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.

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.

Connectedness, Synchrony, Electricity

The sun is shining. That’s pretty unusual in an Oregon winter, so I am really grateful. I’m looking forward to some puttering and other simple things that bring pleasure, especially when they are contemplative (I know I’ve written about ironing—no ironing piled up for me today LOL). I seem always to be well connected when I can lose myself in something repetitive. It is one reason I discovered long ago the virtues for me of kataphatic prayer (like praying with a rosary). I suppose it is a matter of how we’re wired; I have many spiritual companions who prefer centering prayer. Diversity, of course, is part of the plan of creation. Sort of like how one of my best friends often reminds me the tall trees hold each other up. Whatever it takes to stay connected is good, is God given, is holy.

Which is why we pray to be “set us free … from the bondage of our sins” [collect for 5 Epiphany Book of Common Prayer 216]. Of course, it is not up to God to set us free. We have to free ourselves from disconnectedness. Think about it now, what is the opposite?—connectedness, synchrony, electricity! Then we can see that abundance of life that is available to us if only we will tap into it.

The second voice of the prophet Isaiah [40:21-31] sings of the mystery and magnificence of God “Have you not known? Have you not heard?…  Have you not understood …? The Creator of the ends of the earth … [whose] understanding is unsearchable … those who wait for [God] shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” Those who stay connected, are heirs of the power of creation.

The blessing of the Gospel is the revealed glory of life in the dimension of love as Jesus told us, as Paul learned the hard way [1 Corinthians 9:16-23].

Did you see that uproar about the homoerotic Spanish painting of Jesus? (“‘Gay Christ’ poster sparks outcry in Spain as some say depiction of Jesus looks ‘homoerotic’“). Here is the image, how does it look to you? Paul says he became all things to all people in order that he might share the Gospel. Why should the Jesus in our spiritual center not resonate with our own way of being in creation?

It is as though a “demon” had been set loose somehow. In Mark’s Gospel [1:29-39] Jesus, who has just called his first disciples, visits the home of Simon and Andrew along with James and John. All four were called from their boats as they fished at the shore; all four dropped everything to follow Christ. Now they find Simon’s mother-in-law is ill. The story says Jesus heals her. The key here is that Jesus “lifted her up.” This means he returned her to her place in the community; connected. This is why, in the story, she immediately gets up and serves lunch. In the society of Jesus’ time there was no worse “sin” or disconnection than that of being cast out from the love of others. Frequently people who were ill or in any sort of trouble were cast out. Jesus’ healing restores them to their right place in connection with their loved ones, in their societies, in their families, in their towns.  

The point of the Gospel then, the Good News of salvation, is that we are all connected through Christ. In the connection is normality, return, refreshment. Many years ago when I was becoming an Epsicopalian, when I was working with AIDS ministry, the motto of the church came from then Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning. It was: “There will be no outcasts.” (https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/pressreleases/there-will-be-no-outcasts-official-obituary-for-edmond-lee-browning/ ). It was the clarion call of the Gospel to those of us in the LGBTQ+ community in those days of oppression. It was, and remains, a blessing.

We all are called to remain connected in synchrony with Creation living fully into the LGBTQ+ lives with which we are created in God’s own image.

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Year B 2024 RCL (Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16–23; Mark 1:29-39)

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

Called to Love

Hard work, hard work, hard work … I keep telling you this love stuff is hard work. Why do you think God appointed us, God’s LGBTQ+ people to do it? It’s not just a challenge, it takes guts to make the world work with love.

Our collect today (the opening prayer) asks God to increase in us “faith, hope and charity” because to “obtain [love]” God has to make us love loving [the prayer says “love what [God] command[s]!].”

These last few months the lectionary has had us following the generations of Abraham, and the journey of the Exodus. It is a story of a spiritual journey toward salvation, which God has made available to all of creation. It is a revelation, or a meditation if you will, about the challenge of living as humans in the world, about the challenge of living together in the world, about the challenge of being at once stewards and subjects of creation. The story ends today with Moses’ death [Deuteronomy 34:1-112] and the beginning of the period of Joshua as prophet. It is important that these leaders are called “prophets,” meaning they are neither autocrats nor monarchs, but rather, they stand in view of God and the people, translating as best they can, God’s law of love.

The liturgical response is Psalm 90 [1-6, 13-17], which reminds us that all time is all at once and already is. Time-space is a single continuum. Time and space bound the dimensions of love in which we live. Love indeed is all around us. When Jesus says “the kingdom has come near” he means “the next dimension over” … “can you get there?” The way to get there is through the action of love.

The testing of Jesus continues in Matthew’s Gospel [22:34-46]. Jesus resolves all questions into an equivalence: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The revelation from scripture is that love is tough but love is the law in the dimension that God has prepared for all creation. But we have to choose love. We have to choose the prophetic action of standing tall in the face of challenges and remembering always to respond by continuing to walk in love.

It is about to be the feast of All Saints, in which we remember those who indeed walked in love. Is it just quirk of fate that All Hallows Eve comes first, in which an ancient tradition of warding off the absence of love has become a celebration of joy and childlike rejoicing? Is it an accident that LGBTQ+ people revel in the opportunity to express the love God created within us to share as we dress up and dance and rejoice?

It is our call from God, to be the visible prophets of love, to stand tall as the revelation of active love that works.

Proper 25 Year A 2023 RCL (Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 1; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46)

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

Rejoice always

It is very difficult when you are angry to be loving. Anger is one natural response to danger, so we often become angry when dredging up a powerful emotion can be life-saving. So that makes it even more difficult to be loving when you are frightened. Other times anger can be fleeting—last night I slammed my finger in a door—I was very angry, for a minute or two. I suppose the endorphins may have lasted a bit longer. But it all resolved soon enough and I spent the rest of the evening playing the piano. In that case, experiencing the anger, and then letting it go, is a way to restore the dimension of loving.

The story of the golden calf heads our scriptural journey this week [Exodus 32:1-14]. It is the amazing story of fear and anger and managing to shift dimensions into the dimension of love. The story opens with the people of the Exodus angry that Moses has not come down from the mountain, and let’s face it, fearful about what they will do now that they have no prophet and no God. So in their fear they cry out for something firm to hang onto—they ask Aaron (Moses’ brother, the priest) to make them a new God. Of course, we have only the text to rely on, so we cannot know whether Aaron’s instructions to melt gold and form the image of a holy calf was a form of idolatry or syncretism, or whether he was being clever giving the people something to do while they waited for Moses to return.

And, there is in this (naturally) a bit of revelation about the human experience. We all do this daily, don’t we? We make our own God, our own Gods even … to comfort us, to help us make do, to ease our fear and anger. But in so doing we violate God’s first commandment “to have no other Gods than me.” Once we’ve given our selves fully then we have left the dimension of love and moved into the dimension of idolatry, of forgetting the power of God’s love to heal.

But, back to the story–God sees the people worshipping their idol and in anger decides to punish them. Now Moses reminds God that this is God’s own doing, having created them in God’s own image and given them the power to choose their own dimensionality.

So Moses reasons with God. Which we also all do, right? It is how we stay in relationship with God, it is how we use our God-given humanity to steer our own ship, as it were, along the dimension of love. And God, who is love, is also reason, and reason leads to mercy, which as the Psalmist reminds us [106:1] endures forever.

in Philippians [4:1-9] Paul reminds Gods’ people of the new covenant that to “stand firm in God” means to be constantly attentive to the rigor of managing emotion, to steer always in the direction of the dimension of love. Paul says rejoice always, be gentle, do not worry, give your soul to that which is pleasing, honorable, just, pure, commendable.

Jesus ends the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew’s Gospel [22:1-14] by saying “many are called, but few are chosen.” I have struggled with this all through my priesthood, although I know not only that it is repeated in Luke’s Gospel and in Thomas’, but that that tells us it most likely is a real statement from this historical Jesus. I know it has something to do with what happens when we refuse God’s invitation. It is a mistake to focus on what seems to be a vengeful God, because what God says, in effect, is, if we cannot walk in love then we are on the wrong side of the great feast. Like the people of the Exodus who survived decades in exile and a very long time en route to a promised land only to give themselves over to fear, the accidental guest who is not wearing the garment of love is destined to miss the entry into the dimension of love.

Heady stuff, eh?

What can we who are God’s heirs created in God’s own LGBTQ image make of this? That we must, of course, steer into the dimension of love, avoiding the shoals of fear and anger and remembering to stand firm in God’s love. “If there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” [Philippians 4:8].

Proper 23 Year A RCL 2023 (Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 Confitemini Domino, Et fecerunt vitulum; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14)

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

Let Love be Genuine

It began to rain in the past week; at first just a bit, but then on Friday it rained all night and all day. If you don’t live in Oregon you won’t understand how we rejoice when that happens. It isn’t so much about the water (which, of course we need, and for which, of course, we are grateful). Rather, it is about the culture of rain. You see, here, it rains from October through May. Usually never those kinds of downpours you hear about on the evening news; usually, just steady, rain, and it is quiet and constant and comforting. I haven’t slept that well in months. Also, when it rains the moisture turns the carpet of pine needles in the forest into a naturally fragrant ecosphere that is unique … in fact, when I came back here after being away almost five decades the first thing I noticed was how much it smelled like Oregon.

Creation nourishes us with goodness, which is love, which is God. The synchrony of love and creation brings forth in us, love, because we feel joy. This is the cycle of the dimension of love.

The cycle of love is eternal. This is what the authors of the intermingled texts in the Old Testament try to convey. It is fascinating to see how scholars millenia ago used cultural tools, mainly oral culture story-telling, to relate the revelation of God’s truth. In last week’s scripture a baby had been found in the river; today the grown man Moses is learning all about theophany [Exodus 3:1-15]. He is encountering a bush on fire.

Let’s look at the text. What happens? Moses is tending sheep when an angel appears “in a flame of fire out of a bus … blazing, yet it was not consumed.” Fire is a sign of theophany—the presence of God. So we are forewarned by the authors. But did Moses know this? Perhaps.

An angel appears, Moses is surprised. He looks away. Wouldn’t you? And, because he looked away, God loves this. God speaks now out loud! I saw you look away! Then God calls to Moses who says “here I am.” And God says that God sees misery and is going to intervene. Moses asks who to say it was and God says “I am.” Just like Moses said “here I am” God says “I am” who “I am.” Love, being, am-ness, is the essence of this God, and of God’s love, which is.

Psalm 105 [1-6, 23-26, 45c] is the response in our lectionary reminding us to give thanks as we recount these deeds. Gratitude is the pathway to active love. Thanks is the road to gratitude. Give thanks, sing praise.

In Romans [12:9-21] Paul recounts not only a God moved to intervene in misery, but also a God who demands that the response must always be love. If you were looking for a recipe for active love, here is an outline:

            let love be genuine

            hold fast to what is good

            love one another

            be ardent in Spirit

            rejoice

            live in harmony

            overcome evil with good

In Matthew’s Gospel [16:21-27] we are moving rapidly toward Jerusalem and the culmination of what theologians call the Christ-event. Jesus finds it important to convey this to his disciples; after all they now are deeply involved. Peter’s response is, like Moses looking away, is very human. Jesus famously says to Peter “Get behind me, Satan!”

There are lots of movies and novels about “Satan” and there is quite a lot of folklore. The theological truth is that there is not an evil force or being with that name, in fact, in the Old Testament the name means “vacuum” or “absence” or “opposite of love.” So what Jesus is saying to Peter is that Peter’s inability to love is throwing a stumbling block in Jesus’ path. As Paul reminds us to “overcome evil with good” and God reminds Moses that “being” is love, which is the only way, Jesus is teaching us that the response to times of trial must be rooted in love, no matter how hard that is.

Love is never simple, never easy. To walk in love is, as Jesus says, to “take up your cross.”

Tough words for LGBTQ+ people in an increasingly dangerous environment, in daily new challenges of our very being, in a litany of rejection of our love.

Our job as always is to be God’s loving heirs; we are to remember that the God of our LGBTQ+ ancestors is the God who created us in God’s own image to be people identified by our loving being. Don’t be afraid to look love in the face. Do remember to live in harmony, rejoice, and above all, overcome evil with good.

Proper 17 Year A 2023 RCL (Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c Confitemini Domino; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28)

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

Justice as Love

We are all connected. We can see that this week from the drama about the spy balloon, about the jobs report, about the surprise decrease in COVID … we are all connected, unless we choose not to be. Choosing not to be connected is sin.

Do not ever let anyone tell you (wag their finger at you, quote the so-called “bible,” look again, it doesn’t really say what they say it does) that you are in “sin” if you are LGBTQ. You are not choosing to be disconnected from humanity just because God made you to be a lover of souls.

(You can see what they are trying to do, it is the oldest trick in the propaganda book—make you feel guilty because you are “different” from how they are. It is a form of reverse projection! They put this on us because they cannot tolerate how we could be different from them and still be human. It is what the Ten Commandments mean when they say “no other gods before me,” which is idolatry; I must be normal, therefore I am like God, therefore you are in sin if you are not like me ….)

But, when we bother to make friends, be friendly, be people together, in connection—go ahead, try it, just smile, that’s all it takes, and show up, like sit in the pew every Sunday in church, or say “hi” when you stop by their stall at the farmer’s market every week—when we make ourselves visible, it always is witness to the fact that we are, in fact, alike precisely because we are connected. There is no sin, no disconnectedness in being LGBTQ.

God’s prophecy through the writer known as second Isaiah (58: 6-12) is that God wants us to create justice and to celebrate it. God wants us to bring healing through joy. God wants us to remove the yoke of oppression put on us by those who want us to not be ourselves. God says “remove the yoke from among you … your light shall rise in the darkness.” It means that we who are God’s LGBTQ people, created in God’s own image, are called to live our LGBTQ lives with joy and pride, we are called to demand justice, we are called to celebrate connections and connectedness.

The Psalmist sings (112: 4) that righteousness, which is living in a dimension of justice “stands fast for ever.” It is the lamp light that shines in the darkness. We are created in God’s own LGBTQ image and we are charged to demand righteousness, which is justice, which is full connection, which is the absence of sin.

Paul carried the Gospel to the communities outside Israel. He was the greatest of evangelists. He was in pain and living with some sort of speech impediment caused by the stroke he had on the road to Damascus, from which God saved him by sending first Jesus to call him to righteousness and then others to bring him to healing. His love of God is not only genuine but it is part of his soul. He knows God’s wisdom, because he is a scholar of Hebrew texts, but he knows God’s love because he has experienced it at the point of personal tragedy. And he knows that all God wants from us, which turns out to be incredibly difficult for us, is that we should receive God’s Holy Spirit with loving arms and we should rejoice in the lives we have been given (1 Corinthians 2:1-16).

And thus, in Matthew’s Gospel (5:17-20), Jesus tells the crowds that he has come to point to the new dimension, the fulfillment not only of the prophecy but of God’s very will, that our righteousness should bring justice, which brings love, to every corner of creation. And Jesus tells the crowds that they will find the dimension of love when their justice exceeds that of those who oppress them.

It can be difficult to realize how much love demands justice. God is love, God has created us to love, God has made us the manifestation of love, and God wants us to live in a dimension of love. But to get there we have to find justice. Not only for ourselves, not just to “throw off the yoke” of our oppression. But as well to be just, to embody justice as part of the love we give. This is righteousness.

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL (Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20)

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

Think Again: and Live!

Our job, no matter how difficult, is to be joyful.

“Be joyful all you lands,” God says.

Have joy in your heart. Do what ever you have to do to have joy. Because joy is love manifest. And your job is to love. Your job is to proclaim the Good News, and that is to show joy.

(My husband, has so much joy in his heart, that just being near him makes me overflow with joy. See?)

Yes indeed, we—you and me—we all are those people who have walked in darkness and seen that great light, which is the light of hope, the light of love, the light of joy. We have “increased … joy … [we] rejoice before [God].”

Sing,

dance,

hug,

smile.

 “Sing and make music” however you must—bake cinnamon rolls? grow tulips? make hamburger stroganoff? fix your friend’s broken garage door? hug your beloved? say “thank you” and mean it?

Sing, dance, hug, smile, and make music however it is you do that.

Our job is not to proselytize, our job is not to teach, our job is not to lecture.

Our job is to PROCLAIM with joy. “For the message about the cross … is the power of God”

Jesus told the crowd “repent.” It means, “think again.” That means, “wow, just stop for a moment and think about it.” It means, think before you speak.

Yesterday I was walking up a rainy street in Portland, my knees hurt, I was trying to make sure my walking stick didn’t hit a slick patch. And a woman coming toward me was in my way, and I was irritated by her. She was walking toward me with a walker. And as our paths crossed she smiled at me and said “Hello.” And I was irritated. And I was frightened. And I was captivated by her smile. And I was enthralled by her joy in the small steps she could make and her encouragement for mine. And I “re-pented” and in a heartbeat I looked her in the eye and said “thank you” and “hello” and smiled. And I could feel the both of us stand taller and walk with greater assurity. Joy.

Jesus walked, Jesus called, Jesus saw, Jesus said … and Peter and Andrew and James and John “immediately” re-pented, they “thought again” and they followed him.

And what of us LGBTQ siblings under God? According to The Rev. William Barber II (https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/us/william-barber-christian-nationalism-blake-cec/index.html’) we—queers and fags!–we have the power to unseat those who deny us a living wage, who deny us equality, who deny us a seat at the table, who deny us healthcare. All we have to do is: stand up, be present, be visible, this is called “witness” in theology.

And then re-pent, think again: smile, bring joy, bring love.

Re-pent.

Think again. And live!

3 Sunday after the Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL (Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 5-13 Dominus illuminatio; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23)

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

Hope

It seems to me that faith is about hope. Like many things in life, hope is at the same time really easy and really difficult. It is easy to hope that it will (or won’t) rain tomorrow. It is quite difficult to hope that, in the throes of a crisis, all will turn out the way you “hope” it will. We hope for what we want, we hope for better … we “hope.”

Jesus is looking for us to prepare a mansion for him, within us, meaning open space in our hearts not only for love, but for hope to thrive. God’s countenance. brilliant light, is a sign of unity with creation, which is the ultimate expression of hope. Apostleship means taking up the cross of Christ, which means learning to turn hope into action, which is love.

And the essence of Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus is not the details of conception but rather that Joseph did what he was told by God, which was to have hope, and to name his child “Jesus,” which means both “Emmanuel” or God with us, and “God helps,” which is hope, for sure.

God is with us and God helps, except when we close the door.

We open the door with love.

This is the message of the coming of Christmas, that we must open our doors of love.

(4 Advent Year A 2022 RCL (Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18 Qui Regis Israel; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25)

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

Running with Alter Egos

I know it is almost Halloween, one of the gayest of holidays. I know it is (arguably more importantly) almost All Saint’s Day, when we hallow (!) all those who ever have learned to walk in love. Curiously, then, the scripture today points directly to the core of Christian life which is the hard work of walking in love.

Love is easy to say, and to write about love is easy, but to live love, to walk in love is not so simple. It is not warm fuzzies, although when everything is copacetic it can seem that way. It is not all laughter and joy, although it should be. Walking in love is work.

To love is to be constantly alert, to be constantly focused on loving. I know, I’ve been living with it, through it. When anxiety comes, you have to overcome it (you cannot let it go, I know this, you have to overcome it with some other sort of feelings) or it will overwhelm you.

The only thing that matters is love and loving and holding love foremost. If you can do that you will understand what Jesus was trying to teach us.

This is why our collect for today as God to “grant that we may run without stumbling.” This is why God in a prophecy from Habakkuk (2:4) says “Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.” This is why Paul writes to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. 1:3) that “we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing.” It is the moral of the parable of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:10) says “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

It seems life is full enough of ghoulishness, perhaps we take Halloween the wrong way, perhaps we should embrace it as an opportunity to raise our own spirits with the joy of living into the some of the alter egos we usually suppress.

I am feeling blessed this year by the constance of love in my own life, surprisingly, not having been without challenges this year, but constant nonetheless, sometimes despite my distraction, my anxiety. I have learned to pray “I love …” in my soul around the clock.

Let us embrace our alter egos, let us celebrate our differences, let us raise the level of joy in creation. Let us run without stumbling.

Proper 26 Year C 2022 RCL (Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4; Psalm 119:137-144 Justus es, Domine; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10)

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