“And if one of the gods wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to ensure that, too”.
A quote from Homer’s Odyssey, written in the 8th century. A bit of a strange one, when you think about it. I can’t say I’ve ever looked at the ocean and thought “hmm, that looks a bit like a glass of Merlot”. It’s quite clearly the wrong colour. I’d probably say sapphire, or even whale-blue, to invoke the leviathans of myth.
Was Homer colourblind, perhaps? Historians don’t think so. It seems, unbelievably, that the Ancient Greeks just didn’t have a word for blue. It’s why, elsewhere in his epics, Homer described the sky as “bronze”. So, when Homer reached for a word to describe the colour of the ocean, he picked what he perceived as a similar shade of the same colour.
It turns out that many ancient civilizations didn’t have a word for blue, not just the Ancient Greeks. And it’s not because their eyes hadn’t fully evolved or something like that – pretty much every culture just… took their time getting around to inventing blue. They just saw it as a shade of another colour, the same way most people would look at Fuchsia, say “it’s pink”, and then proceed to have difficulty distinguishing it from Flamingounless the two swatches were next to each other. Or they’re a colour nerd.
Blue and green seem to be amongst the most lumped-together colours, enough so that “Blue-green distinction in language” has its own Wikipedia page. In Japanese, the word for green was only invented in the 800s CE, and was considered as much a shade of blue as cornflower is to an English speaker. Schoolbooks only began distinguishing midori (green) from ao (blue) after World War 2 and, as a result, older traffic lights in Japan are generally what an English speaker would call blue.
Colour is a spectrum, not a series of discrete points, and each culture has made its own choice in where the dividing lines fall. Russian doesn’t have a catch-all blue, instead having separate words for lighter and darker hues – much like our red and pink. So if a Russian is trying to translate a novel where the protagonist drives a blue car, they’re going to have to decide if the car is a light blue or a dark blue. Does that matter? Well, what different associations does a Russian have with a light blue or a dark blue? After all, someone who drives a red car might be a very different person from someone who drives a pink car.
As humans, we really like pretending continua are discreet points. We make little boxes to put things in, then get annoyed when someone takes something out of box A and, instead, puts it in box B.
In today’s reading, we see a society that decided that, on the spectrum of humanity, disabled was just a shade of sinful. When Jesus gave the blind man sight, He took him out of the box labeled “sinner” and put him into a box labelled “innocent”. “Look,” He says, “these are completely different colours.” And then everyone, including the man’s own family, says “you’re crazy, they’re clearly the same colour! That man must have committed some great sin as a fetus!”
God painted humanity a wide array of shades and hues. A spectrum of heights and weights, colours and ages, of strengths, of levels of flexibility, with different body parts. But our bodies are not what matter. Remember the words of 1 Samuel 16:7: “God does not see as mortals see; mortals see only appearances but God sees into the heart.”
That man was born blind. He was not born a sinner. What pieces make up your mortal body and their degree of functionality are not descriptive or indicative of the soul God put in it. Being born without feet doesn’t mean you’re destined to stay in one place. Being born female doesn’t mean you’re not a man.
Ah! There’s another spectrum! And, just like colour, different cultures around the world have drawn their lines in different places. And, just as we have our own associations with different colours, each culture has its own associations with their gender categorizations. Here are a few of the many three-gender decisions used traditionally around the world:
In Oaxaca in Mexico, there are mujer, muxe, and hombre
In Hawai’i, there are wahine, māhū, and kane
In parts of India and Pakistan, there are Aurata, khusra, and Ādamī
In Balkan countries, there are the Grau, burrnesha, and burrë
Here, in North America, with its many different indigenous languages, manywith their own term for “third-gender” people, the umbrella English-language term “two-spirit” was developed to describe the many distinct traditional identities viewed as not “man” or “woman”, but other, both, or in between.
We will discuss two-spirit identities more during future services in collaboration with the Reconciliation committee. In the meantime, when someone says that everyone must be a male man or a female woman, or that trans and nonbinary identities were only invented in the ‘70s, you can pity them that they cannot perceive the spectrum that God made, that has always been there, and that they are blinded to. The same way the Pharisees were blind.
When someone approaches you and says “I am a man”, “I am a woman”, or “I am non-binary”, they are telling you that God made them that way, regardless of their outward appearance. It is your duty to believe them, to address them how they asked to be addressed, to treat them as you would anyone else claiming that identity. You cannot tell what is written on their heart by their outwards appearance. And, just as it did harm to the blind man to be labelled by all to be a sinner, it does them harm to be put in a box where their soul doesn’t belong.
Today, we are celebrating PIE day, when we re-affirm our Public, Intentional, and Explicit support and inclusion of 2SLGBTQIA+ people. We make sure that others know we are on the side of justice and truth, that we are a safe harbour for those who are spurned by their own communities of faith for being who God made them. Where we appreciate the whole rainbow of God’s creation.
Amen.