A Season of Hope

What a world we live in! Spring has come to the Pacific Northwest, or at least every few days it is springlike. LOL, we even had a “thunderstorm” the other night. I kept thinking it was kind of cute (I am a veteran of decades in the midwestern US, where thunderstorms are violent and dangerous), a little bit of a rumble, then some rain in the front yard but not the back. Tulips are at their peak.

Yesterday my husband and I braved an hour in the garden to plant greens and herbs.

Jesus said “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” When the angels announced his birth they said to the shepherds “Fear not.” We tend to think this means “don’t be afraid of X.” But that is not Jesus’ message. Jesus (and the angels) means “fear will fill your heart and push out love” and “fear will attract that which you fear.”

Look closely at what Jesus said [John 14:1-14]: first “do not let your hearts be troubled” and then “Believe” and then “in [the dimension of love] there are many dwelling places,” i.e., there is room and there is a room for everyone who believes, there is room for everyone who loves. Peter’s epistle [1 Peter 2:2-10] reminds us that our love is part of the firmament of the dimension of love, we are the “living stones” that can be “built into a spiritual house.”

Do you think that is a reference to church? Yeah sure maybe; but more importantly it is a reference to the spiritual house of love that you build when you lead a life in the dimension of love. Think of family—not genetic family, but the families of love LGBTQ people build. What Armistead Maupin called “logical families” not biological families.

Did you think you were building family by accident? Or did you understand God had called you to build a logical family of love? Remember “there are many dwelling places,” there is a room for each of us, a spot for each of God’s LGBTQ heirs, created by God, in God’s LGBTQ image. We are called to live in the dimension of love; we are called, indeed, to be witnesses and to be witnessed as people of love.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Like living stones let your loving selves be built into a spiritual house.

And, then there is this tantalizing bit: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

Have you tried?

Have you asked?

Is it time to try?

Eastertide is the season of hope. Try it.

5 Easter Year A 2023 RCL (Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Rejoice

Happy New Year!

It is such a time of hope, the new year.

I find that in my own life it is the love my husband and I share that is the most important source of life and hope at the new year. Every year now we joke we should toast it early and pretend—“it must be the new year someplace!”—and every year we sit by the fire and listen to music until the magic hour. And then we toast the new year. We wake up to music from Vienna on our favorite radio stations and then we work on our hoppin’ John and collards and corn pones (my husband grew up in the south).

As I give thanks for the love we share, I remember that there was a time in my life when I could not have imagined that I could be married to a man. I recently shared in an online forum that back in the day it wasn’t so much that I was in the closet hiding, it was more that I didn’t know what it was or that it had a name or that it could actually “be.”

LGBTQ people all have some version of, some variation on, this sort of story. For many there is not so much a muddle as the face of oppression and the search for the dimension of love, in which it is blessed to be who we are, created as we are in the image of God, who after all, is all, who is love.

No wonder we enter each year with hope of the fulfillment of the realization of the manifestation of our own creation as God’s LGBTQ heirs.

And so the hope we carry all of our lives is rooted in the love with which we were created and nurtured, it is borne with the love that is in our hearts, it is the hope of the fulfillment of creation. The New Year is a good time to look forward, with hope.

In the church this year this Sunday is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which means roughly “God is salvation.” It is this idea, that the manifestation of salvation eternally is being born among us, because after all, love is our salvation and love is our creation and love is all eternity within and through us. In Numbers 6 God teaches us that blessing comes from joy that love brings into our lives. In Galatians 4 we are reminded that we are heirs of God’s loving creation. And in Luke 2 we have the continuation of the story of the shepherd’s on the hillside tending their flocks when the angels appear to tell them of the birth of Jesus, who is salvation come among us. We forget these shepherd’s were at work, at night! And yet the story is full of the forward motion of the action of their response to the angels’ news—they went to Bethlehem, they saw, they proclaimed what they had seen and heard, and then full circle they returned to their work where they loved and rejoiced—they carried salvation with them in their loving joy.

Christmas is the certainty of the hope of God’s love for all of creation, The new year is a reminder to manifest, to fulfill, to realize, to see, then to “return,” to “proclaim,” to “rejoice,” to love.

The Holy Name of Jesus Christ (January 1) RCL 2023 (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Expectation, Hope, Love

Advent is the season of expectation, the prelude to the manifestation of hope. It is a very sweet time. It is when we carry love in our hearts—love for the people we are sending cards to, love for the people we are buying gifts for, love for the guests we are or will be cooking for—and all of that love spills over in smiles for the grocery cashier, the fish monger, the cheesemonger, the guys who tie your Christmas tree to the top of your car, and so forth. It is in all of this the perfect example of the way of love. Love at the center of your existence builds up as it radiates outward. Love builds up as radiating beams of love from everyone overlap.

In the US it begins with Thanksgiving, the annual holiday of remembrance combined with a harvest celebration merged with a ritual meal, the purpose of all of which is to build up—you guessed it—love. We carry love in our hearts when we buy the turkey, we radiate love when we donate a turkey, our love overlaps as we share the day itself but even more as we move out into the realm of the approach of Christmas.

In the church Advent is one of the loveliest seasons, we tamp down the ritual excitement and revel instead in expectation and hope. We pray to be freed from “works of darkness” and to be protected by “armor of light.” We remember the prophecies of the coming of Christ, who will teach us to embrace “justice and righteousness” (Jeremiah 33:15). We are reminded by the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13) that joy and thanksgiving give rise to the prayer that God will help us to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” In Luke’s Gospel (21:25-36) Jesus talks about signs in the skies and in the earth and in the sea and among nations. He tells the parable of the fig tree: “as soon as they sprout leaves you can see … and know” that summer is coming, thus do these signs reveal to us that the kingdom of love is near. Jesus specifically says (34) to “be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down.”

The reality of the prophecy is that the time Jesus foretells, just like the fig tree leafing out each spring, is all around us all of the time. The celestial heavens show us that we are constantly a part of the immensity of creation linked in to and by all things. The seas and waves roar, people faint, and there is always distress among nations. Therefore, the kingdom of love is always near. The moment is not at some uncertain point in the future, for, remember, there is no such thing as linear time, all time has already happened. The kingdom of love already is here.

The question is, can we enter into the dimension where it rules creation with justice and righteousness? Can we find the way of love? Of course we can. All we have to do is extend the love we feel, the expectation and hope, the radiant beams of love.

LGBTQ people live in the moment Jesus foretells in perpetuity. We always live in an environment born of oppression, brined in the experience of minority, on the border between the works of darkness and the armor of light. We are the heirs of the kingdom of love designated in our creation in God’s own image as people who love. We are called to carry love in our hearts, to let that love spill over and radiate all around us, to overlap the love we have been given, to build up with love that fabulous armor of light.

Amy Schneider—a trans woman is still champion on Jeopardy a week later. Pete Buttigieg—a gay man—is US. Secretary of Transportation. My husband is still eating leftover turkey.

Be hopeful, be expectant, and love.

1 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36)

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

Love is All You Need

Awhile back when we were excited that our family would be all together in mid-September I ordered a bunch of DVDs from a postal DVD service (you know who I mean). For some reason it kept wanting me to order Yellow Submarine (The Beatles 1968) so I did. For years now, when I am without a parish, instead of worrying a sermon and going to bed at 7:30 I make pizza (I make wonderful pizza) and we have movie night. I thought Yellow Submarine would be fun and we would all sing along. Well, it didn’t show up, so we didn’t get to watch it together.

Yesterday, six weeks late, it showed up, so we watched it with the last pizza Margherita of the season. In the first 30 seconds I quickly was transported back to the psychedelic 70s and blurted out “this would be better if we were stoned.” (I do date back to the ancient days of the Age of Aquarius after all, but not to worry we forged ahead with our consciousness unaltered.)

Interestingly, as the movie went on I could see there was one firm message embedded in the movie, in the music. It is this:

Love, love, love …
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
Nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy
All you need is love …
Love is all you need …

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul Mccartney
All You Need Is Love lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

All you need is love, indeed. It seems it is not news now, even though it seems every day to be news to new generations, that we are surrounded by grace. Grace is God’s gift of love. Grace, therefore, is justice and unity and abiding love. Love is always a possibility, therefore grace precedes and follows us always. But it is up to us to grasp it. It is up to us to make sense of it. It is up to us to nurture grace with love.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
All you need is love …

On the other hand, it is pretty common to have an inverted view of reality such that we see ourselves but not the role we play. Like a forest for the trees idiom we bear down on our own situation without remembering to see how we fit. This is a polite way of saying we make ourselves miserable by forgetting that it isn’t God who has abandoned us rather, it is we who have abandoned God. We “look” for God, but in reality God is always with us in the living out of love. To find God all we have to do is love

God is always present. God always has been present. We always have been in the presence of God. Love always is potential. Love always has been potential. We always have been in the potentiality of love

Loving, living in love, walking in love—loving requires boldness. Boldness in loving is the doorway to grace and mercy. If we hear Christ’s commandment to love one another as ourselves we hold confidence and pride firmly as hope. Hope is our invitation to grace.

You can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy
All you need is love

The parable of the rich man (Mark 10: 17-31) places us in the context of grace and hope. Love is always potential and grace is always near. Hope is always justified in confidence. But we must love. To love we must give up those things that bind us. To love we must give up those things that blind us. It is those things that bind and blind us that cut us off from the love we are called to live. Who is last and who is first? Those who give love are always first.

The LGBTQ community of love is first because so often we are last. To be fully the LGBTQ people God created us to be in God’s own image means “giving up” the closet that binds us and blinds us so that we might live boldly the lives of love intended for us. It is love that defines our community. It is living in the boldness of loving that opens the doorway to grace and mercy. We can indeed learn how to be us, all we need is love.

I remember as though it were an old movie how it was when I came out as a gay man. The smiles of my brothers in the gay community were a reflection of the relief in their hearts that I had given up the blinding binder to live in the community of love and loving. The hugs that greeted me were an expression of welcome and joy that I had learned how to be me.

One, two, three, four
Can I have a little more?
Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
I love you …
Look at me
All together now …
All together now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
All Together Now lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

All together now: love is all you need.

Proper 23 Year B 2012 RCL (Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15 Deus, Deus meus; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31)

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

Touch, See, Love

I hope everyone had an amazing Easter.

I have missed a few weeks here because of a family emergency. My own Easter was sweet enough, as it was the day the emergency receded and a semblance of normalcy began to return. It was a lesson in faith and hope greater than I have experienced in a long time, a reminder that Easter is not just a date or a church holy day but rather an eternal state of life. Resurrection is constant and eternal and always, always linked to faith and hope. Alleluia!

In John’s first letter (3:1) we are called to perceive the evidence of God as love: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.” We might paraphrase it thus: see what love love has given us that we should be the result of love. Love is the power and the glory, love is the key to life, and indeed love is the key to resurrection life. It is in the glory of a life lived walking in love that we who are the evidence of love are called to, in turn, keep the love going. Verse 7 says: “Everyone who does what is right is righteous” and that means that everyone who manifests love is, indeed, love.

As I walked through the weeks of our emergency I was uplifted by what I can only describe as my own personal cloud of LGBTQ witnesses, especially one angel with multihued hair who seemed to hover protectively over me. I felt the warmth of the love of these several angels whose own faith in the love we share in our own logical families (https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/the-majesty-of-love/) upheld me and reinforced the love that was within me.

In the resurrection appearance in Luke’s Gospel (24:36b-48) Jesus calls his disciples to turn from the absence of love that occupied them (“they were startled and terrified”) and to turn toward the love he knew was in their hearts “touch me and see,” he said, and then, “have you anything here to eat?” It is in the reality of shared humanity that we see the truth of the love we all have been given in our creation in God’s own image. It is in the simple things, a smile, a pat on the shoulder, a warm greeting, a touch, a bit of hospitality, a bite to eat—it is in these things that we “touch and see” the glory of love, the vitality of love, the power of love.

3 Easter Year B RCL 2021 (Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48)

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

Hope

Hope and change go together I guess. Having hope means having love in your heart that is dedicated to the future and that has to mean change because more love is definitely a change for the good. Spring finally is here and that definitely is a sign of hope, especially now, one year into the pandemic. A year ago we were just locking down and just learning that it would be over a year before we could reunite with loved ones. Well, here we are, and although it is not clear when it will be possible to travel safely, we have at least some hope based on the rollout of vaccines. Our hope is tempered by newly rising infection rates everywhere.

Our yard is finally “cleaned up” from the exploding tree mess. Bulbs are up, some daffodils are blooming alongside the crocus. Still, the fig tree has no leaves, so we know from scripture that summer is yet a ways off. We have a deranged robin that has been flying into the glass door on our deck for the last three days. A friend suggested it was trying to fend off its reflection so I pulled a screen over the door but now it sits on the screen staring for the reflection. We hope it goes away soon before it does any actual damage to the door, the screen, or its beak. Elsewhere our blue Steller’s Jay is happily hopping around from tree to tree and even an oriole seems to be enjoying the environment. I think, like my houseplants, they are enjoying all the fresh sunshine now that the exploding trees thinned out the canopy.

In another right of spring, the Vatican issued a proclamation about same-sex marriage. Specifically they made it clear they have no intention of blessing same sex unions of any kind any time soon. This is not a change and therefore it is not a surprise. While we commiserate with our LGBTQ friends who are part of the Roman church, because we know how hurt feels, we also invite them to join us in the Episcopal Church, where we have ordained LGBT clergy for decades, where we developed rites to bless same sex unions decades ago, and where once marriage equality was achieved socially we adapted our marriage rite to allow us appropriately to bless any couple who is legally marrying.

In church time we have come to the fifth Sunday in Lent—next Sunday will be Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion and then we will enter into Holy Week. It is the annual moment of embracing hope in every way we can. As we learned last year in the beginning of the pandemic, Holy Week’s season of hope filled our hearts in new and unimagined ways. This year, strengthened by vaccinations and new treatments and the promise of reunions with loved ones we look forward to Holy Week with the highly specific prayers for peace and health and especially renewed and strengthened love.

The collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent asks God to grant us grace to love and to desire God’s love. The simple truth is that love and desire go hand in hand. To love is to desire good things and to desire good things is to bring about greater love. Psalm 51, which was our anthem for the beginning of Lent echoes Jeremiah 31 with the promise that if we can learn to embrace love sin will be no more. To “know” God is to love God, which is all God asks of any of us, that we should love each other. After all, another simple truth that is so difficult for us to grasp is that sin is the absence of loving. The “iniquity” is that feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we know we have failed to love. It is an intimate sign that we have broken the bond of love with God by breaking it with each other. Thus, it is by remembering always to walk in love that we cement our relationship with God by cementing the love we share with each other.

In John’s Gospel (12:20-33) Jesus reminds us yet again that “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” To love properly, the end of sin, is to give up self. On the other hand, to transgress, to hang on to self by denying love, is to give oneself over to sin.

What does any of this mean for us today? It means that we who are LGBTQ people, who are called to love in our very creation in God’s image of love, must find ourselves on the leading edge of the power of loving. We must push past the power of the transgression of reliance only on self if we are to understand the true power and relief and hope of a creation walked in love. We must embrace this pandemic spring with hope.

5 Lent Year B 2021 RCL (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13 Miserere mei, Deus; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33)

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

Hope

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith–to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen– Romans 16:25-27

What else is there for me to add to the words of Paul?

God is “able to strengthen you.” Wow, do we ever need that right about now. We all need strength to keep going through a global pandemic, through a global recession, through a difficult season in our society and in our culture and in our political life. We even need strength to keep going through a season traditionally considered to be a “season of cheer” in this time when the light seems all too scarce. Paul writes that God is able to strengthen us according to his “gospel”—gospel means “good news”—Paul’s good news is the good news revealed in Christ; that God is with us always, that we all are created in God’s image, and especially that disconnection from God is removed from all of us who embrace the means of staying connected.

The mystery is now disclosed: that love is everything. God is love. We who are created in God’s image are created in love and of love. The power of connection is the power of love.

The Saturn-Jupiter super conjunction will produce a “Christmas Star” on Monday evening in certain parts of the world (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/style/self-care/jupiter-and-saturn-conjunction-christmas-star.html ). It is a herald. Of what we do not know, but of change we only can pray. At least we know this, the solstice means the days will begin to be a tiny bit longer, there will be each day a bit more light. It is a time for hope.

It is by this, by the possibility of hope, that God strengthens us. It is in the embrace of life and the comprehension of life through the power of love that we see what Mary said to the angel Gabriel: “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1: 37).

So here we are on the eve of the Solstice. By the way, it is Christmas now—go for it! Light your trees and your candles and have an egg nog. Embrace hope. And let the love within you light up the world.

4 Advent Year A 2020 RCL  (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15 The Song of Mary Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38)

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

Laughter, Joy, Love and Everyday Miracles

Laughter is said to be the best medicine. I guess about now we want to take advantage of all the free medicine we can. I know that laughter is thought to reduce stress and increase immune response. But, of course, it also just feels good. I don’t laugh much during the course of a regular day; I spend most of my time at a computer with my brain metaphorically buried in manuscripts or statistics (but then, I love being a scholar, and I know that loving my work also affects low-stress and better immune response). I have a kind of dry wit sense of humor, which tends to lead more to the occasional chuckle than a good old-fashioned belly laugh. This is one reason I took up watching I Love Lucy a couple of years ago as a kind of discipline; every weeknight I watch at least one episode. It never fails to make me laugh out loud, and I admit it feels really good. I hope it has the desired effect.

The story of Sarah’s pregnancy, if you will, in Genesis (18:1-15, 21:1-7) seems to pivot around Sarah’s laughter. I think, like many people, Sarah starts laughing as a response to a shocking surprise. At first, hearing she was to become pregnant in old age, she laughed to herself. In the end, after the birth of her son, she understood better that “God has brought laughter for me” and “everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Laughter, after all, is contagious.

Of course, the surprise Sarah experienced, the surprise that made her laugh, was a visit by God. At first encounter “three men” appear at the entrance of Abraham’s tent. After he feeds them “one” of them speaks to Abraham, he even asks about Sarah’s laughter. At the end of the tale Sarah knows God has visited to bring her laughter, which is love.

God, as we know, is love. And God, as we also know, doesn’t really need to visit because God is always with us. Rather, it is we who need to learn to see that God is acting in our lives. This is why the visitor to Abraham and Sarah says “I will surely return to you in due season” meaning, “sooner or later you will let down your guard and know me again.” And it is the very laughter that is the opening of the gate, if you will, in Sarah’s consciousness that let’s her see and know that God is with her. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”

Well, laughter brings joy, and joy stirs up love, and love makes miracles happen. God’s “due season” is any time our laughter builds up enough joy to stir up enough love to realize not just the presence of God all around and within us but also the miracles of everyday life. Little things are God’s miracles—a recipe works, a rose blooms, a tree limb falls and doesn’t knock down the fence (just to name a few of my own)—a child is born as a sign of hope in a time of trial. God’s presence is made palpable by joy, by the sharing of love, by realizing in our hearts, with laughter or tears, the very miracle of the pure experience of love.

In the letter to the Romans (5:1-8) Paul writes that it is through the intermixture of the experience of life as faith that we see how God’s Holy Spirit has been given, is given eternally, to us. The Holy Spirit is always with us. Like the visitors to Abraham’s tent, we experience the “visit” of the Holy Spirit when we are able to experience the love that makes God’s presence palpable. We are justified by faith, by the love that does indeed make God’s presence known to us. This is the grace in which we stand, of which we boast, from which comes our hope, which enables us to endure. Hope is the joy given by the realization of the presence of God when we share God’s love.

In Matthew’s Gospel (9:35-10:8) we enter into the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as he begins to travel from village to village, summons his disciples, gives them authority, and then sends them out as well. Jesus’ instructions are all active verbs—go, proclaim, cure. “As you go, proclaim the good news.” The good news is this, that God’s love already is all around us. We stir it up by its proclamation. We stir up God’s love by the act of loving whether that means a good belly laugh or a soft chuckle or just a hug—remember hugs? Loving is action, not just feelings but the outpouring of feelings that makes God’s presence palpable. Going, doing, curing, proclaiming … these are the ways Jesus calls all disciples to stir up the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, which we endure in hope, which we realize in laughter, even the laughter of God’s surprising everyday miracles.

One more thing, Jesus sends his disciples to “go … to the lost sheep.” Who are the lost sheep? Why, we are of course. We are lost until we can pass through the gate of love into the dimension of God’s presence where we experience the very palpable companionship of God.

 

Proper 6 Year A 2020 RCL: Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1, 10-17 Dilexi, quoniam; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)

©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.

Let anyone with ears listen*

What a week just past. Sometimes we should just stick with the scripture. To wit:

In Genesis 28 Jacob leaves. It says he left and went. It sounds rather like one of those critical moments in life, one of those things that presses on your soul, and then in the telling of the story it becomes simply “he left … and went.” But in leaving and going he found a place where God is and was. Of course, it was in his vulnerability, sleeping on the ground, exhausted on his journey, that he discovered God always is at hand. It was in his vulnerability that he discovered the very gate of heaven.

It is a metaphor, of course, for every life lived. For we who are lgbt people, it is a metaphor about how our lives are led in a constant state of coming out; we always are having to leave and go. And it is in the leaving and going and coming out that we find in our moment of vulnerability that God has opened the very gate of heaven to us, right where we are.

In Psalm 139 we are reminded by the psalmist that we are in relationship with God and that the relationship is mutual. God searches us out, God knows us, God discerns our thoughts, God traces our going out and lying down, God is everywhere, and the very gate of heaven is right where we are in every moment, God opens it to us. God knows our prayers, our needs, our very essence. Did you think free will meant your thoughts had no consequences? You may think what you will, but bear in mind your thoughts are universal and are always part of God’s very consciousness.

Our very being as lgbt children of God is embraced as part of God’s universal omniscient omnipotent consciousness. Open your hearts and thoughts to God with gladness; God rejoices in the searching out and knowing of you.

In Romans 8 we are reminded that in our adoption as children of God we are the first fruits of the Spirit, of the whole of creation that has been groaning in labor pains that we might be born as children of God, and in the realization of our childhood, in that moment in which we cry out “Abba! Father!” full in the knowledge of our salvation in the arms of our loving God—it is in that moment that we know truly that it is in hope that we are saved. “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?”

Paul focuses on the split between flesh and Spirit—he means that we must be aware that God is searching us out and knowing us, that God is with us on our journeys, that the gate of heaven always is opened to us, if we can get past our own selfishness. Lgbt people hold their breath when these passages come up because, as we know, so often we are falsely held out as “flesh” for our sexualities; but the thing to remember is that all of humanity is sexual, even heterosexuals[!]. For every human the question is how to remain constantly in awareness of our relationship with God so that we can find our salvation, in the hope known in God’s embrace. Yes, as we know, even lgbt people are children of God finding hope in God’s embrace.

In Matthew’s gospel chapter 13 Jesus tells a parable about sowing good seed in a field where an enemy later sows weeds. Of course Jesus is telling this parable to his followers to give them an example to internalize about good and evil. But the story is much richer than that after all. It says first and foremost that everything is always all mixed up. There is good seed among the weeds (which is the rather more optimistic version of the interpretation; but if you need a concrete example you should see my garden). The righteous, the good seeds, grow up and shine even among the weeds. Not even the enemy’s weeds can so choke out the righteous that God and God’s angels cannot find the children of God.

Certainly lgbt people know all about being mixed up in fields full of weeds, and other distractions from the fullness of life we yearn for. All of the scripture here tells us that God has, in fact, guaranteed our very salvation, our very hope, our very destiny as God’s own. Do not be obsessed about the weeds, instead leave and go, keep coming out, unto that place where you find the gate of heaven.

What a week just past—we began with a world obsessed with the World Cup, we end with a world in mourning at the tragic loss of life in an airliner shot down, and in the latest round of apparently constant war in Gaza. Everything is always all mixed up, indeed.

“But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” [Matt. 13:43]

*Proper 11 (Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23; Romans 8: 12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)