Second Tuesday of Advent
In this holy darkness of advent, the holy darkness that allows things to germinate and grow, we anticipate Word and Wisdom made flesh in Jesus. This year, the waiting of Advent takes on a different form. Many of us are probably tired of waiting, tired of the sacrifices we have made this year in the midst of a global pandemic. Pandemic fatigue has taken its toll. Our celebrations and rituals may be different this year. Yet we wait, despite how tired we are. We wait with expectant hope.
As we wait for the coming of Emmanuel, God-with-Us, we acknowledge that God is already with us and within us. God is with our unhoused neighbor, God is with those struggling to breathe, God is with those struggling to make ends meet. God is within us. As the Word made flesh at Christmas in Jesus, so too is God is within each of us. To see God-with-Us, to see Emmanuel in our midst is to see God enfleshed in queer and trans bodies.
Trans bodies are, to put it simply, marked and othered. They are at higher risk for violence and discrimination; they are excluded, ridiculed, and fetishized. Trans women often end up as sex workers through coercion or through a need to survive. Marked as bodies that do not fit within the established gender norms – bodies with both beards and breasts, tall women, short pear-shaped men, women with deep voices, women with Adam’s apples, men with uteri, and bodies marked by surgical scars – trans bodies have been the site of violence for years. And yet, through their blessed unique diversity, trans bodies are sacred, trans bodies – like all bodies – hold the God within us.
When I think on my own journey of coming out as trans and trying to discern if there was a place for me in the church, I think back to my first Transgender Day of Remembrance. We grieved and cried out against the toxic, combined violence of transphobia, misogyny, racism, classism and ableism. We declared our determination to join in transforming a world that seeks to erase and efface our existence. On a dark, rainy, November night, I joined in the commemorations in Boston church before we formed a candlelit procession through the streets of Boston. Candles flickering against the rain, to brighten the way, to remind us all of hope in the midst of despair. Slowly, reverently, the names of all the transgender martyrs killed within the last year were read. It was a litany of saints, spanning the entire world. My voice quivered when it was my turn, but I read the name on the card in my hand and realized that these were my saints, my martyrs, though I had never met them. Yet their ghosts surround me, glimpses at the edges of the candlelit circle. We are part of a shared trans history, and we must take that story, like the light and the love that we carry, out into the world.
Throughout the church’s history, gender variant members of the faithful have been alternately canonized and decried as heretics. Sometimes both. Even today, trans people have varied experiences with the church. Some find rejection, some find acceptance. And I dream of a church that not only tolerates and accepts its transgender, gender variant, and non-binary members of the faithful, but affirms and celebrates them, allowing them to flourish and to lead. Let us recognize the God-with-us present in those most marginalized among us, enfleshed in the sacred queer and trans bodies among us. So come, Emmanuel, come, and be with us and within us.
