Once again we stand in the threshold of yet another new year. The door of 2006 is fast closing behind us. We stand before the door of 2007 that is gradually opening before us. What are our thoughts in this moment of time?

The other day a friend made the comment that this has been a good and bad year. I can resonate with that sentiment. There were good times and bad times What has been your own individual experience? Like me you may have a share of good and bad situations. New Year’s eve is a time of recollection. For a few, it could have been a good year – with high spiritual experiences, with good financial bonuses, and with satisfying working conditions. For others and I hope not too many, I fear this has been a bad year with personal struggles, broken relationships and fallen expectations. All these are behind us and we can thank God that we have survived and we are yet alive. Life goes on and we have to move on neither revelling nor groaning over what is past but look forward to the future that lies ahead of us in year 2007.

Whenever we approach something new and unknown, the reaction of most of us is a little fearful and we take uncertain and reluctant steps somewhat like testing the temperature of the waters with our toes before we plunge into the pool or the ocean. The question that looms before us is what will the future be in the new year. Is the new year going to be different? Most of us are conformist. We don’t want to be different. We are afraid to stand out in the crowd. We want to blend into the scene with others. We don’t wish to tred on the untrodden path or walk on the road less travelled. We have the crowd mentality and follow like dumb driven cattle.

Not only are we afraid to be different we are also comfortable with the old. There is this magnetic attraction of the familiar and we are stuck with the past - the things we are used to. Where is the creative act, the innovative task. When we are traditional we are conformist and you can imagine what the Christian faith amounts to when we only hark back to the past and do not peep into the future. Is there an excitement for us to tiptoe and look in the future?

I don’t mean to suggest that we abandon and ignore the past. There are lessons from the past. We have to learn the lessons of history in order to engage in mission. One of the classic books on mission theology has this captivating title "History’s Lessons for Tomorrow’s Mission" It is not to copy or reproduce the past in its entirety but to apply what has transpired in the past which is productive and useful for contemporary engagement. Times move and conditions change and we must keep up with it and not be drawn by the magnetic attraction of the familiar. We are to do a new thing in the new day that God has made for us. We do not always repeat the familiar but we must produce some difference. Sadly the same can be said of Christian understanding of the faith.

Last week I was in invited to be a member of a six-member panel in a Forum on Contemporary Islamic Society: Tradition and Progress. I happen to be the only Christian and the others in the panel are all Muslims. One is a African American Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the University of Michigan. Two are research scholars in the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies here. The issue was how to deal with tradition in Islam. The Professor commented that we are custodians and transmitters of tradition. But what do we do when we receive the tradition? Do we just simply hand it over? There is the danger of concretizing tradition. My contribution pointed to not only in handling tradition but also engaging in traditioning. It is the ongoing process of discerning what is good in the past and discovering what is new in the present and processing what has to be transmitted to the future.

The Muslims have the problem of the tradition embodied in the Qur’an. The Christians have the issue of the tradition embedded in the Bible. Both have to engage in interpretation of their sacred writings. The progressive Muslims are involved in ijtihad or personal interpretation. Progressive Christians have the same critical approach. Both have to contend with fundamentalist/conservatives in their literal/traditional interpretation of the revealed word of God. But it is more difficult for the Muslims because the traditional belief is that the Prophet Mohammed is protected from error and he dictated in Arabic the Qur’an. Whereas, in Christianity Jesus did not write anything Himself.

For progress to take place we cannot be conformists and avoid new interpretations in the light of the new experiences in the new context in the passage of time. We must summon courage to face the ever-changing situations in life.

A preacher once noted that most Christians use the bible the same way a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination. We can't blame them for this because the tradition-bound conservative preachers are always calling us to go back to some simpler, cleaner time. Those were the times, back to the time when all the gays were in the closet, back to when women were in the kitchen, back to when the rulers had all the power, back, back, back so much so that they are more worried about the origin of the universe than they are whether we have any future in the end of our polluted planet earth.

I am always challenged with the concept that the future is open. Inasmuch as we live by the providence of God, God does not determine our future and deny the freedom that He has given to each one of us. In our common experience we know that we are free and God has said to us: "Choose you this day, whom you shall serve."(Joshua 24:15). Deuteronomy 30:19 reminds us with these words: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life…"

The theologians have reminded us that if we believe in this, then even God will not know exactly what is our choice. No one knows what we will decide in that final moment when we make our decision. The all-knowing God can predict most probably how we decide but the freedom of choice that God has given to us is that we can even surprise God and decide otherwise. We are always called upon to choose what is pleasing in the sight of God. And when we fail to do so, God grieves with us because of the consequences of our bad decisions. For God there will be the second chance and God forgives always when we come in the spirit of repentance.

The future is open and because we do not know then we must cultivate courage to pull away from the magnetic attraction of the familiar, escape from our comfort zone and launch out into the deep. We are called not only to be different but to make a difference This is the challenge of the new year. Recognizing this obligation that in spite of the fear of the unknown that is ahead of us we must in trust pluck up courage and move forward open to change and not to conform but to be transformed and be transforming. When we in our reflection recognize that our future is open we are cultivating courage.

In the series of sermons on Christian living you have been challenged to be more fully aware and to accept your true and authentic self. To have self-identity means not letting oneself be wholly defined by publicly defined roles.

I don’t need really to remind you how hard it is to be courageous when you are misunderstood and rejected by the massive majority in society. They act as if you don’t exist among them. You are unknown and unacknowledged. You are an invisible lot. They will accept you when they perceive you as normal like them. As LGBT persons you are a non-being in homophobic society.

I sense that most of you have been conditioned by conservative theological tradition that says homosexuality is sinful. You find it extremely difficult to reconcile your faith with your sexuality. As a result you harbour a sense of guilt that you are sinful because of your sexual orientation. It is a form of internalized homophobia. You have tried unsuccessfully to change and you are in a dilemma. It can only be resolved when you come to the faith in a loving God who has accepted you and affirmed you.

For gay and lesbian people it means summing up courage in accepting and affirming your sexual identity and finding responsible expressions for your sexual feelings. It is plucking courage in coming out to those who care, establishing friendships and loving relations, and finding good public roles and ways of life that build up a positive gay lifestyle.

The theologian Paul Tillich in his classic work; "The Courage to Be," calls for self-affirmation despite of the threat of non-Being. True religion enables one to grasp life with the radical insecurity and to live it with courage. .A scholar describes how Tillich finds that it is just at that moment when we are sinking into despair, when it seems that the dark clouds are about to suffocate us, and we gasp for breath, it is then that we uncover within ourselves the courage to endure… It is that moment when things begin to turn and lighten, that moment when the stars begin to burn through the sheets of the clouds, and slowly, slowly we draw breath again, we breathe and we go on.

When we do not have the courage to do so we become mere conformists to traditional ways of thinking and perform the roles that society has dictated us.

Martin Luther King who preached about having dream also spoke of courage in 1961 in his sermon entitled "Transformed Nonconformists." His words seem like they could have been written yesterday: "In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth. . . . We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds?" "More than ever before," Dr. King said, "we are today challenged by the words of yesterday, ‘Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.'"

Life needs to be chosen. We can ignore it and because we have not chosen to be or do something we are the living dead. We can also slide by and go with the flow. We can pass our days aimlessly and do not even attempt to make a difference to ourselves and to things around us. No wonder we find it so difficult to cope with the strains and stress of living in these perplexing and complicated days in our lives.

The reality is, I believe, that we all require an enormous amount of courage and fortitude to navigate our way through the complexity of living today in the year 2007
Finally when we have cultivated courage for ourselves in facing the open future, we are to encourage others. The word encourage itself already suggest that. En-courage literally means "to give courage."

Someone very wise wrote, "A word of encouragement after a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after a success."

In my counselling you and some parents I sense the suffering that you are going through and see the tears that are flowing down your cheeks. I feel so helpless. I can be around just to encourage you but you have to make your own individual decision. You cannot evade or avoid accepting yourself and be liberated from that guilt feeling which was imposed upon you by traditional church and homophobic society.

I can only pray that you are able to turn your sorrow into joy, despair to hope, hate to love, conflicted to tranquility.

Langston Hughes is an African American poet who in his poetry has encouraged his people who were being discriminated. This poem inspired me and I had it placed before my study desk since my college days and beyond. It is entitled:

"Mother to Son"
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
- Langston Hughes