LGBTQ Army of the Cross of Christ

We have reached the Sunday of the Passion. Which is to say, the Sunday that ends Lent (well sort of, still no meat until after Good Friday!) and begins Holy Week. Where are we today, on the Sunday of the Passion?

I am in love with my husband, and in love with my life, and in love with our home.

My Oregon elderberry plants, which somehow made it through the winter, are now almost 3” tall. I think that’s a miracle. I can’t wait for ten years from now when they will have those lovely red berries all winter.

Darcelle XV, the famous Portland drag queen, passed last week. It was momentous for Portlandia, to whom she was really a folk idol; to the LGBTQ community she was a hero. Curiously,all Portland was celebrating her rich life just as our homophobic siblings in red states were trying to outlaw drag.

The tulip festival, which is a magnificent display of tulips in the shadows of Mounts Hood, St. Helens and Jefferson, is delayed (like my garden, where I have a few crocus and a single daffodil blooming, but I can see buds forming elsewhere) because it has been so cold and yipes!, it keeps snowing (albeit, it doesn’t stick here on the floor of the Willamette Valley; no telling what it’s like at the tulip farm, which is at a higher elevation).

Still, Easter is knocking at our doorstep. We have reached the Sunday of the Passion via a riotous journey. We have come through war, climate change, train derailments, eternal politics, attacks on trans people and drag queens, inflation … a pandemic even.

One might say we have come mercifully to the Sunday of the Passion.

When Jesus reached the outskirts of Jerusalem [Matthew 22:1-11] he sent his disciples to find a donkey he could ride into the city. They not only found him a donkey, they lined the streets with their cloaks and those of the crowd that gathered to honor Him.

The Psalmist [118:19-22, 28-29] gave thanks for the gates of righteousness, which always are open, for the opportunity to give thanks to God who always answers, for the opportunity to be the cornerstone of faith.

Like the followers of Isaiah [50:4-9a], we have heard the call of God: “Let us stand up together.” We, the queers of the world, must stand up to the fearful who would see us “erased.” We are not alone, most of God’s other children love us and support us. We need only stand up to be counted, to be victorious, to walk in the way of love and share in resurrection.

And we must share in the meal Jesus gave us to eat 2000 years ago [Matthew 26:26-27], and which we, like gazillions of God’s children, partake of daily ever since … give thanks, take, eat, give thanks, take, drink. This is God’s covenant with us, eternity is now.

And then have a look at the end of this story: who is gathered there at the foot of the cross [Matthew 26:54-57]? The centurion, terrified, many women,weeping, and a rich man from outland. Outcasts all, standing up together. These, like us, are the army of the cross of Christ.

We, indeed, are the LGBTQ army of the cross of Christ.

Palm Sunday (Sunday of the Passion) Year A RCL 2023: Liturgy of the Palms (Matthew 21:1-11; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29); The Liturgy of the Word (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14- 27:66)

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

Spirit, Flesh, Grace

The Spirit is our very life force. It is that thing in the back of your consciousness that leads you to smile, or to get (erm) aroused. Paul writes again and again about the difference between Spirit and flesh; the difference is between that part of you that is biological and that part that is sentient, between that part of you that occurs without heart (flesh) and that which occurs only with love (Spirit).

LGBTQ people are particularly gifted because our sentience is biological. We are part of the biosphere, genetically created as we are to advance love.

In the church it is the First Sunday in Lent. We have the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2), and Paul’s midrash on it (Romans 5), and the story of Jesus led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4). The focus is on this distinction between Spirit, that which is holy because it sentient, and flesh. We are being reminded that it is by choice that we follow the Spirit.

This story of Eve and the tree and the opened eyes, well, it’s sort of like coming out isn’t it? When I was a boy I knew I loved boys, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to love boys, but I did, but I knew to keep it shut up inside me. Then one day, I ate the proverbial apple (erm) and my eyes were opened and … oh my!!

Grace is that gift of knowledge of love that comes from God. Like when I discovered that being bodily gay was in fact being led by the Spirit to discover my truth; that was grace. That was God calling me to be me. That was grace. In everything, that is grace.

Jesus was “led by the Spirit” to go into the wilderness … he was moved by his connection to creation. Because Jesus was God and was of God and was with God he could not have had any sin, he had only connectedness. And in every test Jesus sent disconnectedness away. He chose life. He chose power. He chose grace.

We are called In Lent to reflect on our place in God’s creation. We who are called to be God’s LGBTQ heirs are called to reflect on the grace of being who we have been created to be, because it is an essential part of the connectedness of everything.

First Sunday in Lent A 2023 RCL (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

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

Glory, Light, Space-Time, Love

My mission from the beginning, now many years ago in a column in the Philadelphia Gay News, was to interpret the message of the Gospel for my LGBTQ+ companions on the way. Just as I grew weary of “romantic” movies that featured only hetero-normativity, I observed that the Gospel was not being interpreted through our eyes, and especially not to us. Over the years and in particular in this space I’ve done my best to interpret weekly the Good News of salvation for all of creation through my own gay eyes and heart and soul. I use a form of midrash and a bit of standard homiletics, and as I do to a live congregation I try to interpret the lectionary through my own life experience.

My own life has been changed and challenged just like everybody else’s. I have learned as I matured (LOL) the true power of love and the true deficit of its absence. I see clearly in the scripture how this message of love has been the message of God from the beginning, and how its revelation is continuous, as though all time were one (as physics asserts) and in every moment we are continually working out the creative power of love.

In 2016, after the election rendered a truly shocking result, I literally lost my muse and had to quit blogging. I was only able to overcome that shock after we moved to Oregon. Here in the Pacific Northwest I was stunned as I had been when I lived and loved here as a young man by the sheer beauty of creation and by the power of the society here that takes responsibility for creation literally. The synergy of love and its constant building up is powerful.

I find myself after two years of pandemic just about shocked into loss of muse again, this time by the war in Ukraine. My soul aches for the Ukrainian people and for their own beautiful slice of creation. My heart is rended by the raw evil of the attempt to wipe out their culture and to deny their very existence. As a human I am frightened, I am fearful, I am worried; and I am aware none of those adjectives embraces the Good News of the power of love. Rather, in this I risk giving myself over to its absence.

We are in the second week of Lent. Our collect reminds us that God’s “glory is always to have mercy.” That mercy—forgiveness yes but more to the point, healing and restoration—is God’s glory is the truth. When have you known glory more powerful than in the hug of a loved one, the arms encircling you, the hearts beating side by side, the warmth of embrace? If that isn’t glory I don’t know what is. And certainly it is both healing and restoration.

The selection from Genesis 15 is the story of God’s covenant with Abram of eternal inheritance. Abram encounters God in a timeless numinous moment heralded by the vision of stars in the heavens (LOL, just like when I take the garbage out each night). Our response is Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio, “God is my light.”

In the letter to the Philippians (3:17-4:1) Paul appeals to the goal of the Good News that lies in life beyond time and space, reminding us that “our citizenship is in heaven,” that Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.” In other words, in all time and space, the Gospel of love exists to be revealed to us in numinous ways when we are open to its reception and when we can shift into that dimension we will and do discover the heaven of healing and restoration. As I read these words this week I thought first of Ukraine and of the power of the faith of the people we are witnessing daily. Then I was reminded that we in the LGBTQ+ community know what it is like to be considered targets of oppression to be eliminated. So, there is a human connection for us, after all.

In Luke’s Gospel (13:31-35) Jesus speaks of his timeless desire to gather children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. It is the power of the dimension of love that brings the gathering of all heirs of God, all children of creation, to healing and restoration. It is this power that restores the outcasts of the world to God’s glory.

We as God’s LGBTQ+ children are defined by the love God has given us in creating us in God’s own loving image. We are called to build up love in all of creation, in order that in that way we might reveal the dimension of glory.

Pray for love, pray for Ukraine.

2 Lent Year C 2013 RCL (Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13: 31-35)

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

Angels with Orange Wands

We are at a midpoint in Lent … how is that going for you? Before I was ordained I used to tie myself in knots trying to explain to friends how the process of Lenten fasting worked. Chiefly, I tried to say, the idea is to give up something you will miss so that you will be reminded to think of it each day. Also, of course, is the notion that it should not be something that you ought to give up anyway. The point is to be mindful of the idea of repentance, which means to turn away from those things that disconnect us and toward the one thing that always does connect us, which is sharing God’s love.

The question takes on new meaning in a pandemic. Last year we had just begun our lockdowns, mostly, when Lent suddenly was upon us. We were still giving up everything it seemed, more and more each day. Frankly I gave myself a pass last year because it was just too much to bear. Now we are in the official second year of the pandemic. Isolation and safe behavior have become (I hope) a new norm for most people. We have coped, mostly virtually, with the things we had to forgo in order to live. Still, it is scary enough all by itself.

So this year the question is not what have you given up, but rather, what else have you given up? Haven’t we all given up enough yet?

My husband and I were vaccinated yesterday. Through what can only be described as grace we received a link by email from a dear friend and because we caught it at the right moment we had about 10 minutes in which to make appointments, and we did. It was important to us to go to a drive-up where we would not have to walk a long distance or be indoors. In the metropolitan Portland area that meant the clinic in short-term parking at the Portland airport. We were grateful to get the appointments and relieved a few seconds after booking them to receive QR-codes by email, magically linked to our health-care provider accounts as well.

While we waited the 10 days for our appointment date to come around we read in the newspaper about how people on one occasion waited in line for 5 hours; but in the meantime the process had been worked out well. We were there less than 45 minutes altogether. And the people who shepherded us through were truly angels. We were blessed many times over. They even rang a bell as we drove away; two more vaccinated. Hallelujah!

The true bread which gives life to the world is that bread which feeds the soul; and that is love. When we refuse love we suffer the anguish of our own dark nights. When we give love we receive more love and that builds up ever more love. Thus when we give thanks we give love and we build love. Yesterday as we drove from post to post, angels directed us with bright orange tarmac wands. At each curve, at each new line-up, at each new staging area we were greeted with eye-smiles, thumbs-up, waves, and we were pulled along as though on angel wings by the light from those orange wands. And as, at each point, we called “thanks” and waved back, we could feel the love building in our hearts.

The epistle to the Ephesians (2:1-10) reminds us that when we can understand that the desire of our selfishness is the manifestation of the absence of love we can escape that vacuum. And when we learn, we are no longer “dead through our trepasses” but rather alive in love, with love, through love. Even the simple gift of a wave and a “thanks” is enough of a Lenten fast to bring us to repentance. (8): “For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”

In John’s Gospel (3:14-21) Jesus tells Nicodemus (and, of course, us) that “the light has come into the world.” The light of which Jesus speaks, of course, is love. Love is freedom. Love is fulfillment. Love is responsibility because love comes only when it is given. “Those who do what is true, come to the light.”

This Lent, try this approach to your Lenten fast: look for the angels around you who are pointing you to the light of love.

4 Lent Year B RCL 2021 (Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21)

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

Giving up walls for Lent*

I had a wonderful surprise this morning. Rushing out the door to get to church, still jet-lagged, happy I didn’t need a winter coat, mind on the days to-do list, I absent-mindedly buttoned the front of my blazer. I stopped and thought to myself “oh my look at that.” You see, I haven’t been able even to pull the flaps together for almost two years. I was thrilled. And I let that happy moment shove all of those busy-ness things in that list back there to the back of my mind. Church was delightful.

How much of that was because instead of feeling harried I was, at last, feeling good? I can’t be sure, of course. But I have the experience that these little things in life often lead to unitive moments when I feel the palpable presence of God, and I am convinced that happens because I have at last let down my walls enough to become aware of the constant presence of God. God is with us.

I’m just back from three weeks of travel to Toronto and Amsterdam, Toronto on the ends of the trip, most of the time in Amsterdam. Somewhere along the line I picked up a rhinovirus that turned into bronchitis. I was in Amsterdam for an academic event, but because of the coughing I found part of the trip turned into self-directed worrying—eventually I went to the doctor and as usual, after the first dose of the medicine it was 100% better—and after that I gave up on the worrying. We sang a hymn this morning “My song is love unknown” (458 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982), set to music by John Ireland. It is a hymn that has always had the power to reach into my soul. As the organist started I remembered walking out my apartment door in Amsterdam last week and hearing that tune on the carillon of the Zuiderkerk. I remembered having a nanosecond impulse on hearing it—oh, that’s from Holy Week. And then looking at the water and the brilliant Dutch blue sky and thinking God was somehow with me.

I also went to a concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. They were brilliant as usual. What I noticed on this occasion was the immense intimacy of the hall, as though all of the hundreds of audience members were in a small chamber listening together to some sort of private music. It is more than just the acoustics, more than just the hall, it is somehow an intimacy shared by hundreds at once, not unlike those riveting moments we sometimes experience in church. Well, those are some highlights from my trip.

Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent and we are reminded that [Ephesians 2:10]: “We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” It means that the lives we are leading are the lives needed by the shared intimacy of the kingdom of God’s children, that we are created in the love that is Christ, intended as children of love to live into and share that love. It means that all of us are here, with God, living out the will of God, insofar as we allow ourselves to realize it.

The line just before that, Ephesians 2:9, reminds us that this is a gift of God, that it is by grace that we have been saved—that is, given this gift—if only we allow ourselves to realize not only our role in the kingdom of God’s children but also the explicit closeness to God that is ours if only we stop throwing up walls. The walls we throw up to protect ourselves from each other are the same walls that stop us from seeing the nearness of God.

As lgbt people we live in a world that is more dangerous by degrees than even the wretched world on the evening news, because we sometimes live either in closets of monolithic walls or behind the closed curtains of oppression. It makes it harder to live into our createdness. But God is with us and is calling us, each of us always, to live into the kingdom of God’s children, where we walk in love, in the light of Christ. I have to admit I have not experienced either closet or oppression recently, by God’s grace, and I am grateful. But I also have to admit that I am guilty of throwing up walls all the time. I have a couple of weeks of Lent left to learn to give that up.

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*4 Lent (Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21)

Foolish wisdom*

There is (for me) always a sort of tension between the enormity of God’s love and the enormity of humankind’s inability to cope with God’s love. This, of course, is the very definition of “sin,” which means being apart from God. Many faith traditions, assuming people are not bright enough to figure this out for themselves, promulgate lists of “sins” and tell people not to do those things. This is wrong, this is foolish wisdom; the only true sin is what you do that separates you from God.

Ponder that for a moment. What do you do that separates you from God? I know what I do. I get something like a fury in my soul in which I become self-righteous. I know that I am right and everyone around me is wrong. I long for retribution. This is sin. This is sin because I have put myself first among others; it is sin because I have made myself the judge; and it is sin because in doing these first two things I have completely forgotten about God. And I have forgotten about God by forgetting about those around me. Yet, how are we to put such a thing on a list? It is easier to say eating meat is a sin or having sex is a sin or making money is a sin and to be done with it. Of course, none of these is sinful in or of itself; it is only in the intentions of your heart and soul that sin, separateness from God, can take place.

GLBT people are weary of the whole notion of sin. We are accused of being sinful just by the very nature of our being. All of us at some time or another have run into self-righteous (there’s that word again) folk who quote at us from the Bible to convince us of our “sin.” And yet, there is nowhere in the Bible such a passage; rather there are pieces of texts that are taken out of context for the purpose of oppression. That is sin, regardless of the text, because oppression is sin.

In today’s Gospel Jesus flies into a just such a rage, excoriating the money changers with a handmade whip. It was just the kind of rage I described, the sort that only a human on the edge can have. And yet, because it was human Jesus, it was also the divine excoriation of evil from God’s own temple, both in the reality of the money-changers in the story and in the metaphor of Jesus’ own body as the temple of God. And in the midst of it all Jesus says to make an end of sin and in its place he will build the glory of God. That would be you and me, my friends, for in our lives as children of God we embody the very glory of God. Psalm 19 verse 1 says “1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.” And in 1 Corinthians Paul writes that God has made foolish the wisdom of the world, hence those lists of sin, and in its place God has equated faith with God’s own glory. For those who believe are saved.

God is merciful to those who keep trying, to those who purge sin and embrace belief. Love God and love one another my friends; that is what God who is merciful and full of compassion asks of us.

*3 Lent (Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19 Coeli enarrant; Romans 7:13-25; John 2:13-22)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

We are all born blind*

When I was about 11 or so, my dad had a terrible car accident. I remember it was the 4th of July and he had just shipped into Long Beach from Taiwan. We’d greeted him at the pier, and we’d had a great reunion evening, and then early that morning he’d taken the car in to the ship to get the stuff he’d bought in Taiwan, including some magnificent rosewood furniture. But, the main thing was, he’d brought Chinese fireworks for the 4th. So all day we waited for him but he never came; some time in the late afternoon Mother got “the” phone call—he’d been in a wreck and had been taken to San Diego where there was a better military hospital. (You know, right, that this is a fifty page story, so I’m doing my best here to cut to the chase.) Mother had to buy a new car [!] with the money in her purse … it was a horrid chevy station wagon. She paid for it off the used car lot, then she and I drove to San Diego to see Dad. She got a neighbor to babysit the kids (my much younger siblings). Dad was in traction with broken hips. But let’s just cut to the chase. Three months later, Dad is home, and they sit me down in the living room after the kids are asleep, and they explain to me how bad men will try to touch me. It took me years to figure out that really nice Navy nurse (a young red-headed guy) had put the moves on Dad, and Dad had ratted him out.

So, let’s see, I was 11. And it was 13 years later before I could let the eyes of my soul, “born blind” open up and realize it was okay to love another boy.  And this is the value of today’s Gospel for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people everywhere. Because we are all born “blind” my friends. And we have to let our eyes be opened if we are going to experience the beauty of life God has made for us. In the story you might notice that there is a lot of chatter about how Jesus made the blind boy see, but there isn’t any detail about the process. Okay, a little bit of mud. But, it isn’t the mud that opens the boys’ eyes anymore than it was mud that opened my own eyes when I finally came out. One day I just realized I was gay, and I just wanted to stop playing blind. You know what, in 1975 it was harder than you might think to come out. It took the blink of an eye to come out to myself; but it took months to find a sympathetic gay person to take me by the metaphorical hand and show me how to find the community into which I had been born. All jokes aside, his name was Billy, and I’ll never forget the joy and laughter with which he welcomed me into the reality of my own self, and drew me toward the community where I could and would be nurtured.

You know, I intended this story to follow on from the gospel about the man born blind. But now that I think about it, it follows too from the story about the selection of David, the least of  Samuel’s sons. Later we will learn that David was “the fairest of men” and that his love for Jonathan surpassed the love of God. So let’s see, sometimes these weird stories we tell about our own lives are pretty much like these stories where God chooses the right one, which is why the Bible is considered revelatory.

“For once you were in darkness but now in the Lord you are light.” You are light. You. Are light. Let your light shine friends, let it illumine the world.

Let me put it more bluntly—BE GAY! Or, REJOICE AND BE GAY! And let your light shine my friends.
*4 Lent (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)

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

Two way Street*

Greetings from Toronto, one of my favorite places in the world. I just arrived yesterday. I always chuckle a little, because at some point, inevitably on the first day, I experience a little jangle of cognitive dissonance. You know, somewhere in the recesses of your brain you know you are in a different culture, because after all, you just off a plane and went through immigration. But then, the cars and the streets and stores look like cars and streets and stores back in the U.S. so you forget momentarily. Then, walking along you overhear conversations and think, sounds just like home. Then just as you get lulled into complacency you start to really notice what people are talking about, and you start to hear subtly different speech patterns, and then maybe you see a Canadian flag and your brain at first goes “oh, look a Canadian flag” then it goes “duh ….,” and you realize all at once that you are in a different place after all. The interesting thing I think is that you have to listen quietly in order for the knowledge to come into your consciousness. You can’t just barge about in your normal way, expelling yourself as you go. No, you have to be still, listen quietly, and let the new reality become present in your consciousness.

Of course, that’s a lot like praying, isn’t it? Or is prayer for you still of the “gimme gimme” variety? Too many of us succumb to that I’m afraid. No, real prayer is about being still and knowing God; about being still and in the quietness hearing and seeing and feeling God and knowing what God is calling you to do. In Genesis it says God spoke to Abraham, but we are being naïve if we think a guy walked up and talked to Abraham. In my experience, when God speaks it’s pretty clear; but it’s never verbal in the human sense. God tells us to “go” by being with us in the going, on the way. Like Abraham, we have to listen to God if we want to inherit the richness of experience God has prepared for us.

Lent is our time for listening. I suppose you thought it was a time for giving something up, for dreary music and dour church stuff. Well, it plays out that way if you let it. But really Lent is a time for listening—to God, of course, but also to each other. Paul says Abraham’s promise came through the righteousness of faith and that means it was through listening and action, through hearing God and knowing God along the way, because this is what the righteousness of faith means—it is in this way that Abraham’s promise was realized. And it will be in this way that we realize the promises of God as well.

This is also the substance of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. Jesus wants Nicodemus to understand that faith isn’t magic and God isn’t a magician. Jesus wants Nicodemus to understand that change is required to let God work through your own experience.

And that reminds me of coming out. It reminds me of the first unstable steps I made when I finally understood what it would mean not just to be gay, but to live life openly and fully in the reality to which God had called me from before my own birth. It was a little bit of cognitive dissonance at first, it was a little bit like walking in a different culture even if all around it felt just the same as before. But eventually, once I listened, I began to see, and the reality transformed me. This is what I mean when I tell lgbt folks to be proudly lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered. I mean let your reality transform not only you, but the culture around you too.

You have to listen to hear and see what God is calling you to. And you have to be God’s creation to be transformative. It’s a two-way street. Happy Lent. Holy Lent.

2 Lent (Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)

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

 

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore*

It certainly has been a bizarre week. We began the week pre-occupied with Libya, and too few of us are paying attention to the coming total meltdown of the US economy, and we ended the week with earthquake, Tsunami, and now nuclear meltdowns in Japan. Certainly the stories from Japan are of what people like to call “biblical” proportions … I heard at one point that both an entire ferry and an entire train were missing.

The collect for this week, the first Sunday in Lent, reminds us that God knows our weaknesses.  It’s a good place to start.

Wednesday, as I was pulling out of the driveway to go celebrate the 6pm Ash Wednesday mass, I was almost killed. It’s always a potentially dangerous pullout; and lately, to his consternation, I’ve been making Brad buckle up before I back out. That’s because people with Jersey plates tend to think they’re in a Disneyland parking lot and barrel down the street at about 70. And that’s just what happened. I backed out enough to close the garage door, stopped, looked behind me to be sure no vehicle was on the street, and then I started to back out. And just then here it came, a blue Mini-Cooper, going about 70. I slammed on my brakes. It shook whoever it was up, because when I subsequently backed out and paused to be sure the garage door was locked, they had stopped  up the block. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to photograph the license plate.

Well, the point of this is that I went on to church and walked through mass as though I wasn’t in shock. People kept greeting me and saying “how are you” and I kept saying   “fine” but in my head I was saying “I was almost killed just now.” And, four days later I haven’t had the nerve to take my car out of the garage again. It’s the sort of thing that, together with too much work-stress, and earthquakes and Tsunamis, and revolutions and economic crises is just enough to put you out of sorts.

And that’s the message of Lent, isn’t it? Not being out of sorts. No, the Lenten message is about life as real-life; if we pray for chocolate God won’t magically give us chocolate. The world is the world, and creation is creation, and humanity is humanity, and God is always with us. But sometimes, in the meantime, in real life, things look kind of bleak.

I love the psalm this week—“I acknowledged my sin to you … then you forgave me the guilt of my sin.” Not “you forgave me my sin” but “you forgave me the guilt.” You see, and please write this down—sin is not a  naughty thing you do, sin is a way of living apart from God. And there really is no way for God to forgive you that, because God has nothing to do with it. God knows your weakness. If you choose to live apart from God, then that’s your decision. Where God can help, is with the guilt you feel about your decision. Do you want to come back into God’s fold? All you have to do is open your heart. And the guilt you feel, which overpowers you, is forgiven. Now the way is clear to plug in again to the richness of being a part of God, and a part of God’s creation, which is how we play our part in God’s kingdom.

The Gospel reading is about Jesus and Satan arguing in the desert. Did you think that was a historical report? Or did you get it, that this is about you, and about God, and about the forces that draw you away from God? Good. See, you’re learning. Now, what about those forces that draw you away from God? They’re all within you.  That’s why it always is your choice about whether to walk with God, to walk in love, or to put God to the test by walking in your own creation. Worship Satan who is within you, or worship God, and angels will attend you.

How do I connect all of this to any sort of reality? Well, go back to the beginning. Life always is tough. And in any moment we can choose to dwell in the hell of our own making, or to dwell in the heaven God has prepared for us. Did I do the right thing Wednesday night by keeping what happened to myself? I hope so. For if I hadn’t, I might have missed the opportunity to dwell in the celestial banquet hall, to feed God’s sheep,  to lay hands on them and draw God near to them in prayer. And in so doing to open my own self to the nearness of God.

As you know if you’ve been here before, I often have to ask myself what any of this says to gay folks–and here it is: for God who made us in God’s image we are just folks. Being gay is as much a state of mind as it is a way of being in the world. We can be people of creation who lift up creation with our love, or we can be “those other folks,” defined by how straight folks perceive us as different. If we let our own being be defined by others, that is a sort of sin, because it is letting our own minds cut us off from the loving folks God made us to be and wants us to be. So, for us the trick is to be gay, to go about life living and loving, and not to be defined in our own souls as different. Maybe Lenten discipline is a good thing then, for looking inward and scouring the dusty corners of our souls, the better to let the light of God’s love shine in.

Well, the real world is real, and man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Ask God to forgive you your guilt. And then my friends, remember we’re not only not in Kansas any more, we’re not in Eden any more either.

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

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

Transfiguring gay life*

I was in Milwaukee last week, no, not the last five days but the week before that. I was busy, and I apologize that I didn’t manage to post a homily last week. But then what was I going to say? The gospel was that damn thing that is always the Gospel on Thanksgiving about how the birds are pretty so don’t worry …. Silly nonsense.

I think one reason I was paralyzed about that was that the whole time I was in Wisconsin I was subjected to apocalyptic television, and I don’t mean CNN. And I don’t mean the news about the crisis in Wisconsin budget legislation either. I mean, the airwaves in Wisconsin are full of non-stop “this is the end of the world DO SOMETHING” programming. Much of it refers you to the Web, where it says the same thing. But then at the end it says “let me sell you a solution.”

So I don’t know what to think. Except that everything seems to be pretty bizarre at the moment.

This Sunday is a special day in the Christian calendar. We pause for a moment, maybe just to take an official deep breath after Christmastide,  before launching into the secular silliness of Lenten giving up of things. It’s a nice pause I have to admit, because we get to sing terrific hymns and hear all about magical goings on on mountaintops and so on.

And Tuesday is Mardi Gras, so we get to celebrate wildly—either with pancakes or lots of martinis—you choose (ha ha)—and then suddenly into Lent we dive with purple and penitence and flagellation and so forth. Ugh.

I love Advent, but I’m not so sure about Lent. Before I was a priest I savoured Lent; I enjoyed the difference, I sought out the special disciplines, I waited with eagerness for Holy Week and the Triduum and the change that would be wrought in my soul, especially after my annual Holy Week confession.
Then I was ordained and I found out most people just don’t care much and don’t even pay much attention, not even to the ritual. Nobody makes a confession. Nobody comes to the services during the Triduum—“what, and miss American Idol?” And the Easter Vigil gets a tiny congregation. And then BOOM thousands show up for Easter.

I’m never sure what to make of the whole thing. Which is what was resonating with me when I read this text from Exodus about Moses. God says “Yo, Moses, come up here, I want to talk.” And Moses has to climb a mountain. Now, I was just in Seattle, and I tried to walk two blocks from hotel A to hotel B and I know now how Moses and his assistant Joshua felt. I was out of breath halfway up the first block; and my back took two weeks to recover.

So Moses finally gets up there and he’s out of breath and his back hurts and he’s not sure what to hold on to not to fall down the damn mountain again and a cloud comes. Come to think of it that sounds like Seattle too.  So this cloud covers God and the mountain for seven days. And that’s just the beginning. This cloud that covers everything is called “the glory of the Lord.” And Moses, who just nearly broke his back climbing up there has to stand there for SEVEN DAYS!

And then, like some MTV prank, God calls out of the cloud, which by the way also is a devouring fire …. Oh, it must have been a volcano, I just got that …. And now Moses has to go in to see the boss, and all it tells us is he was in there for 40 days and 40 nights.

When I read this I was reminded of how disconnected from the world I become when I travel. And I also was reminded of how disconnected from the world I become when I pray. And that’s a pretty interesting set of reminiscences. What does it mean to be connected to the world? We equate connection with God with connection with one another. But it seems connection with the world is another thing altogether. Hmmmm.

In the Gospel Jesus goes up the mountain into the cloud, and takes Peter and James and John with him. This time the wordly guys get a glimpse of what’s going on—they see Jesus talking to Elijah and Moses. Jesus tells them it was a vision, and tells them to keep it to themselves until after he is raised from the dead.

You know I heard someone say recently how Jesus woke up and resurrected himself from the dead. You know, it’s really important to understand that that’s ALL WRONG. In fact, in the Gospel, in the Greek, the whole business is in a special tense called “aorist passive” such that what it really says is that Jesus “was raised”—are you following? It means he didn’t just get up, it means God made it happen. And it doesn’t say how.

Those are important metaphors for Christians. God is taking care of things. And you cannot know how it works. It is not perceivable by human means. Which is why God asks us to have faith and trust in God. And  yet God does not leave us bereft at the bottom of the cliff. God makes us claw our way up the mountain and then gasp our way through the volcanic ash.

I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for life. It isn’t easy. But it works. Promise is everywhere, but there’s no certainty about most things. And faith greases the emotional skids—if we have faith, if was have reasonable faith, then we will see what is in the cloud.

You know having faith doesn’t mean being blind and it doesn’t mean letting churchy types walk all over you. It means doing your best to listen to God even in the cloud. Listening is a lost art—it requires shutting up … even the tape in your brain …

If you listen, you will hear what God has to say. And if you listen to what God has said to you, you will know where your faith is well-placed in the risen One.

We had our latest lgbt (okay, for some of us it was glbt) potluck last night. It was great. Every time we have one we have a little bit more listening among us. There was a lot of talk last night from those of us who are married about how it feels, what happened, what we did. That’s all a sort of revelation now isn’t it? And you know what I think when we go into the potluck and begin Evening Prayer God’s cloud descends around us, like a protective blanket, like that fog that comes over Twin Peaks in San Francisco every evening around 5. And it’s like a comforter. And inside the cloud we get to hear God speaking to us, through us.

That’s transfiguration my friends.

 

*Last Sunday after Epiphany (Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9)

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