Come … and help us*

Acts 16:9-15: “During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.'” Now there is a story of evangelism. Paul has a dream. But the best part is that the man in the dream says “Help us.” It reminds me of that time in New York City 20 years ago when I went to the gay community center for an event about the Bible. They had set out 50 chairs but easily 250 people showed up. The place was packed. Now, I was in seminary at the time, so I recognized that the presentation was unsophisticated at best, although nothing incorrect was said much of the nuance was missing. Still, people were moved. There were lots of the usual questions about spilling seed and lying with a man, but eventually an older gentleman, by his own admission 85 or so, weeping, said “Do you mean I can be a child of God too?”

It tore me to pieces. Mainly because, although the Episcopal Church has mostly a very accepting approach to the Gospel, we just are lousy at letting people know. You see, these older gay people have been so abused by so-called “Christians” their whole lives that they just do not easily believe that somehow, suddenly, all has changed. So if we want to reach them, we have to literally reach them. But here was a gentleman asking, just like in Paul’s dream, “help.”

Paul had to sail, and travel  by donkey or on foot. And then he had to scope out the town and figure out where it was safe to preach. And when he got there it wasn’t an audience of the town’s best and there was no honorarium. It was a patch outside of the gate by a river, sitting on a rock, and talking to a working woman. But she heard the Gospel and invited them in.

That has been my experience as an evangelist in the gay community. The “church” itself looks down on my work, because it isn’t in a stone building with a pipe organ, but is on the streets and in bars and in community centers, and yes, sometimes on a rock by a stream. And I don’t talk to the “movers and shakers,” rather I talk to those who seek Christ, whoever they might be. I talk to those who ask in some way for me to  “come … and help us.”

So to all who read this blog I say that this is God’s mission for us, to say to God’s created glbt people that the good news of salvation is for you too. And all it requires is that you believe. In John 14 Jesus says “those who love me will keep my word.” And he means to love one another. So you see there is no special gay approach. But, the one thing we must do as gay people is to be as ready and open as that Macedonian woman, after a hard day’s work, by the river. We have to be open to receive the gift that God wants to give us.

That means we have to be fully who we are. There has been lots of hype this week about the professional basketball player who came out. But there is rejoicing in heaven every time any one of God’s children recognizes his created gay self and comes out. God wants you to be who God made you to be. And in that createdness you will find the openness to receive the good news of salvation. God loves you, gay as you are, God wants you, gay as you are, to be a lover of souls too.

6 Easter (Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Split personality?*

Sometimes I feel like several different people all at once. At the very least there is the priest, the professor, and the vital young man (he’s in here someplace, I just know it!). How can this be? Well, of course, multiple realities are consistent with the nature of the universe. We all are one and yet we all are separate atomic beings as well. So it is only natural that the diversity of all creation is mirrored in each of us.

This, too, is how we have come to understand God—as a Holy Trinity—three in one and one in three. God the creator who has caused all things to be, whose love is the energy that transforms chaos into beauty, whose breath is the wind that gives life to all things—God is at the core of existence. All my life I have heard people call God “him” as though God were a human, and a male at that. Of course, this is human chutzpah. We are created in God’s image. God is not created in our image. God is God and that is all we need to know. This is what God says whenever anyone asks—“I AM.”

Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary and of the power of the Holy Spirit, is the eternal incarnation of God. Jesus is God‐with‐us, and Jesus is with us always, as the visible proof of God’s promise that our life is continuous and eternal. It is from Jesus that the truth about God’s will for humanity is given in simple and straightforward terms: we are to love God and each other with mutual respect and with all of the will God has given us. It is the action of this willful loving embrace that creates God’s kingdom among humankind, like the spinning of a potter’s wheel acts to shape the clay.

The Holy Spirit is the power of God’s love come among us and dwelling within us to fuel for us this action of eternal and universal love. This, then, is God the trinity—creator, redeemer, and sanctifier.

What about you and me and our multiple personas? We need only remember that we are as God has created us, and that that is indeed in God’s own image. We are gay and that is good, we are loving and that is good, we are vital and that is good—it all is good in God’s image. And we are to live fully into the lives God has given us, gay as gay can be, and by so doing we are to lend our energy to the love that not only brings the kingdom into being but keeps it alive and vital eternally.

*1 Pentecost or Trinity Sunday (Genesis 1:1‐2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11‐13, Matthew 28:16‐20)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.