From Triumph to Triumph of Love and Grace

Triumph takes many forms. We read this scripture for the Liturgy of the Palms [Mark 11:1-11]  about parades on donkeys through streets lined with followers. What about the hug you give your beloved every morning? Isn’t that, too, triumph? I think it is. In every moment in which you are able to love and be loved … hug your beloved; give your neighbors a plate of cookies; smile at the grocery cashier who took the trouble to smile at you … those are life’s triumphs. We are meant to treasure them.

Because it is God’s purpose in creation that we should live from triumph to triumph, from hug to hug, from cookies to smiles. And we are asked to give thanks as we go, because, as we see, love builds up.

We walk with Christ each day. We walk the way of creation, life is full of stumbles and steep cliffs and as we negotiate them, and survive them, and celebrate our triumphs with pure love, we are walking with Christ.

In the Liturgy of the Word for Palm Sunday [Mark 14:1-15:47] we walk the way of the cross. Have you ever wondered about the other people in this story, those with no names, or those we’ve never encountered before? There are bystanders and crowds and helpers all along the way. But in this story two things stand out for me, the young man following Jesus who ran away [Mark 14:51], and the women looking on from a distance … who used to follow Jesus [Mark 15:40 ff.]. I think this is where we are visible in the narrative of the way of the cross. These precious, loving people who are for whatever reason less than full members of society in their own day, these folks are made alive—literally healed—in the ministry of Jesus.

We who are God’s LGBTQ+ created people, we who populate that dimension in God’s multiverse, we are those people healed by his love. We are the fountain of love God has built up, from triumph to triumph, to provide the grace from which salvation springs.

Palm Sunday Year B RCL 2024 (The Liturgy of the Palms: Mark 11:1-11; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; The Liturgy of the Word: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16 In te, Domine, speravi; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47) ©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

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.

Love, for the sake of all of us

Who remembers what week it is of this event? I remember they told us to ready ourselves for two weeks of less outside travel. Now it seems we might endless isolation.

I love my home and the beauty of our surroundings. I have rarely witnessed so beautiful a spring, treasured so much each tulip blossom as the color increases in my garden day by day, breathed deeply the scent of the fir trees as the winter rains moderate. I treasure my health, and I am grateful that whatever thing I was dealing with last week has resolved. Still and all, it is easy to be worried these days.

It is Palm Sunday, the opening of the Christian Holy Week, which leads to the celebration by participation in the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ, which by grace is our salvation. This year (as many clergy have reminded us online) we will keep this feast as the earliest Christians did, as small family units, in isolation from the community, alone in our homes.

Isaiah wrote “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” (50:4). With what word shall I sustain us now? There is only one word, the word of God given freely to all who can or will embrace it—love.

Love, people.

Love, for the sake of all of us.

Love.

Philippians 2:5 says to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” How are we to do that?

Love, people.

Love, for the sake of all of us.

Love.

The passion narrative from Matthew’s Gospel is read aloud in liturgies on this day. Through it we remember the agony, the trial, the persecution, the crucifixion, the death. The story ends today with a sealed tomb—desolation, despair.

But we know the rest of the story. We LGBT Christians know as people of oppression what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ. We know that this via dolorosa leads eventually to salvation, and that salvation is the triumph of God’s love.

We all know what we need to do—social distance, at least six feet separation, mostly stay home, do not let the “bubble” around you be penetrated from outside.

What else can we do? We can give love with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds. We can give thanks all day each day that we are safe. We can give thanks for the beauty of God’s creation that surrounds us. We can give thanks for the heroes of this time who are caring for us—healthcare workers, grocery and pharmacy staff, broadcasters keeping us in virtual community. If we can all give love, we can overcome this too.

Love, people.

Love, for the sake of all of us.

Love.

 

Palm Sunday (Sunday of the Passion)

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

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

Our times are in God’s hand*

Another gap in this blog, due largely to another journey—a research and conference trip to Amsterdam and Florence. I got bronchitis in Amsterdam, and thus was rather out of sorts for the entire time. It was my first trip to Florence, and I managed on the last evening to see much of the historic center of the city. But mostly I coughed a lot and saw the insides of different academic center meeting rooms. Such is the scholar’s life in the twenty-first century.

Last week I traveled to Philadelphia where I am canonically resident (in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania) to participate in the election of a new bishop diocesan. I had never been part of an episcopal election, so I wanted to have that experience while I could. Also, I had been personally invited by several people to take part. Although I moved to Wisconsin in 2013, I remain connected to the diocese where I first heard my call to holy orders, and where I served as deacon and then as priest for almost two decades. It was a bit of a shock to my system—I suppose culture-shock is a good term for what I experienced—to enter the Cathedral Church of the Savior in West Philadelphia for the opening Mass. The music, of course, was almost overwhelming in the way it tugged at my heartstrings. As I looked around I saw so many familiar friends, as it happened all of us who went to seminary together and were ordained deacon together in that very cathedral were present, as were so many colleagues from so many years in the clergy of the diocese. So much life lived together, so many holy moments shared—it was a very powerful presence into which I entered and of which I became a part in a heartbeat. The phrase that flew into my consciousness was how good it was to be back in the bosom of the church.

One way in which clergy are fortunate is to have these experiences of the whole church, or at least of larger parts of it than individual congregations. In seminary our experience of this was constant, the better I suppose to orient us to leadership in our individual congregations. That said, the convention was an amazing experience. There were five candidates, after the opening Mass, the voting began. There were four ballots, each taking about two hours in the end. The ballot would be announced, then we all stood to sing and pray, and then there were ten minutes of silence, following which we were instructed to mark our ballots and hand them in. And then we waited while they were counted (and we gathered, while the candidates were contacted with the numbers before we were). After the second ballot two candidates withdrew. And on the fourth ballot finally there was an election in both houses (clergy and laity vote simultaneously and are counted separately; the successful candidate must be elected by majorities in both houses). (Lest I’ve aroused your curiosity, the facts are available on the diocesan website here: http://www.diopa.org/.)

I was very tired afterward but I was very glad I had taken part in that particular council of the church.

In preparation for the trip I had tried hunting down information about places to eat and was chagrined to discover my favorite haunt had closed. It was a gay restaurant from the old school, with a bar of course. Back in the mid-1980s when we first moved there it was still the sort of place where everything on the menu came with a green vegetable so as to reinforce the community’s nutritional standard. During the first ballot at the convention I got to chatting with parishioners from the church where I last had worked, and from this conversation learned a waiter I’d known there had passed away. Over the past week I’ve mentioned several times to my husband how surprised I was at how upsetting I found that news. We’d been acquainted for almost three decades, and I suppose almost unwittingly I had developed a sort of dependence on his presence. So it was a bit of a shock to learn of his passing followed by a good bit of grieving as well. On reflection I see that his work in the place was as much ministry as job, for decades he loved his customers and tended to them like a flock.

The week ended with my birthday. Another conundrum I suppose, because each year older now is sort of a numerical shock even though I don’t particularly feel old.

Well that’s my news. Today is Palm Sunday, and it is with the remembrance of the Passion that we enter Holy Week. We who are Christians will walk this week together into the deep darkness and then step once more into the light. It is not just a memorial of the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, of course. It is the way of all of life, all of human experience, and in this we learn to hold together in both the darkness and the light. God’s glory is not just in the music and incense but also in the grief, which expresses love experienced together in community.

And what an intersection of community. A restaurant that for decades had nurtured and tended to the gayborhood had been a haven and a loving presence. And a diocese of the church now fully open to the lgbt community.

En route to the diocesan convention I tried to discover whether there were any particular points of view about the candidates from the lgbt community and there were not. At first I was surprised about that, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. After all, the diocese’s formal decisions about full inclusion of lgbt people date back to the 1970s. I was not the first gay priest in the diocese, although I was among the first partnered gay ordinands at a time when marriage equality was brewing as a goal for a distant future. How interesting that that future now is our experience with marriage equality the reality in society and in the church. As I strolled around the convention (there was lots of time for strolling during those long ballot counts) I noticed how many lgbt people were present. Everyone at this event was in a leadership role, so that speaks volumes for not just the presence of the lgbt community in the diocese but also for their sense of belonging and their commitment to the church that has made a commitment to them. At one point I ran into a priest who had been a comrade of sorts in my ministry of evangelism in the lgbt community and we discussed how we had succeeded in not just creating environments that were open to lgbt people but also in finding ways to take the gospel into the community. So there is a lot of good news about lgbt Christians in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, and in the Episcopal Church in general.

I’ll close with a bit of today’s scripture, from which I paraphrase today’s blogpost title. From Psalm 31:14-15a “But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. I have said, “You are my God. My times are in your hand.”

 

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

*Palm Sunday (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:5-6)