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.

Seeing Love

Acts 5:32 “And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Psalm 118:22 “The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

John 20:29 “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Walking in love is the challenge. Saying you love is easy; doing it is both hard and easy. If you can walk in love, then a new dimension opens to your eyes and you can see how it works; this is what the apostle means: “we” are and “we can be” witnesses to these things. Witness is not just seeing; it is living, prophetically, into a specific reality. I witness spring and daffodils and tulips. I witness my husband’s sweet love. I witness tragedy in Ukraine. I witness hope.

Rejection is part of resurrection; the pain of rejection is the building stone of resurrection (the “chief cornerstone”), it is the beginning of new life, it is the moment dimensions shift, it requires witness.

God, who is love, is always in our midst, always among us. It is we who refuse to see, it is we who refuse to embrace, it is we who refuse to live in its dimension. It is we who refuse to love, who refuse to live in the dimension of love. But all we have to do to see Jesus among us, all we have to do to find love among us, is shift dimensions so that we love outward instead of waiting for love to come to us.

When we can walk in love we can rejoice, we will know we are blessed because we have not seen and yet have come to believe.

LGBTQ people are created in God’s—love’s—own image as people who are defined by their love. Loving LGBTQ people are facing new challenges in parts of the world. We are called to be fully ourselves, to have strength in the certainty that we are called to walk in love. We are called to resurrection, to new life in the dimension where love prevails.

 

Second Sunday of Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 5: 27-32; Psalm 118:14-29 Confitemini Domino; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31)©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Dimensionality of love

I suppose, like you, I feel like this has been the most bizarre week of my life. I have moved from caution to fear to anxiety.

I remember some of the first sermons I preached, back in the days when I was being ordained and the AIDS pandemic was still roiling the world. I am of the generation whose friends all died suddenly, and then my new friends all died suddenly, and then the next new friends died slowly. I remember preaching from the text Te Deum Laudamus: “the white-robed army of martyrs praise you”—thinking of the hundreds of thousands of loving men in hospital gowns passing in those days. And I thought that was the war of my generation and I would now be allowed to live out my life in peace.

Oh well. The ironies pile up.

So, where are you “sheltering in place”? We are in our home. We live among Douglas firs and rose bushes and enormous rhododendrons and lots and lots of holly. Rabbits are frolicking in the garden hopping about under the Japanese camellias just now losing their brilliant red February blossoms even as daffodils and tulips begin to bloom and bring more color to our greenscape. Our neighbors are there—we can see their houses, and last night a couple cooked out, which really excited the rabbits—but they also are distant. We wave to each other. We are “safe” so long as we stay home.

We have had to go out more than we wanted this week to pick up routine prescriptions because the pharmacies are overwhelmed and uncoordinated. We try to order groceries delivered but the shoppers often buy the wrong things or cannot find things in the store.  And then there is the hoarding … toilet paper and paper towels are on our watch list, but the stores are stripped daily by hoarders. Fortunately a shortage of dishwasher detergent has been rectified but we were working on making our own from baking soda ….

Globally leadership is a critical issue as well. We appreciate strong leadership among the governing bodies of Oregon, even as we see the fifty states of our union struggle to cope with a vacuum in Washington. We see varying forms of leadership worldwide.

But we know in our hearts that for leadership we must turn to Christ, who invites us into the dimension of love. Unless we can move into the dimension of love we will not be able to see the way out—the Exodos—from this crisis. The dimension of love, where love is the law and the giving of love prevails in the hearts of all people, is the dimension where Christ is the light of all creation.

It is in this dimension where love prevails and Christ is the light that makes all truth visible that we can find the way through this time.

In 1 Samuel (16:1-13) Samuel is sent to anoint God’s chosen leader. Jesse, one of whose sons is to be anointed, cannot see, but Samuel can, that it is the gentle youngest son, the shepherd David, who is inhabiting the dimension of love. I tear up every time I read this description of him: “Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” How many children of light have I known in my lifetime for whom this is or was the perfect description?

In John 9:1-41 we learn of the miracle of sight given to a man born blind. It is the shifting of his perception as Jesus guides him into the dimension of love that brings his vision. The crowds are perplexed—how can such a thing take place?—they point and profess blame for sin as a cause of the man’s blindness but Jesus knows that it is just a matter of a lack of love. The Pharisees cannot see because they cannot enter the dimension of love.

Ephesians 5:8-14 brings the focus: “Live as children of light,” “everything exposed by the light becomes visible,” and “Christ will shine on you” if you embrace the dimension of love. As it says “Sleeper, awake!” and see the light revealing the way forward.

My friends, our job as children of light is to feel as much love as we possibly can, to give as much love as we possibly can, and then to give some more. We lgbt folks are specially gifted in the practice of love as it is our love that defines the ways in which we are created in the image of God.

Let us pray, let us love, let us give, let us live in the light of Christ. 

 

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

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.