Justice, Love, Salvation

Sometimes you have to take a chance on love.

Sounds like a song lyric, doesn’t it? But it is just the honest truth about God, and creation, and being LGBTQ+ and reality. Love defines us, and if we aren’t willing to take a chance on love then we risk the purgatory of that vacuum dimension where love never is. When we take that chance, when we give just a little bit of love, it comes back a thousand-fold, and we thrive in what the scriptures call heaven on earth, otherwise known as your real life.

God, who is love, always helps us, even if we try just a liitle bit, God helps us to sure footing on God’s foundation of loving-kindness. God is always with us, we are most in God’s grace when we seek to walk in love. The point is, take that chance, let down your wall, love, and you will receive grace a thousand-fold.

When approaching scripture it is always important to understand that it is intended as a form of revelation, and neither as history or as instructions. The story [1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49] about David slaying Goliath in the midst of a pretty unpleasant battle is intended to be revealing because—wait for it: because David who walks on the fundament of the love of God always wins over the vacuum dimension absent love.

The Psalmist [Psalm 9:9-20 Confitebor tibi] sings of God, who is love, whose love is known as justice.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth [2 Corinthians 6:1-13]: that today, now, this moment, with every breath, is the day of salvation. Salvation is now. If we can accept it. If we can walk in love. We must live with wide open hearts, as the hearts of children, open to joy and love.

I remember well my first days in seminary. We were all extremely spiritually hyped up. After all, here we were beginning the real journey to the priesthood. We ate together and worshipped together and learned together and lived together (albeit in our own apartments in the close). A couple of days in I was going to get my mail when I ran into a couple of people from my class. They said “I saw you were out until 8:30 last night then your lights were on” and I was sort of shocked. It suddenly became apparent to me that living in community meant living fully in community.

If you are LGBTQ+ you probably, like I did that day, recoil at the idea of living “in community” because that means living in the prying eyes of judgmental people. So, that was a challenge for me, to accept the love of my new friends and to stop being afraid of their love.

At a couples workshop the leader asked us to introduce ourselves to the group. My husband was sitting on the floor between my legs, and I patted him on the head and introduced him as my puppy, which was a tenderness between us. You should have seen the shocked looks on the faces of all of the heterosexuals in the group. They were stunned I could be so rude; and yet, I thought (and he thought) that I had been perfectly loving. So you see, living a life of love is always a challenge. It isn’t as easy as just having happy thoughts and saying “I love you” or even just “thank you” all the time.

Love is tough work. We who are God’s LGBTQ+ people are, indeed, just folks some of the time, but we also are the real loving people God created us and called us to be, and our lives take shapes that are different from those of other folks. We live integrated into the community, sort of, but also we live in our own ways of loving of which we should be proud and for which we should demand the justice of acceptance.

Love is tough work but it is worth it because love is the only path to salvation.

In Mark’s Gospel [4:35-41] exhausted Jesus gets in the boat with his disciples to escape the crowd by crossing to the other side; he falls asleep even as a storm comes up. They panic, awaken him, and forgetting all about love because they have given themselves over to fear, they reproach him. Weary, but understanding, and loving, he stops the wind. Then he reprimands them gently: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” As Mark tells it, the disciples miss the point, that it was their fear that opened the door to the vacuum of the absence of love.

Faith is trust that the power of love in action fills the void and wipes out that vacuum. Love is the power that saves. Love is the power that brings salvation now. Love is the power known in God’s justice.

We have that very power in the love we share, the love we experience, the joy we bring to each other and to those around us and by extension to the whole of creation. We are called to have pride in our LGTBQ+ lives and the love that defines them.

For Pride 2024 The Episcopal Church has unveiled a new pride shield (https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/episcopal-church-unveils-new-pride-shield-in-celebration-of-lgbtq-inclusion/ ). The shield is an attempt to integrate and celebrate the power of God’s LGBTQ+ people and of God’s love lived out as justice.

The design retains the upper-left blue corner of The Episcopal Church’s shield logo and incorporates elements of the traditional Pride flag as well as the Progress Pride flag and Philadelphia Pride flag. In their use of black, brown, pink, and light-blue diagonal lines, the latter two flags represent intersectional progress in acknowledging people who are often overlooked by the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement: communities of color; the transgender community; and the many thousands harmed by anti-LGBTQ+ policy—from those who lost their lives in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s, to those still disproportionately impacted today.

In June 2023, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry issued a video message of encouragement to “all of my LGBTQ+ family members,” noting, “I believe deep in my soul that God is always seeking to create a world and a society where all are loved, where justice is done, and where the God-given equality of us all is honored in our relationships, in our social arrangements, and in law.”

Proper 7 Year B RCL 2024 (1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49; Psalm 9:9-20 Confitebor tibi; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41)

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

By Grace … Alleluia!

We have tulips. We have daffodils. We have sunshine. We have health. We have love. We have what God has intended for us.

And, we have joy. Joy is the outward expression of happiness, which is the inward expression of grace, which is God’s gift to those who remain connected, connected to each other most of all, which is how we remain connected to God.

Yes, of course, as Peter preaches: “God shows no partiality … anyone who … does what is right is acceptable.” And “everyone who believes in [Jesus Christ] receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” All of us are connected among us and with God through our faith in the one who taught us of the ultimate power of love.

God is love, and love is salvation, because love builds up, love creates, love heals, love sustains, love infuses, love is the greatest power God has given us. We sing [Psalm 118: 14-15] with exultation about our victory, we celebrate our righteousness—read that “right ness”—read that “walking in love.”

By God’s grace Paul writes [1 Corinthians 15:1-11] “I am what I am.” All that we are and whatever we are, we are by God’s grace. Remember, God created us in God’s own image. Next time you look in the mirror remember, you reflect the image of God. LGBTQ+ people, by grace, we are who we are, created LGBTQ+ in the image of God. Amen.

Of, course, today is Easter. Today is the Feast of the Resurrection. Today is the celebration of God’s promise to us—wait, even more, it is the celebration of our faith in God’s promise to us—of eternal life in the dimension of love. All we have to do is get it.

In John’s Gospel [20:1-18] it is early Saturday morning, before sunrise the day after the crucifixion, when Mary Magdalene gets up and goes to the tomb. She is ashamed for not having gone earlier to perform ablutions and tend to the body of Jesus. She is consumed with guilt and her own bad feelings. She therefore does not understand when she arrives to find the tombstone rolled away.

She is shocked. She runs to the disciples; note it is Peter and “the one Jesus loved” who come running. It literally says she ran, and then they ran. It says they ran together–connection. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved see that Jesus is gone. The one Jesus loved is first to believe. Love builds up. Love triumphs. Love conquers all.

But Mary Magdalene stood there weeping. Suddenly two angels appeared to ask her why she was weeping, then Jesus himself asks her.

She does not recognize him.

She thinks he’s a groundskeeper.

But when he calls her by name she shifts dimensions, her emotions fall away, and now she sees, now she knows, now she believes. By grace, she is who she is, in God’s image.

For us, as for Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the disciple Jesus loved, salvation comes in the most difficult moments when we are the most confused. All it asks of us is faith, faith in love. If we love enough, we will enter the dimension where love prevails. This is the message of Easter.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter Day Year B RCL 2024 (Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-29 Confitemini Domino; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18)

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

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.

Microhabitats of Love

Microhabitats can be fascinating. It is time for Japanese Camellias to bloom in Oregon. My neighbor’s, which is about 100 meters away from my study window, has been blooming for two weeks. Mine just started blooming this week; as I drive around I see some blooming, some just budding. What makes the difference?

Well, sometimes they’re called microhabitats, small spaces that have microclimates. I know, for example, that the roses and Japanese Maple east of my house are in a protected environment and the sun’s warmth is amplified there. But in my west garden under pretty serious tree canopy, the same plants are weeks behind. Fascinating.

But then, how is it we comprehend that, but we cannot comprehend that we live in a multidimensional universe, where some of us live in a universe of love? All at once.

God, who is love, which is the power of creation, which is the force of the universe, took human form in Jesus, to teach us how to move into and thrive in the dimension of love.

Abram, encounters God, and is transformed [Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16]. Encounter with God causes what theologians call an “ontological shift;” being itself changes. You might have experienced this–my own experiences of ontological shift include my marriage and my ordinations. Everything looks the same, but everything is different too. In the story, Abram’s body is changed from elderly to vibrant, his name is changed because his being is now suffused with love, his wife is also transformed, which further transforms his ontological reality. In the aftermath of the encounter Abraham receives from God a covenant of love fulfilled.

On the face of it, the story is about how God “changes” Abram and Sarai into Abraham and Sarah. But that misses the point. In reality—one might even say in truth—Abram and Sarai were walking in love where they encountered God as they moved into the eternal dimension of love.

The Psalmist rejoices with praise [Psalm 22:22-30]. Love, God, is open to every petition. Love, God, fulfills, fills, satisifies. Love, God, sustains the heart, the heart sustains love in synchrony, love builds up.

Paul’s own midrash on Abraham [Romans 4:13-25] is focused on the promise of the covenant of love eternal, which comes through the experience of faith, which is lived experience of love. It was Abraham and Sarah’s life of loving that drew them closer to the realization of their encounter with God. In other words, love builds up, love is attracted to love, love rests on grace which is love received, faith builds as love builds as lived experience. Love, walking in love, is living rightly. “Therefore … faith was reckoned … as righteousness.”

In Mark’s Gospel [8:31-38] Jesus has quite directly told the disciples the details of the journey toward crucifixion and resurrection on which he, Jesus, and they, have embarked. Peter rebukes Jesus for saying such things. Peter lets his feelings overwhelm him. Jesus calls out the absence of love; he says to get the absence of love behind him. Jesus makes the difficult proclamation “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” To cling to self, to things, to hunker down is to shut out love, which is to lose life itself. It is a tough lesson to learn that those who give up whatever love requires thereby enter the dimension of salvation in which love transforms everything.

LGBTQ+ people often live in microhabitats subject to microclimates. We live deeply into the love we share, which is the love that defines us, which is the love with which we are created in God’s own image. We cling fiercely to our security. We celebrate our love. We have been called to walk in the dimension of love, to be transformed by love, to be the visible evidence of the power of love. We are called to lead the building up of love that has the power to transform our microhabitats into the grace and power of the dimension of love. We are called to show how to receive from God a covenant of love fulfilled.

2 Lent Year B 2024 RCL (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30 Deus, Deus meus; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38)

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

We all are Witnesses

Easter-tide, thank goodness, is a time of refreshment, rejuvenation, reorientation to life without holidays –a kind of opening of the way of normalcy. With any luck the weather will get better and soon spring sun will be the norm instead of a rare surprise. My tulips are beautiful on the rare occasion when there is enough sun for them to open up! This sense of return to normal is, I think, a major aspect of faith. It is easy enough to get whipped up by holiday hype, it is another thing to walk in love, to live the love that God asks us to live into. God asks us to understand in resurrection the idea that there is always renewal where there always is love in action. Resurrection is within us.

So it is that like Peter (Acts 2) and the other disciples, we are witnesses—[Acts 2:32] “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.”  Yes, Peter means that he and the disciples were witnesses of the risen Jesus. But he also means that all of us, you and me, if we have faith, if we live into our covenant with God that we love our neighbors as ourselves—we are witnesses of resurrection.

In this, then, is our joy. In the leaves popping out on stems that remind us spring is coming and life is abundant and that there is always renewal. This is our joy in the smiles and hugs of loved ones, in the greeting by the nice lady at the supermarket, in the sweet sound of a familiar voice—in a hundred moments in each day is the proof that resurrection is within us, that God has raised us up too, that our joy is complete in the fullness of the path God has pointed out for us, the doorway into the dimension of love [Psalm 16:11].

In his first epistle [1 Peter 1:3-9] Peter speaks of hope, of that sense of trust that is the essence of faith that our inheritance of love is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” It is this hope that is the catalyst for Easter joy, the sense of renewal, or if I may, of salvation, which is “more precious than gold” because like all of life it has been “tested by fire.” We know that resurrection is within us if we can keep our feet on the path into the dimension of love.

John’s Gospel account of the risen Jesus’ visit to the upper room [John 20:19-31] leads usually to the focus on Thomas, whose “doubt” is revealed not only as very human but also as very intimate. Whatever Thomas’ failings, however momentary, the love he shares with Jesus is so powerful that the risen Christ comes to him to say “Do not doubt but believe.”

Jesus ends the story with the pronouncement “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Thus belief completes the circle of faith, the route back to love, the sure way to the dimension of love.

And so even we, the LGBTQ Thomases of our own time, we who are oppressed and outcast and reviled and distrusted even in our own “enlightened” day, we still believe, because we know the power of the love we have been given in our creation in God’s own image as inheritors of God’s love, as gatekeepers of God’s dimension of love. We know that resurrection is within us because we experience it every day, every moment, in the love we share. We all are witnesses. We all are blessed.

Second Sunday of Easter Year A 2023 RCL (Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31)

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

Rejoice

Happy New Year!

It is such a time of hope, the new year.

I find that in my own life it is the love my husband and I share that is the most important source of life and hope at the new year. Every year now we joke we should toast it early and pretend—“it must be the new year someplace!”—and every year we sit by the fire and listen to music until the magic hour. And then we toast the new year. We wake up to music from Vienna on our favorite radio stations and then we work on our hoppin’ John and collards and corn pones (my husband grew up in the south).

As I give thanks for the love we share, I remember that there was a time in my life when I could not have imagined that I could be married to a man. I recently shared in an online forum that back in the day it wasn’t so much that I was in the closet hiding, it was more that I didn’t know what it was or that it had a name or that it could actually “be.”

LGBTQ people all have some version of, some variation on, this sort of story. For many there is not so much a muddle as the face of oppression and the search for the dimension of love, in which it is blessed to be who we are, created as we are in the image of God, who after all, is all, who is love.

No wonder we enter each year with hope of the fulfillment of the realization of the manifestation of our own creation as God’s LGBTQ heirs.

And so the hope we carry all of our lives is rooted in the love with which we were created and nurtured, it is borne with the love that is in our hearts, it is the hope of the fulfillment of creation. The New Year is a good time to look forward, with hope.

In the church this year this Sunday is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which means roughly “God is salvation.” It is this idea, that the manifestation of salvation eternally is being born among us, because after all, love is our salvation and love is our creation and love is all eternity within and through us. In Numbers 6 God teaches us that blessing comes from joy that love brings into our lives. In Galatians 4 we are reminded that we are heirs of God’s loving creation. And in Luke 2 we have the continuation of the story of the shepherd’s on the hillside tending their flocks when the angels appear to tell them of the birth of Jesus, who is salvation come among us. We forget these shepherd’s were at work, at night! And yet the story is full of the forward motion of the action of their response to the angels’ news—they went to Bethlehem, they saw, they proclaimed what they had seen and heard, and then full circle they returned to their work where they loved and rejoiced—they carried salvation with them in their loving joy.

Christmas is the certainty of the hope of God’s love for all of creation, The new year is a reminder to manifest, to fulfill, to realize, to see, then to “return,” to “proclaim,” to “rejoice,” to love.

The Holy Name of Jesus Christ (January 1) RCL 2023 (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

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

To Know is to Love

We “know”—knowledge is that firmament that is both within us and outside us to which we conform as a form of synergy. Creation requires knowledge, after all—we know that spacetime is one existentiality, all space exists and all time exists all at once, it is not on a line, there is no sequence except that derived from our perception.

So, if we perceive that we are outcast because we are of the LGBTQ communion, instead of perceiving that the oppressors are condemning themselves, then we accept a perception. If we perceive that one day is better than another then we accept a perception. But if we comprehend that all days are the same and all places are the same, therefore there can be no divisions among creatures or creation except those imposed as perception jealously to prevent love, then we can approximate understanding of the multi-dimensionality of love.

All love exists all the time.

We always are called to love. We always are called to walk in love. We always are called to walk away from those who cannot or do not or choose not to love. We are not called to complain. We are called to create, to build, to build up—Jesus says over and over “the kingdom has come near” and Paul says over and over “love builds up.” Put the two together and you see …

You see, and when you see, then you can walk in love.

In Jeremiah 29 God says to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you .. for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” It is in walking in love that peace and justice flourish and nourish creation. In the Second Letter to Timothy Paul says to “avoid wrangling over words” and “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by [God].” It is a New Testament paraphrase of God’s word from Jeremiah–it is love that counts and the good that love brings and only love counts. In Luke 17 we receive the story of Jesus’ healing of ten lepers. They called to him and they were healed but only one, “a Samaritan” “turned back, praising God with a loud voice … and thanked [Jesus].” It is this man cast out from society for his illness and cast out because he comes from a different culture, it is this man doubly an outcast who truly “sees” that healing is a sign of the kingdom of love and love is the only thing that brings salvation. It is only this newly healed disciple who sees and knows and grasps the truth, that all time and space are one and only love counts.

We who are God’s LGBTQ people in this world must see and know somehow that we inhabit a different universe than the one our str8 relatives, neighbors, etc., walk in. Parallel maybe, but different.

And that’s okay. That is how it is.

And all space and all time are the same and only love counts.

Does this seem too wifty to you? I suppose it might. But it is important for LGBTQ people now, living through this period of re-re-re-oppression—laws against simple books, laws against health care for trans people, laws against sex—it is important for us to see and know that only love counts.

Proper 23 Year C 2022 RCL (Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-11; 2 Timothy 2: 8-15; Luke 17:11-19)

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

Intersecting Dimensions of Love

It is interesting to ponder the intersection between the dimensions of the natural world and those of the soul. Of course, the soul inheres in us and we exist in the natural world. But do we inhere in the natural world, or do we only reside alongside it? In the Pacific Northwest now we are enjoying a few days of relatively cool weather, but the rain that was forecast never appeared. The trees are still stressed. Although the air smells clean and moist, we see another heat wave is coming in a few days and we wonder when we can look forward to our trademark rain. Even in Oregon, there usually is some rain in summer. If the trees are stressed, if the air seems thin with heat, are we stressed as well? Yes, of course we are. So, does the longing for rain inhere in our souls or in our minds or in both? And, where is the intersection between the dimensions of the soul and those of the natural world?

Psalm 130 is a lament of the soul longing for forgiveness “Out of the depths have I called to you … hear my voice … I wait …, my soul waits …, more than watchmen for the morning.” My immediate reaction was that at the moment we in the Pacific Northwest are watchpeople waiting less for morning than for rain. But you could say “I wait for rain, my soul waits for rain, more than watchpersons wait for the morning.” Thus, here we find a parallel between the dimension of the natural world and the dimension of the world of the soul. The truth of the dimension of the soul is that the forgiveness the lament awaits already has been given, the redemption, the salvation of unity with God already has been given. It is eternal. It is not that we wait for it so much as that we struggle to align our way of being with the dimension where salvation already exists. As Jesus says in all of the Gospels, the kingdom has come near. The question is can we get on the frequency of that dimension, can we learn to see the truth of our own salvation?

The letter to the Ephesians is clearly not written by Saint Paul, but is thought to embody his Gospel, as set in writing by one of his disciples. The essence of Paul’s Gospel is that we are intertwined by love. Again, it is about intersecting dimensions. Can we live in the dimension where love unites us with creation? In this week’s portion (Ephesians 4:25-5:2) we are given the tools we need to hone in on the dimension of God’s love: do not let the sun go down on anger; put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander and malice; be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving. This is how to live in love. This is how to occupy the dimension of God’s love. This is how to occupy the dimension of the soul. This is how the dimension of the soul intersects the dimension of the natural world. Love creates, love builds up, love is the source of all power.

I relish life in the dimension of the natural world, where, when I remember to dwell on the frequency of the dimension of love my soul melds with the natural world. Where my skin reflects the moisture in the air that I see in the trees. Where the flowering shrubs respond as quickly to the motion of the sun and the gentle breeze as does my heart. I am eternally grateful that the trajectory of the dimension of God’s love brought me back to this life in nature. I am even soothed by the new ways in which I see my sibling LGBTQ heirs of creation finding new forms of community, new ways to let our love shine as a light to lead the way to the dimension of living in the love which is ours in creation.

I give thanks for the mornings when the watch of God’s creation brings gentle peace to my soul in the intersection of the many dimensions of creation. I rejoice in the intersection of the dimensions of love.

Proper 14 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130 De profundis; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51)

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

The Potential Moment of Love

Life is full of “surprises.” It is what makes life “interesting.” I’ve been having a string of these “interesting times” lately.

And yet, love keeps pulling me through.

And that is God’s message to us through Christ, that love is always the answer.

Today I look out my window at lush greenery under gentle almost-summer sunshine. My little family is slowly coming back together. My husband smiles; he is so filled with love it is at once a surprise and a comfort. But it clearly is his clue to resilience and longevity.

God tells us that as a church of believers God is our sure foundation. We have to translate that language a little bit. We have to understand that the “church” is a community designed for the building up of love. After all, that is what “worship” is all about, that we should all give as much love as we can in community. Think about how your heart melts during worship and how much love is built up in you before the end. Now, think about how that is true of every person in the worship. Now do you get it? It is for the “us” that we gather to worship, because when we do we build up that sure foundation of love.

When I first began evangelism (in the Episcopal way, I mean) in the LGBTQ community, I think the most striking reality for me was the sheer number of faithful LGBTQ people in the pews. It was a sign of the love in the hearts of our LGBTQ friends, that our love was helping to build up the community. And in the Episcopal Church, where we experienced not only tolerance, not only acceptance, but full communion and full community in the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and the support of adoption for LGBTQ families and the equalization of the marriage rite to apply to all humans—these all were signs of the active shared love of God. The second striking reality, then, was my discovery that everywhere I went in the Philadelphia gayborhood I encountered faithful LGBTQ people who were not members of any faith community but who were committed to walk in God’s love. I discovered walking those brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets, dropping by the William Way LGBT Community Center, tending a booth at PrideFest and OutFest, that there was a large community of LGBTQ people walking in love. Evangelism in this community was a joy. It was primarily the action of being lovingly present together.

Time is that inexorable human creation that we use to sequence events in God’s space that all always exist. Last Sunday I was unable to post here but I was able to celebrate on Facebook the 23^rd anniversary of my ordination as a priest. In the secular world today is Father’s Day. June is LGBTQ Pride month in the USA so many cities (like Portland, Oregon) are having pride festivals today (the traditional celebrations likely still virtual in places such as San Francisco and New York will take place next week, to coincide with the anniversary of the June 28, 1969 Stonewall Rebellion). In the church calendar it is the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. The lessons include the stories of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49) and Jesus’ stilling of the storm (Mark 4:35-41). Both are fine examples of faith in the salvation of walking in love. David, facing the challenge of his life with love in his heart is confident that God’s love will prevail. David knows that God’s love is salvation in every aspect of life and that giving love is the deliverance God promises to all of us. Jesus is sleeping in the boat being tossed about on a stormy sea while the disciples tremble in panic. When their panic reaches a fever pitch they wake Jesus who rebukes them for forgetting to love, for letting their focus settle on fear instead of faith. The fact that Jesus is asleep shows us the power of the love of God that is full within him. The sea is stilled because love demands it.

In celebration of the anniversary of my ordination I posted this photo of me blessing folks immediately after the ordination.

As I look at that smile on my face I remember the feeling I had at the time that was not unlike the metaphor of the calm after the stilling of the storm that had been my decade-long walk toward that moment. The love in that moment was what set me out on those brick and cobblestones to bring the Good News to those in the LGBTQ community who so eagerly walked already in love.

In 2 Corinthians (6:1-13) Paul reminds us that “now” always is “the acceptable time … the day of salvation.” It is his way of reminding us that it is always the time for walking in love. The inexorability of space-time in the dimension of love means that now is always the culmination of all time and thus the culmination of our calling to walk in love. And now is always the potential moment of salvation because now is always the potential moment of love.

Our job as Christians is to keep God’s love uppermost always and never to give into fear. Our job as LGBTQ Christians is to continue always to walk in the love that is the God-given trait that defines our very creation. The potential moment of love is now.

Proper 7 Year B RCL 2021 (1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49; Psalm 9:9-20 Confitebor tibi; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41)

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

To Be is to Love

There are so many ways of experiencing love it is at once awesome (in the original meaning of that word) and impossible to contemplate. I love a beautiful day, I love the sun and warmth that signal a beautiful day, I love the aroma of pine needles in the warm sun on a beautiful day, I love how my heart sings when I experience a beautiful day, I love loving on a beautiful day, I love loving, giving love makes my heart sing—and on and on I could go. To say “I love” is at once the most beautiful and intimate thing any human ever can say because it is not just an expression of affection but it is also an expression of trust. It means “I trust”—I trust how my heart sings on a beautiful day, I trust how my singing heart embraces you on a beautiful day. To love is to trust with our entire being.

It is this kind of love, trust in being, that God asks of us. Indeed, it is all God asks of us, because if we can love, then we love God and each other and creation all at once. God creates us in God’s own image, and God gives us all of creation to nourish and nurture us, and all God asks of us is that we return the favor, that we love God by creating love in every relationship, by mirroring the images of the beloved people in our lives, that we nourish and nurture each other and thereby we trust God and each other and all of creation with our entire being. To be is to love.

The story of the Passover (Exodus 12:1-14) is a core liturgy of Judaism. In the traditional meaning of “liturgy,” which is “the people’s work,” remembrance of the Passover is an expression of faith that takes place through actions of families. It is interesting that much of Jewish faith takes place in the family. The Passover seder is more than a ritual meal, it is ritual action that in its performance stirs the love of the people participating. This love, once stirred, insures the awareness of the presence of God. Like the original narrative from Exodus, it is the expression of trust among the members of a community in each other, in God and in all of creation. In particular, as God has given it to be “the beginning of months …,” it is not just a day but it is a ritual of the eternal beginning of redemption, for it is in the eternity of beginning that redemption finds its realization. When we begin to love, we begin to be, and to be is to love. In this remembrance we experience God giving God’s people, who are eternally created in God’s own image, God’s eternal promise of love.

Of course, LGBTQ families are more often “logical”—made up of people we love and who love us whose life trajectories have brought together—than biological (see “The Majesty of Love” https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/the-majesty-of-love/). Our families are created by the outpouring of love—trust with our entire being—from our own hearts. God redeems God’s families created by the love of God’s children. God protects the families truly created by the outpouring of God’s love.

“’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law”—(Romans 13:8-14). I think Paul is trying to say first and foremost that love is all, therefore love must be pure and unfettered. When we love, Christ (who is God with us) is loving through us. Paul goes on to say that “now is the moment to wake from sleep” because salvation is ours if we can be awake to it, if we can be alert to love, if we can trust God and each other and all of creation with our entire being. Paul says “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” He means to leave the night behind and embrace the morning, the day, the light, the beginning—it is this light that is the cloak of Christ—for it is in the eternal beginning that we embrace not only our redemption but, indeed, our very salvation. To wear this cloak is to love, to embrace beginnings.

In Matthew’s Gospel (18:15-20) Jesus says “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Love is the binder; to trust with our entire being is to bind ourselves to each other, to God and to all of creation. Whereever love is, Christ who is God with us, also always is. It is for this reason that “if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. ” Whatever is bound with love is eternal. Whatever is bound with love is the eternal beginning of being, which is love.

 

Proper 18 Year A 2020 RCL (Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149 Cantate Domino; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20)

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