Grace, Wisdom, Love and Interesting Lives

I am now officially, constantly, in search of boredom. I am weary of having an interesting life and would happily spend an entire week with nothing to do except the things I want to do. In last spring I acquired a small raised garden bed in which I planted tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and way too much zucchini. I enjoy spending time out there each day, squeezing the tomatoes and puzzling over the odd way cucumbers fill out. So happy was I with that experiment that I then acquired a smaller raised garden bed with the intention of planting some full sun flowers—zinnias and peonies to be exact. And so excited with that was I that I then spent two months playing the online shopping “out of stock” game—you know, you click on it every morning and once or twice else during the day until miraculously one day it says “1 left in stock” and you order it! In this manner I finally acquired two more, and set about getting soil and mulch and plants to populate my growing flower garden. Are you enjoying this story? Good! So that was the plan for this week; put the beds together, fill them, plant and water and enjoy the new flowers right along with those strange cucumbers.

But then en route to drop my husband for an appointment a tire went flat. Since we were only down the block I drove home the better to be safe while we waited for the spare tire person to arrive magically (LOL). But, then, a loud explosion and (never mind how it happened) the rear windshield shattered. Oh fine, now we have to find the magical windshield repair person too. Just to make it all more interesting this was all happening while the local meteorology folks began scaring us with news about another heat wave “stay inside, don’t go outside, don’t do anything, hold your breath” they seemed to say. (In the end, the worst of it was 105° F (40.5° C.) Not to mention that before the heat wave, when it was still cold at night, the furnace decided to stop working. So we got to arrange a visit from the not so magical furnace repair person on top of all of the rest. Trust me, it was a very interesting week.

Grace finally has come I’m glad to report. The heat wave has passed, everything is repaired, we are sleeping well, all is calm for the moment (although I still need to tend to those raised beds). Of course, grace comes from grace, by which I mean, grace creates grace in the same manner that love builds up. A little bit of grace—such as finding myself outrageously thankful for the magical spare tire and windshield people and thanking them effusively—creates grace, and that returns as more grace. It is a constant challenge for me to remain in a state of grace, given my penchant for detail and control. One of God’s gifts to us, then, is the pathway to a life of grace, and it is our charge, if not also our destiny, to maintain it by receiving it thankfully.

Closely related to grace is wisdom—the ripening of knowledge over time. Wisdom comes from the merger of experience and maturity with regard to the receipt of grace, the knowledge that grace comes from love given and received in equal measure. Wisdom manifests the courage and confidence to trust in grace, not only to receive it with thanksgiving but to know when to trust. Wisdom is a kind of gracious power emanating from a loving heart with its “on button” set to “care.” Care, because of course, love is the beginning of wisdom. The love we are created to manifest is the love and loving we are called to share. It is by the action of loving that we change our own hearts into sources of grace, it is by the ongoing building up of love that we grow grace and love into wisdom.

Scripture reminds us that King Solomon’s wisdom was indeed a gift from God given in response to an outpouring of love and care (1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14). The Psalmist (Psalm 111: 10) sings that worship of God is the beginning of wisdom, reminding us that it is in loving one another that we most effectively worship God who has given us love. Ephesians (5:15-20) reminds us that wisdom comes from the action of being filled with the Spirit because to fill our hearts and souls with joy is to build up love. John’s Gospel (6:53-59) reminds us that it is the living bread of God’s love given in Christ that is the gateway to eternity. To live forever is to live in love, which is to live in loving.

Grace, wisdom, love—what do these say to us as LGBTQ siblings and heirs? Grace is the gift we are given in our creation as loving people created in God’s own loving image, grace is in the love we share in our logical families, grace is in the smiles and laughter and hugs of the communities of love we create. Wisdom is in the ways in which we understand that we are not created to satisfy heteronormative traditions, but rather we are created and indeed called to use our grace-given mature knowledge to build up love and logical families and loving communities. And, of course, love is the glue.

Grace, wisdom, love—these are pathways to unity with the God who creates us through unity with one another. We are called to move past the details of our interesting lives and to focus instead on those moments of thanksgiving from which true grace emerges.

Proper 15 Year B RCL 2021 (1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Psalm 111 Confitebor tibi; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58)

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

If we Dare

They say that time and space are one. This actually is a tenet of physics and of theology (which we should remember is the queen of the sciences). The meaning of the union of time and space is that all things happen and have happened and will happen in the space that is. That means that we experience (or maybe perceive is a better word) only tiny portions of reality in each moment, as we pass through dimensions. We experience everything at once, but we perceive things sequentially.

Another way to look at it is to understand that temporality is a human invention that has its purposes, like movie start times, airplane take-offs, and so forth. But, in reality, the life you love already exists and is waiting for you to get onto the plane of its existence.

Thus, when we read of King David committing sin (2 Samuel 11:1-15)(and let’s be clear that the sin is the cutting off of himself from God), we see that the outcome is the loss of love. The power of the anointing of David as King over all of God’s dimension of temporal geography is in the eternity of the connection between God and David and thereby between God and the people. All love and all of heaven always exist. This unity of love can be experienced when we allow ourselves to cross into the dimension of love, when we open our hearts to the love that is all around us, when we remember that love builds up.

In Psalm 14 we hear about “fools”— people who do not embrace love—they are said to have no “knowledge.” Knowledge, of course, is the eternal wisdom about love and loving God and loving each other, wisdom that is written on our experience and in our genes through our creation in God’s loving image.

The letter to the Epehsians (3:14-21) asks us to strengthen our inner being—our soul—which is where we are in direct contact with the Holy Spirit. It is in our souls that we dwell in the dimension of love, if we dare. There we are “rooted and grounded in love” in a dimension so wide it is “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love that surpasses knowledge.” There we may attain the fullness of God, if we dare.

In John’s Gospel (6:1-21) we have two stories—Jesus feeds thousands with bread and fish, and then he calms the sea. To the nascent church of the years after Jesus’ resurrection these were stories that sustained the believers. The main point of the first story is that the miracle comes from the love in the boy who gave all he had (“five barley loaves and two fish”). The main point of the second story is how people (even the disciples) are loathe to recognize God in their midst (notice the way that Jesus says “It is I”, as in Exodus God says God’s name is “I Am”). The moral of the story is the last line, that once they recognize God in Jesus in their midst, their boat lands on dry land and their trial is over.

Such is the power of love, if we dare.

If we dare to be who God created us to be, if we dare to be fully loving LGBTQ people created in God’s own image to love, if we dare to look up and see the love in the faces of those around us, we too can experience the breadth and length and height and depth of the eternity of God’s dimensions of love.

Proper 12 Year B RCL 2021 (2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21)

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

Knowledge and Grace

Knowledge is power I think somebody said once. It certainly is true that knowledge is important not only in daily life but in spiritual matters as well. It is important to remember that knowing ourselves is a critical part of loving ourselves, and that loving ourselves is critical to loving each other. Therein lies the promise of grace.

The reality of grace is lived out in daily life. My husband’s smile, my buddie’s laugh, a dinner well-consumed by all, our little family reunited after a year and a half of pandemic—these are moments of grace that come from the love within us given out as action in the real world.

Our walk through scripture this week points continually to the interaction of knowledge and grace. The continuing saga of King David (2 Samuel 6)is in our scripture again this week. Here we have the story of David dancing before the “ark of God” and blessing God and God’s people. I see a glimpse of the Eucharistic ritual in this story. Eucharist, of course, is Greek for Thanksgiving. (Efkaristo in modern Greek is “thank you.”) What do we see? We see the king, ordained by God to serve as priest of priests, beginning with knowledge by giving thanks. Then he blesses the people, then distributes nourishment in thanksgiving. Nourishment is grace in action.

The Psalmist (Psalm 85) sings  of “mercy and truth … met together; righteousness and peace … kissed each other.” It is in this blending fo knowledge (truth) and grace (mercy) that love can emerge as righteousness and peace.

In the first chapter epistle to the Ephesians, we are reminded of layers of blessing that accompany our destiny as heirs of God’s kingdom. I think this speaks directly to LGBTQ people because it is we who are destined as God’s LGBTQ children to live in thanksgiving for the love that is our created nature.

In Mark’s Gospel (6:14-29) we receive the story of the execution of John the Baptist. I think we can see, however, in the prelude to the story the point of including it in this Jesus narrative. We leanr that Jesus’ preaching and healing has effect on all of the people. But the people who have not seen or heard, and have no knowledge, cannot comprehend that love has actually become manifest, that God is with us in this human expression of active loving that is Jesus. “Prophet” is the best they can manage.

The truth is, we are inheritors of a kingdom of love if we can maintain knowledge of loving ourselves and one another. This is our destiny, to give thanks, to nourish each other, to achieve righteousness through love, and in loving righteousness to know (!) grace.

And, as God’s LGBTQ created heirs it is our destiny that our love leads—in building up the love, in showing the love, in sharing our love. Our peers who doubt or who do not walk in love need our example, they need our vision, and most importantly they need our love.

Proper 10 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24 Domini est terra; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29)

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

Learning to Embrace Love

Learning is a tough slog. I guess that’s an American expression—another version might be “a tough row to hoe,” which means, “I’m doing this thing, it’s really difficult, but I’m getting there.”

Learning is more than simply acquiring knowledge, although that certainly is a big part of it. It requires putting the new knowledge to use, and that often means some kind of necessary change. In academics it means increasing the ability to create syntheses, to generate new knowledge. In life it’s even tougher, because the changes we have to make require introspection and shifting priorities, letting go of old ways and practicing new ways of being. Like I said, it can be a tough slog.

But, of course, a tough slog is a good slog, if at the end you have new knowledge or even a new life.

In the famous story of Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 3: 5) the serpent challenges Eve to eat the forbidden fruit so she and Adam may become wise “like God, knowing good and evil.” Of course, acquiring this knowledge—learning—changes everything. For millenia theologians have debated about this battle, but I think the point is that the learning revealed a new truth from which there was no going back. Learning can be tough precisely because change is forever.

The best way to live through and recover from any life-changing experience, of course, is to embrace love with every ounce of your being. Remember that love is the experience and giving of the energy of God that creates and transforms reality. Feel love, embrace love, and give love, to live.

In Matthew’s Gospel (4:1-11) we follow Jesus’ temptation. Not unlike the patter in the Genesis story we see a back and forth between Jesus and “the tempter.” Eventually Jesus triumphs and the tempter is vanquished with these words: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” And then it says “and suddenly the angels came and waited on him.”

This classic battle between the presence of love represented by God and God’s angels, on the one hand, and the absence of love represented by the temptation to embrace only self, on the other, reveals the simple truth that in all of life we have a choice between the swamp devoid of love that is of our own creation and the garden of love that is always there, if only we can learn always to choose it. Ah, if only we can learn—gain knowledge, grow, change.

The simple synthesis of these stories is this. To gain knowledge is to be empowered, enlightened by the revelation of truth, and to be utterly changed. This kind of change requires learning to embrace love, because it is in the giving of love that we best worship our creator and all of creation.

 

First Sunday in Lent (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

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