“Wash and be Clean”

We are watching the inexorable march of fascism.

We have seen the near overthrow of our own government

            which is still on-going.

We have seen the self-righteous right take over

            the supreme court and turn the law into dust.

We have seen the right to body sovereignty

            removed.

We can only expect that we will be next,

            first they will re-outlaw our marriages

                        then they will re-outlaw our selves.

And intelligent people don’t have the erm [gumption? cojones?]

            to make their friends and relatives understand this isn’t about the price

            of gasoline

            this is about life and death.

Your girlfriend dead from a coat-hanger abortion.

Your sister dead from carrying a fetus too long until it killed her.

This is my cry.

“Wash and be clean.”

How much more clear could Elisha’s instructions to Naaman

            have been (2 Kings 5:13)?

Naaman wanted magic.

But the magic is within you.

The spirit of God is within you.

God is within you.

God is with you.

God is with gay you,

God is with lesbian you,

God is with transgender you,

God is with queer you,

God is with polyamorous you …

            and you know what,

                        all you have to do is look in the Bible,

            throw it back in their faces,

                        all of us are there in God’s own image.

“Wash and be clean.”

That’s all it takes.

Admit your self

            to your self

                        and be

                                    your own God-given self.

Do it all with love in your heart.

“You reap whatever you sow” (Galatians 6:7).

Have love in your heart in all that you do.

If you do not have love

            get some,

                        any way you can.

If you feel upset or angry or vengeful (as I clearly have been doing)

            think about someone you love

            think about some thing that you love

            think about love

                        get some love in you.

Then

            go out and “wash and be clean”—

            go out and be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer,

                        proudly, loudly, fiercely, boldly—

            remember,

                        you are made in God’s gay image

                        or you are made in God’s bisexual image

                        or you are made in God’s lesbian image

                        or you are made in God’s transgender image

                                    now how could that be? but it is,

                                                you are made in God’s own image

                                                            did you think God really was an old man?

                                                            did you never think God was intersectional?

And wherever you go say to them “the Kingdom of God has come near to you” (Luke 10:9, 11).

Because it has.

Because it is.

Because it is in us,

            the LGBTQ people made in God’s image,

                        we are the keepers of the kingdom of love.

Proper 9 Year C 2022 RCL (2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30 Exaltabo te, Domine; Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11,16-20)

©2022The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love is the Doorway: Remember to Love

Well … [a deep subject one of my friends like to say] … here we are. We are either at the dawn of a new day, or we are at the precipice … we won’t know for awhile I guess. But, we do know this, that God is with us always. The best evidence of that I have seen lately is all of the signs on lawns that say “we’re all in this together.” Because, you know, that’s about the size of it.

Love is always the answer. And LGBTQ people, because we are God’s special children created to love, are in charge of giving love. It is up to us to remember to love.

In the US we are experiencing a moment of cautious optimism. Okay, yesterday it was elation. But today we are cautiously optimistic for the first time in years. And in Oregon the sun is shining. Nice how that works isn’t it?

Now is a tricky time, then, because we want to believe in all of those good feelings we have. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who heard a call out to LGBTQ people in President-Elect Biden’s speech last night. I cried. When has a call out to all of the people included us? It was a combination of joy and relief and pride. It felt great. It felt like the kind of loving feeling we want to hold onto forever.

Of course, we have to remember that we can get carried away. We can allow ourselves to be almost addicted to those kinds of feelings to the point that it becomes a form of idolatry if by allowing ourselves to believe in those good feelings alone we allow ourselves to forget that we must continue to give out love. We are meant not just to take happy endorphins in, but we must always give out love. It’s like breathing really—good feelings in, love out, no matter how hard it is to keep doing it.

The story of the covenant at Shechem in Joshua (24:1-3a, 14-25) is the story of God’s people choosing love over everything. Joshua reminded the people to “incline your hearts to God”—to give love—and the people chose to serve and obey God, who is love. Foreign gods, idolatry—we easily make substitutions for God, we pay tribute to everything that gives us a vapid good feeling however fleetingly—but God is love, and only love, and only love is permanent and true and reliable. The way to remain firm in faith and at one with God is to “incline your hearts”—to give love.

But it is easy enough in the course of daily life to forget, to turn inward, to get lost in the chaos of getting along, to forget all about love. Therefore, we need to be reminded. Psalm 78 (1-7) reflects the covenant at Shechem in the form of a song, a kind of oral history, to be sung again and again as a reminder to not forget that our covenant is a covenant of love. We must be alert to the opportunity to keep loving, to look around us and see that love builds up. In 1 Thessalonians (4:13-18) Paul reminds us to “encourage one another with these words.” The triumph of love is like this then: trumpets sound in your heart, archangels call in your heart, life itself is magnified into a brilliant light, and those who love and give love are alive forever. We are to remind each other—to say “love” to each other constantly, to “encourage one another with these words.”

In Matthew’s Gospel (25:1-13) Jesus tells the parable of ten bridesmaids, five wise who are prepared and five foolish who are not. He starts with “then the kingdom of heaven will be like this,” pointing to the fact that the kingdom of heaven is already with us if we can find the doorway into dimension where it exists. You see, even in the kingdom of heaven it is critical to remember to love. The wise and foolish bridesmaids are just like us, either giving love or being distracted by false gods. We must, as Jesus says, keep awake, encourage one another, remember to incline our hearts, and remember to love.

The kingdom of heaven has always been here; it is why I call this blog “dimensions of reality”—if only we could make ourselves turn to the real God, who is love, then we would see that we already live in the kingdom of heaven. Heaven is not a promise for some distant disembodied future, heaven is now, if only we can embrace it. Love is the doorway into that dimension. To enter we have to give love.

I know, it’s really hard. Scary even. But go ahead and try, that scariness makes it more exciting too. Try it out: say “I love you” and mean it. And the next time someone cuts you off in the supermarket aisle, don’t scream, just turn around and go the other way. And when someone bumps into you by the broccoli, smile (you have to use your eyes now because your mask will hide your mouth). That’s all, just smile. I’ll bet you will hear something like “oh, doesn’t this look great today?” And you will both walk away feeling loved. It’s that simple and that hard all at once.

Keep awake, encourage one another, incline your hearts … and remember to love.

Proper 27 Year A RCL 2020 (Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7 Attendite, popule; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13)

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

Keep thinking*

It is tough to move around. No matter how nice a place your new place is, the change is always problematic. The shifting of culture is really more important than most of us think. We think the US is one country and everything is the same, but we really are a nation of 50 countries, and each one has its own collection of cultures, and they all really are different from each other.

Wisconsin is lovely. We are especially moved, after 30 some years in the Northeast corridor, to see the sky. And especially at night. We can see the moon, and the stars—all of them—against the inky black sky. And now we live on the edge of Lake Michigan, which is one of the world’s largest inland seas—freshwater notwithstanding. Just those things, simple as they sound, are part of the different culture here, and especially are part of our comprehension of this new place where we find ourselves.

I think maybe because I have not worked as a priest much (I am not yet licensed in Milwaukee, and have served only once in Philadelphia since moving in May), I have a kind of secular perspective. I notice how, when I hear church people talk, they sound churchy. And it almost immediately turns me off. There was an interesting article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a week or so ago about how churches are trying to attract young men. We drove past a place last week called “Brew City Church.” We laughed, but I bet they get more young men than anything with a saint in its name. So, I am going to try to make a theological point here without getting churchy. Let’s see how well I do.

To know, in the ancient texts, usually is code for sex. And when it isn’t code for sex, it is metaphor for the kind of melding that happens between souls during sex. Somehow the most human moment we can experience is also crossed with the most holy moment. And when the Old Testament prophets talk about “knowing” God, they mean having that kind of intimate experience with God, knowing God in your soul, and God knowing you in your soul. This is the second Sunday in Advent. Christmas is three weeks away (take that! all you premature marketers!). And God says through the prophet Isaiah that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of God.” Wow. The whole of the earth, every living thing, is destined to know the soul of God.

It means that you should take time in these deliciously dark nights of winter to look inside your own soul, to find God within you. The only sin, remember, is refusing to be one with God.

In this week’s scripture, we have the story of John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness. He eats locusts and honey—ick! And the author of Matthew’s Gospel has him saying some dramatic things. But the most important thing he says is this, which Jesus also will keep saying (a sort of leitmotif in Matthew’s Gospel): “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

So let’s see. Repent means pause and look inward. Re- pent; pent, again. Do it again. Look inward, again, and again, and again. Because the kingdom of heaven not only has come near, it is here, nearby. Only by continually thinking (pent, penser, to think) can you move yourself into God’s dimension. God’s dimension of reality. Only by moving to the dimension where you know God will you find God’s kingdom.

In God’s dimension of reality there is justice. And there is peace. And there is equality for all of God’s creatures. We who are glbt must re-pent until we are truly proud of the souls God has given us to live in. When we have done that we will stop bowing to hetero-hegemony. Then we will see that the blindness society has keeps people from seeing that some people are not replicas but are diverse. Nature is diverse. Humanity is diverse. God’s creation is diverse. We are diverse.

Have a soulful second Sunday in Advent. (Remember, Christmas begins at sundown on Christmas Eve, the 24^th of December. Don’t be saying “happy holiday” to people for six *$&^@ weeks!)

*2 Advent (Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12)

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