Ever More Pride

It is high summer in Portland. This weekend is “Portland PRIDE.” There was an (I think successful) attempt to make a difference–a 48-hour drag show–this past weekend. This Sunday there will be a dinner cruise on the Willamette River hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It should be an exciting event all around.

We need to remember the importance of Pride: first, it helps us provide witness that we are here and we are proud, and second, it helps us build up our own pride in our own selves. In fact, that is the main point isn’t it? “Love your neighbor as yourself” begins with having pride in your own self.

We went on a quiet dinner cruise the other night with some friends from college days. The food was great and the views of Portland from the middle of the Willamette River are always going to be stunning. Not to mention it created for us a time to relax and enjoy dinner with people we love.

As we sat down my husband excitedly patted my knee … he had noticed (as had I) a young gay couple being seated at the next table. We smiled and laughed. I said “we looked like that once upon a time.” I suppose they were in their early to mid-20s (just like us when we met 45 years ago). As we were getting ready to leave after the cruise I spotted a couple of bears arm-in-arm, maybe in their early 40s.

So, I thought to myself, our love is not so quiet anymore. Hallelujah! I took comfort in seeing both couples. I wonder whether they saw us. I hope so.

God asks us to “know and understand” how love works, and gives us both the grace and the power to know and to understand that we might continue to walk in love.

There is a long story in Genesis [25:19-34], a continuation of the history of the blessings of Abraham, in this case the blessings of Isaac, whose wife Rebekkah has twins. You can read the story; it has its ups and downs, and I think we are to take from that that even God’s chosen have ups and downs and have to cry a bit and pray a lot. But in the end it all works out. I think the key to the whole story is in Rebekkah’s prayer—she went to inquire of [God] and [God] answered.

There you have it. Ask, and you shall receive.

God gives us the tools we need to be loving people, to let our own lives be “a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path” [Psalm 119:105, 112]. What a concept, eh? That your life should so light up the world?

Sounds like Pride again doesn’t it?

Paul, oh my, Paul. I bear his name (it is my middle name). He tells the truth [Romans 8:1-11]. “There is no condemnation.” Repeat that to yourself, over and over, and let it sink in that there is no condemnation. The law of love, if you can always walk in love, has set you free to lead the life God created especially for you to live. If you can remember always to walk in love, and to reject your animal instinct to isolate yourself, then you have been already given the tools you need to live in the Spirit. And when you live in the Spirit, God dwells in you. And you have “received a spirit of adoption;” you are, indeed, “children of God … heirs.”

Matthew’s Gospel recounts a day of preaching for Jesus [13:1-9, 18-23]. Jesus has to get in a boat because so many people had come to hear his simple message of love. He told stories. He pulled no punches: “let anyone with ears listen.” His parable of the seed is all about faith, and all about the power of the persistence of love, which always wins.

God loves you.

God loves us.

God created us, as we are, in God’s own image.

God wants us to do a special job, which is to show that family comes from love.

May Pride be with us all always.

Proper 10 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23)

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

Welcome, Pride

Happy Pride. Again.

Try to be happy, try to have pride. I know it is kind of tough these days to hang onto good feelings as we see daily that we are becoming again a persecuted minority.

But let’s hang onto the fact that it is sweet to be LGBTQ. God created us deliberately and with purpose as God’s LGBTQ people in God’s own image … never forget that, and never stop being proud of the LGBTQ person God created you to be. And remember you are called by God to be who you are!

This week there were a number of uh-oh moments for us … a seminarian at Nashotah House (https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/06/30/document-reveals-nashotah-house-rescinded-seminarians-acceptance-because-he-was-gay-married/ ) an actual accredited seminary for candidates to ordination in the Episcopal Church,! was turned out for being a “married” gay man. The reason was “traditional [sic] Christian beliefs.” This means, they think being “gay” and “married” means you are having lots of hot sex. It also means they are really wrong about Christianity and homosexuality. And then there is the woman who claims she is a Christian and so cannot make a wedding website for a gay couple, although as it turns out, it was a straight man who didn’t actually ask her to do anything, who she cited in her lawsuit (https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/colorado-web-designer-court-filings/index.html ). This person seems very confused about many things, but it is clear that her “Christian beliefs” also are not correct.

Back decades ago when I was ordained, and when I began writing a column for the Philadelphia Gay News which morphed into this blog, I tried to lay out the facts (check this out if you want: https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2009/10/ ). Here, to bolster us, is a reminder that in the Old Testament, which we as Christians read because it is the revelation of God’s acts in the world, the two most revealing and profound love stories are those between David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Orpah. And, as we see in today’s scripture, the New Testament, which is the scripture of Christianity, reminds us that “the law” has passed away and that we are saved from sin by grace.

Okay, that’s an outline, but you know what? This is not news to theologians. Every theologian for centuries has known this. The only reason some so-called “Christian churches” keep this up is for the same reason they insist (again incorrectly) that women can’t be leaders. It is to preserve the hegemony of white heterosexual males.

Yes, God tests us and yet God also provides [Genesis 22:1-14]. If you are in a loving relationship then you know that this is true. End of story.

Pride is not just about feeling good, it is about giving thanks for the lives we have been given. It is about rejoicing in life. It is about singing with joy in thanksgiving [Psalm 13].

Ok , here we go with the Christian truth [Romans 6:12-23]: Remember: “sin” isn’t about eating chocolate or even having hot sex; sin is about disconnection. If you disconnect yourself from the love of others you have allowed the absence of love to prevail in your life; if you disconnect yourself from the love of others you also disconnect yourself from the love of God. It is a circle of love. You are called to engage it. Don’t let go of it, don’t break the circle of love, that is the only sin, and that is the sin that God became human in Jesus to free us from.

And here [Matthew 10:40-42] is the absolute truth: “welcome” is the whole Gospel. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Be proud of who you are.

Be proud of the love you share.

Be attentive to the ways in which you allow yourself to be disconnected or to break the circle of love.

Sing praises for the proud loving life you have been given.

And welcome everyone.

Proper 8 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13 Usquequo, Domine?; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10: 40-42)

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

Pride, Revelation, Responsibility

The anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion is June 28, which is next Weds. This is why “Pride” always fell on the final Sunday in June (until it didn’t). For years I never experienced Pride, I just wasn’t there then …. And then one year I was in San Francisco for the American Library Association and trying to get from one committee meeting to another there it was in my way … San Francisco Pride. OMG I might have said! Was I shocked? Yes, but not because of what I was seeing; I was shocked to realize I had blown off this responsibility for so long. I never made it to that committee meeting; I joined the ragtag bunch on the fringe of the parade (ok, we were just invited to join if we wanted and march along) and eventually there I was at Market and Castro—another name for “heaven” if you were a gay man at that time.

Back in real life I discovered “Pride” in Philadelphia was always on the wrong day (in theory so as not to compete with the big Pride in New York City). Nevertheless, and decades later, the day after I was ordained a priest it was Pride in Philadelphia. Bishop Walter Righter (who had famously been tried and acquitted of heresy for ordaining a gay man) was the parade guest of my diaconal gay outreach ministry, and all of the dozens of family members who had come to my ordination came along.

I said my first mass as a priest, we sang Te Deum Laudamus, I gave my mother a rose (my brother and I had spent hours the night before wandering around Center City looking for that rose!) and then everybody went to the parade. Bishop Righter was seated in a convertible, I was marching just behind him. At the end of the parade we went into Christ Church Pine Street to a planned Evensong where I preached. Then we all gathered at my house in exhaustion, and … in PRIDE of course! I’ll never forget my college friends exchanging reminiscences of the day with my 70-something Dad who had taken his paraplegic wife the whole route in her wheel chair alongside my brother and my mother (Dad’s ex!). How’s that for parental love?

God’s love is the sure foundation, for sure!

Sometimes. normal things are the things that are the most significant catalysts. Like my Dad taking his wife in her wheel chair to follow me on a gay pride parade the morning after I was ordained a priest. You couldn’t make a movie about this sort of thing, nobody would believe it. But there it was, God incarnate, love incarnate, love in action, love generating love. Not unlike God hearing the voice of Hagar’s outcast son and providing first life-saving water and then an eternal blessing [Genesis 21:8-21].

And oh my that Evensong, we sang and sang and sang and sang and sang … and prayed. And rejoiced. We gave thanks for God, for love, for each other, and for God’s having brought us to that moment. Love, supplication, God will answer [Psalm 86:5-7].

This all happened in 1998. Three weeks later I went to Amsterdam to the Gay Games and my life was changed again and again, almost daily. I couldn’t believe I was finding myself in a place where everybody was like me, instead of the usual reverse where I was the outcast. It was exactly what I was called to do: to look, to see, to receive the revelation, to reject the state of disconnection, which is sin and to be born over and over in total connection. Alive to God in Christ [Romans 6:1b-11].

[Matthew 10:24-39] “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Be proud! Be proud of who God has made you to be in God’s own loving image, be proud of the love you share, be proud of those who love you in the form in which you are.

Proper 7 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Inclina, Domine; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39)

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

Pride, Prevailing Grace

We are in Pride month, we are on the eve of “Juneteenth” … is it a coincidence that celebrations of liberation coincide?

They are the evidence of grace, which is the work of God’s love in and among us. Grace always prevails.

The hard part is that “prevail” part … unfortunately, it means there often are struggles. Pride is about LGBTQ people saying we are proud of who we are and more importantly, we are ready to proclaim our creation as people created in God’s image. Juneteenth, well, it is a celebration of the end of the enslavement of people in the United States, but as we know, it was the end of the beginning … we could hardly say that black people have equality in the US today. Just as we could barely choke it out that some of us queers are sort of equal a little bit sometimes.

But look at what God asks of us—to “proclaim with boldness the truth” and to “minister justice with compassion” [collect for Proper 6].

God appeared to Abraham “as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day” [Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)]. Theophany at high noon while you’re sitting on the front stoop? Not only does Abraham not realize this is God, God does nothing but appear and the sit down in the shade of the tree.

God drops in and waits for hospitality. What a concept!

Abraham begs pardon of the visitors and throws open his home and his larder. The whole household rushes to make a meal–they bake cakes, they roast a calf, they even make cheese! and then they stand by while they partake of hospitality.

And then grace prevails. Then, God says that Abraham, who is 100 and his wife Sarah who also is 100 will have a baby. And they do!

I love this story. At first Sarah hides, then she laughs, then she sings with joy. Abraham did not recognize God, but did the right thing anyway. How much does that sound like real life? How much does that sound like a pride parade? Laughter, song, tears of joy, and grace … not to mention the heat of the day.

We are called to follow the examples of Abraham and Sarah, to be hospitable—to walk in love—and to “offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving” [Psalm 116:11, 10-17], to sing praises to God and to creation.

Paul [Romans 5:1-8] reminds us that it takes perseverance. That although grace prevails, it is not without the hard work of walking in love that we realize grace. Paul writes that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint” because we are after all made of love at the core.

Sounds like Pride to me again. I am (erm) “mature” enough to remember when it was a crime to be me, to remember when I dare not express my love in public, to have known the joy of both dancing queens and marriage equality. I am wise enough to know that this fight has been fought over and over and over and that we must not now give in to the voices that would oppress and suppress us. We must walk in love, offer hospitality even in the heat of the day, and sing praises to God. We must march with joy and pride. Most of all we must persevere.

And grace will prevail.

Jesus goes on a campaign from town to town and he sees that the need is immense so he ordains his disciples to act as well in his name, to heal, to cure, to bless [Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)]. He gives them quite specific instructions, which, as we can see, match the actions of Abraham in the unknown presence of God.

And here is the sum for today: it is in hospitality that we will find that God is in our presence. When we open our hearts to the possibility of love we can see that God is with us always and that grace has indeed prevailed.

And, finally, is Jesus’ perfect advice about those who will not receive God .. shake the dust off your feet and move on … and when you find a welcome sing praises and give thanks.

Proper 6 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1, 10-17 Dilexi, quoniam; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23))

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

Go in Peace, Be Healed in Love

The love between David and Jonathan is the most powerful love story in the Hebrew Bible. You don’t hear much about it because it is suppressed by the heterosexist majority who are embarrassed. They say it was about bonding. They like to point out that both David and Jonathan had wives.

When we were working toward marriage equality at the William Way Community Center in Phialdelphia, it came to us to sponsor an annual prayer breakfast for marriage equality, even though it meant getting up very early in the morning. We invited leaders of the gay faith community, gay leaders of the faith community, and leaders of the faith community who were allies of the LGBT community. And we had exciting guest speakers.

I apologize that I do not remember the name of the woman whose impact was perhaps the most powerful. But her point was, the lives of millions of women had been affected, mostly negatively, by marrying gay men.

How different it might have been, had so-called biblical literati actually read the text?

Mournfully, David sang (2 Samuel 1:26): “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

In 2 Corinthians (8:8) Paul writes that he is “testing the genuineness of [their] love.” He is trying to help the members of his church understand that giving is about the love involved, that the gift itself is almost irrelevant, when love is the purpose. It matters more that we give from the love in our hearts than the shape of what we give. Of course, this applies even more to the love shared between people. It is the love that matters more than the shape of the relationship. It is this law of love that is at the core of all LGBTQ love, it is this God-given law of love that defines us.

In Mark’s Gospel (5:34) Jesus says: “Go in peace … and be healed.” There passage contains two healing stories, but the point is that healing is in the community of love. That to be healed indeed is to go in peace. And that to go in peace is to be genuine in love.

It is “Pride” today in many cities in the us, timed traditionally to coincide with the anniversary of the liberating June 28, 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. The pride we celebrate as people created to love is the pride we have in the genuineness of the love we share. When we celebrate Pride, we go in peace … and we are healed.

Proper 8 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130 De profundis; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43)

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

“Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”*

This verse from Mark’s Gospel (7:28) about “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” has always had meaning for me, because (of course), it is at the core of the “prayer of humble access” which was a central piece of the historic Anglican Eucharistic canon. The theology is still in our prayerbook, in Eucharistic prayer C where we pray “deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”

After my recent foray in India, where dogs are everywhere, I have a different, fuller perspective. Feral dogs like those in India are not precious pets, but running everywhere in packs, taking over everything, leading their own lives alongside but not with humans (now, I suppose Indian people must have dogs as pets, I’m not knowledgeable about that, I’m talking about the vast herds of feral dogs that one sees everywhere).

Given that I have seen something like that in Crete as well, makes it seem likely to me that the Syrophoenecian woman is saying to Jesus “I am less than even the dogs.”

This is the point of the Gospel story. Jesus says “for saying that … the demon has left your daughter.” What happened there? She told the truth. And the truth set her daughter (and her) free.

Tell the truth my friends. LGBT people are less than equal in American society. Even though we are everywhere, and everyone has one of us as a relative, we are oppressed when we fail to speak up and say “even the dogs eat the crumbs under the table.”

We are God’s beloved children. James says “what good is it if you say you have faith but do not have works?” For us this means, what good is it to sing the pretty hymns at church if you do not go out into the world proclaiming the virtue of life as a glbt child of God? “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.”

Our collect asks God to help us resist pride, because it is pride that stands between us and God, and between us and each other. Proclaim your gayness my friends, because God made you that way with pride, and God wants you to trust in God and show the goodness God has made in you. Be gay, and go with God.

 

*Proper 18 (Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-10,(11-13),14-17; Mark 7:24-37)

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