Hearing Love

I suppose we hear what we want to hear.

I certainly listen—in the night to trains in the distance, to the rustling of the Douglas firs, especially to the rain, especially to the rain that comforts me. When I was an adolescent living by the Monterey Bay I learned to fall asleep each night to the distant sound of a foghorn, which likewise was a sound that comforted me. It was a sound of human engineering that worked in accord with nature and that idea too comforted me. When I came to Portland to go to college I learned all about this comforting sleep sound of the rain pouring but also landing on windows and roofs and gutters and flowing and the sounds of the rain became my lullaby.

We ask God to hear our prayers and then to grant us peace. The truth is, when our prayers are the voice of the love within us then God’s peace has already been granted, much like the peace of the fog horn or the rain at night. Of course, any conscious interlocution with God is a sign of not only faith but of readiness for prophecy. When we consciously join in God’s eternal conversation we become like God’s voice in creation and this is what a prophet is. God’s prophets are those who viscerally experience—hear–God’s love and speak it aloud. Sometimes we call this witness when it means being present in creation in acts of love. Witness, prophecy—these are just the evidence of the active presence of God’s love working in and through us.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 8:1b) “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up” and “anyone who loves God is known by [God].” Knowledge, say, like gossip, puffs up the ego, which is separated from God because it is self-aggrandizing and that separates us from each other. But love, experienced, felt, taken in like a deep breath and given out like a great cry, builds up. If you don’t believe me, just see what happens when you actually say “I love you” to someone you love.

In Mark’s Gospel (1:21-28) we see Jesus preaching in a synagogue, speaking with authority. Like many such stories, the important bit arises almost as background, as a “man with an unclean spirit … cried out.” Jesus recognizes the torment in the man’s soul—what some commentators call a demon—and commands it “be silent, and come out of him!” The healing takes place with “convulsing and crying with a loud voice.” How like the moments when love can triumph by filling the vacuum of the absence of love. How like moments we all experience every day in our relationships with those we love. The healing action is the action of hearing, of hearing both the suppressed love and the convulsing of the fear of love’s absence.

Oppressed people know all too well how this goes. Once when I was sitting in collar at my church’s booth at gay pride a man came up to me and made fun of my pectoral cross sitting on my chest below my collar but also near a set of rainbow rings. Then he spat at me and walked off. It was a fairly typical interaction with a protester at pride. But it was also an example of hearing the action of an unclean spirit interacting with the fear of love’s absence.

The power of God’s love is ours to build up through our faith expressed not only in perception of love but in the prophetic action of loving. Loving begins with hearing the truth with compassion.

4 Epiphany Year B 2021 RCL (Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28)

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

Take action … Love

It was sunny yesterday in otherwise rainy winter Oregon. It was nice. I thought I had been seeing more daylight lately and I was pleased to read in the newspaper that, indeed, last Wednesday had been the first day of more daylight than dark. It is nature’s sign of hope I think. It also is a sign that we are being newly called to action—the action of love.

God’s good news—the Gospel of love—promises salvation to all faithful people. And faith requires action. Love is not in any way about passivity. Even in the face of the absence of love action is required. Action is required first and foremost to keep yourself in the presence and knowledge of love and second to keep yourself actively engaged in love—as Jesus said “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This also is what it means to answer readily the call to proclaim the good news. The good news is love and proclaiming is action. Prophetic action is the action of proclaiming the good news by showing love, by raising up the quantity and quality of love. In today’s scripture we have a reading from the story of Jonah (3:1-5, 10), the prophet famous for his interaction with a whale. But the story we see tells us how Jonah too action to proclaim love. Jonah’s action changed the course of history for those who heard him and listened. We have another example of prophetic action in the act the US Capitol police officer who wore a red hat during the January 6 insurrection to distract the intruders and rescue fellow officers–love, in action.

Look at all the action words in the scripture for today:

-Jonah 3:1-5, 10: Get up, go, proclaim, Jonah set out and went, began to go, cried out

-Psalm 62: 6-14: pour out your hearts, God has spoken once, twice I have heard it, steadfast love

-Mark 1:14-20: Jesus came, proclaiming, saying, passed along [and] saw, said to them, went … farther [and] saw, called them, they left … and followed

To follow Christ is to be active in loving, which is on the one hand harder to do than we think. It is not just having warm fuzzy feelings. It is taking action to be filled with love in order to proclaim love. There is no possibility of passivity for we are called to love in every moment. On the other hand, the good news about this good news is the same thing in another dimension isn’t it?—to love means being filled with love.

Look at Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:16-18)—they were casting a net to catch fish—they were doing their work, following their profession with skill but also with the love of skilled fishermen. They were filled with love and Jesus saw that love in their hearts, in their souls, in their skill, in their teamwork, in the idea of the purpose of the catch which was to nurture people with food. When Jesus called, the love in their hearts led them to follow Him.

In 1 Corinthians 7:31 Paul writes: “for the present form of this world is passing away.” Present past and future all mingle in that statement because it is another kind of prophetic call, it is the call to us to understand that love is dimensional, that the world absent love is in a dimension we are called to turn from, and that the world filled with love is a dimension we are called to turn toward. Indeed, we are called to live in this new dimension of love. The possibility of this shift is eternal in every human soul. To follow Christ is to walk in the dimension of love.

LGBTQ people are well known for prophetic action. By the mere action of having faith and loving each other we are answering the call to walk in the dimension of love. Gerald Bostock, Donald Zarda and Aimee Stephens are the most recent prophets to call forth the dimension of love before the US Supreme Court, who last June ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex.

Take action.

Love.

3 Epiphany Year B RCL 2021 (Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Psalm 62: 6-14; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

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

Prophets of Love

A week or so ago I reminded a friend that it wasn’t Christmas yet. I told him about how, in seminary, we had Advent police who roamed the close looking for any sign of Christmas cheer before the fourth Sunday in Advent was over. Fact is, that’s one of those urban seminary legends I think—I remember we all joked about it, and the joking was enough to keep us all in line (not that final exams and preparations for a zillion masses at Christmas weren’t enough to do so on their own), but I don’t remember any actual seminarians acting, erm … prophetically, at least not in this way. On the other hand, I also remember that it didn’t take much to teach us about the ever present problem of syncretism. Syncretism is (according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism) the blending of beliefs. A good example is the placement of national symbols in churches—both are important, both have meaning, but they are best understood individually and apart. Of course, the most famous example of syncretism in American culture is secular-Christmas, which begins some time around Halloween, and is over when people “have Christmas” (code for opening presents) whenever they feel like it but usually around mid-December. My goodness, just look at that, I still have strong feelings about this apparently.

Well, my husband was a cradle Episcopalian and I was raised by stern Methodists, so for the 42 years of our relationship we have kept Christmas pretty much according to the church calendar. We will get a tree some time in the next week, but we decorate it pretty slowly, usually getting done just as Christmas Eve approaches. When we still lived in Philadelphia I never put lights on the front of the house until 4 Advent! For us, the season really begins with “Once in Royal David’s City” sung at Midnight Mass (which usually is now around 8pm). Of course, we keep the season running full tilt through Epiphany. A solid two weeks of light and music and special food—not to mention, in Philadelphia, mummers.

When we took up our interlude in Wisconsin I learned the hard way that if I wanted help with lighting up the exterior I had to get it done before the first snowfall. One shot at mucking around in two feet of show was all it took to learn that lesson.

This is our second winter in Oregon. As far as the lights go, I’ve given in completely. We got them up last week and they gloriously light up the night. I can see from the kitchen windows that more of our neighbors have (as have we) put lights in the rear of their homes. It makes cooking even more delightful! I have to say, the lights around us are brilliant this year. I observed last year how the neighborhood suddenly lit up after Thanksgiving, essentially a way of dealing with the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest I guess. This year I have seen several notices in various local online services and newsletters that we should go all out with decorating, especially exterior lighting, because it helps all of us with the isolation of the pandemic. I agree, and I am grateful to my neighbors for the glory of their luminescent company visible from our windows.

We are, ultimately, people of hope. The lights are a glimmer of hope. And, in a way, all of us who engage in lighting up the night are serving as prophets in this time—we are showing our hope, strengthening the love it symbolizes, deepening our commitment to each other, which is the very bedrock of faith.

Prophets (Advent police notwithstanding) “prepare the way of the Lord,” usually in simple ways, most often just by example. Some years ago a church colleague used to say of all of the LGBTQ people who came to church every Sunday, that they were prophetic just by sitting in the pews and being visible. Our visibility, the light we bring together with our love, is a sign of the power of God, the gentle nurture that is at once the product of our faith and the promise of the very presence of the kingdom.

Isaiah (40:11) reminds us that God “will feed the flock like a shepherd.” Psalm 85 (10) reminds us that “mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Peter (2 Peter 3:13) reminds us that “we wait for a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”

Peter begins this passage (2 Peter 3:8) with: “Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” It is a reminder (and a parallel to Einstein’s reminder that time is an illusion) that for God a moment is the eternity and the eternity is present in every moment. Notice the psalm is past-tense “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” When we say that we wait for God to bring justice and love, we mean that we wait to be able to see that justice and love are already present but only when we are able to live into both fully.

We must remember, especially as nature reminds us with the approach of winter, that this pandemic is not forever but that God’s love is forever. We must answer God’s call to be prophets of love, visibly luminescent in the love we share. That is how to spend Advent, building up love.

2 Advent Year B 2020 RCL (Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Benedixisti, Domine; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8)

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

Love Sustains

“Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”

This sentence from Ephesians (5: 2) is used at the offertory in the mass. It is an invitation to the Eucharist—the great sacrament of communion that takes place in the context of group prayer that summons the presence of Christ, and in which everyone present shares in Christ with one another—total connectedness, a model of what it means to “walk in love,” to “live in righteousness,” and to be one with God through being one with one another. It is no coincidence that almost all worship begins with music, especially with singing, because it is through singing together that people raise their consciousness from self to community. Once raised in song the spirit of the whole community grows and grows and grows in love.

In most of the Episcopal Church, indeed throughout most of the Anglican Communion, lgbt people are not only welcome but are active participants in all parts of walking in love. Gay priests like me preside and celebrate, lesbian and gay deacons lead the prayers, proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, lgbt lay people serve as acolytes, lectors, ushers, chalice bearers, layers-on of hands in healing, altar guild members, hosts at coffee, and lay eucharistic ministers bringing prayer and communion to shut-ins. We are so fully integrated into the heart of the church that we forget it wasn’t always that way and that our compatriots are often barely tolerated or are outright persecuted in other faith communities.

For folks in other faith communities “choosing life” as Moses reminds us to do, might mean making decisions about survival. Choosing life should mean choosing God, choosing connectedness with each other, choosing to live in community in love. But that’s easier said than done when those around you are only putting up with you and accusing you of “sin” (which is disconnectedness) because of your very nature, just because of this thing we call “sexual identity.”

I suppose it might be time for us to consider finding a better term than “identity” to describe our sexuality. I know that I am gay, and I know this in my heart where I love fiercely. It is by no means a random “identity”—something I am called–it is my very being. Ontologically I am a man who most powerfully gives love to and is nurtured by love from men. In fact, the very power of the love I hold for the men in my life is such that I cannot imagine that somewhere people think it is simply an identity, simply a name for me. Gay is my being and loving is my spiritual life substance. Love sustains me, and loving sustains those I love, and all of it sustains the community in which I live when I am able to fully embrace it and actually walk in love.

The hard part for me, of course, is to keep it going—to keep loving when I am hurt or angry or otherwise distracted by my own self. The most dangerous thing any Christian faces is the tendency to turn inwards, away from others, and away from God.

In 1 Corinthians Paul is writing to a fairly untested congregation about their own variable or occasionally faltering faith. He says he had to feed them with milk because they weren’t ready for solid food—a metaphor for infancy in faith—he judges their readiness by the extent to which they devolve into arguing and struggling for power in their community, which are signs of devotion to self, which is the only true form of sin. Not being of the community means not being attuned to the aura of love given freely among the people, for it is in that love that we find ourselves united with God. United with God we share (metaphorically) the real food of real life–the rewards of walking in love.

What are we to do? Remember to love, of course. Remember not to let little things overwhelm you. (So easily do I fall back onto self instead of community my dad spent decades reminding me about it—“Son,” he’d say whenever we talked, “don’t sweat the small stuff.”)

LGBT people are good at this business of walking in love—after all we have to work harder just to be able to love openly—so the love we share shines like a beacon for the whole community. It has been said over and over that the best thing lgbt people can do in faith communities is to give witness to our loving lives just be being present and visible. Me sitting with my husband in the pew speaks volumes to everyone in the congregation about the power and persistence of love.

Choose life, choose love, choose God.

 

6^th Sunday after the Epiphany (Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37)

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

A Place of Refreshment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mustard Seed of Love

I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with the concept of defining lgbt experience. Especially when it comes to reflecting on scripture, as I do to write this blog, I puzzle over just what in lgbt experience is a match for the references in the text; it is sometimes particularly tricky to match lgbt life with the stories in Jesus’ parables. No end of navel-gazing can be inserted here. There always is the old saw that if it is my experience and if I am gay (and I am gay) then it is a gay experience. So, getting the car washed, planting tulip bulbs, doing the laundry—are those gay experiences when I am the gay person in question? I guess so, actually, because it is a matter of backdrop. That is, the tulip bulbs aren’t particularly gay nor is planting them, but having a home where I can do that is a gay experience, at least for me. In fact, having the kind of life where there is sufficient stability to allow mundane things like everyday errands to happen is still a rare experience for lgbt people. We still struggle to achieve equality in the quality of life. Our lgbt friends in some parts of the world still risk their lives just getting up every day. Although in the ostensible developed west there is a façade of equality and acceptance, as we all know, too often it really is just a matter of bare tolerance. It’s okay to plant your tulips, just don’t look too gay when you do it.

Last Sunday’s scripture included a passage from Jeremiah that was recorded as a prophetic text; it is essentially the instructions for buying a house. The details are fascinatingly like they remain today. But the prophetic meaning of the text is that when and where righteousness and justice prevail God guarantees stability in the lives of faithful people; security returns like clockwork when the fulcrum of righteousness holds and the scales of faith and faithfulness are balanced.

This week’s scripture includes passages from Lamentations 1 and 3; a “lonely” “city that once was full of people” refers to an ancient exile; the response is that God is good to those whose hope expresses their faith because it is in that hopeful faith that salvation is encountered. In Luke’s Gospel (17: 5-10) Jesus gives a series of examples of the encounter of faith in ordinary life. The very power of faith, of course, is in having it. The grace of salvation is in the life of hope and atonement—a priest mentor of mine* used to delight in pronouncing that “at-one-ment” to remind us that it is we who must remember to remain one with God by living our lives in faith.

Exile, of course, is a common experience of oppressed peoples of all stripes. Lgbt people are no exception—we experience exile from family and community when we admit our God-given sexuality. Sometimes that exile is metaphorical being realized in dour faces and tight-lipped utterances. Sometimes it is more tangible—millions of lgbt children are thrown out of their homes or separated from family. It is one reason the Exodus narrative is such a powerful metaphor for us—we dream of a return to a life of equality and stability even when it involves a powerful journey filled with trials. How “lonely,” then, are the homes from which lgbt people have been exiled? The passage from Lamentations reveals the grief of post-exile: “the roads … mourn,” “children have gone away,” “all … majesty [has departed].” Indeed.

The response in Lamentations 3 is hope and faith and the faithfulness of daily life. “Life goes on” we say as we get through each day hoping, building, waiting eagerly for our own personal Exodus, our own personal return to equality and stability. Here is where Jesus’ examples of faith “the size of a mustard seed” (so tiny as to be imperceptible, yet powerful enough to produce miracles in the physical world) remind us that it is in living life to the fullest—getting the car washed, doing the laundry, even planting tulips—that we best express our lgbt faith in the God who created us lgbt in God’s own image.

People in faith communities often look for majestic signs of powerful theophanies—thunder and lightning, or volcanoes erupting or great tsunamis. The reality is that theophany—the meeting between us and God—takes place in our hearts. The reality is that the mundane life is the very place where theophany counts. It is in doing the laundry and taking care of business by building stable lives that we create around us a sea of equality based in the love of God that is in our hearts, even when it is expressed with a gentle smile while planting a tulip bulb. It is the force of that mustard seed of love that propels all of creation toward righteousness and justice and the time when “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jeremiah 32:15).

 

Proper 21 (for September 29, 2019): Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6: 6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Proper 22 (for October 6, 2019): Lamentations 1:1-6; Lamentations 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

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

*The Rev. Charles O. Moore

Gentle sun

There is gentle sun playing across the deck outside my study this morning. I experience it as comforting, maybe because it brings with it a sense of calm. It is end-of-summer warm in Oregon with the gentle breeze giving motion to the greenscape as the sun kisses the new flowers I’ve somehow managed to tease from the few plants I’ve had time to acquire since we arrived here. They seem to enjoy the environment as much as I enjoy them. It is more than a metaphor, isn’t it? I give them love by loving them when I look at them in the morning or look for them in the evening dusk. I nurture them with my affection, but also with water and occasional plant food, but mostly with the gentle sun and gentle breeze they enjoy out there. They return my affection with blossoms that not only give me pleasure but signal their health and strength, perhaps metaphors for my own.

To give love is why God created us and put us here. God is, after all, love. The fabled unity of God’s church showing forth power is in reality, the giving of love by all of us, the sharing of God among us, however awkwardly ineptly we manage it—what matters is that we try. By merely remembering to have affection inwardly, we can manifest outwardly the presence of God among us. This is what Jesus meant when he so often said “the kingdom has come near.”

We continued this week to acclimate ourselves to this new environment. We had a terrifying afternoon at the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles (affectionately known as the DMV, of course). We set off too late in the day because our morning contractors had spent longer than we anticipated. We drove and drove and drove for what seemed like hours (it was probably 15 minutes) down hills and across rivers toward some mysterious address. When we got there the place was packed (of course) with a long line of people standing right in the middle, but a prominent sign pointed an arrow at a machine that said “take a number for service.” I took a number but noticed it was hundreds more than the latest number on the lighted sign above the long line of people. We sat down and wondered whether we shouldn’t just go home and wait for another day. It reminded me of a sort of cross between waiting for a so-called “delayed” flight, and sitting in the vast auditorium at the University of Chicago many years ago waiting for the beginning of the dreaded German exam. Maybe you can see why I was terrified.

Something prompted a guy in front of us to explain they had called fifty numbers at once and those were the people in the line. A moment later the last person in the line was helped and they resumed calling the numbers in sequence. As often happens, most of the people had left so it actually went so quickly that I stood up to make sure I wouldn’t miss my number because of my creaky knees. And, once we got to the “window,” the lady was charming and helped us with all of the things we needed done all at once. In less than 30 minutes we’d registered the car and both passed the “knowledge” test (a minor miracle in itself) and were on our way with temporary licenses in hand. We laughed all the way home joking when we saw double yellow lines and laughing out loud when we came to one of the infamous double-roundabouts. It was three days later, though, before either of us dared say something along the lines of “we won’t have to do that again.” Oh well, nothing like culture shock mingled with the vagaries of test anxiety.

But what struck me was the loving way our new friend helped us, even nurtured us, through the process with a gentle smile, a quick walk out to the car with me to check a couple of things, and managing the pile of documents we had brought with us. Of course, she gave love in her nurturing care. And one realizes she must do this all day long every day, giving love and nurturing hundreds of people, all of whom are excited, worried, needy and frightened all at once. I briefly had the thought that it was a terrific metaphor for church.

In the scripture appointed for today we hear the story of the call of the prophet Jeremiah (1:3-10), who resisted (of course) because of his fear or anxiety that overwhelmed the presence of God’s love until God reminded him not to be afraid, because God had put God’s words into his mouth, giving him the power to build and plant with love. The letter to the Hebrews (12:18-29) talks about what theologians call “theophany”—the realization of the presence of God—which often is accompanied by terror, fear and anxiety, until the actual presence of love is manifest. We are reminded that, although the world at large “shakes,” still that which remains, God’s love shared among us, cannot be shaken. In Luke’s Gospel (13:10-17) Jesus heals on the sabbath and is reprimanded for it. He reminds the crowd that the sabbath, God’s day, is for healing, which after all is the unification of creation in God’s love. To heal is to share love, which is to honor God.

I was impressed that our helper at DMV never batted an eyebrow at two “mature” married men. She just helped our family get settled. It was an enormously healing event for us. Dignity, witness, love—these are the essence of healing, but especially significant for the lgbt children of God. A sort of everyday theophany like the gentle sun.

Proper 16 (Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17)

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

Mirrors dimly*

I’ve been thinking a lot about my spending time with my cousin when I was a boy, and how we often spent summers at each other’s houses. He’d be at my place for awhile and then his parents would come to get him but somehow when they left I’d go with and spend awhile at his house. This went on for years. Still, and this is the point, there were things about their house that were just a little bit off for me. I got to thinking about this because I was trying to remember how it was I got so taken with strawberry soda, which we never had at home. I think it must have been something they had at their house. Silly kinds of memories like this come after six decades. I keep trying to recreate the experience of delicious strawberry soda and I can’t quite duplicate it, and the reason probably is that whatever it was probably was locally-produced at the time.

I think of things like this when I read that line in 1 Corinthians (13:12) where Paul says “for now we see in a mirror, dimly.” He’s writing about growing up and putting an end to childish ways as a metaphor for putting away self-centeredness and growing into Christlike lives. He says we understand only dimly how real a life of clarity there could be if only we could live fully into the salvation God prepared for us in Christ, a salvation that already is ours if only we can fully grasp it. To grasp it, we keep trying to see it.

The mirror part is important because Paul wasn’t living in any urban condo with mirrored walls. He walked from place to place or rowed a boat, lived where he could find shelter in villages along the way. And mirrors in their day were pieces of metal or more likely the inside of the abalone shells we collected growing up in Monterey that reflected light about as well as a still pond on a sunlit day. You can see the image and you can tell what it is but it’s not exact and there’s no detail. We see it only dimly.

Paul brings this up together with prophecy—or prophesying he says, meaning playing the prophetic role. He says we prophesy only in part, because we see our role in God’s kingdom only in part. There are two other readings today about prophecy. In Jeremiah 1 we enter into the dialogue between Jeremiah and God when God commisions Jerermiah’s prophecy. Like most prophets, Jeremiah isn’t interested in it as a career choice and doesn’t think he’s going to be good at it. But, God says, there is no choice, it was intended in God’s plan all along. In Luke 4 (21-32) we have the story about Jesus trying to preach in his childhood synagogue and getting turned away.

Well, prophesy we all do every day, whether we like it or not. LGBT Christians are prophets in many ways. We show the church what faithful life is like for lgbt people. We show the world that God made us lgbt and wants us to live fully into our lgbt lives both in and out of the church. We show our heteronormative fellow travelers on life’s journey that there is more than one way to be normal, to be Christian, to be faithful. We do it whether we like it or not, because God has ordained us to do so. And as Paul reminds us we see only dimly what it ultimately means, like Jeremiah we do not set foot on the prophet’s path with speechwriter in tow but merely with the life and breath that God has given us. And, like Jesus, sometimes people don’t or won’t see or hear us. Then again, sometimes they do.

We in the United States are on the cusp of a political year. One day from now the looniness of a so-called campaign played out by and for the media will end when actual voters begin to make their points of view known. It won’t be quick, it will last until November. The voices won’t be clear, they’ll be muddled and inconsistent, just like that dim mirror. But one thing is true for lgbt people and that is that we have played a major prophetic role in advancing God’s kingdom by bringing equality out of the closet and into the living rooms and driveways and offices of America just as our friends in other parts of the world have done. We haven’t got it quite perfect yet and we won’t right away but we absolutely are en route.

We have to keep growing up into adults in Christ, into reasonable prophets in God’s kingdom. It’s our calling.

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

Epiphany 4 (Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30)

 

The prophet’s life*

Greetings from the finally frozen North. It hasn’t snowed in a couple of days, but the temperature right now is 1°F/-17°C.

In the Episcopal Church it is the Second Sunday after the Epiphany. The lessons all revolve around the theme of the light of Christ. We remember Jesus is the light of the World, we pray that we the people might be illumined and shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory. It’s all part of the extended hope of the coming of God among us as Christ–the real meaning of Christmas. Another clear theme in the scripture appointed for today is the idea of the wedding feast; the Gospel lesson is the story of Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding at Cana.

But I kept getting distracted by the first lesson from Isaiah, in which the prophet insists he will not stop prophecying until God has succeeded at the metaphorical marriage of God and God’s people. It is the union of God and humanity that is the eschatalogical outcome of the Christ Event, which ushers salvation into human history. (I know, lots of big words … it means the now and future and eternal unity are the ongoing eternal result of Salvation, which is ours in Christ.)

I kept getting stuck on this prophetic role. I’ve written about this before. LGBT people often have played a prophetic role in the church just by showing up and being seen. The fancy theological term for this is “witness.” Unlike the legal usage, this kind of witness is not what we see, rather it is what everyone else sees when we show up. Much of the remarkable evolution of equality for LGBT folks has come about through just this sort of prophetic witness, whether it means we showed up for church, or to vote, or to be counted in the census, now to get married–all of that is prophetic witness. Like Isaiah, we cannot give up. We have to keep showing up.

This week, famously, the Anglican Primates met to discuss, well, things gay mostly. It seems some of the Primates are unsettled by the advancement of what we see as equality in the lives of LGBT people in the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church (the historic face of the Anglican Communion in the United States) has been “suspended” by this body for making marriage equality canonical.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but I know I can’t escape writing about it here. Of course all of the instruments of the messy and disorganized body of Christians known as the Anglican Communion must be carefully considered and all of the people involved must be accorded respect. “Suspension” in this case means no vote in a body that makes no decisions. So that’s one place to begin. The Anglican Communion is just that, a community of Anglicans who share the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the tradition of the reformed Church of England as passed down through the past five hundred years or so. No one person is in charge, no particular body is in charge, the shared tradition involves rather a lot of constant conversation and quite often people disagree with each other. Disagreement is normal in our polity, so this is not unusual. Newspaper reports of the meeting listed a number of other national bodies in the Anglican Communion, most of which are in countries that now also embrace marriage equality. This means that likely, well before the three year suspension is up, most of those other churches will have made the same decision the Episcopal Church has made. Eventually the tide will turn, as the saying goes.

It doesn’t make the prophet’s life any easier. It’s never easy to keep showing up in the face of oppression. We have to count on all of our resources to strengthen our resolve, like Isaiah, to keep showing up and showing up and showing up. Remember this: there is no reasonable theological stance for the oppression of LGBT people. And remember that it was the whole Episcopal Church, gathered in convention, after decades of witness, who decided as a community to embrace revelation.

There has been a lot of quoting this week from within the Episcopal Church of Galatians 3:28 “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

I myself would point us to 2 Corinthians 5:17: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ” And, to the words of Jesus, in Matthew 22:40: Matthew 22:40 “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

The Presiding Bishop who is the Primate of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Michael Curry, said “We are part of the Jesus Movement, and the cause of God’s love in this world can never stop and will never be defeated.” here

And so we have to keep on keeping on, showing up, leading the LGBT prophet’s life.

 

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

*2^nd Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10 Dixit injustus; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11)

Keep a-goin’*

Have you noticed that this is the time for crazy tv ads? This is the time of year for things like “vegematic” or “superremover” or whatever sort of crazy thing people think might be possible to sell, especially late at night. But even this morning in my newspaper, the coupons, which usually are for Pillsbury Crescent rolls, were mostly for old people stuff—knee pills, diapers, etc. Ick … I know …. What does that mean about this time of year? Look at the collect for the day today: “God, you are in charge, please listen when I pray, and give us peace.” That’s a pretty simple prayer after all … no divine intervention, no magical story.

The gospel is the second half of the “Jesus preaches in his childhood synagogue” story. Last week we had the first half, where he shows up and preaches, and everyone is sort of shocked. He announces his agenda, by saying “today, scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This week we have the other half of the story. It is rather more exciting, because it tells us that when Jesus tries to tell the truth to his synagogue, they become outraged and try to kill him. Miraculously, like a ghost, he passes through the midst of them and goes on his way. That made me think about what it means to just keep on keeping on. Because that’s what we do: miraculously, we just pass through and go on our way. Life’s too short to worry about the crackpots, as it were. But, where is God in all of that?

In the reading from Jeremiah we hear the story of God calling Jeremiah to be a prophet. God tells Jeremiah (who has protested, of course) in no uncertain terms, that this has been God’s plan all along, and that God now has put God’s own words in Jeremiah’s mouth. And yet, what is the job of a prophet in the Old Testament? Well, above all, it is sort of like the sheriff … to root out corruption and make sure everyone is safe. No wonder we need vegematic ….

The third lesson this week is from 1 Corinthians; it is the lesson about the definition of love that so often is read at weddings. And yet the best part is this: “Now we see in a mirror, dimly … but then we will see face to face.” Paul is reminding us that what we think we know about God is only of our own making. That eventually, if we can walk in love, the love will become like our life blood, and then we will see, face to face, God, who is love.

We are glbt people, who are defined as outcast in our society because of those whom we love. My goodness, look at us! Well my friends, all of us are made in God’s own image. All of us are called to prophesy, which means to stand up in the world and show the world what God has given us, and often, to pass through the mob and go on our (i.e. God’s) way. And God has given us everything we need already. We are called to love. Love, love, love. Love, my friends is the outpouring of your soul, in which is the love God gave you in creation.

Like Jesus, we often have to pass through and go on our own way. In fact, to do this, is exactly what God has called us as lgbtq people, to do.

As the famous poem by Frank Lebby Stanton says: “Keep a-goin'”!

Epiphany 4 (Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.