The Door to the Dimension of Love

I begin as often with a note about nature. In Oregon spring clearly is with us. Tulips have been beautiful but are about finished; azaleas are blooming radiantly, rhododendron are opening their glorious blossoms. Tree pollen has been like yellow snow for weeks but now seems to be giving way to the flurry of petals from cherry and apple trees. A few very warm very sunny days have been tantalizing but the reality is that spring has come too soon and we are very grateful now that the rains have returned. The rhythm of life here in the Pacific Northwest is that the temperate summers are dependent on the rainy winters. It is an ecosystem. It is the visual evidence of the action of the creative power of God, which is love, expressed in the totality of the environment. Nature breathes and so do we, nature smiles and so do we, nature relaxes and so do we. And as the ecosystem in synchrony builds and communicates love, wonder and joy increase as well.

So, it is critical to comprehend human enterprise not as singular but, rather, as part of this ecosystem of love from God. We are created in God’s own image as loving people, and the stewardship of nature we have been given consists primarily of maintaining our synchrony of love with creation. Stop and smell the flowers, but remember to prune judiciously so they will continue to thrive. And in this way responsibility evolves as loving action.

Indeed, the cosmos is everlasting, the cosmos brings light and movement and gravity and pull and push and ebb and flow, all possible because it is love filling what would otherwise be a void. Without love there is only the void. With love there is only life.

Thus, there is an ecosystem of love in which the entry into the dimension of love is the pathway to eternal life in joy. The ecosystem of love is available to every child of God who loves, who loves God, who loves the other children of God. Therefore, there can be no outcasts. Anyone who loves, has found the door into the dimension of love.

Love can take many forms, we have to be clear about this. When we talk about God and love we are not talking about warm fuzzy feelings; we are, instead, talking about justice, righteousness, equality, egalitarianism, peace, and the accompanying concepts of restraint, refrain, responsibility.

In the Acts of the Apostles [8:26-40] Philip is directed by God, fueled by the power of love. An angel sends him to the right spot, the Spirit directs him to where he encounters the official identified as a eunuch. After their interaction—their synchrony of love in action–the Spirit snatches Philip away and deposits him where he is next needed to preach the Gospel of love. God’s Spirit of love moves Philip across dimensions to build up the love needed to spread the good news of salvation.

The court official identified as a eunuch is an outcast from the religious community; because of his sexual difference he cannot be a part of the congregation. But his love of God overcomes his difference, his love of God compels his desire to know Jesus. This is his opening to the dimension of love. God, love, always rushes into the opening to fill the void.

Philip proclaims the Gospel of love, baptizes him and receives him into the household of God, and he goes on his way rejoicing, no longer outcast, now a full member of the community. Such is the power of love to bring everyone into the fold as a child of God through believing in Christ Jesus.

If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us [1 John 4:12].

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them [1 John 4:16].

John’s first epistle [1 John 4:7-21] continues the expression of the power of love. Love is the very force of life, life is God because love is God, God is love and therefore God is life. When we love each other God is alive within and among us thriving and building up more love.

In John’s Gospel [15:1-8] Jesus uses the metaphor of a vineyard to make his point about the ecosystem of love. God is the vinegrower, Jesus is the vine, the branches must be pruned to bear the best fruit, those branches that are pruned grow and bear much fruit.

God is love, Jesus is the Word of love, the vine is the dimension of love, the branches that bear even a little love bear much love, we are those branches, our job is to bear the fruit of love.

When we live in God’s loving ecosystem we thrive, love thrives, love builds up, whatever creates more love (joy) is part of the working of the ecosystem.

Of course, we who are LGBTQ+ people might identify with the outcast in Philip’s story, but also as the lovingly tended vine that bears much fruit in Jesus’ metaphor.

Remember, the purpose of scripture is not to serve like a cookbook or a legal repository, but rather, to reveal to us God’s purpose.

Here is a person who was outcast because of his sexual classification who, despite that, seeks understanding, finds God, and the Holy Spirit sends him an apostle and leads him to the waters of baptism. From there it is revealed that, like us, he has eternal life in Christ.

And Philip, the apostle, I love this story (not least because for several years I was rector of one of his churches), is shunted like the Jetsons from spot to spot from need to need by God’s Spirit of love. And the whole time Philip stands at the door to the dimension of love.

5 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30 Deus, Deus meus; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8)

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

A new corner of the vineyard

Greetings from Oregon. We moved here several weeks ago and have been mostly consumed by trying to get control over this crazy house we now call home. In the midst of it we experience daily the wonder of the beauty of this place, from the tall Douglas firs surrounding our property, to the deer tiptoeing past in the neighbor’s yard, to the jewel-like lake nearby one direction and the magnificent rivers and mountains the other, and even to the giant raccoon (we thought maybe it was Sasquatch) pressed against our window the first night we cooked out.

Maybe it’s the thicket in our back yard that makes me chuckle when I ponder Isaiah 5, the Old Testament reading appointed for today. God’s love song for God’s beloved metaphorical vineyard turns to despair as the vineyard fills with wild grapes, then the hedges are torn down, all is devoured and trampled and overgrown. Yes, it sounds like our backyard all right. But of course, God is voicing through the prophet the truth of what happens when God’s people forsake the way of love, and justice and righteousness are replaced with disaster. It is a magnificent metaphor for the world spinning around us today.

It points directly to the climax of Luke 12 when Jesus berates the crowd: “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

This metaphor of the vineyard has personal meaning for us as well, even if I’m stretching a bit here. We moved from Philadelphia to Wisconsin to take up academic work for which we had been recruited. That vineyard quickly filled with wild grapes and we determined to escape before the hedge crumbled. But as we determined to retire from the academy still we pondered whether to stay in the majestic beauty of Lake Michigan or to move away. It was life as gay people that convinced us to come to Oregon. Gay life in Wisconsin was too difficult; it was impossible to find contractors to work on our home, health-care providers refused to acknowledge our marriage and with great snarkiness referred to us as each other’s “friends,” at restaurants we got the worst tables and the worst service. I could go on and on, but in the end we decided we had had enough of those wild grapes.

Oregon is no perfect haven, but it is far and away a better “garden” for lgbt people; a place where we can live lgbt lives tended and nourished (not just tolerated) by God’s created vineyard. Oregonians, it seems, have continued to mature as good stewards of all of creation.

I went to college here many years ago. I have now almost daily the wonderful experience of a kind of sensual perception of my youth as the aroma of the fir trees transports me back to that magnificent time of wonder when as young people we first tried on the mantle of adulthood and prepared for careers and families. And the sun breaks through the morning fog and the trees outside gleam and reflect its rays in this particular vineyard, just as decades of lgbt life has brought the sun to shine on our wonderful families.

We will fix up our corner of the vineyard, not to worry. As Paul writes in Hebrews 11 we will do our best to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And I don’t mean just in our garden, but in society as well to the best of our ability. Having joined Oregonians, we are fully aware that it requires us to take up the progressive cudgel that is God’s tool for tending and nourishing the greater vineyard of all creation.

We do what we can each day by giving love and by giving thanks to God for the love with which all of us have been placed in this magnificent garden.

 

Proper 15 (Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56)

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.