The Beginning of the Good News

Atmospheric rivers … what a concept. Well, it seems the Pacific Northwest is the new home of them. At least this past week; we’re now on number 4 I think. True, they keep the terrestrial rivers full and the trees green and the mountains covered with snow.

Also true that they now remind me that we are in Advent. Just goes to show you how easily reference points shift; when I was a boy it was the first snowfall that let us know Christmas was right around the corner.

I always think this is a curious time of year, caught someplace between secularism and the holy. There is expectation, yes, and a glimmer of hope. There is excitement and all kinds of busy-ness from decorating to baking to shopping to … (fill in your own blank here). In the church it is a new year that opens with prayer and solemnity and with calls to the internal, which is to say we are called to turn inward to discover the ways in which we disconnect ourselves from each other and thus from God. Still, this time of year we all know what is coming soon and we have in our hearts the knowledge of the joy that is coming our way.

The prophet Isaiah is instructed by God [Isaiah 40:1-11] to “speak tenderly” and to “comfort” God’s people. Way back in 1994 I was living and working in New York City when I first encountered the Gay Games. I had no idea there even was such a thing. But one morning upon awakening and realizing I didn’t need to go to my office at the university I decided to wander down to the bodega on the corner and get a newspaper and a bagel (usually I would acquire these at Penn Station running to catch my train). Of course, it was a brilliantly sunny summer day! At the bodega I recognized the owner (of course) but nobody else, which was odd, and also it was odd that the place was crowded. I was barely awake, but slowly it began to dawn on me that it seemed like everybody in there was gay. It was a strange realization frankly. I sort of chuckled, then walking back to my apartment through crowds (I lived in Chelsea, which was then the heart of the gayborhood) I realized everybody around me seemed to be gay. And I had the odd thought “Oh, this is how they (i.e., straight people) feel all the time!” And I was comforted.

I was comforted to have known, if only for an instant, what it felt like for once in my life to be “normitive,” to be one of the “regular” majority. To let down my walls and just be me. It was glorious. Talk about “rough places plain” and “glory … revealed” and “all people see it together.”

I know I’ve written often here about the 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games; it was right after my ordination and it was a powerful time in my spiritual life. And the opportunity to be there at that time and to experience this sense yet again and for two weeks this time was a real gift.

We are too often afraid to look around us and see that the words of the prophets are not predictions about some dim future, but rather, they are revelations of our own reality.

So as I go about my daily life I no longer find myself in crowds of young gay men (more’s the pity) but I do live in a world of love created by the synchrony of my relationships, especially with my husband, who is clearly the greatest gift in my life as well.

In that realization, that this is the life given to me, that this is the glory love creates for me, is the sense of the critical importance of walking in love. When we walk in love we dwell in peace, and there in that place is where mercy and truth have met together [Psalm 85:7-13], for love produces peace which is the mother of mercy which can only thrive in truth.

I’ll say it again, that prophecy is not prediction but is revelation of our own truth, the reality about our own path into the dimension of love. There is no human time in the dimension of love, rather God’s time, which is all time all at once, forms the parameters of love. Love once experienced, once attained, is eternal [2 Peter 3:8-15a]. A glimmer is forever. The instant of realizing that there is a world full of LGBTQ+ people who God created in God’s own image—just that instant—becomes in my heart a pathway for walking in love each day. We are loved, we are created by love, we are called to love. Peter writes “we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” … therefore we must “strive to be found … at peace.”

That brings us to the beginning of the good news” [Mark 1:1-8]. The good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the pathway into the dimension of love. It is heralded by repentance—a reminder always to return to walking in love–which means connection, which means life eternal in the dimension of love.

2 Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Benedixisti, Domine; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8)

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

The Earth is Full of the Knowledge of Love

Prophets are god’s messengers. This week I met a prophet, a young man who was good to me in a difficult situation … no preaching, just a smile and understanding for a gay elder … it was a perfect example of how God’s prophets are always everywhere among us, showing us the way. The form of repentance they bring is the reminder of what a difference a little smile can make. The way of salvation is the door into the dimension of love where the little smiles reign.

We are learning more and more from the heritage of our indigenous neighbors. I learned this week about how, for the Yurok people, condors “carry prayer to the heavens and across the world” (https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/1139971256/the-yurok-tribe-leads-conservation-efforts-to-reintroduce-the-california-condor ).

This week’s Old Testament prophecy, then, from Isaiah (11:1-10), tells how a “shoot shall come out from the stump.” I have been nursing an avocado tree for a couple of years now, I grew it from a seed, I have been trying this for years and never succeeded until now, but then given the vagaries of life I let it grow too tall and thin so that the tiny trunk could not support the few leaves at the top. I said a little prayer and cut it off near the “stump.” I held my breath for about two months until at last a shoot came out from the stump, and now, about 3 months later, I have a nicely variegated tree with lots of strong branches and leaves. Prophecy here is yet again about how God shows us in these simple and everyday life ways where to find the doors into the dimension of love. Something as simple as tending a tree has the power of the knowledge of God, of the growth of righteousness and faithfulness, “a signal to the peoples,” a prayer carried to the heavens and across the world.

Stewardship of this life, then, is the obligation to render prosperity in the tending of creation. Righteousness inheres in the right harmony with creation (Psalm 72:1-8).

Hope is that spiritual sense of justice and righteousness and the certain knowledge that not only is God with us but we also are with God (Romans 15:4-13). Hope fills us with joy and peace in our believing, which is our harmony with creation, with God and with each other, and that is another sign of the door to the dimension of salvation.

To repent is just to think again, to pay attention, to not just respond to the smile but to let it change your life (Matthew 3:1-12). Years ago in Philadelphia I knew a guy (our regular Saturday night waiter for almost 25 years!) and he was one of God’s prophets too. I remember how he always seemed frightened about the idea of Advent. Having been raised in the Roman tradition he remembered only that the Advent readings seemed to be always about horrors to come. He was good to me, an Episcopal priest, and he had a desire to be connected to his faith, which he managed to work out through our casual conversations. And he was a prophet in many ways, but in this one thing is where I really see it now, that like so many LGBTQ people he had been mistreated at the hands of seemingly religious people who were ill informed about the true faith. Not unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees in today’s Gospel reading who are scolded by John the Baptizer.

I don’t know whether I ever managed to convince my friend that these readings were not about a future, but rather aboutthe present reality in our own hearts. But he had already, long ago, successfully navigated his way into the dimension of love.

What else can I say? Repent? Yes, of course, always rethink, and always ask forgiveness when you fail to act in a loving way, and do not let your heart be darkened by oppressive thoughts.

The earth will be full of the knowledge of the love of God as the waters cover the sea, and the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal of how creation grows God’s love.

2 Advent Year A 2022 RCL (Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 Deus, judicium; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12)

©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.

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.

Prepare the Way of Love

The sun is shining today in the Willamette Valley. When I went outside to get my newspaper this morning the sky was hazy with fog but the sun’s rays were pointing brilliantly in a fan shape through the stately Douglas firs all around. It was heavenly.

This past week we had arborists here. We had an old silver maple that had slowly been dropping its branches on our house and our neighbors’ backyards over the past year and a half. It took months to figure out what to do and finally get someone here to do it, but this week the tree was trimmed. Now there is a lot of fresh firewood in our woodshed and there is no possibility any branches will fall on anything. It is that last bit that I am noticing each morning as I look out where the cracked branches used to be. I had grown so accustomed to worrying about when they might fall that I find it difficult to remember, now, that that problem is resolved. We are prepared for ice storms and winter winds, whenever they might come.

Preparation means change, and change means both working past the former reality and accepting the new.

Advent is a season of preparation. We are called to look inward, to work past former realities, to generate new realities and to accept the change.

Love is the path to the dimension where change is not just accepted but embraced, cheered with joy, accepted with grace—dare I say (?) it is the dimension where change is loved.

Love, of course, is the “robe of righteousness that comes from God” (Baruch 5:2), the “diadem of the glory of the Everlasting.” It is the love of creation making those heavenly rays of sun shine through the trees to remind us not only that we are all part of something larger than us but also that we and all of creation are loved. It is the love that comes to us in this way that is the robe of righteousness and the diadem of glory. It is the love to which we are called that is the manifestation of our blessing. This call to love, that our love might “overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight” (Philippians 1:9), is the affirmation of the certainty that we are called to love. It is our sign as LGBTQ people that we are called as God’s loving children who are defined by the love we share, to love.

We are called to “prepare the way” (Luke 3:4).

We are called to embrace the love in our hearts as the instrument of change, of new reality, of preparation. Why, it is just like the new reality that Amy Schneider, a trans woman, is still an on-going champion of Jeopardy. The brilliance of her smile shows that love that fuels her. Her gentle embrace of her identity, her proud posture in the world, is a sign to all of us that we, too, can find the dimension of love.

Prepare the way indeed.

2 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6)

©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.

Joy

We’ve been working like proverbial maniacs on our home. We are doing the kinds of little things that make you crazy until they’re done, but on the other hand, are too small to hire anybody to help with. We did just have a friend visit for a week, and he worked pretty hard inside and outside, to get roses planted, weeds cleared, shrubs pruned etc., etc., before the traditional rain started. We just made it, the rain started yesterday. If I remember correctly from college days, it will now rain more or less constantly until April. Or May even. That’s why, of course, the Portland area is so lusciously green.

Inside we were doing a combination of adapting our new house into our home and fixing things the movers broke. We were pretty exhausted. The other day it was hot and sunny so we ran outside to spray paint some metal furniture and both overdid it. I woke up in the night with warm feet, and when I got up I could see my feet were striped (!) from the sun on my sandals.

We even worked late nights several days in a row to rebuild the benchwork for one of my train layouts (the O-gauge toy train layout … the HO-gauge model train layout will have to wait for now).

And then our friend’s visit was over and I drove him to the airport. As we left the house the morning grey began to lift, and after I dropped him off I had a stunning drive back through the trees as the sun intensified. Combined with the magical music on the radio I was brought nearly to tears with the joy not only of being back in a place that I love, but also with the radiance of creation that is so close in this environment. In the house I could see that we had restored a sense of “home,” so important for anybody but very near for folks who have just moved. For both the joy of my sense of the beauty of this environment and the comfort of home I gave thanks, in prayer, out loud even …. To top it all off, my new license plates came in the mail; as one friend put it, now we’re really citizens of Oregon!

We forget how important it is to experience joy. So often we are so busy being busy that we forget to think about simple things, the old “forest for the trees” metaphor. We work and work and work and drive and drive and drive and make lists and make new lists and plan and plan and … whew! we forget to look up at the skyline and give thanks for being, and for being here. We forget that love is that feeling of joy in our souls we experience when we walk into a place that feels like home. When we forget to experience joy we cut ourselves off from love. And when we are cut off from love we are cut off from God.

This is the very essence of “sin”—cutting ourselves off from God. Often we do it by cutting ourselves off from each other. Just as often we simply cut ourselves off altogether.

In 1 Timothy Paul writes that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” But he goes on to say that Christ “might display the utmost patience.” It’s a good thing! But what it means is that God became incarnate in Christ to remind us to pay attention—to pay attention to our inner selves, to pay attention to our place in creation, to pay attention to each other. In these ways we restore our connection to God. Christ’s patience, God’s patience, is visible in those stunning moments when we realize we are right with creation and we give thanks.

Is there a message for lgbt people here? Of course, it is the message of my last few posts—that belonging is nurturing, that being free of the strain of defensive living opens gates of joy, that living fully into our role as created lgbt beings is as close as we can get to unity with God. It is in this perfect unity that love and life can flourish. It is this reunion, this return, this reconnection that Jesus means when says in Luke 15:10 “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

 

Proper 19 (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28); Psalm 14 Dixit insipiens; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

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

Necklace? No, the cross of Christ*

I have been having lots of interesting intersections with the healthcare people in Wisconsin. This isn’t going to be a complaint, they’re great and they do a wonderful job. But, I just wanted to tell you that for something like nearly four decades I have worn a crucifix around my neck. Actually, in Philadelphia, if you are Italian (as I am), it is required by social convention.

Whenever I had to get an X-ray or such in Philadelphia, the technician would gingerly say “lets move your crucifix out of the way” and move it to one side or the other. But here, they always say, “oh what a pretty necklace, you’ll have to take off your necklace.”

Boy do I feel put down as  a sissy boy when they say that.

Also, boy, do I feel put down as a Christian, and a priest, when they say that, although I also wonder what is so culturally different that it might lead to such a divergence of response and reaction.

Matthew’s  Gospel reading this week begins: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” I think that’s enough. The rest is just midrash. And the examples in the story in Matthew do not speak to 21^st century sin in a direct way. We cannot imagine how wanting some bread is a sin. But, of course, that is not what the text intends. It intends to tell us that, people who lust, judge. Is the bread God has given you not good enough? That is a judgment on your part. If so, you have made yourself into a little god. And that is sin.

It is both thrilling and frightening to watch the spread of the marriage equality movement in the US, of course, almost two decades after it began the Netherlands and Canada. I hope the U.S. finds the right path, meaning, I hope we win this civil rights battle. And I wish ardently that gay people would understand that the sins here are two: first that the heterosexism leads to a facade of normativity. The second is that we fail to understand the cultural divergence of this dynamic, not entirely like my experience with my crucifix. God asks us to love one another. God means, we should understand when our neighbors have got it wrong. Here is our own potential for sin, if we judge instead of understand.

Jesus died, and rose again, so you and I could see that this is the pattern of life, and that in the end God is always with us, and we already always are saved, meaning we always will be in the eternity with God. Nothing matters in this equation except faith. You know, faith is not such a mystery, it is just a matter of learning the keys to open the door to the proper dimension.

Have a Holy Lent my friends. Pray, for the equality of all humankind.

1  Lent (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

©2104 The Rev. Dr. RIchard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Keep thinking*

It is tough to move around. No matter how nice a place your new place is, the change is always problematic. The shifting of culture is really more important than most of us think. We think the US is one country and everything is the same, but we really are a nation of 50 countries, and each one has its own collection of cultures, and they all really are different from each other.

Wisconsin is lovely. We are especially moved, after 30 some years in the Northeast corridor, to see the sky. And especially at night. We can see the moon, and the stars—all of them—against the inky black sky. And now we live on the edge of Lake Michigan, which is one of the world’s largest inland seas—freshwater notwithstanding. Just those things, simple as they sound, are part of the different culture here, and especially are part of our comprehension of this new place where we find ourselves.

I think maybe because I have not worked as a priest much (I am not yet licensed in Milwaukee, and have served only once in Philadelphia since moving in May), I have a kind of secular perspective. I notice how, when I hear church people talk, they sound churchy. And it almost immediately turns me off. There was an interesting article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a week or so ago about how churches are trying to attract young men. We drove past a place last week called “Brew City Church.” We laughed, but I bet they get more young men than anything with a saint in its name. So, I am going to try to make a theological point here without getting churchy. Let’s see how well I do.

To know, in the ancient texts, usually is code for sex. And when it isn’t code for sex, it is metaphor for the kind of melding that happens between souls during sex. Somehow the most human moment we can experience is also crossed with the most holy moment. And when the Old Testament prophets talk about “knowing” God, they mean having that kind of intimate experience with God, knowing God in your soul, and God knowing you in your soul. This is the second Sunday in Advent. Christmas is three weeks away (take that! all you premature marketers!). And God says through the prophet Isaiah that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of God.” Wow. The whole of the earth, every living thing, is destined to know the soul of God.

It means that you should take time in these deliciously dark nights of winter to look inside your own soul, to find God within you. The only sin, remember, is refusing to be one with God.

In this week’s scripture, we have the story of John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness. He eats locusts and honey—ick! And the author of Matthew’s Gospel has him saying some dramatic things. But the most important thing he says is this, which Jesus also will keep saying (a sort of leitmotif in Matthew’s Gospel): “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

So let’s see. Repent means pause and look inward. Re- pent; pent, again. Do it again. Look inward, again, and again, and again. Because the kingdom of heaven not only has come near, it is here, nearby. Only by continually thinking (pent, penser, to think) can you move yourself into God’s dimension. God’s dimension of reality. Only by moving to the dimension where you know God will you find God’s kingdom.

In God’s dimension of reality there is justice. And there is peace. And there is equality for all of God’s creatures. We who are glbt must re-pent until we are truly proud of the souls God has given us to live in. When we have done that we will stop bowing to hetero-hegemony. Then we will see that the blindness society has keeps people from seeing that some people are not replicas but are diverse. Nature is diverse. Humanity is diverse. God’s creation is diverse. We are diverse.

Have a soulful second Sunday in Advent. (Remember, Christmas begins at sundown on Christmas Eve, the 24^th of December. Don’t be saying “happy holiday” to people for six *$&^@ weeks!)

*2 Advent (Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12)

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

There is joy in heaven when we are*

I had a conversation the other day, as often happens, with someone who declared he was not interested in religion. But then, of course, he was interested enough to ask me about my faith. And so I said, as I often do, that it’s just too bad that so many people have been so brain-washed with false doctrine. I always begin by telling people that God is not a puppet-master running a marionnette show pulling all of the strings. That just is not how it works. And yet, that is what so many people have been taught.

The scripture this week is disturbingly full of an angry God who is ticked off at people who aren’t faithful, who forget God, who forget to be one with God, and who forget that God is the source of all life and light. It is a very irate (… dare I venture hurt?) God we see in Jeremiah 4 and also in Psalm 14. What are we to make of that? Well, I think we are to think of God as we think of our own selves—God is eternity, God is the source, God is the creation, and God is the creator of each one of us in God’s own image—but God needs tending to once in awhile. God wants us–God’s people–to be plugged in, and to stay plugged in. And this is a two way street. It is as important for God as it is for us.

I had my handyman try to install a rheostat on the dining room chandelier (that’s a very grand word for that horrid fixture—it was in the house when we bought it) and after lots of trial and error he had to give up. Interestingly, when the electrician came the next day, it turned out we’d actually got it right, but those damn CFL bulbs won’t work with a dimmer, which is why we got buzzing and flashing and thought we had failed. But the electrician calmly and methodically matched each wire to each other wire until he sorted out the circuits. And then everything was copascetic. Now, you see, this is how it works with us and with God. We have to stay plugged in and on the circuit. Sometimes we have to methodically sort out the connections and tend to each one fully and separately in order to make sure it all continues to work together. If we do, God who is fully empowered, fully empowers us.

So in the Gospel reading from Luke 15 we have two parables, one of tax collectors and another of the “widow’s mite”—the poor woman sweeping her house for a lost penny. She should have been here the other day. I dashed home from the supermarket because I had to turn around quickly and go to teach. As I set the groceries down the containers of blueberries fell to the floor and pretty soon I had an entire kitchen of blue dots. I got them swept up … and then when I came home from teaching and wanted to cook dinner I grabbed a bag of carrot chips from the crisper and pretty soon I had an entire kitchen full of orange dots. It was quite a day. I swept it all up. I achieved a clean floor. And eventually I achieved dinner. And I rejoiced. And I thanked God. Okay, I got carried away by the sweeping metaphor, but I think it wasn’t the mite that was important, it was the effort, the human attention and the honoring of the connection with God that was the woman’s blessing. This action, of getting and staying connected to God, is repentance.

Is there a gay message here? Only that we must be, and we must continue to be. We must be who we are. I met a man this week who was terrified of being found out to be gay. I was stunned. How can it be that in this year 2013 there still are men who are terrified of being who God has made them to be? How can it be that there still are people who cannot cope with God directly. God has asked us, gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people to understand that we are one of God’s gifts to the whole community. It is our responsibility to love God and to love each other, and to stand up in public as God’s loving children. There is joy in heaven when we do.

*Proper 19 (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)

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