spirit from Christ.

And here is where we see our own selves as God’s LGBTQ+ children, called to be witnesses to our own creation, to our own lives of love, to be visible as LGBTQ+ people in the community of the faithful, indeed, in creation at large.

Ask yourself then when have you been an apostolic witness? Maybe you were part of ACT-UP? Maybe you have been in a Pride parade? Maybe you have been there for LGBTQ+ people in need. Maybe you are the same-sex couple who always bring a terrific casserole to the church potluck? All of these are acts of witness.

We are witnesses to God’s love every time we stand up in the church and profess our faith as the proud LGBTQ+ people we are.

John’s first epistle [1 John 5:9-13] continues to proclaim the facts about God who is love. Love is God and God is love. If we know love then we know God. If we know God then we know love. If we know God and we embrace the love we know, eternal life is ours. Knowing God, loving God, embracing love, is witness of the purest form.

In John’s Gospel [John 17:6-19], Jesus’ prayer makes explicit the relationship between God and Christ and love and, yes, us. Jesus says “All mine are yours, and yours are mine … so that they may be one, as we are one.” When we are one with God we do not belong the “the world;” instead we belong to “love.” We are God’s children. We are the children of love.

We who are God’s LGBTQ children are sanctified; we are holy, in the love we share, because love is truth.

7 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19)

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

Pray. Love is Endemic.

Love surpasses all understanding. How is that? If you know the power of love; not sentimental warm feelings, but truth, justice, righteousness—the things that define God’s love–then you know that love surpasses all understanding. God pours love into our hearts so that we might give love out through our own love of life building it up until the whole of creation sings with joy.

As indeed it is doing right now. The rhododendrons are blooming gloriously, shortly it will be warm enough to plant vegetables for the summer, the peonies are swelling to blossom, after some dry spells the spring rain is gloriously back in Oregon giving us the opportunity for short drives in the rain, for in-between sunny day glimpses of Mount Hood glistening with new snow. Love is endemic.

There are two broad categories of prayer, or maybe I should say, approaches to prayer. Kataphatic prayer is the kind we find in liturgies, precise words repeated over and over in specific patterns. Apophatic prayer is the kind used in “centering” prayer, in which there is no content, only the job of being still and listening for what God brings (here is a tutorial).

I have always been more attracted to kataphatic prayer. Indeed, I find it apophatic in its repetitive nature. That is, as the prayer is recited over and over, consciousness shifts from the foreground to the back, where indeed there is silence, and room for God to enter in. But that’s just me I guess.

I thought of this when I saw this week’s story from Acts [10:44-48] where it says “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” LOL, his kataphatic voice lulled them into apophatic presence. They were lulled into a trance by Peter’s voice and in the trance the Holy Spirit occupied their hearts. The listeners were converted by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Fascinatingly, the story ends by telling us they invited Peter to stick around for awhile.

But there also is a story here about the spiritual welcoming of those were were outcast. The crowd Peter was preaching to was a mix of insiders and outcast; the insiders were “astounded” that the outcasts could get it, not just that they heard and understood but that they received the Holy Spirit.

It reminded me of church conventions, where of necessity everyone is together in one place and in worship the divisions must cease. It is in such arenas that LGBTQ+ people are at their most powerful just by their presence, especially their visible presence among the faithful. Sing a new song, indeed [Psalm 98]. This past week after decades of division our United Methodist kin, in convention, used the joy and love in their hearts to bring LGTBQ+ people into full membership. The insiders embraced the formerly outcast and all of the faithful received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

John’s first epistle of love [1 John 5:1-6] continues to explain how all of us who know God’s love must be (as there can be no other possibility) children of God. We know God’s love because we know love as we know gravity. We know love as we know rain and sun and hugs and tears. We know love because we are love because we are people of love.

In John’s Gospel [15:9-17] Jesus tells his disciples about the transcendence of love: “As [God] has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Joy must be in us for us to make love complete. But God’s love brings us such joy that we have the capacity to make more love. Love builds up. If we love one another creation will bring everything we need.

Let us embrace the Holy Spirit, rejoice in inclusiveness, and pray however we can for peace in the Holy Land.

6 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98 Cantate Domino; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)

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

The Door to the Dimension of Love

I begin as often with a note about nature. In Oregon spring clearly is with us. Tulips have been beautiful but are about finished; azaleas are blooming radiantly, rhododendron are opening their glorious blossoms. Tree pollen has been like yellow snow for weeks but now seems to be giving way to the flurry of petals from cherry and apple trees. A few very warm very sunny days have been tantalizing but the reality is that spring has come too soon and we are very grateful now that the rains have returned. The rhythm of life here in the Pacific Northwest is that the temperate summers are dependent on the rainy winters. It is an ecosystem. It is the visual evidence of the action of the creative power of God, which is love, expressed in the totality of the environment. Nature breathes and so do we, nature smiles and so do we, nature relaxes and so do we. And as the ecosystem in synchrony builds and communicates love, wonder and joy increase as well.

So, it is critical to comprehend human enterprise not as singular but, rather, as part of this ecosystem of love from God. We are created in God’s own image as loving people, and the stewardship of nature we have been given consists primarily of maintaining our synchrony of love with creation. Stop and smell the flowers, but remember to prune judiciously so they will continue to thrive. And in this way responsibility evolves as loving action.

Indeed, the cosmos is everlasting, the cosmos brings light and movement and gravity and pull and push and ebb and flow, all possible because it is love filling what would otherwise be a void. Without love there is only the void. With love there is only life.

Thus, there is an ecosystem of love in which the entry into the dimension of love is the pathway to eternal life in joy. The ecosystem of love is available to every child of God who loves, who loves God, who loves the other children of God. Therefore, there can be no outcasts. Anyone who loves, has found the door into the dimension of love.

Love can take many forms, we have to be clear about this. When we talk about God and love we are not talking about warm fuzzy feelings; we are, instead, talking about justice, righteousness, equality, egalitarianism, peace, and the accompanying concepts of restraint, refrain, responsibility.

In the Acts of the Apostles [8:26-40] Philip is directed by God, fueled by the power of love. An angel sends him to the right spot, the Spirit directs him to where he encounters the official identified as a eunuch. After their interaction—their synchrony of love in action–the Spirit snatches Philip away and deposits him where he is next needed to preach the Gospel of love. God’s Spirit of love moves Philip across dimensions to build up the love needed to spread the good news of salvation.

The court official identified as a eunuch is an outcast from the religious community; because of his sexual difference he cannot be a part of the congregation. But his love of God overcomes his difference, his love of God compels his desire to know Jesus. This is his opening to the dimension of love. God, love, always rushes into the opening to fill the void.

Philip proclaims the Gospel of love, baptizes him and receives him into the household of God, and he goes on his way rejoicing, no longer outcast, now a full member of the community. Such is the power of love to bring everyone into the fold as a child of God through believing in Christ Jesus.

If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us [1 John 4:12].

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them [1 John 4:16].

John’s first epistle [1 John 4:7-21] continues the expression of the power of love. Love is the very force of life, life is God because love is God, God is love and therefore God is life. When we love each other God is alive within and among us thriving and building up more love.

In John’s Gospel [15:1-8] Jesus uses the metaphor of a vineyard to make his point about the ecosystem of love. God is the vinegrower, Jesus is the vine, the branches must be pruned to bear the best fruit, those branches that are pruned grow and bear much fruit.

God is love, Jesus is the Word of love, the vine is the dimension of love, the branches that bear even a little love bear much love, we are those branches, our job is to bear the fruit of love.

When we live in God’s loving ecosystem we thrive, love thrives, love builds up, whatever creates more love (joy) is part of the working of the ecosystem.

Of course, we who are LGBTQ+ people might identify with the outcast in Philip’s story, but also as the lovingly tended vine that bears much fruit in Jesus’ metaphor.

Remember, the purpose of scripture is not to serve like a cookbook or a legal repository, but rather, to reveal to us God’s purpose.

Here is a person who was outcast because of his sexual classification who, despite that, seeks understanding, finds God, and the Holy Spirit sends him an apostle and leads him to the waters of baptism. From there it is revealed that, like us, he has eternal life in Christ.

And Philip, the apostle, I love this story (not least because for several years I was rector of one of his churches), is shunted like the Jetsons from spot to spot from need to need by God’s Spirit of love. And the whole time Philip stands at the door to the dimension of love.

5 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30 Deus, Deus meus; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8)

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

Love in Truth and Action

In the fourth week of Eastertide the seasons everywhere remind us of the eternity of creation and of the power of God’s love. Here in Oregon the spring is at its peak; tulips are at their prime, as the cammellia’s finish their riot of late winter color the azaleas and rhododendrons begin their turn, the blooming cherry trees yield in turn to the apple trees, the vineyards are dressed one again in frocks of deep green.

The evidence of the eternal reliability of God’s love is all around us to see if we can slow down the pace of our daily lives long enough to appreciate it.

In our lives as LGBTQ+ people there is nothing more important than to hold on to the love that is the essential nature of our creation in God’s own image. We love because we must. We love because we are made of love. We love because love builds up—our love insures the active creative habitat around us as our love builds and spreads. It is to this that we have been called.

The scripture appointed for this Sunday is all focused on the concept of love in truth and action, as John writes in his first epistle [1 John 3:18].

In the scene from the Acts of the Apostles [4:5-12] Peter and John have been preaching and healing in Jesus’ name. Healing is restoring fullness of life and equality in community through the power of love.

Healing, especially in the New Testament sense of being made whole in community is something God’s L:GBTQ+ people understand. We are often on a roller-coaster ride of being cast out one day and brought back into community the next. More to the point, we are jostled by competing forces in the world. Last week Title IX protections (in education) were expanded to protect against any “sex-based harrassment” and especially to enhance protection of trans folks. This rolls back decisions made just four years ago by different political forces in the US. This is an act of healing. But, in the same week the conservative supreme court let an Idaho law stand that prohibits transgender care for minors. This is the crowd pushing back and preventing healing. We live and love on this roller coaster, as indeed, do all of God’s creatures.

Excoriated for healing Peter and John are arrested and confined by the authorities. They know this roller coaster too. Peter testifies, or preaches if you will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is love. It says Peter is “filled with the Holy Spirit.” It means he has pushed out the vacuum of the absence of love and filled it with loving action, which, of course, is how he has been able to pass along healing. Peter testifies before this crowd to the power of healing love.

Psalm 23 says that God is my shepherd, and in John’s Gospel [10:11-18] Jesus says “I am the good shepherd … I know my own and my own know me.”

John’s epistle reminds us that we know Jesus because we know his love, and we know this love because love has created and surrounded and suffused us. John, who was standing there arrested by the crowd with Peter when the spirit of love filled Peter and compelled him to preach the Gospel of love. John’s epistles are among the most beautiful testimonies to the love of God in Christ and its power to heal. Love in truth and action fills the void. Love enlightens creation.

Jesus reminds us that everyone is included. Everyone is known by the love of God. All we have to do to receive God’s love is to recognize God calling us by our own names.

God calls each of to be God’s loving LGBTQ+ people in truth and action in the world.

Alleluia!

4 Easter Year B 2021 RCL (Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23 Dominus regit me; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18)

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

That Our Joy May Be Complete

The great message of Easter, indeed, the great message of Christianity, is that sin is forgiven for those who have faith in Christ.

To understand this requires multiple levels of comprehension, indeed, even dimensions of reality.

Sin, is disconnection, from God. The main way humans sin—disconnect from God—is to disconnect from each other. The opposite of sin is love. When we have love for one another—the love which is God—then we cannot be disconnected.

Today I heard a commentator on radio say that the problem in the world arises when both sides in a conflict are too hurt to stop hurting. In other words, so long as both sides are too hurt, they are so absent of love that they cannot see their way to a human realization of a way out.

Hurt is hurt; but let us remember the power of forgiveness. Forgiving is not forgetting, it is not forgoing justice, but it is the way to clear away the wall that prevents love. When that wall is raised there is no possibility of grace. The wall must be erased.

This is the essence of Christianity. Forgiveness is ours, by faith, by grace even, if only we can tear down those walls of sin that disconnect us.

Connection is God’s plan for creation. Not just connection, but synchrony, interconnection that is greater than the sum of its parts—otherwise known to us as “love builds up.” Connection, love, glory, blessing.

Both the epistle [1 John 1:1-2:2] and the Gospel reading [John 20:19-31] are from the author of John’s Gospel this week. The message is this: “what was from the beginning” “concerning the word of life,” that “our joy may be complete” when we walk in love. When we walk in love we understand that when sin occurs forgiveness is ours if we ask for it in faith. “Do not doubt but believe.”

Erasing the wall is the hard part. We who are created LGBTQ+  in God’s image learn to live with the powerful love in our souls even in the midst of oppression from all sides. We must erase the walls that separate us from each other—“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity” [Psalm 133: 1]. If we can tear down those walls, we will see Christ among us and receive his peace.

2 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133 Ecce, quam bonum!; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31)

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

From Triumph to Triumph of Love and Grace

Triumph takes many forms. We read this scripture for the Liturgy of the Palms [Mark 11:1-11]  about parades on donkeys through streets lined with followers. What about the hug you give your beloved every morning? Isn’t that, too, triumph? I think it is. In every moment in which you are able to love and be loved … hug your beloved; give your neighbors a plate of cookies; smile at the grocery cashier who took the trouble to smile at you … those are life’s triumphs. We are meant to treasure them.

Because it is God’s purpose in creation that we should live from triumph to triumph, from hug to hug, from cookies to smiles. And we are asked to give thanks as we go, because, as we see, love builds up.

We walk with Christ each day. We walk the way of creation, life is full of stumbles and steep cliffs and as we negotiate them, and survive them, and celebrate our triumphs with pure love, we are walking with Christ.

In the Liturgy of the Word for Palm Sunday [Mark 14:1-15:47] we walk the way of the cross. Have you ever wondered about the other people in this story, those with no names, or those we’ve never encountered before? There are bystanders and crowds and helpers all along the way. But in this story two things stand out for me, the young man following Jesus who ran away [Mark 14:51], and the women looking on from a distance … who used to follow Jesus [Mark 15:40 ff.]. I think this is where we are visible in the narrative of the way of the cross. These precious, loving people who are for whatever reason less than full members of society in their own day, these folks are made alive—literally healed—in the ministry of Jesus.

We who are God’s LGBTQ+ created people, we who populate that dimension in God’s multiverse, we are those people healed by his love. We are the fountain of love God has built up, from triumph to triumph, to provide the grace from which salvation springs.

Palm Sunday Year B RCL 2024 (The Liturgy of the Palms: Mark 11:1-11; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; The Liturgy of the Word: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16 In te, Domine, speravi; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47) ©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love Blooming into Eternity

Daffodils are blooming.

Tulips are next.

The rhythm of life is always visible.

I love life.

I love my husband.

I surely love God.

Life is messy by nature for sure, which is what makes it “unruly” (to quote this week’s collect). It is one thing to believe in love and another thing entirely to keep love uppermost as you go through the day dealing with dropping your keys, stubbing your toe, forgetting to pick up tomatoes on the way home, dealing with traffic, and on and on and on. We ask to be granted “grace,” which is love unbounded and freely given, because if we can achieve a state of grace then our hearts will be fixed on the place where love prevails.

God’s law is love. God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah [32:31-34] that love has been written on our hearts, in other words, God has made it a part of our created nature. An inscription for eternity. So we will know that when we love we are naturally the people of God.

The Psalmist [51:1-13] sings a prayer for mercy according to God’s “loving kindness” and “great compassion.” Cleanse us from disconnection by washing away unruliness; create a clean heart that will make my spirit love until joy sustains me.

The epistle to the Hebrews [5:5-10] connects Christ to the Old Testament stories of creation by reminding us that God has created Christ a “priest forever.” A priest is one who accepts responsibility for mediating God and humanity. One accepts the responsibility both from God and from one’s peers. The job is richly rewarding, on the one hand, and constantly challenging on the other. Although on the face of it there are lots of potlucks and plumbing repairs and learning to fire up the oil burner, mostly, the job is to lead, spiritually.

That’s it, to lead, spiritually. Christ “became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,” linking through eternity to the people of creation. In other words, all is all, all time is all at once, and God is just God. Paeans to God notwithstanding, God is not a mighty warrior or a royal prince or anything else other than what people need God to be.

And we need more than ever for God to be love.

In John’s Gospel [12:20-33] Jesus reveals the truth of love and connection and all creation. A grain of wheat falls on the earth, it germinates, in that it ceases to be a grain of wheat, becoming a plant that bears fruit that nourishes creation. We must likewise let our lives be open to the path of creation that makes us ever flexible for love. The Jesus tells the crowd: “Now is the judgment;” now is the time.

Now is always the time. Now is always connected to all eternity. The daffodils bloom in spring; but in between they are hard at work for next time creating new life, multiplying and generating more beauty. Love builds up.

A piece I saw this week in a gay venue said that now is the time for LGBTQ+ people to celebrate ourselves. Our community created in God’s own image of love, is incredibly loving.

I posted a picture this week of my hellebore, which I planted 3 years ago and which only now, at last, has bloomed. The loving response from other queer gardeners has been not only overwhelming but profound in its love. Love builds up.

Let us bloom like the hellebores and the daffodils and tulips, let us show our love shining forth in the universe, and then let us use that love to multiply and regenerate and to sustain connection with each other, with God, with creation, into eternity.

Happy Lent.  

5 Lent Year B 2024 RCL (Jeremiah 31:31-34;; Psalm 51:1-13 Miserere mei, Deus; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33)

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

Microhabitats of Love

Microhabitats can be fascinating. It is time for Japanese Camellias to bloom in Oregon. My neighbor’s, which is about 100 meters away from my study window, has been blooming for two weeks. Mine just started blooming this week; as I drive around I see some blooming, some just budding. What makes the difference?

Well, sometimes they’re called microhabitats, small spaces that have microclimates. I know, for example, that the roses and Japanese Maple east of my house are in a protected environment and the sun’s warmth is amplified there. But in my west garden under pretty serious tree canopy, the same plants are weeks behind. Fascinating.

But then, how is it we comprehend that, but we cannot comprehend that we live in a multidimensional universe, where some of us live in a universe of love? All at once.

God, who is love, which is the power of creation, which is the force of the universe, took human form in Jesus, to teach us how to move into and thrive in the dimension of love.

Abram, encounters God, and is transformed [Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16]. Encounter with God causes what theologians call an “ontological shift;” being itself changes. You might have experienced this–my own experiences of ontological shift include my marriage and my ordinations. Everything looks the same, but everything is different too. In the story, Abram’s body is changed from elderly to vibrant, his name is changed because his being is now suffused with love, his wife is also transformed, which further transforms his ontological reality. In the aftermath of the encounter Abraham receives from God a covenant of love fulfilled.

On the face of it, the story is about how God “changes” Abram and Sarai into Abraham and Sarah. But that misses the point. In reality—one might even say in truth—Abram and Sarai were walking in love where they encountered God as they moved into the eternal dimension of love.

The Psalmist rejoices with praise [Psalm 22:22-30]. Love, God, is open to every petition. Love, God, fulfills, fills, satisifies. Love, God, sustains the heart, the heart sustains love in synchrony, love builds up.

Paul’s own midrash on Abraham [Romans 4:13-25] is focused on the promise of the covenant of love eternal, which comes through the experience of faith, which is lived experience of love. It was Abraham and Sarah’s life of loving that drew them closer to the realization of their encounter with God. In other words, love builds up, love is attracted to love, love rests on grace which is love received, faith builds as love builds as lived experience. Love, walking in love, is living rightly. “Therefore … faith was reckoned … as righteousness.”

In Mark’s Gospel [8:31-38] Jesus has quite directly told the disciples the details of the journey toward crucifixion and resurrection on which he, Jesus, and they, have embarked. Peter rebukes Jesus for saying such things. Peter lets his feelings overwhelm him. Jesus calls out the absence of love; he says to get the absence of love behind him. Jesus makes the difficult proclamation “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” To cling to self, to things, to hunker down is to shut out love, which is to lose life itself. It is a tough lesson to learn that those who give up whatever love requires thereby enter the dimension of salvation in which love transforms everything.

LGBTQ+ people often live in microhabitats subject to microclimates. We live deeply into the love we share, which is the love that defines us, which is the love with which we are created in God’s own image. We cling fiercely to our security. We celebrate our love. We have been called to walk in the dimension of love, to be transformed by love, to be the visible evidence of the power of love. We are called to lead the building up of love that has the power to transform our microhabitats into the grace and power of the dimension of love. We are called to show how to receive from God a covenant of love fulfilled.

2 Lent Year B 2024 RCL (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30 Deus, Deus meus; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38)

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