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.

We Receive as We Give

Yesterday was my birthday … what a concept! Once upon a time I thought of them as sort of checkmarks on a list; but then I (briefly) had a boyfriend who thought his birthday was a national holiday so I learned to think of it that way a little bit, but then again as I grew more “mature” I just learned to think of them as hallmarks of respect for a life well-lived; then … well, LOL that many decades would take awhile to narrate … these days they are more like accomplishments as in “oh! I made it, again!.”

And there you have it, joy, and love of life, which is love, is the true bread that gives life to the world. We receive as we give.

I love the story in 1 Samuel [16:1-13] about the anointing of David; really it is about God seeking David among his brothers. Of course, he is the least among them so far as they are concerned, but as a gay man through and through I can’t get past the part about God looked for the one who was “ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.” See! What makes you think God hasn’t got gay bones? What makes you doubt that God has created you and me in God’s own image? The truth is more nuanced, of course, and that is that God is all always and that in the scripture each of us can find a recognizable reflection of our own reality. The trick is that the majority community of oppressors has suppressed those passages that reveal the LGBTQ place in creation. (In fact, more radical reading can reveal more of this reality, but even I am sometimes intimidated into suppressing what my eyes see and my reality reveals as God’s gift.)

Goodness and mercy … joy … love … dwell in God’s love for ever [Psalm23]. And whether we count as “ruddy and handsome and with beautiful eyes” we all are God’s LGBTQ children of light [Ephesians 5:9], because what is in our hearts is what God gave us, all that is good and right and true.

We are graced with this very long story from John’s Gospel [9:1-41] about the blind man given sight by Jesus. I think the point for us to take is that the verbs are instructive action verbs: Jesus says “go,” and telling the story, the man says “I went” and “washed” and “received.”  It reminds us that love is not passive. It reminds us that there always is forward action in God’s love. It reminds us that we always have a part to play, God’s love is not passive, no love is passive, love is to be had, held, and given in whole. To be healed, to be constantly renewed and made whole, like the man in the story, we have to “go” and “do” to “receive.”

The love we share is the love we receive. The love we receive is the love we are called to give in return.

4 Lent Year A 2023 RCL (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23 Dominus regit me; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)

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

Love Triumphant

Context is everything they say. It’s winter again in Oregon, rainy and cold and apparently going to be colder. Bulbs are up and looking like they want to bloom soon, but freezing nights are coming this week so we’ll see how that goes. It seems like I’ll have to bring my Meyer lemon tree into the garage for a few days after all. We are about to have some construction begin so things are a bit in an upheaval, but it will pass. What matters is the love we share, the hugs, the smiles, the laughter, the knowledge of love, that love surrounds us and strengthens us and nurtures us. I have never known love greater than the love I am experiencing now. Love triumphs.

Luke’s Gospel (6:27-38) continues Jesus’ discourse addressed to his disciples, but also to the crowd that has gathered. It is a discourse about love and action. The discourse is punctuated with action words, commands really: love, do good, bless, pray, give. It is the measure of love as the outward manifestation of God’s presence in each of us. It is the pathway to inherit the kingdom: “you will be children of the Most High.”

Of course, the context makes the message tougher. Jesus says to love your enemies, bless those who curse you. He means that we must be on guard not to let love lapse within us, not to let the absence of love overwhelm us. We must keep the love lighted in our hearts like a beacon under any circumstance. It is a kind of tough love after all that we are enjoined to embrace.

But the essence is the ultimate clause (6:38) “the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” Love must be everything, always.

The other scripture appointed for today (the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany) provides yet more context. The story of Joseph’s triumphant discovery by his brothers (Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28) is the revelation of a common truth, that what is, is what was meant to be. It is an instruction yet again to embrace love , because love clears away the fog. Psalm 37 reminds us to be in love with love, to trust, to take delight, to commit and above all to be patient. 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50) is Paul’s discourse on resurrection. As usual the concluding clause has the key “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” because flesh and blood are perishable. But love is imperishable. It is love that is the key to inherit the kingdom. Paul, of course, is using midrash on Jesus’ discourse.

Well the world out there is an amazing place, sometimes confusing, sometimes implacably beautiful, always fascinating, always presenting the possibility of grace to those of us who can learn to walk in love.

Often it is difficult to find a nonobvious way to relate the scripture to LGBTQ spirituality. The key must be that word “nonobvious,” because if there is an LGBTQ perspective on the message today it is the very normality of the lives we lead as people who love, as people whose love is powerful, as people whose love is triumphant.

7 Epiphany Year C 2022 RCL (Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37: 3-12, 41-42 Noli aemulari; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38)

©2022 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.