At the Intersection of Dimensions*

Happy New Year everybody.

I admit I’ve been neglecting this blog lately and I thought perhaps a good way to kickstart myself would be to try to generate some thoughts on New Year’s Day.

In the church it is the feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord. It is the feast that celebrates the giving of the name “Jesus” to the infant at ritual circumcision on the eighth day. The feast used to be called the feast of the Circumcision, but things being what they are, this was changed in the late twentieth century, at least in the Anglican calendar. The meaning of the day, as usual, is richly complex. The event time-line places this at the eighth day after the birth of the infant, and shows his incorporation into the human Jewish family literally, spiritually and metaphorically. We’ve had a star and angel choirs and shepherds, and now we have the giving of the name “Jesus” (which means “The Lord is salvation”). The Gospel story (Luke 2:15-21) pulls us back from mortal timelines into the spiritual timeline of the birth of the Savior when it tells us that the shepherds, on finding the child as predicted, recounted the whole story of the angel presence bringing the news from God to them. It says Mary “treasured all these words” and as she pondered them she no doubt connected this story to the very presence of the angel Gabriel who came to tell her she was to bear the son of God, thus connecting a spiritual timeline in another dimension. Mary the mother and Jesus the infant, in the bleak reality of a stable trough, occupying a point on which human reality connects to God’s greater reality by their role in salvation history. The scripture for the day rounds out the story then by reminding us that God blesses God’s people and that the glory of God is found even in the wild reality of creation.

Whether it is accident or design that this feast occurs on the secular feast of the new year I leave to others to discuss. It seems to me that it is yet another instance of dimensional interaction, as it were, as the every day reality of the beginning of a new year, which by the way occurs in the midst of winter, represents an awakening of sorts. The naming of the child takes place in a ritual that binds him to his faith and also that changes his physical body. Our recollection of the physical then once again meets the metaphorical. From small changes come major results just as from this one day a whole year of yet unknown events will seem to have sprung.

That’s all very mystical I know, but then the season of Christmas is itself very mystical in the way in which it connects us between the human and the divine. It’s no mistake we put bright lights on trees and on our houses to create light in the nighttime. We act out this very story on large scale as we seek each year at this time to generate enough hope in our hearts to sustain us into the new spring.

The year just past gave witness to brutality and horror and even mystery on the large human scale. Mother Nature also seems to have intensified her campaign of extreme weather on a global scale. There was good news too, the U.S. economy is booming, millions more Americans have health care than ever before, some parts of life keep getting easier through technology and medicine. Whatever else might be true, I am much healthier than I was a year ago, taking fewer medications, in better physical shape, and enjoying my sleek new updated smartphone.

For lgbt Americans 2014 was a year in which almost incomprehensible progress was made on marriage equality. Of course, much of the rest of the developed world got there before us. Still, it once seemed impossible that we ever would be allowed to marry in the U.S. and now it is the law in the majority of states. There is a long way to go to complete this progression. Even in the places where marriage equality is the law, like Wisconsin, there is much educating to be done. (I have grown weary of married heterosexuals asking me whether we’ve remarried now that we’re in Wisconsin. I always tempted to ask whether, when they go on vacation, they get remarried every time they cross a state line. But I digress.) I admire the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to get directly involved so far and I hope their strategy to let this essentially social movement take place without their instruction works. Those who think our rights as citizens ever are well served by deliberation by any arm of government would be advised to revisit the history of oppressed people everywhere, including especially those of us in the U.S.

Christian communities were moved and enlivened and encouraged by the actual emergence of conversation in the Roman Catholic church about social issues such as divorce and sexuality. I was startled, saddened even, by the naivety of gay Roman catholics posting on social media that all now was resolved (!). The Roman church is not likely to transform, even a little bit, over night, ever. But it is good to see the work of the Holy Spirit taking place in their midst at this time. You see, in Anglicanism we believe that God speaks to us through scripture, tradition and reason, the latter being the result of discourse (a fancy word for conversation) by which the will of the Holy Spirit becomes known among the people. We also believe that the Holy Spirit is just fine with us having more than one point of view at a time. We have been listening for six centuries to the Holy Spirit among us. I’m glad the Romans are trying it on for size.

Our human reality always is taking place at the point between the dimension in which we live with our bills and chores and worries, and God’s dimension in which we are the beloved heirs of God’s kingdom. The glory of God sung by angel choirs in a starry night is enshrined in the very reality of our lives. The love in our hearts and the hope in our souls is God’s glory.

Happy New Year!

 

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*The Holy Name Of Our Lord, Jesus Christ (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

There is Power in Naming, Power in Saying*

Probably the easiest way to unsettle the person you are with in any moment is to say the wrong thing. And often we do that, just to gain a momentary upper hand, so wifty are human emotions. My husband has learned from me to huff out loud just to signal me that he is unhappy, even if only momentarily. He didn’t used to do that, but I do it all the time, and he has picked up on it, whether to mock me or join me I’m not sure, but either way it works.

Well, what does this have to do with anything? A lot! There is great power in what we say to each other. Just as there is great power in a smile, there also is great power in a word, and there especially is great power in a name. Victims of abuse learn that the first step on the road to recovery is the ability to name the abuse, whether it be alcoholism or spousal abuse or some other form. If you can say the word, you rob it of the power it had over you. Because if you can say the word, you can also negate the word. AA participants learn this at the outset; if you can say the word, you have gained a bit of power you did not have before.

So naming is very important. This is true in society of course. Let’s just try a couple of examples on for size. I bet you don’t know that there are many Christian churches that are catholic. The Anglican Communion, including all of the Episcopal Church, is catholic. Most churches with the name Lutheran, all Orthodox churches, and others, such as Old Catholics, also are catholic. Notice the small “c.” That word, catholic, just means “universal.” In the Episcopal Church, we always refer to that other big church with a bishop in Rome as “the Roman Church.” They call themselves, THE Catholic church. See? They use the word politically, as though it were alone their possession. We use the word politically too, by not acknowledging their usage.

Language is subtle, and subtly powerful. And that is always important. In fact, it is a fascinating area of study, to comprehend how we human animals manipulate each other with words. So there is no surprise that we commemorate God’s incarnation among with a feast day for the Holy Name of Jesus, a name that means “God rescues.” As the scripture notes, this name is given by the angel Gabriel even before the impregnation of Mary, Jesus’ mother.

There is power there to be sure. Angels always represent power. Gay people know, because in many ways we live despite our best efforts on the fringes of society. So angels visit us more openly, more easily, because we are more readily available to them. Which is one way of saying, our doors are more readily open to God, because we, as gay creatures, are closer to God who created us gay. We are less bound up in the strictures of “what is right.” And so, we are more open to the power of God. And, of course, we are more easily hurt by names slung about.

So let us begin this year with God’s blessing, given through Moses to Aaron: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

And let us remember, each gay one of us, that God’s angel has given us our names before we were conceived in the womb. Naming, and especially calling each other by name, is a form of prophetic witness, of calling God into our midst by doing.

That my friends, is power.

*The Holy Name, January 1 (Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.