Spiritual charger*

God says “I have called you by name, you are mine.” It’s an awesome concept (to revist a badly misused term) that somehow everyone of us is called by name by God. I’ve always wondered whether cats really understand their names, or whether they just respond to a tone of voice used by their human companions. Several times over the course of my life I have met people whose name I just could not remember no matter what I tried. In a couple of cases I finally let myself memorize them by the phrase “A whose name is B” and that worked. I guess it works because it allows me to remember the key stuck in my brain and from there to connect to the actual name.

The scripture for today is all about the baptism of Jesus. As I wrote last year, it seems a little odd that the baby wise men were just visiting last Wednesday is now 30-some years old and wandering in the desert where he can come across John the Baptizer. But, that’s scripture for you. I like to take these occasions to remind us that sequential time is a human interpretation of God’s spacetime, which is a single continuum. Maybe last Wednesday really was thirty years ago! (Okay, I know better …. I’m just pondering things here.)

Two of my closest friends got engaged this week, Tuesday to be exact, and it got announced Thursday if I recall correctly. I enjoyed watching their Facebook feeds go berserk with congatulatory messages. Each message included their names. Names are important because calling someone by name is an acknowledgment of the power of God within. When we call someone directly by name we connect with the soul that was called by name by God.

As a priest I have presided at weddings and baptisms. The liturgies for these sacraments are lengthy and complex. But the key moments are the naming of the people and the invocation of Father-Son-And Holy Spirit. It is like connecting electrodes so the power can arc through the connection. For all the words I might have uttered at any of these events, the moments I remember are those electric moments when the power of naming a person baptized, or the power of naming two persons married sets the power of the Holy Spirit arcing about, connecting them and god and me and everyone present to all past and future in a heartbeat.

It is just one reason lgbt people can rejoice for full inclusion in the church as married individuals. It is one way of connecting the power from the moment of baptism with the power of the moment of marriage. It is one way of understanding the ontological shift—the change in being—that takes place when two become one literally in God’s sight and in the sight of God’s people.

I was crossing a street in downtown Toronto the other day when I passed a woman and two young men as the woman said “all the gay people are getting married now.” I chuckled a little bit. Of course we are, I thought. Now that we understand the power of entering into a sacrament together.

I can’t end of course without reminding us all that that’s the same power of entering the sacrament of the Eucharist together, which too few of us do often enough. It’s all a matter of plugging into God’s spiritual charger in order to remain always connected through the power of the Holy Spirit shared among us.

Peace be with you.

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*1 Epiphany (Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22)

 

Massah and Meribah?*

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ended this week. It was always a dreadful policy, dreamed up by some policy wonk someplace who figured compromise with human rights was a step forward, forgetting altogether that to compromise any human’s rights is to deny them the respect God demands for them. Well, that said, the policy has ended, but of course, discrimination has not. Serving openly won’t end the discrimination; there will still be snickering and lost promotions and low priority for housing and on and on. But at least the government no longer officially sanctions discrimination in this regard.

It is a useful lesson to hold up next to that story from Exodus, about the angry exiles wandering in the desert cursing Moses and demanding tests of God. Libertation doesn’t just happen, exodus doesn’t just happen, equality for lgbt people isn’t going to just happen. Rather, it takes a million steps, like Confucius’ famous journey, some forward, some sideways, a few back. Like most journeys there is plentiful time to pause for reflection. I think of all of the ways in which equality has come to be—marriage for instance where it is available. I remember marveling at my own wedding that it was even possible. This week I’ve spent in Amsterdam I’ve noticed a remarkable number of gay couples who’ve just been married. Marriage has been available in the Netherlands for more than a decade, but something has shifted in the consciousness of gay people such that young couples now grow up and fall in love with the expectation that marriage is a real possibility. That is the blossoming of equality in the hearts and souls of gay people. This is the outpouring of God’s grace, like the waters at Massah and Meribah, through the lives of lgbt people living into the fulfillment of God’s call to them.

I suppose that makes me like those angry exiles yelling at Moses. (More likely, I’d have been standing behind them shaking my head.) But it has happened several times this week that a couple has walked into a room and been applauded waving their rings and grinning ear to ear. Part of the beauty of it is being able to witness the shift in the community attitude. And that is a lot like what happened at Meribah too. Look at that psalm, written generations later, recounting the flowing of water as a praiseworthy deed and a wonderful work, the ire of the moment completely past in the fulfillment of the reality of the presence of God in everyday life.

And God is in the reality of everyday life, even when we grumble, maybe especially when we grumble and moan and then do the right thing. Like the first son in Jesus’ parable, who says he will not work but goes anyway, most of us push through life in a kind of reverse swim, instead of sweeping water behind we fend off whatever comes at us. And then in a moment of intense clarity we see that we need not struggle so much, because God is with us in every thing.

God is with us in the struggle for lgbt equality. We know this because we see the fruits of God’s mercy in our lives. We know this because we know God created us in God’s own image. We know this because we see God’s love in each other’s eyes.

Proper 21 (Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 Attendite, popule; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

More or less random thoughts

I missed the last two Sundays, I know.

On the 5th I was traveling home to Philadelphia from Fredericton, New Brunswick. I had been there for an academic conference, a really great, inspiring, conference. I decided to make my “prayer” for that day the trip itself. My first flight, from Fredericton to Montréal, was on a Dash-8 prop-jet. I hadn’t seen one of those since I lived in Illinois 30 years ago. It was on time, and although it was packed, it also was pleasant enough. In fact, the whole experience was pretty pleasant (the conference, the travel both directions, the visit to Fredericton), if not really exciting. The second flight was an immense A330, which had just flown from Brussels to Montréal, and also was packed with Dutch-speakers. That was fun. I could understand them, but their accent was a little thick, so I’ve no idea where, exactly they came from … however, it had a Dutch ring to it so I don’t think they were Flemish. Maybe they’re from Maastricht or Limburg. The final flight was an Embraer, which is what makes Air Canada flights to and from Toronto so much nicer than those horrid US Scareways Express flights. All together a very nice trip. It was especially noticeable that, although I had three flights, all were on time, smooth, pleasant. Try to do that on US Scareways.

Fredericton might be the provincial capital, but it was a very small city. If there is gay life there I never found it. People were pretty nice, and very helpful, but I did feel sort of out of place. Also, almost all of the service employees I ran into–hotel, bar, restaurants, even cab drivers–were women. It began to dawn on me that young men probably leave when they get out of school to go to Toronto or someplace metropolitan to make their careers. Interesting. There was a night-club that is listed as a gay bar, but it was rarely open, so I never got to it. I was working, after all.

Yesterday I preached and celebrated at CHT in the morning (it was Pentecost after all), and in the afternoon I blessed pets at the William Way LGBT Community Center’s booth at Philly Pride. That was fun. We did somewhat better with it this year, and by my count I blessed 14 dogs. I blessed 6 cats by remote (ha, I gave the owners a “blessing” card to take home with them). Two other dogs came by to have some of the cool water, but their owners didn’t want them blessed. I did notice that the people who brought their pets to be blessed were very gentle sorts of people. It made me wonder whether there is some nurturing instinct that some lgbt people have, that correlates with the way they manage their pet relationships. All of these people commented (which got my attention, because it happened 14 times) that the dogs were a bit freaked out by all of the people at Pride. Interesting.

The sermon I gave in the morning is available on CHT’s website. It is titled “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I found myself, as I was composing it, outing myself anew. As a preacher for my former lgbt interparish ministry I often gave very openly gay-affirming sermons, but since I’d gone to CHT I had been aware I had pulled back. I’m glad I’ve gotten over that hump now. It was a little thing, really–I was describing my experiences of the Holy Spirit and although getting ordained was clearly going to be on the list, I also had to include getting married to Brad.

Being married has been quite an eye-opener. We have been together 33+ years, married 3+ years. But since we’ve been married there is something about the quality of  the relationship that has changed, in much the same way there is a sort of ontological shift that comes with being ordained. I wrote in the sermon that it is the matter of receiving the Holy Spirit’s gift of unity as part of the marriage–unity with each other, and our collective unity (as two-made-one) with God. I really believe this to be the case. I was amused, as often, about the little matter of when I raise my hands to the orans position to begin the Sursum corda, I can see out of the corner of my left eye the candle-light gleaming in my wedding ring. It always reminds me that I’m married, that Brad is with me, and that God is part of it. Neat, huh?

Well, I said these were more or less random thoughts.

But lgbt people who think marriage won’t make a difference in their relationships need to ponder this. The sermon is here: http://www.htrit.org/worship/sermons.html.

You thought it was just about Marriage!*

Last Monday the Episcopal News Service put out a notice that the Bishop of Massachusetts had solemnized the marriage of two female priests. It seemed like a sort of hallmark to me at the time so I made a note to note it here. You can read the story at the ENS site:  http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80263_126369_ENG_HTM.htm. Of course, probably thousands or millions even were married last Monday, and even hundreds by bishops, so we have to pause for a moment to think about why this merits a news release. Our marriages are still rare enough to evoke interest from society. I suppose for us, glbt folks, each one is sort of a marker of progress made.

The next day I flew to Toronto for my annual winter break, a bit of retreat time for writing and sleeping late. As it happened, that afternoon some friends were married at City Hall, in the same place where my husband and I were married two years ago. I was delighted to attend, and it brought up lots of thoughts for me, not the least of which was the simple observation about how absolutely normal it is for same sex couples to be wed in that chapel, or at all, in Canada. Marriage equality is no longer new here, and it has assumed a certain role in society that makes all of the hoo-hah about it in the US seem totally silly.

Then again, there is also my suspicion that it is deliberate that the right to marry is being denied to us. I told my friends they would notice a difference, but that it would be subtle. Just one day you sort of notice that you feel married, you feel like family, because you are. Like ordination or baptism, marriage is a sacrament (even civil marriage), and the people involved experience something theologians call an ontological shift. That means your very being changes somehow. Two really do become one, and not just the mathematical sum of A plus B, but a new and different entity, a family. And we really need to stop letting people make any argument about denying us the right to marry other than an acknowledgment that it is discrimination to set aside a class of people and deny them the right to an essential part of life.

Jesus’ own baptism is the action that assumes hallmark status in this week’s scripture. It is a dramatic  story. Jesus enters into the action in dialogue with John the Baptist by saying “let it be so” and “it is proper … to fulfill all righteousness.”  It is just action, and it is necessary action, for the equilibrium of God’s creation that this sacramental action should take place. And when it does, the simple dunking in the river becomes the gateway to the ontological shift in which the very voice of God becomes perceptible, audible and visible at once as though somehow the dimensions of the very universe were shifted on their axes.

Interestingly enough, this scripture is paired with a reading from Acts that we usually hear at Easter, in which Peter gives a startling sermon that begins “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” For “nation” you could read “society” or “neighborhood” or “congregation” or “family.” The point is, God has given us the grace of unity with God and one another, and our challenge is always and only to “fulfill all righteousness” by “doing what is right.” It is God’s plan that creates us gay, and it is God’s plan that we should be married, so that by establishing our families the axes of the universe can shift to show everyone the glory that is God.

And you thought it was just about marriage!

*1^st Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-17)

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

Jesus said “feed my sheep”

But he never said we were supposed to choke on it. Are you fed by the Spirit? Or are you fed up with being treated like a second-class citizen because you’re gay?

The Church of Sweden (Lutheran, established) has just extended “marriage” to all couples. The usual nonsense about “a man and a woman” is being tossed at us from no-it-alls (no, that’s not a mistake, I did that on purpose). I’ve been fed up for a long time. So has Bishop Spong, apparently. Have you seen his manifesto? It was distributed by Integrity on October 15. I apologize for cross-posting but I can’t find a proper link, so here it is:

Thursday October 15, 2009
A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate “reparative therapy,” as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality “deviant.” I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that “we love the sinner but hate the sin.” That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is “high-sounding, pious rhetoric.” The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn’t. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to “Roll on over or we’ll roll on over you!” Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a “new church,” claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by “fair-minded” channels that seek to give “both sides” of this issue “equal time.” I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world’s population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a “mobocracy,” which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture’s various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the “Flat Earth Society” either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church’s participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: “New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth.” I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong