Keep Shoveling*

We’ve had lots of snow this week in Philadelphia. I have to laugh while people carry on about it. I spent a substantial part of my youth in Illinois, where this would not even have attracted anyone’s notice. I keep thinking, “it’s winter, it’s supposed to be like this.” Winter is good, because it is part of the cycle of creation. Summer brings heat and plant growth and bugs; winter brings snow and rain and cold, bugs die or hibernate, it is the cleansing cycle. So stop your bellyaching, I want to say.

It has been an even more curious week in the rest of the world. Wow I suppose the revolution in Tunisia was an amazing example of people power. But the spill-over into Egypt is genuinely frightening. It has not been this frightening on a global scale since the period when the Shah was driven from Iran and the world seemed to shift on its political axis. Let’s hope our own government knows what its doing (okay, we know it doesn’t, so let’s all just pray harder about that). Of course, the oppression of gay people in Egypt is well-documented and needs to come to an end. But replacing this regime doesn’t necessarily spell liberation. We’ll have to see. And wonder, we have to wonder, whether this is a kind of political winter. Is this a part of a cleansing cycle?

In the Anglican Communion there is considerable turmoil as well. The primates of the communion are meeting, except of course for the homo-phobes and mysogenists who have refused to attend because Presiding Bishop Jefferts-Schori is attending. David Kato Kisule, a lay leader in the Anglican Church of Uganda who had tried to organize the dialogue called for repeatedly by Lambeth councils about gay life in Africa, David was murdered this week. Let’s just make note that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the first to issue a press release condemning his murder and celebrating his life. The presiding bishop has also done so. At last, today, the Archbishop of Canterbury has done so as well, although let us also note that his press release backed away from acknowledgment of political murder.  No surprise there. Canterbury has rarely been so ill-served.

Am I ranting? I guess. Is this a proper homily? No, that should be clear by now.  This week’s scripture has no fun stories. The Gospel is Jesus preaching the beatitudes—you will be reviled if you love God. That’s always a neat slap in the face coming a few weeks after Christmas. The key this week is the last line in the pericope from Micah:  “and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” If that doesn’t sum up the whole of the Gospel I don’t know what does.

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. Easy enough to say. Much harder to do.

People are just sort of typically difficult. I think it is born of defense mechanisms that originally were programmed into our genes to help us flee from predators and protect our offspring. So we are constantly pushing back at each other, and constantly on guard at each other, and constantly ready to spring against each other. Not exactly a prescription for peace. What about all of those people on the streets in Egypt? What are they doing but pushing back, staying on guard, and springing against their oppressors.

But, there is another way to look at it. Maybe they are doing justice. They certainly have lived for decades, maybe even centuries, without justice. Maybe now is the time to do justice. Maybe they are loving kindness, and trying to throw off a regime that prevents both justice and kindness. And maybe, just maybe, they are walking humbly with God for once, instead of giving in to the demands of men. And I do mean men.

I’m not doing much for gay and lesbian uplift this week, am I? I think for that we have to look to the lesson from first Corinthians. Paul writes “has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” And a bit later, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” Ahh, that sounds like us. You see, there we are, wise for being oppressed, low and despised maybe, but lifted up by God because of it. As I keep telling you, God made us gay on purpose because the world needs us. We might be oppressed by humans but we are blessed by God for our capacity to love and our capacity to encourage doing justice and loving kindness wherever we go in the world. And when we do that, we are walking humbly with our God.

Okay go shovel your snow. There’s more coming Wednesday so you have a few days to clear out last week’s stuff. Think about it as a life metaphor. As you shovel, think about what in your life needs to be shoveled out of the way. So that when the sun next shines, you can do justice, and love kindness, which is why gay people have been put here. To show the world how to walk humbly with God.

*Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Micah 6:1-8, Psalm 15, 1 Cor. 1:18-31, Matthew 5:1-12)
©2011. The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.