In order to be faithful to my blog and my bloggers and my commitment to myself to engage the scripture each week I’ll take a shot at this. But I’d just better begin by saying I’m exhausted. I was in Seattle all week at a conference, and am just barely home. I always think it sort of humorous when I’m conference-going that the world goes on around me. The rest of the time, you see, I’m at the center of the universe. Hmmmm … and if you believe that let’s talk about that bridge in Brooklyn. Okay, still there’s little opportunity to engage the news in the usual ways when your work and life routine is up for grabs. So let’s just acknowledge that there was a revolution in Egypt this week.
But maybe there’s a hook here after all. I was thinking (again sort of bemusedly) about how hard I have to work to get home from a trip, especially via air (but it used to be like this on the train as well). It takes all of my emotional energy to keep the plane in the air, to keep the airline running on schedule, to generate enough emotional energy to make the people around me sit still and not put their seatbacks down in my lap and so on. It wears me out! And this is what Ecclesiasticus points to, and what Jesus also is teaching, in today’s scripture. (Remember, Jesus is never teaching about the actual thing in his story—never; his examples are supposed to make you think deeply, so you’ll internalize what he has said, and change.) Ecclesiasticus says you make your own choices in life, God has given you both fire and water and you get to pick which one you want to live with. And all of the dichotomies Jesus raises are examples.
It all goes back to the real meaning of sin, which is to cut yourself off from God. (And don’t go finishing the phrase by adding “by doing X” because that is exactly my point. There is no list of naughties that are “sins” that you can just tick off on your list to make yourself a good boy! Or girl!) Cutting yourself off from God means turning off the part of your soul that listens quietly to God’s voice, that plugs into the gently powerful energy that is God’s creating love. And since it is by sharing God’s creating loving energy with each other that we prove we are connected with God, when we cut the circuit—when we are in sin—then we usually have cut ourselves off from each other as well. In fact it’s the first sign. And that, as Ecclesiasticus says, is all up to us. Every one of Jesus’ examples is such a thing. Jesus doesn’t say you shouldn’t ever have a disagreement. He says if you consume yourself with anger you have already shut the door on God. And so on. Paul says the same thing in two ways in 1 Corinthians. He says don’t argue about whether you belong to him or to Apollos (another early evangelist)—you are missing the point, because you belong to God. Grow up, Paul says, get ready for solid food. Stop demanding selfishness (this is what Paul means by “in the flesh”) like a spoiled brat and learn to deal with your fellows as an adult joint heir of God’s kingdom.
There’s nothing explicitly gay here this week … jetlag got me I guess. I could do some Philadelphia-bashing. I could say I was in Seattle all week, and while I didn’t think it was the best place I’d ever been, I did discover some really nice people. Nobody I encountered was mean. I found a gay bar for cocktails one evening and although my back hurt too much to relax, everybody was very friendly. And I found a really nice gay restaurant, where I managed in two days to become practically a regular, just because everyone was really friendly. (You figure out why this is Philly-bashing.)
I can say I shouldn’t have spent all day yesterday running the airline and all of my fellow passengers. That’s the true lesson of this scripture. Let God be God. Love each other. And the rest will fall into place on its own.
*6th Sunday after the Epiphany (Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 