Perceptions, righteousness, glimpses of the kingdom

The last time I wrote in this blog was the Sunday before the US presidential election. It is no coincidence that I, like many, have been in shock since then. Enough about that …

We had a white Christmas in Wisconsin, barely, by which I mean we had a lot of snow running up to Christmas and the rain all Christmas Day washed it away. So we were at least able to contemplate the state of climatic grace known as white Christmas for the week running up to and through Christmas Eve. It was a good and holy Christmas and Christmastide, something we can treasure going forward.

Just after the start of the New Year we traveled to Toronto for the wedding of two dear friends, men who have been building a life together for several years and now have become family to each other. It was a wonderful wedding and a holy fellowship blending the families of the two men together with the family of their friends. It was for me one of those transformative moments, when I see a glimpse of the kingdom.

I have just been to Malta and back. Trips like that, as accustomed as I am to them now, still amaze me just because they are possible. After flying all night across the Atlantic I always think to myself, as the plane prepares to land (usually for me at Schiphol in Amsterdam), “my goodness, look where we are!” And then again a few days later as the Mediterranean glistened outside the midday windows of my plane landing in Malta. My hotel room afforded me a deck overlooking the ocean, which was delightful. I was very tired the first day and slept soundly. The next morning when I opened the curtains I was shocked to see through the morning mist and island just off the beach outside my window. “I don’t remember and island being there” I said to myself. Just then, the mist cleared a bit and I could see the island was moving toward the port—a cruise ship—well, then I guess (aside from the humor of it) it is another example of dimensions of human perception. What we see in one way at one moment can easily appear to be another thing a moment later. It makes life at once tricky and interesting.

In today’s scripture we hear Moses remind the people that righteousness comes from a right heart attuned to God’s commandment to love God and love each other. We hear the Psalmist reflect that message, singing thanks together with a vow to walk in God’s way, which is justice. We hear Saint Paul remind the people at Corinth that arguing about details of churchmanship is vanity and not of one heart with God and God’s justice, because we all have a common purpose together which is to maintain God’s just and righteous kingdom among us. Finally we hear Jesus interpret the law in several difficult passages that all boil down to two things: first that constant reconciliation is a key to just righteousness, and second that it is critical to remain focused, as Moses’ message said, on a right heart attuned to God.

We are living in both a wonderful and a difficult moment. I suppose most people in most times can have said that same thing. Of course it is true for lgbt people that this situation is always a part of our condition. That for every momentous act of love and unity we experience there is in society at large a balancing act to be performed. Still, it is critical for us to keep focused, not to be distracted by emotions, to rejoice in the good and holy and transformative moments we experience, to repent of the sin of casting ourselves as right rather than as being people of right hearts attuned to God, to be open to glimpses of God’s kingdom among us.

 

6 Epiphany (Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37)

©2017 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Open the Eyes of Your Heart*

This week’s scripture brings us one of my favorite passages from Paul, where he writes that we should come to know the hope to which God has called us through the eyes of our hearts.

Wow. The eyes of our hearts. And yes, of course it is a metaphor for learning to see the world from within the center of your soul. Which is rather a different way of looking at the world than what most of us do, which is to look at it from behind the ramparts.

It reminds me of my first week in seminary, which is—trust me—an eye-opening experience. You arrive, together with a bunch of other dewy-eyed people, full of hope, full of your own knowledge of the Holy Spirit, ready to dive into the job of becoming a priest. You mustn’t think, reading this, that there is any naïvete about these people. Like me, all of them had been through a “process” as “aspirants” and through the process of opening up and telling their spiritual histories to huge groups of total strangers over and over. That’s the first step toward becoming a “postulant” for holy orders. It is, frankly, an emotionally brutal process at best. But it teaches you to think with your heart as well as your brain.

The first day or two of seminary involve a lot of eating and singing, and then everyone gets down to work and before long the politics show up. And pretty soon, there you are walking around with your walls all down, because that’s how everybody else is, and then comes the zinger that hurts to the quick. And then you see, with the eyes of your heart , just how easy it is to hurt someone, even without really meaning it. And then, if you are to become a priest, you have to keep learning this lesson better and better … because Christ asks us to tear our walls down and walk together in love—as it says “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”

It is not just a lesson for the clergy, of course. It is a lesson for everyone. Christ was born a baby, dangerously in a stable, not in a shiny hospital or an elegant home, but in a barn with animals and filth, it could hardly have been more real or more human. Our God became like us, to show us, that we can be like God, if we can tear down our walls.

GLBT folks live behind lots of walls. I’ve always thought it humorous that the first carpentry I ever did was to build a pantry—a closet—and in fact, in this present home, which is my third house, the only real carpentry I’ve done is to rebuild the pantries—closets. Building closets is the only thing at which I excel. Ha ha … We are all good at protecting ourselves from each other. But, the cost of that is that we wind up separating ourselves from each other. Thus, the power of the Christmas message is the power that tells us to tear down those walls, to open the closet doors, and to learn to see with the eyes of our hearts.

Will it hurt? Yes, certainly, and without question. Will the hurt be worth the gain? Yes, certainly and without question. Because if you can learn to live openly, as who God made you to be, and in full union with those around you, no walls up to separate your hearts … if you can do that, then you will indeed be enlightened to the hope to which Christ calls us in his humble birth.

What should we make of this odd story in Matthew’s Gospel? More dreams—poor Joseph is being jerked around by angels who come to him in dreams, and yet, they are the dreams that open the eyes of his heart to enlightenment, which ultimately fulfills the prophecy. You see, if you are going to be all that God has made you to be, then you must be open to the messages of angels in your dreams. Sounds weird doesn’t it? It means, open the eyes of your heart to see what God is calling you to do and to be. Learn to see with your heart, or listen with your soul. (Maybe I’m being too obtuse here—it means, set your five natural senses aside if you want to hear what God is showing you, or see what God is saying to you.) Or maybe I should just say, don’t overthink it.

There is a persistent theme in this scripture, about a garden full of water in a desolate valley, a place of springs, a place that nourishes, a place that is ordained by God. Not a desolate closet, but an enriching garden of friends and loved ones, whose hearts are opened by the enlightenment you bring. It reminds me of the first Christmas potluck I went to after I came out. There were about 40 guys there, and it was the warmest, most spiritual Christmas I had ever experienced to that point in my life.  I had found my real family, or perhaps I should say, with the eyes of my heart open, my family had found me.

This, then, is the responsibility of Christmastide. Open the eyes of your hearts my friends, and live!

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

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