Advent and a Persevering Faith

This is not quite the traditional hymn in the Chrurch’s advent repertoire, but it could not be more appropriate for the season!

Christ’s advent, His nativity is the ultimate of stories of faith and love. We are called to wait in absolute faith and hope that The Love of our souls, awaits for us to draw near, to call upon Him. Even if we are judged to be undeserving, in the face of obstructions in the path: the call of Advent is to believe and hold on to our love and a belief in a God that loves us!

Advent as a call to faith

A central claim of the Christmas story that we anticipate throughout the season of Advent is that of a real God. An existent Being who consciously makes the choice to incarnate; To assume the form of a human being. A thinking, intelligence that then walks upon the earth and speaks to the human condition with such accuracy and insight, leaves a body of principles that have helped build the greatest civilisations that the world has seen to date. A real Being who transforms the hearts and minds of men and women across several spaces and times.

The comfort from this message, in my view, as a gay man, is simply that God is real enough to engage with the questions and uncertainties that plague any genuine seeker who also happens to be a sexual minority. The message of Advent reminds me that there might be a waiting period involved in receiving God’s assistance, but that it is available and a realty. The season basically calls us to have faith, to belief, and to trust. Yes, to believe, against all contrary messages that say we ought to give up on faith and that there is a false choice between God and our sexuality. This season, to me, is a reminder that God has the will and desires to be reconciled to all of us. We need to activate our faith and defy those who would keep us away from the reality of God.

God’s reality, intelligence, willingness to engage is powerfully reiterated during this period of Advent. We can have faith that He has compassion, that He hears and fully understands, faith in His intelligence to grasp the complex web of emotions of thoughts that go with trying to reconcile sexuality and spirituality, faith to refuse to let go of our relationships to God simply because people – as finite and small as we are – would exclude and hate us; We can have Faith to keep on standing, keep praying relentlessly, anticipating in hope that there is a God who is dependable to ALL who believe Him. In brief, the message of advent issues a call to have the faith to keep believing in a God who became flesh and who continues to engage with all who also draw near to Him.

This is the second biggest calls of Advent that I find as a gay man. The first is to love. This one is a call to believe, to have faith. And to persevere in that faith. I resolve to have faith in a real God who intervenes in real ways, who hears, who enters into our homes, situations, hearts – and is capable of doing so if we ask Him. He clearly desires to help, so we might as well knock on His door relentlessly for the answers and solutions we seek.

If ye love me…

The gospel according to John is a beautiful poetic text in several respects: for its’ comfort with framing God, Christ, as an intimate lover of souls. It works to reduce the distance between us and the immortal-unseen.

Some of the most beautiful words of Christ are articulated in it, expressed in beautiful images and language. Along with the book of Revelations, the Book of John stands out (for this blogger) as one of the high points in New Testament authorship.

During this season of Advent, I find my attention pulled to the following lines from John 14. And,I find in these verses provocation to reflect a lot more deeply on how to be at peace, spiritually, and to find reconciliation with God.

The verses from the King James Version are:

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you….”

As a gay man, I have battled constantly with the idea of being a transgressor. Being disobedient, and disqualified to fully enjoy communion with God. As much as I like to tell myself that I am at full peace with myself and with my sexuality, I find myself in a terrible cycle at times: I find a sense of peace and then, something pulls me into a sense of being disobedient and condemned. It becomes difficult to reconcile myself to God, I struggle and fight through tears and prayers and finally retrieve peace in powerful moments of what I believe to be God’s peace. Some time later, an image flashes before y eyes, a word is spoken, a song plays and the cycle of guilt rotates once again. And again and again it repeats itself (less and less nowadays but I felt trapped in this cycle some years ago).

The question still remains for me: how do I overcome my sense of guilt – guilt of being in contravention of God’s laws, by the virtue of my being gay? Do I try to convince myself that I am sinless and I am good. That ‘gay is good’? That might have worked as a slogan in the 1970s movement for gay libration (which I am grateful for) but at the end of the day, I have to confront myself and find peace in the hidden recesses of my soul that are hidden to the world. In those secret places where I do not have a public mask, Gay feels the opposite of good, many times. It feels like I have broken obedience to God. I ask myself in those times when no one is looking and I do not have to defend my gay persona – if my conscience is troubling me so much, and I am not at peace, then maybe this whole Gay thing is indeed just sinful and toxic, poisonous. Sinful. Maybe it is indeed true that God would rather have me be heterosexual. Even if I cannot possibly become straight. So, how do I deal with this dilemma?

Perhaps it helps to actually first understand what God’s commandments actually are – and what Christ call to obedient actually contains.

The commandments, Christ summarises, can be narrowed down to two lifelong assignments for each human being – the call to love God and love of my neighbour as myself.

‘Thou shalt be heterosexual’ is not an edict that is established in Scripture. Yes, there is an underlying assumption in much of the bible that assumes heterosexuality of all people. Rightly so, given the context in which the scriptures were written.

Yet, at the same time, the commandments that we are called to hold on to and to follow are those tied to love. ‘Love’ unlike heterosexuality and cultural mores is a timeless and spaceless concept. It is not tied to a particular context or time period. By its ver nature, it is unseen. It transcends space and time. So, the commandment to love endures as an eternal one. The cultural assumption in the Bible, on the other hand, speak to temporary things. Cultural imperatives that are tied to space and time.

Love.This is what we are called to obey and measure ourselves up to:

So, if it so happens that I frequently find myself in spirals of guilt and self condemnation…if I find myself being overwhelmed by my gayness as a ‘sin’, I need to remember that my focus is in the wrong place.

Christ is calling us to something much more profound and more challenging than the realities of being gay/straight. He is calling – commanding – us to love. That is plenty of work and very few of us have begun to engage with what these commandments mean. Not even the church (which I will never abandon, regardless of her stances on homosexuality) seems to be concerned with this call to love. I pray that there might be grace at all times, for those who need it, to remember to always re-centre on Love as the chief mission of our lives and souls and the essence of Christ’s command for obedience.