Pray. Love is Endemic.

Love surpasses all understanding. How is that? If you know the power of love; not sentimental warm feelings, but truth, justice, righteousness—the things that define God’s love–then you know that love surpasses all understanding. God pours love into our hearts so that we might give love out through our own love of life building it up until the whole of creation sings with joy.

As indeed it is doing right now. The rhododendrons are blooming gloriously, shortly it will be warm enough to plant vegetables for the summer, the peonies are swelling to blossom, after some dry spells the spring rain is gloriously back in Oregon giving us the opportunity for short drives in the rain, for in-between sunny day glimpses of Mount Hood glistening with new snow. Love is endemic.

There are two broad categories of prayer, or maybe I should say, approaches to prayer. Kataphatic prayer is the kind we find in liturgies, precise words repeated over and over in specific patterns. Apophatic prayer is the kind used in “centering” prayer, in which there is no content, only the job of being still and listening for what God brings (here is a tutorial).

I have always been more attracted to kataphatic prayer. Indeed, I find it apophatic in its repetitive nature. That is, as the prayer is recited over and over, consciousness shifts from the foreground to the back, where indeed there is silence, and room for God to enter in. But that’s just me I guess.

I thought of this when I saw this week’s story from Acts [10:44-48] where it says “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” LOL, his kataphatic voice lulled them into apophatic presence. They were lulled into a trance by Peter’s voice and in the trance the Holy Spirit occupied their hearts. The listeners were converted by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Fascinatingly, the story ends by telling us they invited Peter to stick around for awhile.

But there also is a story here about the spiritual welcoming of those were were outcast. The crowd Peter was preaching to was a mix of insiders and outcast; the insiders were “astounded” that the outcasts could get it, not just that they heard and understood but that they received the Holy Spirit.

It reminded me of church conventions, where of necessity everyone is together in one place and in worship the divisions must cease. It is in such arenas that LGBTQ+ people are at their most powerful just by their presence, especially their visible presence among the faithful. Sing a new song, indeed [Psalm 98]. This past week after decades of division our United Methodist kin, in convention, used the joy and love in their hearts to bring LGTBQ+ people into full membership. The insiders embraced the formerly outcast and all of the faithful received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

John’s first epistle of love [1 John 5:1-6] continues to explain how all of us who know God’s love must be (as there can be no other possibility) children of God. We know God’s love because we know love as we know gravity. We know love as we know rain and sun and hugs and tears. We know love because we are love because we are people of love.

In John’s Gospel [15:9-17] Jesus tells his disciples about the transcendence of love: “As [God] has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Joy must be in us for us to make love complete. But God’s love brings us such joy that we have the capacity to make more love. Love builds up. If we love one another creation will bring everything we need.

Let us embrace the Holy Spirit, rejoice in inclusiveness, and pray however we can for peace in the Holy Land.

6 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98 Cantate Domino; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)

©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Prayer, Joy, Faith

We are on a prayer trajectory it seems. Last Sunday I wrote about sustaining, connecting, present prayer. This week the scripture again points us directly to prayer, but this time with an emphasis on the expression of faith.

Is your prayer “lead me, guide me?” This is the prayer God, creation, the universe, the power of love, is looking for. “Lead me, guide me.”

This week my husband and I drove up (okay, we drove to the east) the Columbia Gorge and back so he could have a fun outing and a good sandwich. It was great. Portland and environs were engulfed in smoke from a wildfire in Washington State, but the Gorge was clear, with marine winds sweeping up the river. The big water of the Columbia River is soothing all by itself in its power and majesty. My husband ate an enormous bratwurst. I bought a whole salmon from the good folks under the Bridge of the Gods. It was fun, but it also was tender for the love we shared in the quiet moments in the presence of nature. We loved each other even more as we were doing it and yet more still in the evening at home, basking in the joy of the day.

I think we all as LGBTQ people are feeling threatened, for good reason. Those of us who are old enough probably know that LGBTQ people had vast liberation in the early 20^th century but it was all pulled back by oppression from the right wing in the 1930s and that lasted until the 1970s. We all know it could easily happen again.

Whatever else we do in the political world, which is not my mandate here, we must follow the law of love that God gives us. We must have faith expressed in the love we share. Hope must persist in the plans we make. And charity is how we make sure that both faith and hope persist—we must remain in the aura of love, we must constantly “be glad and rejoice.”

LOL there is a lot of scripture this week about rain. Well I can tell you we had months of 100 degree heat, and then we had a week of air quality nightmares with yellow foggy skies, and then God’s rain began and now even my lawn that looked like hay after one night of rain is green again. Hallelujah!

The sky is blue and hope has returned to us in creation.

In Joel 2:23-32 the prophet is led by God to proclaim the relief of rain “[God] has given the early rain for your vindication, [God] has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.” It is a sign that faith has been rewarded by equilibrium, it is the basis of hope for fertility and growth and of course for love. The psalmist (Psalm 65: 9, 11) responds “you visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water … you drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges; with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.” At the close of his second letter to Timothy (4:6-8, 16-18) Paul stands firm on his own faith “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Luke 18:9-14 records a parable of Jesus comparing the prayer of the self-righteous to the prayer of a sinner.  Jesus reminds us “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, ….”

“Lead me, guide me” indeed. Pray. Have faith.

The rain will come, the earth will nourish all creation with love.

Above all else have joy. Because joy is the beginning of love, given, which is faith expressed.

Proper 25 Year C 2022 RCL (Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65 Te decet hymnus; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)

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

Sustaining, Connecting, Present Prayer

We are asked to pray. In Luke 18:1-8 “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

We tend to think of prayer as “asking.” We forget, that prayer, really, is about “connecting.”

I remember one particularly sweet moment in my ordained life, after 15 years or so of regular prayer at specific times, after 3 years of seminary with prayer at regular specific times throughout the day, after my ordination as deacon and then as priest … I took a break.

You know, you get to have a break once in a while.

And one morning, I was sitting at my computer, it was a sunny day and I was looking out the window and there was suddenly a unitive moment.

Now, these are the moments when you “know” God is with you. Usually, they happen when you ask for them. Sometimes they happen when you are in a time of trial and God just wants to let you know you are not alone. But this was different, and as I pondered what God wanted I realized it was prayer time and I had not prayed in over a week. God missed me!

I laughed out loud. And then I said “thank you.” And then I learned at last to pray, not in “gimme-gimme” style, but rather in “I’m here” style.

This is what God wants—God wants us to be present not only with God but also with each other. In other words, love, always.

LGBTQ people are particularly good at this; it is our call after all, it is why God created us so we might be witnesses to love. And the best way we can be witnesses to love, which is God, is to live fully, at all times, into God, which is love.

In Jeremiah 31:33 God says “I will put my law [of love] within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” In Psalm 119:97 the psalmist responds “Oh, how I love your law!, all the day long it is in my mind.” In 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Paul preaches to “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed” and “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”

In other words, pray always and do not lose heart.

On Thursday October 14 Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez (Bishop of Pennsylvania, where I am canonically resident) sent a message to the diocese about beauty asking “What did you see today that was beautiful? Or, what did you hear that was beautiful? Beauty has the power to change our hearts and the world. In that beauty, we find joy ….” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYq1vGxiS0A ). Seeking beauty, recognizing beauty, is itself a form of prayer. Sharing beauty—such as the beauty I see in my husband’s heart—is a form of active prayer, a sustaining, connecting, present prayer.

Proper 24 Year C 2022 RCL (Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119: 97-104 Quomodo dilexi!; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8)

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

As we are One

People I meet in the “real” world often are shocked to learn I am a priest. Usually, then, the first thing they say is “I try to read the Bible.” I always say, “Oh please don’t do that.” I know there is this idea out there somewhere that the Bible (btw, from the Greek for “book”) is a non-fiction work written by God. But, oh my … where do I start?

Well, first, God doesn’t write.

More importantly, the Bible is a collection of edited texts of oral histories most of which were written down thousands of years ago.

My first day in seminary I asked the professor who would become my favorite, because he always told me the truth, “why do we read a text that stopped thousands of years ago.” He smiled (how many thousands of times had he answered that question?). Then he said, “because it is the complete revelation of God’s action in the world.” He didn’t say how that day, but he did teach me over three years, to read the revelation as though it were alive today.

So, let’s just take a look at what we have this week.

From 1 Peter (4:1): “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.”

Peter is writing to the early church about persecution. But, how clearly does this passage speak to us now? How frightening and worrisome is this time we live in, in which, at least in theory, every person out there might carry death? How unsettling is it to be separated from people we love with only faint hope that we might be able to travel to one another again? Peter, in words taught to him by Christ, responds “Do not be afraid” and “trust in the righteousness of glory to come.”

From Acts 1:6-14: “When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying … constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”

What better definition do we need for “shelter in place and pray”?

From 1 Peter 5:6-11: “Humble yourselves …. Cast all your anxiety on [God], because [God] cares for you …. steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace … will … restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.”

Pray for strength, pray to give thanks for health, pray to give thanks for little things like toilet paper and chickpeas reappearing in markets, pray to give your anxiety to God, pray with thanksgiving for the love God has shown you in creation.

From Psalm 68: 8-10: “The earth shook, and the skies poured down rain, at the presence of God …. You sent a gracious rain, O God, upon your inheritance; you refreshed the land when it was weary. Your people found their home in it.

Theophany—the revelation of the presence of God among us—is both the fulsome recognition of God in nature, God in every breath, God in every heart, God in every breeze or drop of rain or every ray of sun, as well as the relief that follows the rain. It is how we find our “home.”

Where are we now in this pandemic? Ten weeks in, five months in? Time and space have melded for all of us sheltering in place, as it did for Christ’s disciples in that upper room, leaving us closer to God and each other, ever deeper in prayer and in love. How much more our dependence of technology has shifted from the isolation of heads buried in phones to the constant chatter of Zooms and Skypes and Facetimes, the “gracious rain” of our time. How much has this ordeal brought lgbt people closer to long desired social integration? In times like this everyone is in it together.

At the climax of Jesus’ ascension his prayer is for this time as for all time: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” Amen.

 

The Seventh Sunday Of Easter (Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11)

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

Being*

Thanks for your patience. After Easter I went to Amsterdam for two weeks. I know everybody thinks Amsterdam is a party town but that isn’t why I go there. There are several reasons I go there, actuallly. Maybe at the top of the list is that it has a culture that lets me be me. I think everything flows from that.

Of course, there are other major points. One is that, allowed to be me, I finally can relax. When I’m in Amsterdam I often sleep soundly all night and for 10-12 hours, whereas in my own home in the US where I have a wonderful bed, I rarely sleep 8 hours, and that in 45 minute segments. Doctors are always trying to diagnose something. I always tell them “but, in Amsterdam, I sleep soundly all night.”

Being allowed to be myself means I have genuine friends and even casual relationships, some of which are now 15 years running, that are all just based on real friendship. Then the next layer means, that being relaxed and among friends, I can be creative. So I often spend entire days (after my morning coffee) writing. In a short two week period I have finished six scientific papers (and that doesn’t include the ones on which I’m the second author and somebody else wrote most of it), started three more, and worked night and day on a book. I had hoped to finish the book. It actually is all in the template to be sent to the publisher—except I’m just not done enough yet. But the three days since I got back to the US have been telling, I haven’t had a moment’s peace to even look at the book, let alone finish it.

Then there is the culture of canals and tolerance and gezelligheit …. in fact, on the way in the immigration officer asked the guy in front of me whether he spoke Dutch (he didn’t); same officer didn’t even respond when I walked up and spoke Dutch to him … so when he asked me why I came to Amsterdam so often I said “because it’s gezellig!” He laughed and stamped my passport. And then said “welcome.” So I thanked him loudly in Dutch, and finally got a reply in Dutch.

Acts 9 speaks of a disciple in Joppa named Tabitah who was devoted to good works and acts of charity. But I think the key is that she was a disciple. That means she knew Jesus. In the story, she becomes ill and dies, and then Peter is summuned from nearby Lydda. Peter seems to be learning the ropes here, but he knows what to do—he prays. Tabitha is resurrected.

This is a metaphor of course as much as it is a true story. It reminds us that our faith begins in faith. The first thing we learn is that Tabitha had faith, she knew Jesus after all. And then it tells us that no matter what happens, prayer is the path to the reality of resurrection.

Is it an accident that I have a writing alternative life in Amsterdam? No. It is the answer to a prayer I had many years ago, that I might find peace. And so I have now in abundance the peace that passes all understanding, as the husband of a wonderful man for 35 years, as a priest, and as the quiet American on the north side of the gracht (erm, canal) typing away at his laptop. This is a kind of ongoing resurrection for me. It is, in effect, being.

What does resurrection look like for you?

Alleluia. Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

*4  Easter (Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30)

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

Where you go, I will go*

Brad, my husband, and I have been together for something like 34 years and a bit. We lose track of the exact number sometimes, because like most couples we’ve had moments when we were less together than others, and because after three decades memories are less precise. Still, it has been a blessing. I remember walking with him on the beach in Galveston shortly after we met, but when we were both clear that something momentous was working in us. He said he thought we would last a long time because we had a similar world view. I guess he was right.

The past two weeks have been a bit of a trial. He had pneumonia, the critical kind, and wound up in intensive care. I wound up at his bedside, listening to each breath, watching every tick or eye movement, wishing I could just take him home and give him something to eat. He is fully recovered now and will come home later today, by the way, or I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.

I think one thing that kept coming to me all during the ordeal was how the two of us have become everything for each other, real family. I know this has been palpable for both of us since our marriage in Toronto, on our 30^th anniversary. We thought we were making a political statement, and we thought we were making a wise decision, but we both were stunned to discover how different it felt to be married. We are family.

So instead of looking at the displaced propers for All Saints that most Episcopalians are using today, I wanted to stick with the propers for this Sunday, the 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost, not in the least because the opening lesson is the story of Ruth and Naomi, and the trials that made them a family unto themselves, and the beautiful song that Ruth sings to Naomi: “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” It should be read at every same-sex wedding, heck, it should be read at every wedding.

There also is a reading from Hebrews that rather gruesomely compares the theology of sacrifice made by Christ for sin—disconnectedness from God—for all humanity, with the sacrifice of goats and calves and bulls and heifers. Let’s just be clear, in Christ we are all connected with God forever through our humanity which we share with Jesus. Mark’s Gospel story for today is the story of Jesus giving the greatest commandments, to love God and to love one another. At the end of the story Jesus tells a scribe, who has understood that to love God is to love one another and to love one another is to love God, that he is not far from the kingdom of God. We need to understand that in the love we share for each other we can see and touch the palpable presence of God, who is always within us as love.

Several priests came to visit us and to pray with us during this. One friend said she could see Brad change as the prayers were said over him. As the process went on I became more insistent in my own prayers, and gave up the formulas I’ve memorized over the years for more precise demands. “Jesus do this now!” (Fill in  your own blanks there.) What do you know? It worked. It works. Our salvation is that we already are with Christ. Our knowledge of Christ who is God is palpable in the love we share.

*Proper 26 Year B (Ruth 1:1-18; Psalm 146 Lauda, anima mea; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind*

On Saturday October 20 I wrote the post that appears below. I went to bed early, as I always do on Saturday, planning to post it on my way to church early Sunday morning (I like to sleep on it, as it were). At 3am the hospital called to tell me my husband was unable to catch his breath so had been moved to intensive care. I went to be with him.

He’s recovered now; I’m en route to bring him home. But I want to post this anyway. How little did I know how God answers us out of the whirlwind:

Well, I’ve been there this week. Between chaotic people and a husband in the hospital I feel like I’m living in the whirlwind. What is GOD saying to me, out of this whirlwind? Good question. Actually, I like this GOD from Job who dares to say “who the H are you?” I think we need to think about God in that way more often. Like James and John in the Gospel, we tend to think God is “ours” and is always working for us individually, and that is why we have the temerity to pray for things for ourselves. But of course, Jesus’ rebuke is the reminder that God is the God of the universe (this is echoed, of course, in the Psalm and in Job (which is an echo of the Psalm) where we learn just how God created everything). When we pray, first we should listen, and second we should respond to what God has given us. That, is effective prayer.

My husband is sick this week, in the hospital with pneumonia. I was out of town, and he got febrile and had chills so he went in. I always feel powerless when he is ill, because I am. But also because when I was a hospital chaplain among people with AIDS they so often died of infections they got in the hospital. So I always go through the same set of prayers—fix him, make him well, and bring him home quickly. But what God is asking of us is that we should take responsibility for God’s kingdom. We, glbt people, are called by God to love with all our hearts so that the love we share for each other will lift the rest of society like a peak in whipped cream. We are to love with every ounce of our glbt being, and in so doing our love lifts the whole world.

Boy do I love Brad. I am not whole without him. Last night I went over to the hospital even though I’d been 12 hours flying home. He said “you need to rest” and I said “no, I need you.”

Enough said.

GOD answers us out of the whirlwind. Listen.

*Proper 24 (Job 38:1-7, (34-41); Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b Benedic, anima mea; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved

The power of lgbt prayer*

I suppose it’s a rare week when gay people can look not to scripture, but instead to the prayer of the week (ok, its official name is “collect of the day”) for enlightenment, but there it is: “receive the prayers of your people who call upon you” and “grant that they may know what they ought to do” and “have grace and power to accomplish them.” Sounds like marriage equality to me.

Whoa! Did that seem like a surprise? Well, it shouldn’t. That is the power of prayer. I watched a strange episode of Bill Maher’s show the other night where he equated prayer with talking to your hair dryer. It just goes to show you he hasn’t experienced the power of being plugged into God. Still, most Christians on our side of the boat (by which I mean Episcopalians) don’t really believe in prayer. They think it’s just one of those things that have to listen embarrassed while people at church talk about it, and then they can go home and have a beer and forget about it. But, my friends, prayer works. And always in surprising ways.

In seminary I had an experience with a group of seminarians, meeting with a mentor who said just that to us: “I suppose none of you really believe in prayer.” She was right, none of us did. She told us to march out and pray for something and come back next week and report. Whoa! We were all bowled over. (That means it worked.) So, this collect up there, about praying to God (here’s a paraphrase): “ring, ring, here I am, hello are you there? Hi, ‘sup? Hey this marriage thing we need help. Ok, thanks.” Well, it worked didn’t it?

Now, before I say another gay thing, I want any and everybody reading this to pray for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, right away (both—you pray right away, and they raise it right away). I don’t have enough to lose it all in 1000% inflation panic.

I’ll leave it to my colleagues in pulpits to explain the Gospel for today (it’s the parable of the sower of wheat). Although I have to say I love the commentary “Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there.” Isn’t that wonderful? Just imagine!

Paul says “you are not in the flesh you are in the Spirit” and he means God is in you and you are in God. Sort of like my iPhone is always plugged into my iMac and the force (!) flows between them. Actually, it’s exactly like that. God is always flowing through you as life-force. You can choose to work with it, or to ignore it, or to oppose it. When Paul says “if you live according to the flesh you will die” he means if you ignore the force that is within you you will have the kind of gray life that deteriorating biological entities face. When he says “if you cry ‘Abba father’” he means when you get it that the jolt of the force that is God is flowing within you you ‘ll realize the circuit is complete, and the life within you will propel you ever onward.

(Yes, I’m skirting, flirting, with Gnosticism, but ever so gently.)

So okay folks, the idea is this: be who God made you to be. Not passively, but actively, fully, plugged in and glowing brightly like a string of gay Christmas lights. That is your destiny. That is your call as gay and lesbian people, to light up the drab life of the dreary world around you. Let your prayers change the world. And let the love of God, the love that is God, flow fully within you. Feel love, and express the love you feel. That’s about it.

(Oh, right, just like seeds sown in good soil, that bear fruit.)

*Proper 10 (Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112, Romans 8:9-17, Matthew 13:1-9,18-23)
©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

 

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.