Called to See

Every now and again it strikes me how much every day is the same, every week is the same, everything is the same. I wait for it to be evening then I wait for it to be morning then before I know it’s Sunday again. I joke (maybe joke?) with my husband that my entire life consists of making dinner—I plan it in the night, I check the pantry when I get up, I thaw things through the day, as soon as the sun is low in the sky I’m in the kitchen cooking, then we have dinner, then I go to bed and start all over. Time is passing, it seems, but then again maybe as Einstein said, it is just an illusion (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=82388.0 ). But, of course, the science of Einstein’s perception is that the passing of time depends on the frame of reference.

One way to look at it is to think about how we live in a certain dimension in which our synchrony with creation, a kind of harmony, is an eternal reality. In that there is grace, God’s love freely given in the absolute reality of life.

But then it occurs to me that how we tell our stories to ourselves defines the dimension in which we reside. Do I live in a dimension of dinner? Or do I live in a dimension of love and care, one in which my whole being is oriented to my husband’s, and to the things we share. The moments of togetherness, sharing, indeed loving, are the sunrises of the dimension in which we live. The sun sets and the moon rises and our love carries us. The harmony, the synchrony of the two of us in creation is our own dimension of love.

We all are called to tell—to prophesy if you will—about the dimensions of love we create and inhabit. It is their cumulative overlapping stew that is the eternal dimension of God’s love.

Isaiah (theologians will call this “Second Isaiah” Isaiah 49:2ff.) said “[God] called me before I was born … made my mouth like a sharp sword … made me a polished arrow” and (49:6) “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” The Psalmist (40:10-11) “proclaimed righteousness … did not restrain my lips … I have spoken of your faithfulness and your deliverance, I have not concealed your love.” Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1: 9) “God is faithful, by [God] you were called into the fellowship of … Jesus Christ.” John the Baptist (John 1:34) “I myself have seen and testified.”

As I have written and preached many times, we who are seeking to comprehend how God calls us often don’t realize that we already are living the lives to which we have been called. We have been called to be God’s LGBTQ people, God created us LGBT&Q in God’s own image so we might be a light to the nations. We have been called to lead our LGBTQ lives in the light, as a witness to God’s faithfulness to us. We have been called to proclaim our pride in our God-given LGBTQ lives as a way of pointing to the highway of love into the dimension we create by living in and through our love.

There is a reason Jesus said (John 1:39), simply “Come, and see.”

2 Epiphany Year A 2023 (Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12 Expectans, expectavi; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42)

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

Illuminate

One of the problems with our seasonal culture is the recurrence of “doldrums”–periods of weariness I guess you might call them. Sometimes it seems to me Christmas is designed to yield doldrums—we get almost too excited with anticipation to the point that some sort of letdown is inevitable. Then, of course, is the fact that (at least in the northern hemisphere) we are in the middle of winter. I’m happy that, although it is now a little bit colder in Oregon, at least there is a bit more light each day—the occasional bits of sun make the rain seem all the sweeter. Oh well.

Of course, we also are still living in the middle of a global pandemic. Things that used to help us through the doldrums are now deadly. That means we feel like we have shrinking options, not only for picking up our spirits but for life itself. Gayborhoods, once the liveliest of winter gathering spots, had already begun to give way to better social integration of lgbt communities, but the pandemic has devastated the remaining bright spots. For the moment we cannot gather, which means we cannot see each other, which means we cannot manage our collective identity as a jubilant loving subculture.

And then there’s the continuing critical situation in the US government, which of course creates a critical situation globally as well.

Can you tell it’s a gray day in Oregon?

Well, I guess I could tell myself to “lighten up.” As it happens, our eternal call to faithfulness takes just this shape. That is, we must remember, doldrums or no, that the reason we are here is to carry forward the action of walking in love, always. Giving into dreariness is giving in to the absence of love. We are called to “listen up” for the cues in life that remind us to reach into the recesses of our hearts to find the love that lives there, to feel the love that lives there, to pass it along so as to build it up. We are called to walk in love in order that the creation of love might be a mighty cascade.

We have to look up from our winter obsessions to find the cues that call us back to lives of love. Just now I saw a blue bird hopping around in a fir tree outside my window—no winter doldrums for this bird. In fact, I know this bird from this time last winter when I first encountered him. During the summer I wondered where he had gone until one day I saw him in a tree down at the end of the road, and later that day saw him disappear back into my fir tree. I have no real idea what occupies his life but seeing him gives me joy, and seeing him living and indeed thriving gives me hope. Hope and joy are two of the hallmarks of love.

It turns out that our job is to shine with the radiance of glory. We can do that only if we can walk in love. In order to walk in love we must take care not to be overwhelmed by life’s exigencies. Rather, we must overwhelm with love.

The collect for the second Sunday in Epiphany asks that we might be “illumined” and “shine with radiance” of the glory that is God’s creation of love. The story from 1 Samuel (3:1-20) of Samuel’s own call to faithfulness reminds us that God’s call is constant and eternal. God does not let us fail to hear the recurrent visceral call to walk in love. Psalm 139:1 reminds us that God knows us each intimately. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:12-20) reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, which is love, which is within us. We are to tease out this love that is placed within us the better to give it out into the world around us. In John’s Gospel (1:43-51) we see the action of Jesus calling Philip and Nathaniel with the words “follow me” and “come and see.”

What a coincidence, that this week, with all that is happening in the world at large, our call is to shine with the radiance of love, that our own love might indeed build up power enough to shift the dimensions of all creation into the path of love.

We have witnessed the labor pains of the end of a period consumed by the vacuum that opens in the absence of love. It is our job to let none of God’s love, given to us in creation, lie fallow—rather it is up to us, God’s lgbt people created by love with love for love to love, to “come and see” the new dimension of love.

2 Epiphany Year B RCL 2021 (1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 Page 794, BCP Domine, probasti; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51)

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