The Bridegroom’s garland*

Isaiah’s prophecy (61:10 ff.) is rich with metaphor; how else do humans explain the experience of the presence of God but to say what it felt like? I have known God on the prairie sweeping like angels’  wings over acres of corn, I have known God in ascending clouds of incense at the feet of God’s altars, I have known God a million times in the eyes of communicants. God is everywhere for sure, but sometimes metaphor is useful for describing theophany, which is this experience we have of God in human time and space. Christmas is a time of ongoing theophany.

Isaiah has this lovely metaphor this week “God has clothed me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland.” Of course, this metaphor is meaningful in a specific way at a specific time. Still I chuckled thinking about getting ready for our wedding.

Brad and I have been together for almost 36 years. We had a pretty exciting beginning, and then we had all of the usual potholes, and then we got it worked out. And like most gay men of our generation, and unlike most heterosexuals, we assumed we never could get married, so we didn’t even think about it. In our eighth year together we had a house blessing which we chose to think of as a blessing of our relationship. But it was in our 30^th year together that we decided to go to City Hall in Toronto and get married legally, just because we could.

What a shock. So I have been trying to think about how I felt getting dressed that morning. I don’t think that was the biggest thing on my mind. And, like being ordained, it turns out it is the aftermath that is the most important part of a sacrament like marriage. Still, I dressed as an Anglican priest, and I suppose the “garland” Isaiah refers to was my pectoral cross, which I drew on at the last moment as we were ready to go.

It was the cross of Christ crucified and risen, Christ who had chosen me, a gay man, as a priest in His church. Christ, who had chosen us, a gay couple, as an example of righteousness. The robe of righteousness was laid around our shoulders that day, in our aging bodies and in our mature love for each other.

The blessing of Christmastide is the coming of the light into a darkened world. No matter how many times we experience this, it remains a constant. Christ brings light. Christ is the light which is life. And we, gay people, are the candles in which Christ’s light enlightens the world.

I hope you had a merry Christmas. Don’t forget we still have nine days of Christmas left! 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)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Once in a blue moon*

Metaphor can be both a wonderful and a terrible thing. I mean, it’s nice to know some things happen only once in a blue moon while others are common as pie. It’s exciting to encounter the best thing since sliced bread, and it’s a relief not to be as skittish as a cat on a hot tin roof. I grew up in the Midwest with Midwestern parents and their language was well-seasoned (I was going to say peppered but thought to be more meta-analytical about it) with metaphors that helped explain both life around us and our course through it. It is a part of human experience.

A few years ago in my other work as a scholar of knowledge organization, I was studying tagging—you know those labels you stick on things in Facebook or Youtube or Flickr?—and the peer-reviewers of a draft paper I had written sent me to read about cognitive linguistics, which itself is a bit of a brain twister, because it is about subconscious linguistic ticks. Thinks like “once in a blue moon” that we say and mean but without really being cognitive about it. That is, we don’t think about a moon that is literally blue before we use that phrase; in fact, most people have never seen a blue moon, and if they have it probably wasn’t actually blue, but they use the phrase anyway and with a pretty specific meaning. (Which means that both “moon” and “blue moon” are the kinds of signs called icons, but that’s semiotics, I’ll save that for another occasion).

There are a couple of reasons this might be important for my research. For instance, many people believe we can harvest all of those tags people have added online and use them like a thesaurus. So let’s say we do that, and you want to search for uses of blue cheese in salads from different cultures. Do you really want also to retrieve all of the expressions about “blue moon”? Remember, the moon is made of cheese (green, if I recall correctly). So in such a search engine a blue moon and a moon made from green cheese will be retrieved in a search for “blue cheese.”

Well, it gets worse too. It turns out there is something called fictive scanning. We all do it (except me, now, because I am too afraid of it, so I’ve just stopped talking spontaneously; that’s why, when you ask me a question in person, I often just stand there staring … I’m frozen in abject horror about all of the potential linguistic errors I could commit). This is the one where you tell a lie but everyone overlooks it, because it is more efficient than telling the truth. My favorite—you are sitting on a passenger plane, which just has landed at some airport, and all around you people start jabbering on their cellphones “I just landed.” Well, no they didn’t and they’d better be grateful they were on a plane that did! Well, maybe you see my point. And, maybe you understand why it is that sometimes I think between linguistics and theology we should just give up—one big shrug. But, that is not the Anglican way—it is the way tried by other faith communities all around us but it is not our way, our way is to use reason in equal measure with tradition. Thinking is hard, but useful, as it turns out.

So do you know what a plumb line is? Do you know what plumb is? Plumb means square, as in not crooked or leaning in any direction. When something is plumb it won’t collapse as a victim of gravity, but it will stand and be strong. We’re talking about structures here, but only metaphorically. A plumb line is great fun if you’re a beginning carpenter. It’s a long string wrapped around a core that is hidden inside a big weighted pendulum (a bob). Mine is blue, and has blue chalk inside it, so that when you pull the string out the string is covered with blue chalk (this has nothing to do with the blue moon, mind you). You hold the end of the string at a given specific point, and when the bob (ever hear of a plumb bob? now you have) stops swinging the line is plumb. If you can manage to secure the bob then pluck the string, it will snap and leave a straight blue line where it hit the surface. These often are used for making saw cuts, or for aligning pieces that need to fit together.

Clever theologians have pulled together three pieces of scripture for today and added to them a delightful Psalm, which is to be understood as our heartfelt songburst in response to the other scripture. The lessons are Amos 7:7-17 in which God says God has set a plumb line in the midst of God’s people and they’d better learn to live squarely around it, Colossians 1:1-14 in which Paul says he will pray constantly that we might know God’s will, not to mention be strong about it, and Luke 10:25-37 in which Jesus makes it pretty clear the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, the oft-referred to “golden rule”, this is the plumb line. In between we find Psalm 82 in which the psalmist prays for those who go about not understanding and acknowledges the power of God, who is holding that plumb line.

It’s all very clear (just kidding), and we could even make a good lgbt point that the story of the good Samaritan can be read as what would it be like if an outrageous persecutor of gay people was set upon or robbed or injured in our midst, of course Jesus would want us to treat that person as we would want to be treated. That’s all perfectly clear.

But the part that is not so clear is the part about the plumb line. Remember, it moves. It swings, inscribing an arc as it goes,

 

 

 

and when it settles and you try to snap that line as a marker you are in peril of causing it to swing more or to move to the right or left a tad and thereby inscribe yet another arc.

 

 

 

So what does that mean? It means God’s creation is solid and strong and sure because it is made plumb by God. But, like the arcs in the second pictures, it also means there is no single place where God’s judgment is without reason. It means there is diversity in God’s creation. It means there is room inside all of the many overlapping arcs inscribed by God’s plumb line. It means life is gloriously messy with lots of space for diversity. The plumb line is in your heart; it is only you who can love your neighbor as yourself. Just remember, everybody is your neighbor. There are no exceptions.

Proper 10 (Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37)

©2103 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.