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.

Glorious Grace Bestowed

It has been very cold in Oregon. The other day I found myself thinking I was getting tired of being cold. “If I wanted to be this cold I could have stayed in Wisconsin!” I thought over and over. Mercifully, the Christmastide snow was light and beautiful and gone by the time morning coffee had been consumed each day, and now it is warmer again. Soon we shall be back to full-time rain, which is what winter in the Pacific Northwest is supposed to be like. I’m grateful for all of it, but especially for the sheer normality of it. It seems to me there is grace in the balance and harmony of creation. I feel comforted by it, I feel nourished by it. It is a reminder that all of creation is the issue of God’s love, in harmony, in concentric spheres as nature and humankind and cosmic forces all overlap, building in love, bringing grace and harmony and nourishment.

Out in the “real” world, another COVID surge advances by the moment, and wildfire in Colorado and tornados in Kentucky remind us the climate is changing again, by the moment. The new year ushers in hope, as always. We eat our black-eyed peas and collard greens and cornbread, we share our love, we embrace the love we share in the surprisingly intimate moments of appreciating the gifts given and received in the name of the Christ child. I am made warm by my husband’s comfort in the new shirts I gave him, and his in the pride in the new kitchen tools he gave me, not to mention a new duvet cover—all gifts that comfort and nourish and build up love in concentric spheres.

In the LGBTQ world, trans-Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider continues to win, breaking all-time records including now the highest-winning woman in show history. As celebrated as she has become in the daily game-show news, it’s also no surprise that there is starting to be some trans-phobia in the coverage. We all know what it’s like when LGBTQ people reach for the winner’s circle. Still, there is much grace in the notion that this time the witness is to millions of viewers across the US from all walks of life. I had a bishop once who kept reminding the LGBTQ parishioners that the greatest thing we did was to show up in church and be visible, a witness to the love we share with all who are heirs of God’s love. So each time I see Amy’s brilliant joyful smile and watch the skill with which she wins I am reminded that this is a perfect example of those concentric spheres of love I’ve been writing about.

The climactic scripture this week is the story from Matthew’s Gospel (2:13-15, 19-23) of Joseph and Mary’s flight in the middle of the night with the infant Jesus, and their eventual return to the district of Galilee. What strikes me on this reading is how the action is propelled repeatedly by the voice of an angel appearing to Joseph in dreams. It happens three times! It is a revelation of the force of love’s voice working through the human experience to see that the concentric spheres of love not only are preserved but are built up continuously.

It is in this eternal triumph of love that humanity serves best as interlocking keystone of the glorious grace bestowed, it is here that life becomes like a watered garden. It is in this that the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, by love.

2 Christmas All Years RCL 2022 (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23)

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