Trans Glory

Often I wonder how it is we will know when we have entered the dimension of love, when we have gained God’s kingdom. How will we know we have arrived in a dimension of justice and righteousness governed by the love that powers all of creation?

Jesus famously and often reminded his listeners that although they were good at deciphering the signs of the changing seasons through reading fig trees or stars or winds and so forth, they were no good at all at looking for the signs of righteousness and justice that point to the pathway into the dimension of love.

This week I think I saw a sign, a beautiful sign, a surprising sign. My husband and I are addicted to Jeopardy. Like many people, we watch it partially out of habit and partially out of curiosity. But like many people of our generation we also use it as a tool to check daily our sharpness. I often also learn trivia watching—like the time I learned that “vulpine” means “relating to foxes” and then I understood how a colleague had chosen the name for her new firm. But this week was different.

This week a high-rolling winning champion was unseated by a surprisingly fierce demur woman. Amy Schneider is her name and it turns out she is a trans woman. As we arrived at the weekend she had won three championships with a brilliant mind and a dazzling smile. That smile, by the way, is our sign, that Amy is showing us the pathway into the dimension of love where justice reigns and all of God’s created children, including especially we who are LGBTQ are thriving. God’s love does, indeed, restore all things.

Not only are Amy’s wins phenomenal all by themselves, but they lent a special meaning occurring as they did in Trans Awareness Week. If you haven’t seen Amy or her wonderful smile here are a couple of links:

(You will have to Google “Amy Schneider Jeopardy” look for first one from Uproxx “Transgender Woman Amy Schneider Becomes New ‘Jeopardy!’ Champion During Trans Awareness Week” and then “the second one” is from Newsweek “Transgender Woman Amy Schneider Becomes New ‘Jeopardy!’ Champ During Trans Awareness Week.” WordPress isn’t having any links today for some reason. I apologize.)

If you want to risk tears of joy have a look at the second link and scroll down to the smiles of the two men applauding her first win. If that isn’t a sign I don’t know what is. It is a beautiful example of the description (2 Samuel 23:4) of “ruling in the fear of God” as “like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.” Hallelujah! Rejoice and sing (Pslam 132:9).

Today in the church is the feast of Christ the King. It is  (according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Religion) “celebration of the all-embracing authority of Christ, which shall lead [humankind] to seek the ‘peace of Christ’ in the ‘Kingdom of Christ.’” It is a sign in many ways. It is a sign that Advent is coming, that time when we turn inward and seek to align ourselves with the manifestation of Emmanuel “God with us.” Christ the King is a sign that we must always remember to love, because it is in the love we build up that we find the paving stones of the path into the dimension of the authority of God’s love. It is, as the Revelation tells us (1:8) a sign to look always through our love to find grace and peace from the one who is “the Alpha and the Omega,” who is and was and is to come.

The reading from the passion in John’s Gospel (18:33-37) is the revelation of the blindness of many to the dimension of love, even when it stands in their midst. The signs are all around them and yet they cannot see. The truth is given to them and yet they cannot hear it. “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

The signs are all around us, the truth is being told to us eternally. Can we listen, can we hear, can we find the path into the dimension of love? Can we learn that glory is to be found in the brilliant smiles of people all around us? Check out the manifestation of trans glory and follow Amy’s brilliant smile.

Christ the King Year B 2021 RCL (Proper 29): 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-13(14-19); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37 ©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Intersecting Dimensions of Love

It is interesting to ponder the intersection between the dimensions of the natural world and those of the soul. Of course, the soul inheres in us and we exist in the natural world. But do we inhere in the natural world, or do we only reside alongside it? In the Pacific Northwest now we are enjoying a few days of relatively cool weather, but the rain that was forecast never appeared. The trees are still stressed. Although the air smells clean and moist, we see another heat wave is coming in a few days and we wonder when we can look forward to our trademark rain. Even in Oregon, there usually is some rain in summer. If the trees are stressed, if the air seems thin with heat, are we stressed as well? Yes, of course we are. So, does the longing for rain inhere in our souls or in our minds or in both? And, where is the intersection between the dimensions of the soul and those of the natural world?

Psalm 130 is a lament of the soul longing for forgiveness “Out of the depths have I called to you … hear my voice … I wait …, my soul waits …, more than watchmen for the morning.” My immediate reaction was that at the moment we in the Pacific Northwest are watchpeople waiting less for morning than for rain. But you could say “I wait for rain, my soul waits for rain, more than watchpersons wait for the morning.” Thus, here we find a parallel between the dimension of the natural world and the dimension of the world of the soul. The truth of the dimension of the soul is that the forgiveness the lament awaits already has been given, the redemption, the salvation of unity with God already has been given. It is eternal. It is not that we wait for it so much as that we struggle to align our way of being with the dimension where salvation already exists. As Jesus says in all of the Gospels, the kingdom has come near. The question is can we get on the frequency of that dimension, can we learn to see the truth of our own salvation?

The letter to the Ephesians is clearly not written by Saint Paul, but is thought to embody his Gospel, as set in writing by one of his disciples. The essence of Paul’s Gospel is that we are intertwined by love. Again, it is about intersecting dimensions. Can we live in the dimension where love unites us with creation? In this week’s portion (Ephesians 4:25-5:2) we are given the tools we need to hone in on the dimension of God’s love: do not let the sun go down on anger; put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander and malice; be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving. This is how to live in love. This is how to occupy the dimension of God’s love. This is how to occupy the dimension of the soul. This is how the dimension of the soul intersects the dimension of the natural world. Love creates, love builds up, love is the source of all power.

I relish life in the dimension of the natural world, where, when I remember to dwell on the frequency of the dimension of love my soul melds with the natural world. Where my skin reflects the moisture in the air that I see in the trees. Where the flowering shrubs respond as quickly to the motion of the sun and the gentle breeze as does my heart. I am eternally grateful that the trajectory of the dimension of God’s love brought me back to this life in nature. I am even soothed by the new ways in which I see my sibling LGBTQ heirs of creation finding new forms of community, new ways to let our love shine as a light to lead the way to the dimension of living in the love which is ours in creation.

I give thanks for the mornings when the watch of God’s creation brings gentle peace to my soul in the intersection of the many dimensions of creation. I rejoice in the intersection of the dimensions of love.

Proper 14 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130 De profundis; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51)

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

If we Dare

They say that time and space are one. This actually is a tenet of physics and of theology (which we should remember is the queen of the sciences). The meaning of the union of time and space is that all things happen and have happened and will happen in the space that is. That means that we experience (or maybe perceive is a better word) only tiny portions of reality in each moment, as we pass through dimensions. We experience everything at once, but we perceive things sequentially.

Another way to look at it is to understand that temporality is a human invention that has its purposes, like movie start times, airplane take-offs, and so forth. But, in reality, the life you love already exists and is waiting for you to get onto the plane of its existence.

Thus, when we read of King David committing sin (2 Samuel 11:1-15)(and let’s be clear that the sin is the cutting off of himself from God), we see that the outcome is the loss of love. The power of the anointing of David as King over all of God’s dimension of temporal geography is in the eternity of the connection between God and David and thereby between God and the people. All love and all of heaven always exist. This unity of love can be experienced when we allow ourselves to cross into the dimension of love, when we open our hearts to the love that is all around us, when we remember that love builds up.

In Psalm 14 we hear about “fools”— people who do not embrace love—they are said to have no “knowledge.” Knowledge, of course, is the eternal wisdom about love and loving God and loving each other, wisdom that is written on our experience and in our genes through our creation in God’s loving image.

The letter to the Epehsians (3:14-21) asks us to strengthen our inner being—our soul—which is where we are in direct contact with the Holy Spirit. It is in our souls that we dwell in the dimension of love, if we dare. There we are “rooted and grounded in love” in a dimension so wide it is “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love that surpasses knowledge.” There we may attain the fullness of God, if we dare.

In John’s Gospel (6:1-21) we have two stories—Jesus feeds thousands with bread and fish, and then he calms the sea. To the nascent church of the years after Jesus’ resurrection these were stories that sustained the believers. The main point of the first story is that the miracle comes from the love in the boy who gave all he had (“five barley loaves and two fish”). The main point of the second story is how people (even the disciples) are loathe to recognize God in their midst (notice the way that Jesus says “It is I”, as in Exodus God says God’s name is “I Am”). The moral of the story is the last line, that once they recognize God in Jesus in their midst, their boat lands on dry land and their trial is over.

Such is the power of love, if we dare.

If we dare to be who God created us to be, if we dare to be fully loving LGBTQ people created in God’s own image to love, if we dare to look up and see the love in the faces of those around us, we too can experience the breadth and length and height and depth of the eternity of God’s dimensions of love.

Proper 12 Year B RCL 2021 (2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21)

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

Love is the Doorway: Remember to Love

Well … [a deep subject one of my friends like to say] … here we are. We are either at the dawn of a new day, or we are at the precipice … we won’t know for awhile I guess. But, we do know this, that God is with us always. The best evidence of that I have seen lately is all of the signs on lawns that say “we’re all in this together.” Because, you know, that’s about the size of it.

Love is always the answer. And LGBTQ people, because we are God’s special children created to love, are in charge of giving love. It is up to us to remember to love.

In the US we are experiencing a moment of cautious optimism. Okay, yesterday it was elation. But today we are cautiously optimistic for the first time in years. And in Oregon the sun is shining. Nice how that works isn’t it?

Now is a tricky time, then, because we want to believe in all of those good feelings we have. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who heard a call out to LGBTQ people in President-Elect Biden’s speech last night. I cried. When has a call out to all of the people included us? It was a combination of joy and relief and pride. It felt great. It felt like the kind of loving feeling we want to hold onto forever.

Of course, we have to remember that we can get carried away. We can allow ourselves to be almost addicted to those kinds of feelings to the point that it becomes a form of idolatry if by allowing ourselves to believe in those good feelings alone we allow ourselves to forget that we must continue to give out love. We are meant not just to take happy endorphins in, but we must always give out love. It’s like breathing really—good feelings in, love out, no matter how hard it is to keep doing it.

The story of the covenant at Shechem in Joshua (24:1-3a, 14-25) is the story of God’s people choosing love over everything. Joshua reminded the people to “incline your hearts to God”—to give love—and the people chose to serve and obey God, who is love. Foreign gods, idolatry—we easily make substitutions for God, we pay tribute to everything that gives us a vapid good feeling however fleetingly—but God is love, and only love, and only love is permanent and true and reliable. The way to remain firm in faith and at one with God is to “incline your hearts”—to give love.

But it is easy enough in the course of daily life to forget, to turn inward, to get lost in the chaos of getting along, to forget all about love. Therefore, we need to be reminded. Psalm 78 (1-7) reflects the covenant at Shechem in the form of a song, a kind of oral history, to be sung again and again as a reminder to not forget that our covenant is a covenant of love. We must be alert to the opportunity to keep loving, to look around us and see that love builds up. In 1 Thessalonians (4:13-18) Paul reminds us to “encourage one another with these words.” The triumph of love is like this then: trumpets sound in your heart, archangels call in your heart, life itself is magnified into a brilliant light, and those who love and give love are alive forever. We are to remind each other—to say “love” to each other constantly, to “encourage one another with these words.”

In Matthew’s Gospel (25:1-13) Jesus tells the parable of ten bridesmaids, five wise who are prepared and five foolish who are not. He starts with “then the kingdom of heaven will be like this,” pointing to the fact that the kingdom of heaven is already with us if we can find the doorway into dimension where it exists. You see, even in the kingdom of heaven it is critical to remember to love. The wise and foolish bridesmaids are just like us, either giving love or being distracted by false gods. We must, as Jesus says, keep awake, encourage one another, remember to incline our hearts, and remember to love.

The kingdom of heaven has always been here; it is why I call this blog “dimensions of reality”—if only we could make ourselves turn to the real God, who is love, then we would see that we already live in the kingdom of heaven. Heaven is not a promise for some distant disembodied future, heaven is now, if only we can embrace it. Love is the doorway into that dimension. To enter we have to give love.

I know, it’s really hard. Scary even. But go ahead and try, that scariness makes it more exciting too. Try it out: say “I love you” and mean it. And the next time someone cuts you off in the supermarket aisle, don’t scream, just turn around and go the other way. And when someone bumps into you by the broccoli, smile (you have to use your eyes now because your mask will hide your mouth). That’s all, just smile. I’ll bet you will hear something like “oh, doesn’t this look great today?” And you will both walk away feeling loved. It’s that simple and that hard all at once.

Keep awake, encourage one another, incline your hearts … and remember to love.

Proper 27 Year A RCL 2020 (Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7 Attendite, popule; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13)

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

Snow and convergence*

 

The second Sunday of Christmas is sort of a last gasp reminder that the season of hope is still with us. We woke up to snow this morning in Milwaukee. It finally looks like Christmas doesn’t it? It is yet another reminder that life takes place in multiple dimensions. Nature’s time line is different from ours. Coincidence can lead to wonderful moments of inspiration as doorways to new dimensions are opened. Tonight also will bring a full moon introducing the motion of a celestial dimension into this party of inspiring coincidences. Tuesday will be the feast of the Epiphany, and as we celebrate the arrival of the wise men from the east, Christmastide will come to an end.

The scripture appointed for today all points toward the story of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt after angel apparitions in Joseph’s dreams guide them. Although the story is quite condensed it must cover a fair bit of time before the angel comes back and sends them back to Israel (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23). Of course it all is couched in prophetic terms, as the author of Matthew’s Gospel was concerned with making explicit parallels between the prophetic literature and the life of Jesus. Still, one wonders what they did during that time. We see couples with infants on airplanes all the time; it rarely occurs to us to wonder about the circumstances that compel them away from the bosom of their home. The Old Testament reading from Jeremiah (31:71-4) is the proclamation of Israel’s return from exile. We think of it as a joyous moment but look at the text: “among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor … with weeping they shall come ….”

It is a reminder that God is in the details in every dimension of life. It is also a reminder that our very real lives take place alongside the time lines of parallel or diverging or converging dimensions of nature, society and culture. Some would interpret this as randomness, but: a) that isn’t what “random” means; and b) to see life that way is to miss the importance of understanding how God is in all those points of convergence. The opposite misinterpretation is what I call the “God as puppet-master” theory, that somehow God is in the sky pulling all of our strings to manipulate us. But the truth is that the hallmarks of our lives are these points of convergence where who we are meets where we are and in what truth we live. Well, that’s all rather cerebral.

What I mean is the same thing as the dichotomy St. Paul frequently presents between spirit and flesh. We are here, no matter how we choose to interpret that. We can choose to see ourselves as the center, deciding who or what to allow access to our internal living spaces. Or, we can choose to see ourselves as the children of God, inheriting God’s creation, and residing at many crossroads. Crossroads bring opportunity; opportunity is the spirit enlivening us as the dimensions around us converge. Like the people in scripture all of us are leading prophetic lives at the convergence of the dimensions of creation and society, the crossroads of spirit and flesh, of God and humankind.

In the U.S. lgbt people are rejoicing at the flowering of marriage equality opening a dimension of fertile life all around us. In my morning news is the story of Egyptian gay men being arrested on charges of debauchery so as to drive the lgbt community into hiding.

The snow outside my window this morning is stunningly beautiful. It reminds me of the creative power of nature and of the timelessness of our lives. Christmastide presents a series of dramatic stories in Christian culture to remind us that the birth of hope in the child Jesus was not a one-off moment but rather, is an ongoing rebirth in the souls of the children of God in the timeless dimension of God’s kingdom. Let us rejoice for the goodness and mercy God has shown to us. Let us pray for the end of oppression and suffering that still continues in too many places.

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

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

At the Intersection of Dimensions*

Happy New Year everybody.

I admit I’ve been neglecting this blog lately and I thought perhaps a good way to kickstart myself would be to try to generate some thoughts on New Year’s Day.

In the church it is the feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord. It is the feast that celebrates the giving of the name “Jesus” to the infant at ritual circumcision on the eighth day. The feast used to be called the feast of the Circumcision, but things being what they are, this was changed in the late twentieth century, at least in the Anglican calendar. The meaning of the day, as usual, is richly complex. The event time-line places this at the eighth day after the birth of the infant, and shows his incorporation into the human Jewish family literally, spiritually and metaphorically. We’ve had a star and angel choirs and shepherds, and now we have the giving of the name “Jesus” (which means “The Lord is salvation”). The Gospel story (Luke 2:15-21) pulls us back from mortal timelines into the spiritual timeline of the birth of the Savior when it tells us that the shepherds, on finding the child as predicted, recounted the whole story of the angel presence bringing the news from God to them. It says Mary “treasured all these words” and as she pondered them she no doubt connected this story to the very presence of the angel Gabriel who came to tell her she was to bear the son of God, thus connecting a spiritual timeline in another dimension. Mary the mother and Jesus the infant, in the bleak reality of a stable trough, occupying a point on which human reality connects to God’s greater reality by their role in salvation history. The scripture for the day rounds out the story then by reminding us that God blesses God’s people and that the glory of God is found even in the wild reality of creation.

Whether it is accident or design that this feast occurs on the secular feast of the new year I leave to others to discuss. It seems to me that it is yet another instance of dimensional interaction, as it were, as the every day reality of the beginning of a new year, which by the way occurs in the midst of winter, represents an awakening of sorts. The naming of the child takes place in a ritual that binds him to his faith and also that changes his physical body. Our recollection of the physical then once again meets the metaphorical. From small changes come major results just as from this one day a whole year of yet unknown events will seem to have sprung.

That’s all very mystical I know, but then the season of Christmas is itself very mystical in the way in which it connects us between the human and the divine. It’s no mistake we put bright lights on trees and on our houses to create light in the nighttime. We act out this very story on large scale as we seek each year at this time to generate enough hope in our hearts to sustain us into the new spring.

The year just past gave witness to brutality and horror and even mystery on the large human scale. Mother Nature also seems to have intensified her campaign of extreme weather on a global scale. There was good news too, the U.S. economy is booming, millions more Americans have health care than ever before, some parts of life keep getting easier through technology and medicine. Whatever else might be true, I am much healthier than I was a year ago, taking fewer medications, in better physical shape, and enjoying my sleek new updated smartphone.

For lgbt Americans 2014 was a year in which almost incomprehensible progress was made on marriage equality. Of course, much of the rest of the developed world got there before us. Still, it once seemed impossible that we ever would be allowed to marry in the U.S. and now it is the law in the majority of states. There is a long way to go to complete this progression. Even in the places where marriage equality is the law, like Wisconsin, there is much educating to be done. (I have grown weary of married heterosexuals asking me whether we’ve remarried now that we’re in Wisconsin. I always tempted to ask whether, when they go on vacation, they get remarried every time they cross a state line. But I digress.) I admire the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to get directly involved so far and I hope their strategy to let this essentially social movement take place without their instruction works. Those who think our rights as citizens ever are well served by deliberation by any arm of government would be advised to revisit the history of oppressed people everywhere, including especially those of us in the U.S.

Christian communities were moved and enlivened and encouraged by the actual emergence of conversation in the Roman Catholic church about social issues such as divorce and sexuality. I was startled, saddened even, by the naivety of gay Roman catholics posting on social media that all now was resolved (!). The Roman church is not likely to transform, even a little bit, over night, ever. But it is good to see the work of the Holy Spirit taking place in their midst at this time. You see, in Anglicanism we believe that God speaks to us through scripture, tradition and reason, the latter being the result of discourse (a fancy word for conversation) by which the will of the Holy Spirit becomes known among the people. We also believe that the Holy Spirit is just fine with us having more than one point of view at a time. We have been listening for six centuries to the Holy Spirit among us. I’m glad the Romans are trying it on for size.

Our human reality always is taking place at the point between the dimension in which we live with our bills and chores and worries, and God’s dimension in which we are the beloved heirs of God’s kingdom. The glory of God sung by angel choirs in a starry night is enshrined in the very reality of our lives. The love in our hearts and the hope in our souls is God’s glory.

Happy New Year!

 

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*The Holy Name Of Our Lord, Jesus Christ (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

Gay Christians … talk about dimensions of reality!*

This will be short, and I’m sorry it’s a day late … when I preach at the real deal on Sundays it just wipes my brain out, I’m sorry to say. Anyway, you can find Sunday’s sermon on the CHT website. It’s an all purpose call to learn to walk in God’s reality.

But while I was pondering that, I made these notes about what it means to be a gay Christian? It is at once easy and hard. It is easy, because being God’s own is easy. It is hard, because being a gay person in a church that has for a couple of centuries made us out as demons is hard. As usual in life, as usual in gay life, it involves the ability to live into different realities, sometimes all at once. We have to know that God has made us gay on purpose. God has even made us vital and gay on purpose. The way we live together has an effect on all of society, all of creation, that God has intended. It loosens things up, it makes things happier, it makes the rainbow more generously accepting of diversity. We show the others how it is supposed to be. That is why God has made some of us, even many of us, gay. And some of us have been made gay so we can make families together. I know that God called me and Brad together to be one. So what do we do with all of these different realities?

Well, if we’re clever, we celebrate them, we embrace them, we rejoice in them. Frankly, every time I go to dinner at the Venture Inn in Philadelphia, or every time I sit at the Engel van Amsterdam on the Zeedijk and watch the joyous parade of gay humanity I celebrate the glorious diverse world that God saw that I was born into. And I think that is our job too, to rejoice in our diversity, to celebrate our multiple realities. Go forth and rejoice then. Celebrate being gay and Christian.

And one more thing—remember to walk in love. Because that is how we reach God’s kingdom, that is how we walk into God’s reality, that is how we leave our own selfish reality behind. Walk always in love my friends.

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
*Proper 25 Year A RCL, Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18, Psalm 1, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Matthew 22:34-46

Shifting realities, an example

As I said in yesterday’s post, I’m changing the title of this blog.

On one hand I think it’s too bad, because I rather liked the irony of basing the title on Jesus’ commandment to “feed my sheep.”

But when I discovered an unmentionable right-wing politician had used the same words as title of a book, I knew I had to change it (no, I won’t name him or his book!).

And maybe, in so doing, I’m demonstrating the new title. We as Christians must always be willing and able to shift our focus so as to see God’s constantly shifting new reality. So, here we go …. enjoy the ride!

You thought it was just about Marriage!*

Last Monday the Episcopal News Service put out a notice that the Bishop of Massachusetts had solemnized the marriage of two female priests. It seemed like a sort of hallmark to me at the time so I made a note to note it here. You can read the story at the ENS site:  http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80263_126369_ENG_HTM.htm. Of course, probably thousands or millions even were married last Monday, and even hundreds by bishops, so we have to pause for a moment to think about why this merits a news release. Our marriages are still rare enough to evoke interest from society. I suppose for us, glbt folks, each one is sort of a marker of progress made.

The next day I flew to Toronto for my annual winter break, a bit of retreat time for writing and sleeping late. As it happened, that afternoon some friends were married at City Hall, in the same place where my husband and I were married two years ago. I was delighted to attend, and it brought up lots of thoughts for me, not the least of which was the simple observation about how absolutely normal it is for same sex couples to be wed in that chapel, or at all, in Canada. Marriage equality is no longer new here, and it has assumed a certain role in society that makes all of the hoo-hah about it in the US seem totally silly.

Then again, there is also my suspicion that it is deliberate that the right to marry is being denied to us. I told my friends they would notice a difference, but that it would be subtle. Just one day you sort of notice that you feel married, you feel like family, because you are. Like ordination or baptism, marriage is a sacrament (even civil marriage), and the people involved experience something theologians call an ontological shift. That means your very being changes somehow. Two really do become one, and not just the mathematical sum of A plus B, but a new and different entity, a family. And we really need to stop letting people make any argument about denying us the right to marry other than an acknowledgment that it is discrimination to set aside a class of people and deny them the right to an essential part of life.

Jesus’ own baptism is the action that assumes hallmark status in this week’s scripture. It is a dramatic  story. Jesus enters into the action in dialogue with John the Baptist by saying “let it be so” and “it is proper … to fulfill all righteousness.”  It is just action, and it is necessary action, for the equilibrium of God’s creation that this sacramental action should take place. And when it does, the simple dunking in the river becomes the gateway to the ontological shift in which the very voice of God becomes perceptible, audible and visible at once as though somehow the dimensions of the very universe were shifted on their axes.

Interestingly enough, this scripture is paired with a reading from Acts that we usually hear at Easter, in which Peter gives a startling sermon that begins “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” For “nation” you could read “society” or “neighborhood” or “congregation” or “family.” The point is, God has given us the grace of unity with God and one another, and our challenge is always and only to “fulfill all righteousness” by “doing what is right.” It is God’s plan that creates us gay, and it is God’s plan that we should be married, so that by establishing our families the axes of the universe can shift to show everyone the glory that is God.

And you thought it was just about marriage!

*1^st Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-17)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.