An Oblation of Peace, A Sacrifice of Praise

This post is adapted from a recent talk I gave at an annual retreat for side-B folks.

I grew up in the Eastern Orthodox Church. We’re a highly liturgical tradition and our Sunday worship follows the same liturgy each week. The Orthodox like many other traditions, celebrate the Eucharist or communion at every Sunday service. The hymns and prayers we pray each Sunday can sometimes feel easily familiar and apathy can easily creep in. From time to time though a certain phrase or passage will jump out and resonate with me in a new way. I’ll chew on it throughout the day and a line or passage will pop into my consciousness randomly when I’m least expecting it. For the last few months it’s been oblation. 

Each Sunday in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, immediately following the affirmation of the Nicene Creed, we begin a section that culminates with the consecration of the Eucharist. This section called The Anaphora, begins with the priest, or deacon, proclaiming: 

Let us stand aright; let us stand with fear; let us attend, that we may offer the Holy Oblation in peace. 

Other translations might use the word “offering” or “sacrifice” but I like the term oblation. In the context of the Anaphora prayers, the Holy Oblation is the offering of the Eucharistic elements. It is the work of the people centered in the Eucharist. The Anaphora ends with the consecration and changing of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. 

Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory was a well known Orthodox theologian wrote about this offering in the Liturgy:

In addition to being the perfect peace offering, Jesus is also the only adequate sacrifice of praise which men can offer to God. There is nothing comparable in men to the graciousness of God. There is nothing with which men can worthily thank and praise the Creator. This is so even if men would not be sinners. Thus God himself provides men with their own most perfect sacrifice of praise. The Son of God becomes genuinely human so that human persons could have one of their own nature sufficiently adequate to the holiness and graciousness of God. Again this is Christ, the sacrifice of praise.

Thus, in Christ, all is fulfilled and accomplished. In Him the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, which is itself the image of the universal striving of men to be worthy of God, is fulfilled. All possible offerings are embodied and perfected in the offering of Christ on the Cross. He is the offering for peace and reconciliation and forgiveness. He is the sacrifice for supplication, thanksgiving and praise. In Him all of men’s sins and impurities are forgiven. In Him all of men’s positive aspirations are fulfilled. In Him, and in him alone, are all of men’s ways to God, and God’s ways to men, brought into one Holy Communion. Through Him alone do men have access to the Father in one Holy Spirit (Eph 2.18; Also Jn 14, 2 Cor 5, Col 1). 

This Holy Oblation offered in the Eucharist reminds me of my own meager sacrifice, my small oblation. My oblation or sacrifice is my life to God. Like all Christians we’re called to give our lives to Christ, but my personal oblation takes on a unique aspect as a gay Christian pursuing celibacy. For me, that oblation is that which my heart and flesh long for most deeply, a loving intimate relationship with another man.

After the priest or deacon says, 

Let us stand aright; let us stand with fear; let us attend, that we may offer the Holy Oblation in peace.

The people then respond to the deacon by singing:

An oblation of peace, a sacrifice of praise.

I don’t know what this means. 

My oblation often feels taken by force. Extracted from me like some unfair demand of an all powerful God who invented the rules for the price I must pay. This very sentiment feels impetuous but here we are. 

I’ve spent so many hours of my life trying to figure out how to make my oblation one of praise. Something that I’m thankful for, or even gladly offer up. 

At various points in my life I saw the seeming hindrance to having a wife and a family as itself the sacrifice and offering. My same-sex desires as a hindrance and a block to something good which so many around me seem to find without great distress and pain. But, as I’ve grown, the offering has changed. The wife has become a husband I can not have, the love we might share, and the bed we’d grow old in together. The home we’d form together as a refuge for many and a safe haven crowned by our love reflecting God’s love. This all once seemed utterly other and unthinkable, but now seems like something dear to me, but God and His Church for some reason have closed this door to me. 

A little bit about me. I’m a glutton for emotional punishment. I will seasonally binge a gay drama. Sometimes it’s highbrow, sometimes it’s just horny but that is neither here nor there. As a high school/college student it was V For Vendetta, or Ugly Betty. With Ugly Betty identifying both with Betty as an Enneagram 2, and also with her nephew Justin and her friend Mark. Both were fabulous, Justin was in the closet but Mark was out. Later in College I was introduced to Sense8 featuring a passionate gay romance between a dashing Mexican movie hunk and his artistic hunky boyfriend. Their romance was passionate and sexy and I was drawn in. 

Since then I’ve watched numerous gay movies and shows, most of which I couldn’t in good conscience recommend this audience watch. But all of which are familiar to many. Heartstopper, the 3rd episode of The Last Of Us, or Schitt’s Creek each have wrecked me like many of you. A resonate theme in most of these is the passionate, loving connection between the gay characters and I long for and want that. 

My own experience of gay love is somewhat limited and one sided with my most well known emotional dalliances documented in the blog series “Heartbreak and Celibacy” parts 1, 2 and 3. Corey I still am friends with, but the scars on my heart from Brad remain. 

I come back again and again to this place of heartbreak and longing and do not know what to do other than offer it up as my own holy oblation. In times like this I recall the prayer of Psalm 144, 

Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, For in You do I trust; Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, For I lift up my soul to You.

Cause me to know the way in which I should walk

For I lift up my soul to You.

Or often I change the words a bit.

For I am trying to lift up my soul to You.

Throughout the seasons of my life I have also used the language of “my cross” to represent my sacrifice. The cross being the symbol of the instrument of my salvation. That my experience of longing for a man is my cross a pox upon me and my heart that I’m called to wrestle against as the thorn in my flesh.

Reading back over my first blog post on the topic published in July 2011 I’m struck by both the earnestness, and the shame that exudes from it. I knew almost no gay people at the time I published it and that shows.

It’s important to still speak and be reminded about sin and my fallenness, but the desires and failures that remind me most of this no longer include my longing for a husband and the nature of my desires themselves. At the time I wrote this post, I would have also considered everything related to my same-sex attractions as sinful and lumped all together in some vile mass. I still wrestle, and also fail to wrestle, with sin that I don’t need to also throw my heart’s genuine longing in there along with my lust, coveting, judging, and laziness. 

These days while still at times true, the imagery of oblation comes to mind more often than that of brokenness and sacrifice. Oblation feels more like giving up or offering up some good thing for a higher purpose to be used or transformed in some way for my salvation rather than some affliction I’m destined to wrestle against. It’s all probably the same but for some reason the words feel different now. 

For years now I’ve witnessed and experienced the love of my gay friends as they’ve pursued romantic life with their loved ones. I see the goodness and beauty in it, yet still find myself theologically stuck. I cannot seem to reconcile myself with a non-traditional biblical ethic, yet also cannot deny the seeming goodness and beauty I observe.

I’ve attended five gay weddings in the last few years. All of which involved former side-B friends, and one of them a man I was once in love with. I was a groomsman in the wedding of two of my best friends, and do daily life with God loving affirming friends. I’ve celebrated their joys, and grieved in their pains and I know and love their heart for Christ. I know their faith is genuine and their relationships are sacrificial and God fearing. I don’t know what to do with this experience and this conflict is a tension that lives inside me and one that I must add to the pyre of my oblation. 

I find some consolation in the knowledge that God, as omnipotent and all powerful as He is will still have to give an account for himself in some way. Maybe He will humble me like He humbled Job when He asked him where he was when the foundations of the universe were laid, or if I’ve entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? With Job’s answer:

Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?  

I lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, and I will not answer;

twice, but I will proceed no further.

Maybe though, He will hold me to Himself, gather me like a hen gathers her chicks, and simply say,

Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.

Enter into the joy of your master.

All I do know though is that another Sunday will come. I will join with my church and friends, and that I will once again say with the Church:

Let us lift up our hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord.

It is proper and right.