I’m winding up my Epiphany break in Amsterdam. That’s a fancy way of saying I love coming to Amsterdam in early January because it is so quiet here then. There are few tourists, and because it is cold and rainy even the locals stay inside, so it is just very peaceful. And of course, charming, especially at night with the inky sky studded with stars (Venus is visible in early evening to the southwest from my window) and the lights on the bridges glistening off the gently flowing water in the canals. Sounds dreamy doesn’t it?
The other evening after dinner I got interested in what was on television (rare, because Dutch television is, ahem, let’s say … ummm sparse). My left leg “went to sleep” and when I tried to get up I almost toppled over. I had to plop back down and pound on my leg to get it to “wake up” and then hobble to the kitchen muttering as I went. Interesting to think about God knowing my leg was asleep, about God knowing what I was muttering (ahem, again) and even to wonder whether God put my leg to sleep to make me sit still. Psalm 139:1 “LORD, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up ….”
Of course God is aware and involved, because we are in God and God is in us. God isn’t Santa Claus, I like to remind folks—God doesn’t need to make lists and check them twice, because God occupies us and we occupy God. It is only a matter of dimension that keeps us from always perceiving this truth. Unity already exists, God is our unity, if only we could manage to remember it, to see it, always instead of just once in awhile. Psalm 139:2-3 “You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O LORD, know it altogether.”
Amsterdam is well known, I know, for some eccentric behaviors. I always chuckle about that too, because I have been visiting here for many years and I have many gay friends here. They are all very sweet people, and would be horrified by the idea of such eccentricity. They like their biertjes and boyfriends, but apart from that they have a kind of sweetness in their nature that is very appealing. It is almost as though they are so well-adjusted in their gayness that they have seen their own unity with God, as though they already dwell in that different dimension. Their eyes twinkle sometimes just enough to make me think they know something I don’t know. Psalm 139: 5 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it.”
The Gospel reading for today includes the second part of Jesus’ search for disciples (John 1: 43-51). This is one of my favorite stories to bring up in gay circles. We tend to think of Jesus in big bold letters, yet here is this young man, long hair, a little disheveled, wandering around the seashore chatting up scantily-clad young men (they were fishing, after all) and telling them to follow him. Sounds like the first gay bar I ever went to. I remember, I was terrified, even with my friends sitting right there a couple of feet away. And when the first real honest to goodness gay man made eye contact with me I was really frightened and ran back to my friends and put my head down. A little like Nathanael today, who reacts to Philip’s call by saying something nasty about Jesus’ home town. Now, see, it really sounds like a gay bar. And, like me when I first encountered that which God had prepared for me for all eternity, Nathanael’s first impulse is to hide, to make a rude remark. When Jesus addresses him directly he challenges him—“where did you get to know me?”
Never thought about Jesus and a gay bar in the same way before? Maybe it’s time to begin. Maybe the way to find that sweet other dimension, the one where we know we are of God and God is always one with us, the one where even our eyes twinkle, is to look for God right where we are. As Jesus says to his future disciples, “Come, and see.”
*1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 