The Certainty of Loving

It seems that “to know” is sometimes the hardest thing in life. It is tricky “to know” whether your husband is going to be okay when you drop him at dialysis, or “to know” when you can trust it when they think they have the situation figured out. That is one kind of knowing. When we see the word in the Old Testament it is an antiquated translation of the word meaning intimacy. Thinking about that with care is important because it means that God “knows” us and wants us to “know” God in the same way God calls us to “know” each other—it is totally a call to free and open and deep intimacy of the sort modern life has taught us to avoid, or our demons have taught us we don’t deserve. This is the kind of knowing that is both the easiest and the hardest part of an intimate relationship. We “know” that what we experience is love—the sight of the beloved melts your heart, the touch of the beloved turns you into mush. And yet we fear that knowing as much as we fear being loved. In the end, “to know” is the essence of being, it is the essence of being Godly loving people, and it is at once the most rewarding and most challenging part of being alive. Except, it also can be just the easiest thing if you can learn to love openly and without reservation.

Another part of knowing is listening, paying attention, hearing the truth as it comes to you all through life. In the Acts of the Apostles (8:26-40) the story of Philip and his roadside evangelism is all about listening. (I have to confess a certain emotional bond with this story because I was for awhile rector of the historic but now closed St. Philip’s Memorial Church in Philadelphia). Philip encounters a court official reading scripture—LOL, I always tell people they shouldn’t do that without a guide to help them interpret it, just as Philip does here! There is mutual listening here—Philip hears the desire to know of God’s love, and the official hears the Good News of love as Philip proclaims the good news, which is, all you need is love. The two are drawn together into God’s loving intimacy and in the act of baptism both are transformed.

Again this week we encounter John’s first epistle of love (1 John 4:7-21). The language is as beautiful as it is direct:

Let us love one another, because love is from God

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God

God is love

If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear

Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Of course, it is easy enough to keep saying that God is love. Love means knowing, and love means listening. To love is to give respect and justice to everyone who is not you. Our confidence comes from knowing and hearing that “there is no fear in love, but love casts out fear.”

Jesus says much the same thing in John’s Gospel (15:18): “Abide in me as I abide in you” and “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” To abide is to dwell. To dwell is to reside. To reside is to experience all of life from the relaxing to the hard work. Clean the bathroom, chop the firewood, buy groceries, cook dinner, take out the garbage, clean up the kitchen. But thrive in the presence of home, flourish in shared fellowship, create love for one another. Work, work, work, at the love that is establishing a home. Abiding is the hard work of loving. But as Jesus shows us, it is through this love that we find the pathway into the dimension of the riches of God’s reality. “Ask for whatever you wish” so long as it is a desire rooted in love and shared intimacy.

God’s creation brings all of us together precisely for the purpose of helping one another build up God’s love. We as LGBTQ people are created in God’s own image of love, for love and to love. We are intended to inherit the riches of a life lived fully in love. We are intended, like those angels I’ve been writing about the past couple of weeks, to share both the hard work and the love of the communities in which we find ourselves. The work of love these days means wearing a mask, staying six feet apart from people outside your pod, and above all getting vaccinated, so we might thrive in the warmth of a hug, so we might once again travel to be in the arms of those we love, so that we might live in communities liberated from the virus. The magic of life is the certainty of loving.

5 Easter Year B 2021 RCL (Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30 Deus, Deus meus, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8)

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

God, intimacy, sin*

I often tell people who take the time to talk with me that I sometimes despair of ever being able to explain the Gospel.

I see what the larger church has done—they have made it so simple an idiot can process it, but, of course, in so doing they also have taken away any humanity in the process. There is no list of sins. Some churches have lists, because it helps them oppress people. But God has no such list. Sex, chocolate—when used to create joy, are not inherently sinful. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—they’re wrong.

So here we have the prophet Jeremiah, speaking to a people who have broken every law, and furthermore suffered the consequences. And through his voice God says “they shall all know me.” Do you get what that means? To “know” someone is to share intimacy. So God is saying, all of God’s people, who are truly faithful, will share intimacy with God. And then God says “I will remember their sin no more”—do you remember that sin means being disconnected from God? If one shares intimacy with God, then one cannot by definition, know sin.

Here is God saying that God is with us in every breath, every intimate moment—yes, go ahead and let your mind fill in that blank—and therefore, because we are one with God, we cannot be disconnected from God.

But, of course, the choice is ours. We can choose to share closeness with God, or we can turn our backs.

We who are gay know the intimacy of our God. After all, we are made gay in God’s image so that we can spread joy through all of humanity. Our job, is to embrace the intimacy God has given us with each other, so that in so doing we enhance the intimacy of all humanity with God. Just as God, through Jeremiah, told us to do.

5 Lent (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.