Love in Truth and Action

In the fourth week of Eastertide the seasons everywhere remind us of the eternity of creation and of the power of God’s love. Here in Oregon the spring is at its peak; tulips are at their prime, as the cammellia’s finish their riot of late winter color the azaleas and rhododendrons begin their turn, the blooming cherry trees yield in turn to the apple trees, the vineyards are dressed one again in frocks of deep green.

The evidence of the eternal reliability of God’s love is all around us to see if we can slow down the pace of our daily lives long enough to appreciate it.

In our lives as LGBTQ+ people there is nothing more important than to hold on to the love that is the essential nature of our creation in God’s own image. We love because we must. We love because we are made of love. We love because love builds up—our love insures the active creative habitat around us as our love builds and spreads. It is to this that we have been called.

The scripture appointed for this Sunday is all focused on the concept of love in truth and action, as John writes in his first epistle [1 John 3:18].

In the scene from the Acts of the Apostles [4:5-12] Peter and John have been preaching and healing in Jesus’ name. Healing is restoring fullness of life and equality in community through the power of love.

Healing, especially in the New Testament sense of being made whole in community is something God’s L:GBTQ+ people understand. We are often on a roller-coaster ride of being cast out one day and brought back into community the next. More to the point, we are jostled by competing forces in the world. Last week Title IX protections (in education) were expanded to protect against any “sex-based harrassment” and especially to enhance protection of trans folks. This rolls back decisions made just four years ago by different political forces in the US. This is an act of healing. But, in the same week the conservative supreme court let an Idaho law stand that prohibits transgender care for minors. This is the crowd pushing back and preventing healing. We live and love on this roller coaster, as indeed, do all of God’s creatures.

Excoriated for healing Peter and John are arrested and confined by the authorities. They know this roller coaster too. Peter testifies, or preaches if you will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is love. It says Peter is “filled with the Holy Spirit.” It means he has pushed out the vacuum of the absence of love and filled it with loving action, which, of course, is how he has been able to pass along healing. Peter testifies before this crowd to the power of healing love.

Psalm 23 says that God is my shepherd, and in John’s Gospel [10:11-18] Jesus says “I am the good shepherd … I know my own and my own know me.”

John’s epistle reminds us that we know Jesus because we know his love, and we know this love because love has created and surrounded and suffused us. John, who was standing there arrested by the crowd with Peter when the spirit of love filled Peter and compelled him to preach the Gospel of love. John’s epistles are among the most beautiful testimonies to the love of God in Christ and its power to heal. Love in truth and action fills the void. Love enlightens creation.

Jesus reminds us that everyone is included. Everyone is known by the love of God. All we have to do to receive God’s love is to recognize God calling us by our own names.

God calls each of to be God’s loving LGBTQ+ people in truth and action in the world.

Alleluia!

4 Easter Year B 2021 RCL (Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23 Dominus regit me; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18)

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

Knowledge and Grace

Knowledge is power I think somebody said once. It certainly is true that knowledge is important not only in daily life but in spiritual matters as well. It is important to remember that knowing ourselves is a critical part of loving ourselves, and that loving ourselves is critical to loving each other. Therein lies the promise of grace.

The reality of grace is lived out in daily life. My husband’s smile, my buddie’s laugh, a dinner well-consumed by all, our little family reunited after a year and a half of pandemic—these are moments of grace that come from the love within us given out as action in the real world.

Our walk through scripture this week points continually to the interaction of knowledge and grace. The continuing saga of King David (2 Samuel 6)is in our scripture again this week. Here we have the story of David dancing before the “ark of God” and blessing God and God’s people. I see a glimpse of the Eucharistic ritual in this story. Eucharist, of course, is Greek for Thanksgiving. (Efkaristo in modern Greek is “thank you.”) What do we see? We see the king, ordained by God to serve as priest of priests, beginning with knowledge by giving thanks. Then he blesses the people, then distributes nourishment in thanksgiving. Nourishment is grace in action.

The Psalmist (Psalm 85) sings  of “mercy and truth … met together; righteousness and peace … kissed each other.” It is in this blending fo knowledge (truth) and grace (mercy) that love can emerge as righteousness and peace.

In the first chapter epistle to the Ephesians, we are reminded of layers of blessing that accompany our destiny as heirs of God’s kingdom. I think this speaks directly to LGBTQ people because it is we who are destined as God’s LGBTQ children to live in thanksgiving for the love that is our created nature.

In Mark’s Gospel (6:14-29) we receive the story of the execution of John the Baptist. I think we can see, however, in the prelude to the story the point of including it in this Jesus narrative. We leanr that Jesus’ preaching and healing has effect on all of the people. But the people who have not seen or heard, and have no knowledge, cannot comprehend that love has actually become manifest, that God is with us in this human expression of active loving that is Jesus. “Prophet” is the best they can manage.

The truth is, we are inheritors of a kingdom of love if we can maintain knowledge of loving ourselves and one another. This is our destiny, to give thanks, to nourish each other, to achieve righteousness through love, and in loving righteousness to know (!) grace.

And, as God’s LGBTQ created heirs it is our destiny that our love leads—in building up the love, in showing the love, in sharing our love. Our peers who doubt or who do not walk in love need our example, they need our vision, and most importantly they need our love.

Proper 10 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24 Domini est terra; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29)

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

Light and Love

Christmas is all about hope. In Christian hearts it is all about the intertwined revelation and realization of Emmanuel “God with us.” The idea of God with us is all about hope, trust, faith and relief. At Christmas we are reminded of the revelation of God’s eternal presence with and within us, but we also are reminded of the revelation of the humanity of God in the Christ child. The realization that God has the experience of breath and hurt and hunger and sleep and growth and work and of all of life is the understanding that God always is with us. Even in a pandemic.

On the eve of Christmas we “gather” around our symbolic offerings of gifts and candles and we sing the carols that tell the story of the child born in a manger—divinity born in humility. On Christmas we “gather” around tables laden with the special gifts of sustenance and nourishment. At some time or other we give each other gifts as we act out the ritual of the revelation of goodness and mercy that comes in the loving act of giving. Even in this 21^st century pandemic we have managed to gather online, on the phone, through social media—we have gathered because the essence of Christmas is the shared revelation of the arrival of full-blown love among and within us.

On the First Sunday after Christmas the lectionary leads us to more spiritually metaphorical insights. The scripture points to light in the darkness. We remember in prayer the new light enkindled in our hearts. We listen to Isaiah (62:1) prophesy Jerusalem’s “vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.” The imagery of light covers the panoply of metaphor from the slow emergence of enlightenment to the consuming fire of love. In the opening passage of John’s Gospel (1:1-18) we are treated to the image of “the light of all people” that “shines in the darkness” and yet “the darkness did not overcome it.” We learn that the prophet John the baptizer “came as a witness to testify to the light,” the “true light, which enlightens everyone.”  We are reminded of the eternity of God’s love that both “shines” right now and yet was not ever past present or future overcome by the absence of light. We are reminded in the epistle to the Galatians (4:4) that it is forever now “when the fullness of time had come” that God reminds us that we are children of love.

The metaphor of light as love is powerful precisely because as humans we have daily and constantly the experience of the revelation of light emerging and growing and shining and bringing warmth, indeed as the sunlight in Western Oregon has today brought comfort into the midst of the string of winter rain. We are reminded that this new love that we experience each year at Christmas, like light, is the realization of a promise of eternity in our hearts. In households everywhere as we hang up our new shirts and move the furniture to make way for something new, as we smile and say “thank you” over and over for our new gifts, we demonstrate how much our lives are enhanced by the sudden understanding that it was love in action that acquired that gift that now changes our daily life in simple and yet profound ways. Love enters in and once in, like the light, grows.

The metaphor for Christmas is that the truth, the now, the revelation and the realization is the moment to embrace love. Now the fullness of time has come, now we see that as children of God, created in the image of God, which is love, we must open our hearts to reveal and realize that in this love we have seen a glory full of grace and truth (John 1:14); and that “we have all received, grace upon grace” (1:16).

The light, the grace, these are love.

First Sunday after Christmas all years (Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147 or 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7; John 1:1-18)

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

I am so sorry I missed posting on Christmas*

We had a delightful Christmas at CHT. Not only did we have a zillion (ok, 38 or so) kids in our Christmas pageant, but we had hundreds at all of our masses. And finally I have been there long enough to have experienced in a real way the continuity of what other priests have told me about—that is, that we have a Christmas congregation of people who come every year, and thus are regulars—but it is a different group from the group that we see most Sundays.

But the kids … the kids were great!

Now you’ve got to love it, if you are a gay person, to find yourself in an open and affirming parish, one in which many of the clergy are gay even, and yet young families find this such a loving and affirming home that they are growing the population of the children of God even in our midst, especially in our midst.

Another reason I did not post on Christmas was because one gift I was given was a rhinovirus, just 3 days after recovering from a month of bronchial asthma. So, I have coughed and choked and gasped through the whole season, thanks to someone who should have stayed home or not shaken hands. (Now, don’t worry; at the door on the way out you can shake our hands. We have lots of Purell, and we also go immediately to washrooms to wash our hands. Most priests learn this in seminary (ha ha, not in the classroom, but in field placement).)

I do have to say that shaking hundreds of hands after mass is terrific; and the smiles are especially beatific on Christmas Eve. And I loved it that this year, at long last, there was nary a generic “happy holidays” to be heard—Merry Christmas it was.

And still is. For the Word became flesh and now dwells among us, and we have seen his only son, full of grace and truth. And we have, seen grace and truth, which dwell among us.

Whatever is on your heart this First Sunday of Christmas, give it over to Jesus. Say this prayer: “Jesus be with me, Jesus with me, Jesus in me, Jesus heal me, Jesus _____. I love you Jesus because you are the Word made flesh who livess within me.”

Okay, if that’s too complicated try this: “Jesus, … Help … , _____. Amen.”

Merry Christmastide my friends. And a happy New Year to you too.

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

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

Forest fires*

Life is full of emergencies and false critical moments, almost to the point that you have to wonder constantly whether something important really is … We’ve been having some work done on our house and the guy who is doing the work is some sort of angel. After 3 years of trying to hire people and getting nothing but attitude from traditional Philadelphia contractors finally we find a guy who likes to work, who does good work, who respects us and works his work into our schedule. Still, it feels a little like an invasion. I suppose some of that is because I work at home.

Nobody understands people who work at home. Just like priests and professors are misunderstood. People who know I am a professor think I work 2 hours a week when I teach. And people who know I am a priest think I work 90 minutes a week on Sunday. Nobody gets it that every hour in public has 12 hours or so behind it in preparation. Oh well.

So this nice guy, who really has fixed our house, has cost me a lot of work. And the funny thing is he keeps noticing I’m working the whole time he’s here. But the knee doctor I went to Wednesday cost me about 3 hours of work filling out “required” forms. And then when I arrived, the front desk asked me all of those questions again so I essentially lost 3 hours of work. And then the doctor basically blew me off. I was furious.

Well, see … a little thing can set off  diatribe. A diatribe can set off a riot. Wisdom cries out n the street, she cries out. Listen to her! Stop! “The complacency of fools destroys them.”

But God’s law revives the soul.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is fire ….

Well, that’s the truth isn’t it? The Gospel story is all about witness, and about whether the disciples are ready to see the truth about Jesus, and therefore to witness to the truth. Peter wants Jesus not to say the truth out loud. For that, Jesus calls Peter Satan! And then Jesus delivers the essential moral lesson … and this we all understand, we all have to carry our own crosses.

How do I read that as a gay man? I read it as a call to be outrageously out. I have been working hard lately in major academic circles to make myself say “my husband” instead of “my partner.” People need to know I am married to a man. And people need to be able to process that statement just like they do when the sexy young assistant professor says “my wife.” Carry your own cross, tell your own truth, set your own fires with your words.

It is way past time that we came out in a huge way and made the rest of society comprehend us. How many times has some gay person said to me “oh, they don’t need to know about that”? But of course, they do. It is important for me that you tell the truth about you.

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire.”

Proper 19 (Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38)

©2012 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.

We rarely want to hear the truth*

I guess if you’ve been living through some of this year’s weather events, or last year’s, you’ll resonate with the idea that somehow something weird is going on. Let’s face it, global warming, which was a potential future about which we were warned, is here. It isn’t pleasant already, and this is just the beginning. Wait until we have whole months of temperatures over 100 with no rain ….

Well, we were warned, and we were well warned. And yet according to my newspaper some huge proportion of Americans still don’t believe it. Somehow, it seems people rarely want to hear the truth.

Maybe it’s just stubbornness. I mean, if I keep doing what I’ve always done, it ought to work eventually, right? Except, of course, if it never has been working. That isn’t going to change. Ergo, we don’t like to hear the truth, because it nearly always comes with a big dose of change.

So, why don’t we like to hear the truth? Because we don’t like change. That, I think, must be some sort of defense mechanism in our animal creation wherein we are programmed to do the same things over and over as second nature. Sort of like we get this “fight or flight” response that was useful when we needed to run from dinosaurs but turns out to be unhelpful when it comes up during office hours.

Yet, God always tells us the truth. God is always telling us the truth about our own reality in God’s own kingdom. As we read in Amos this week, God has set a plumb-line among God’s people …. Have you ever used a plumb-line? I have. It’s very useful, especially in determining exact level in carpentry. So I’m sure God also finds it very useful; if the plumb is swinging left to right it is scribing an arc along which God should expect to find all faithful people. Notice, I did not say all faithful people were stuck to the plumb; rather, I said they all should be along the arc it inscribes. That’s how God’s kingdom works of course, it takes everyone, each in a different spot, to create the balance that pulls it all together.

The Psalmist says this week (one of my favorite lines): “mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Wow. Mercy and truth meet, and righteousness and peace kiss …. Well, it means, where truth is told mercy can be plentiful, and in that union of the two, the openness to change produces a merging, a kiss, if you will, of peace which is the peace that passes all understanding in unity with God.

It means, “listen to God, who is telling you the truth, and be open to change” and in your mere openness, comes the kiss of peace with unity with God.

As the letter to the church at Ephesus reminds us, we all are the blameless children of God, destined for adoption, redeemed throught Christ, and lavished with the riches of God’s grace.

What can I say to my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters this week? We rarely want to hear the truth. We do not want to accept change. The church has begun to offer us marriage—are you getting married? Or are you clinging to the idea that “marriage is for straight people”? You should get married, to show how wrong an idea that is. I did. It changed my life forever. Marriage is different. And marriage is part of the riches of God’s grace. Take it, let it change you.

And so on, with lgbt equality everywhere and in every moment. Press for it, do not argue with straight people about it, because equality is your right as a child of God. And when it becomes available seize it.

God wants nothing less from you. Listen when God speaks to you.

*Proper 10 (Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29)

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