Love in Community

How can you contribute to a community that gathers, that brings people home, that loves people out of their shame?

Zephaniah 3:19-20

“I will deal with all your oppressors

at that time.

And I will save the lame

and gather the outcast,

and I will change their shame into praise

and renown in all the earth.

At that time I will bring you home,

at the time when I gather you.”

The word “home” always feels so tender for me at Advent. I am home because I have made it for myself. My community has built a home alongside me, we have made our own family, we keep each other loved and safe. While I celebrate our strength, ingenuity, and resilience, there is a part of me that always mourns for the loss of a home of origin. It is just true. We make love happen for ourselves, by God, but there is such tenderness there for love that is hard won.

The queer community is not alone in this, many (perhaps, if we’re honest, even most?) people have complex feelings during holidays. We want to be saved, to be gathered, to be brought home, to be unashamed.

This Advent comes at a hard and pivotal moment. Communities from historically marginalized communities are anxious and panicked about their future safety, homes, access to healthcare, and basic human rights. We do not know what is coming, but we sense an oncoming storm, and we hope that there are others who are willing to weather the storm with us.

Love has never been simple. Love is tenacious.

How can you contribute to a community that gathers, that brings people home, that loves people out of their shame? It is increasingly urgent that we spread a more true Gospel about the God that centers the oppressed. Advent is all about the joy of God revealing themself to us as love and correcting the world’s vision of God as vengeance. How are you part of the telling of the story of Advent?

— Theo Isoz