Christmas is Back*

This has been a wonderful Christmas. This Christmas Eve was the most blessed Christmas of my priesthood to date. I was surrounded by joy, the light of Christ was visible within and among us, the shared joy was palpable. Of the hundreds of hands I shook, every one came with a heartfelt glance and (for once) an astonishing chorus of “merry Christmas.” The music was magnificent, the kids were filled with life and light and joy and all of the promise that children bring to the whole of creation—how wonderful to watch their pageant of the birth of Christ (not to mention getting on the channel 6 news because of them!). The Lessons and Carols service was also beautiful, and pithy spiritually. As I said, it was the most blessed Christmas of my priesthood.

If you read my Christmas Eve post, then you might remember that I was eager to find the light that might shine in the darkness. Well, I sure found it. Repeatedly during the two liturgies, I nearly “lost it” (that means I was on the verge of tears). It is really difficult to explain this, except to say that when the sacred is most fully active in me, sometimes it seems almost overwhelming. As I write this I remember, of course, the first time that ever happened—at my ordination to the priesthood—when, as the bishop pressed down on my head, and the buzz of babble grew louder above me, and my fellow presbyters pressed down on me from behind, the only thought I had was “I’m going to fall down, I can’t bear the weight”—but I did bear the weight, and I did not fall down. And a moment later I was raised up (interesting phrase there) and turned around, a bit in shock, and introduced as the new priest. Whoa!

Of course, my path to spiritual enlightenment has been long and circuitous and often littered with detours. And there is no stilling the power of the Spirit within me when I hear “O Come all ye faithful.” It is as though I were still standing beside my grandmother in the Methodist church in Pekin, Illinois in 1956, holding her hand and singing as loud as I could to join the joyful noise. It was such a wonder to hear the Babel sound of the children in the background and to think of all of the wonderful Christmas memories of the future that were being made in that moment. Isaiah says he will greatly exult, the psalmist says how great it is to sing God’s praises and I couldn’t agree more.

The pith of the readings for this Sunday is found in the letter to the Galatians, where Paul explains how the “disciplinarian” of “the law” (he means Levitical law), was a kind of imprisonment. I picked up my paper yesterday and read about how now that “don’t ask don’t tell” has been repealed, marriage equality is inevitable (except, they still call it, pointedly, “gay marriage”). They interviewed a particularly hateful right-winger, who said something along the lines of ‘gay people want to be respected but we all know they’re disgusting.” How nice to read on Christmas morning. Well, my friends, it reminded me that for many lgbt people, Christmas means being at home with family members who still work with “the law.” The time has come to take them to church, and point them at this reading. Before faith came we were imprisoned, but now we are children of God, heirs of the kingdom. All of us, especially we who are created lgbt in God’s own image.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only child, full of grace and truth.

A blessed Christmastide.

*1st Sunday after Christmas (Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 147, Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7, John 1:1-18)

©2010 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Jesus said “feed my sheep”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– John Shelby Spong