Keep going*

For may of us, our hearts are broken by the carnage in Orlando last weekend. As the news began to penetrate my consciousness I thought of the irony that I had just written about wanting the security of being in a gay venue. Well, it wasn’t so safe that time, was it? Grief often leads to anger, and I’m guilty of that as well. All week long we’ve been deluged with stories of how the killer was well known to law enforcement, even reported once when trying to arm himself, and everyone kept asking why he wasn’t stopped. And we who are lgbt people know the answer, don’t we? It was because it was us, wasn’t it?

One of my friends has changed her Facebook picture to this image of a fragmented broken rainbow heart. (I’m sorry I can’t properly identify it. The image is linked to something called Vanne Perry on We heart it dot com, where it also is linked to Kara Davis Rainbows; but all of them are on Pinterest and before I can get a proper attribution Pinterest pops up an obnoxious demand that I sign up for something.)

See, I told you I was angry.

I thought the image, and its metaphor, that we are broken but still together, was appropriate. So I hope it’s okay I borrowed it here.

Rant over. Here’s the sermon I preached this morning.

******************

Last week was, to say the least, a remarkable week. It seemed we reeled from tragedy to oddity, from moment to moment, day to day. I was reminded of the queen of England’s famous speech about her annus horribilis. I wanted to figure out how to say “horrible week” in Latin so I Googled it— what do you know, it was right there, apparently lots of people had the same idea. It was septimana horribilis— literally a horrible seven days.

And so it is fitting, I guess, that we have a long story about Elijah, God’s prophet, on the verge of giving up. Elijah, you see, is God’s prophet and that is not an easy job. It means mostly just being present and doing the right things and saying the right things and hoping God’s people will catch on. But of course Elijah has done much more. He has shown them the way to righteousness. He has healed them. He has taught them justice. And now, his thanks are, that his own life has been threatened. So he “was afraid; he got up and fled for his life” it says. And he prayed something along the lines of: “I’ve had enough now. I quit”

Sometimes we just have had enough. Sometimes we just want to give up. It is understandable. But it turns out it is not so easy to do. Life goes on despite us. The sun comes up, the neighbors mow the lawn, the village digs up streets, and the politicians keep carrying on. Life goes on, and we have to go on too. You might be expecting me to say something about God’s plan, but as much as we want to think that is how things work it just is not. I call that puppet theology; God is not running us like a giant puppeteer in the sky pulling our strings. God’s plan is for harmony, for connectedness, for eternity. God’s plan is for all things to work together in perfect unity. When things go wrong that is not God’s plan, it is human intervention. What God wants from us, is to get up, keep going, and stay plugged in. It is best for us to stay plugged in, to stay in the current of God’s universe. And, it is best for God’s kingdom too.

In that story it tells us Elijah, when he got done feeling sorry for himself, fell asleep. Now, he was all alone in the wilderness. It was probably pretty nice, all quiet and secure … but he suddenly was awakened; it says an angel touched him (but it was really God) and said “get up and eat.” And wow, there on the rock he was sleeping beside, was a cake and some water. In fact, it happened twice, that God touched him, woke him up, gave him food and made him eat. The second time God told him to eat heartily for he had a long trip ahead of him. Elijah had to get up and go whether he wanted to or not. And, even though he kept falling asleep, God kept waking him up, and feeding him, and urging him onward.

And there is our message. God is always there. God is always there. God is always providing what it takes to keep going. If you think it is hard to go on in difficult times think about Elijah who had to travel on foot for forty days and nights, fortified only with that cake and some water that God had provided. Sounds like real life to me. This is no magical story, it is a true revelation about true life. We go on, and God feeds us, and God provides for us, and God is always there.

Then we come to the famous part of this story. After Elijah’s long journey, God’s voice comes to him, and makes him go stand on a mountain, as if things weren’t bad enough already. God says “what are you doing here?” and Elijah tells that same story over and over, he says “I’ve been working hard for you and the people don’t like it and now I quit!” So now Elijah is standing on the mountain, and the tornado comes, and the earthquake comes, and then the fire comes, and God was not in any of those. But then, then, there is “the sound of sheer silence.” Utter nothing. And Elijah knew this was God, for real, in this utter emptiness.

Because that is where we all find God, in that moment of utter emptiness.

God asks Elijah one more time “what do you think you’re doing?” and Elijah complains one more time. And God says, “go back where you came from, keep going.” Because that is God’s plan, that we must keep going, it is what makes the universe work.

This psalm we read this morning, this is one of my sounds of sheer silence. When I was learning what it was going to mean to be a priest, I worked in a hospital in Harlem as a chaplain. I worked long nights over night, and long hot 110 degree summer days. I went from sick person to dying person. I was called to pray with people in comas, and people on the verge of death. And I somehow found this psalm, comforted me. “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God.” This is how it works isn’t it? That we have the capacity all at once, to want to quit on the one hand, and to seek God in our soul, like a deer looking for water, on the other. But in the end, it reminds us that the truth is that God is our strength, God’s light and truth lead us, and for that we give God thanks.

For Christians the message is clear. God became human in Jesus, to actually walk with us, to show us how to walk in love, to teach us respect and righteousness, to bring healing and especially to teach us justice.

That’s a pretty fantastic Gospel story about the demons and the herd of swine. But the point of the story is healing; the man who had been possessed, was made whole by being made one with his own people, he got to go home. Make no mistake, in the Gospel, healing always means becoming one again with the people. Because becoming one with the people, is also becoming one with God. This is what God wants. God wants us to realize our own salvation. That means we have to own it. We have to push past whatever our selfish needs, we have stand up to whatever it is that oppresses us, we have to ignore the distractions and instead, we have to listen for the silence. Because there in the silence, is the sure knowledge, that God is always with us. That we already have been saved, that we already and always can be one, with one another and with God.

The carnage in Orlando was, well, it was carnage. We are unsettled that it happened. We are unsettled that it can happen. We are in grief at the loss of life. We are, literally, terrified. And yet, somehow we have to understand that, like Elijah, we cannot quit. God is reminding us that God always is with us, always nourishing us. God is waking us up, for the long journey, and it is a long journey, to discover the Salvation that already is ours.

 

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*Proper 7 (1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a Psalm 42 Quemadmodum and 43 Judica me, Deus Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39)

 

God is waiting for you in the silence*

I am in Portland, Oregon this weekend for the fortieth reunion of my graduating class at Lewis & Clark College. It has been a long time since I visited Portland, but it looks about the same to me even though I’m well aware of the phenomenal growth the city has experienced in just the past few years—let alone four decades. One thing that surprises me, although I’m sure it shouldn’t, is the substantial and substantially visible gay and lesbian population. It looks like Portland is a good place for lgbt people to live. I have seen that confirmed all through the weekend’s events as well. I suppose it makes sense that people I know would be lgbt affirming people. But on the other hand, I don’t remember it that way from college days.

Of course, as we discussed over and over at yesterday’s events, the early 1970s was a different time. The overriding feature of the era was the war in Viet Nam, and that’s pretty much how we all remember it. We brought the college to a brief halt the day after the shooting at Kent State. We remember the day Roe v. Wade decision was announced by the US Supreme Court. We remember LBJ’s passing almost as well as we remember Nixon’s demise. It was a tumultuous time altogether.

I kept trying to articulate to my friends last night how it was that I felt in those days about my sexuality, and I didn’t really succeed at saying it quite right. I probably won’t get it right here either. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t out, although I wasn’t. And it wasn’t exactly that I didn’t know, because I think I did. It was more that it didn’t have a name or an existential reality for me. I didn’t know just exactly what sort of thing it was so I couldn’t quite imagine what to do with it or about it. Coming to terms with it was more a matter of understanding than anything else. But as I tried to articulate this, what I kept coming back to was the idea that it was visibility that was critical for me. After college I went to graduate school at Indiana University, and then took up my first job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In both places my work and my social life were predominantly in the context of the music community, and gay people were prominent in that community. It was as I met attractive men with engaging personalities and watched them socializing together and listened to their stories that I began to understand my sexuality. And once I understood, then I was able to begin to explore. Well, maybe all of that should have happened in my adolescence, but it didn’t—not in those days.

I do remember coming out clearly. I won’t tell that story here, but I will recall that it was not thunderous or calamitous at all, except maybe in my own head. I remember that my friends and even co-workers greeted the news with smiles and understanding (not a few hinting they’d known all along). I felt like I had been welcomed to my own reality. Except that, by shifting my existential being just a tad, I had entered an entirely new dimension. And I would say now, looking back, that that was just exactly what happened.

There are two powerful stories about shifting dimensions in the scripture appointed for today. In 1 Kings 19 we have the wonderful story of Elijah’s search for God on the mountaintop and in Luke 8 we have the story of Jesus casting out demons called Legion. Both are pretty dramatic stories. The Elijah story narrates a theophany as God comes near preceded by wind, earthquake and fire—but it is the “sound of sheer silence” that announces, if you will, the presence of God.

The magic of theophany is in their metaphorical power. As revelation they tell us directly about the experience of God. But as reflection they allow us to look back into our own lives for the moments when God drew near. Wind, earthquake and fire—that reminds me of the time of seeking before I came out. In 1 Kings it keeps saying that there was wind but God was not in the wind. I think that’s about right. There were powerful forces buffeting me but God was not in the forces. God was in the sound of sheer silence that was left after the disruption ceased. God is always near, and God is always tending to us even in those powerfully life-altering moments. And we can find God’s real presence in the silence, when we set aside the disrupting distractions.

In Luke 8 Jesus casts demons out of a man who has so many his neighbors have shackled him. So powerful are these demons that when they are cast out they land in a herd of swine who promptly leap into the sea. It reminds me of the lonely nights and the emotion-filled times that preoccupied me before I came out. And when I had come out, it was as though the demons had not only left me but, indeed, run off into the metaphorical sea to drown. My life was healed because I was no longer cast out, but in the warm smiles and understanding hugs of my friends I was made free. This is the power Jesus shows us. We have the power to be healed if we can give up the deceptive disrupting distraction of letting demons overpower the reality God has made for us. God has made us lgbt in God’s own image. As Jesus says, we are to continually declare how much God has done for us.

There is one more tantalizing passage in today’s scripture, in Galatians 3 where Paul catalogs the dichotomies of human existence and says they no longer matter, we all are free in Christ. And we are free in Christ because we are one in Christ. We are one in Christ because we all are the children of God, made in God’s own image.

In the U.S. we’re holding our breath waiting for the Supreme Court to announce decisions on same-sex marriage. It is a little bit like huddling in the cave waiting for the wind and earthquake and fire to pass. Whatever they decide, remember that God is in the sound of sheer silence, looking for you, waiting, for you.

* Proper 7 (1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a; Psalm 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39)

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