During this Advent time, a particular song speaks to me. Written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and performed by the folk-rock group, The Byrds, this song speaks to those tumultuous times now known as “The Sixties.” President Kennedy had been assassinated in November 1963. On March 7, 1965, John Lewis tried to lead a civil-rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge when they were assaulted and brutally bludgeoned by law enforcement. That day is now known as Bloody Sunday. The country was embroiled in an unpopular war. There were crises of a male-chauvinistic culture as women began to assert their rights. A drug cult arose. College campuses turned into hotbeds of protests and non-conformance.

The song that Seeger wrote and the Byrd’s made into a hit? Turn, Turn, Turn. It is intentional that this socially conscious and somewhat revolutionary folk-rock group would debut this song in 1965. I was in high school and immediately became a fan of The Byrds. The lyrics are lifted from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  

For everything there is a season,

And a time for everything under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to mourn and a time to dance.

Can we Hear the Words?

With COVID-19 ravaging our nation with unspeakable death, much of which could have been avoided, we are in great grief. These are not “The Sixties” but we do have our own societal perils. On top of the grief of death, we face great pain from racial unrest and economic injustice. We have a planet that is crying out under the duress of global climatic pain. We have a health care system that is the best in the world for some and inaccessible for too many others. And we have rotten-to-the-core corruption in the highest places of our political system. Can you hear the words from Ecclesiastes?

 A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace.

A time to keep silence and a time to speak.

Seeger in his lyrics added two dimensions to the words of the biblical writer. There was a call stitched into the verses:

 Turn, turn, turn.

And the plea: 

I swear it’s not too late.

Not Glitter and Glitz but John the Baptist 

If you belong to a church that follows the ecumenical lectionary, you are aware that before you can get to Bethlehem and the child in a manger, you have to first deal with John the Baptist, the voice that cries out in the wilderness and calls us all to turn, turn, turn. Repent! The Greek, metavoia, from which repentance is translated, literally means to turn your brain around. Turn you heart around. Turn your lives and ultimate concern around. Why? Because One is coming. God is at hand. Lest you think that John is just some aberration out in the wilderness, his cousin Jesus, in his first sermon, plagiarizes John’s sermons.

 The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:15)

Turn, turn, turn is the biblical message of this Advent season. As this 20th year of the 21st century is ending, one thing is clear. We human beings do not know how to live in harmony and in righteousness, that is, with justice, with one another. We have proven over and over to be unteachable; yet, the prophet and his cousin, Jesus, cry out, turn, turn, turn, for the sake of the world and all God’s children on this planet.

I swear it’s not too late.

Turn, turn, turn. Turn around your brains. Think differently. Unlearn long held self-protective and self-serving and self-destructive ways and embrace the ways of the One who is coming.

It is NOT Your Birthday! 

Turn, turn, turn. Perhaps a start right now would be to embrace that Christmas is not your birthday, even though too many in our affluent world celebrate as if it is. It is the birthday of the One who comes to save the world from us, and to save us from each other. Only the One who loves us as much as the God-made-flesh would love us enough to tell us the truth. So, what might we do to turn, turn, turn for the common good during these days?

With no intention to present my wife and me as some sort of righteous examples, we decided long ago to protest against the Christmas norms and to celebrate the One who comes by deploying our resources to reflect the rearrangement of the world as this One proclaims. Instead of participating in Black Friday and the annual spend-a-thon, we choose to deploy our resources for the work of the Haitian Timoun Foundation, which provides life-giving impact for the world’s most desperately poor, and for agencies here in Decatur who attend to the homeless and hungry here in Decatur. We do give money to our five grandchildren, but fifty percent must go to a just cause of their interest.

Harriet and I are not alone in this reorientation – turn, turn, turn. We know many others doing the same thing, and it is not just a seasonal thing. It is a new lifestyle where generosity extends for those whom God loves the most, the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised, might have life to its fullest potential.

In him was life, and the life was

The light for ALL people.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

The Season of Advent has begun. It is perhaps the most obscure season observed by the church. Many expressions of the church do not observe Advent. Many celebrate Thanksgiving and immediately jump into Christmas. Sometimes the celebration of Christmas begins even much earlier. On our socially distant, mask-wearing Halloween night walk through our neighborhood with our grandchildren, Christmas decorations were already up! Though my wife and I do the traditional Advent observance by progressively lighting candles and sharing Advent writings as we journey towards the Winter Solstice and do not start Christmas decorating until later in Advent, I totally get why Christmas lights are already going up. It has been and continues to be a dark time in our world.

But more than any year in recent memory, Advent seems essential to me. The message of Advent is straightforward. The name Advent literally means arrival. To us specifically, it means the arrival of God. As Advent begins, the scriptures tell us to “Stay awake! Pay attention! Watch! Wait!” We sing, Light One Candle to Watch for Messiah, let the light banish darkness.

 Waiting is Hard

But let’s be honest. We stink at waiting. Already we have seen millions of holiday travelers unable to socially distant and wait out these days when the coronavirus is surging. Airline executives are acutely aware of the pent-up demand for air travel and especially international travel. Delta Airlines just announced a plan to work with Rome in providing flights for people who just can’t wait anymore. We hear that two vaccines may begin to be distributed by the latter part of December. Much of America, particularly those who are deemed to need immunization the most, can expect access to the vaccines in the not-too-distant future. Already I have a destination wedding on the calendar in July and another one in October.

Waiting is hard. Children “can’t wait ‘til Christmas.” Those of us who are surviving cancer are all too familiar with the waiting game every time a scan is made, or blood is drawn, or a new piece of tissue is biopsied. It is hard to wait for a verdict, especially one with life and death implications. Those who have a loved one stationed in harm’s way halfway around the world know what it is like to simply have to wait for the weekly phone call, to wait for word that the loved one is okay, and to wait for him or her to appear at home again. Waiting is hard.

 We Do Not Know

The scriptures tell us that patience is a spiritual gift. The psalmists write of waiting for the Lord. They also write of impatience. How long, O Lord? And Jesus is reported in the New Testament to tell his follows on more than one occasion, you will need to wait. There are some essential things that we do not know. Only the One who sent Jesus does.

 To observe Advent is to strip away the distractions and to wait in earnest for God to show up. We have a lot of distractions right now – politics, the future of this country, wild conspiracy theories, a high stakes runoff election in Georgia, daily ominous virus updates, the ramping up of the annual Christmas spend-a-thon, and millions suffering from economic or racial injustice.

 God Will Show Up

Yes. Advent is necessary this year because its message is that God will show up. God will show up and do for us and to us what we are unable to do ourselves. We know the final verdict. It is a verdict of YES! YES to the world – all people, no exceptions!

If we pay attention and stay awake, God will show up through God’s people, the church. God will show up and show us the way of the light that shines in the darkness. God will show up and God’s people will stand with the poor, the powerless, and the disenfranchised. God will show up and bring light and life to all. God will show up and enlist us as co-creators of a renewed world that emerges from this wretched year of 2020 with hope, kindness, mercy, and love for all people and for the earth on which we live.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

A Contentious and Polarized Electorate

In the months after the 2012 election in which Barack Obama won a second term over his challenger, Mitt Romney, I was part of a small delegation representing Emory University’s Board of Visitors who gathered at The Carter Center in Atlanta. We had the wonderful privilege of having lunch with former President Jimmy Carter.  We learned much about the global work of the center with eradicating rare diseases in the global south as well as their mission of monitoring elections around the globe. During the question and answer time, our conversation eventually turned to the previous election. It had been so divisive we wanted to get the former president’s take on it. He said a number of distressing things about the amount of money allowed in politics and the reality of negative attack ads being more effective than positive ones. But he said something that has stuck with me. He said the result of the billions poured into elections and the proliferation of campaign attack ads is that on the morning after an election, the winner wakes up aware that half the country hates him. He went on to say, “America is so politically polarized I fear we are on the verge of being ungovernable.” That was 2013.

The Most Toxic in My 71 Years

So here we are in the most toxic, polarizing political election season in my 71 years of life. How many times have we heard, “This is the most important election in our lifetime?” In the midst of this election season and with the clear choices for President of the United States, it sure seems so. No matter how distasteful we find this season and perhaps being disgusted with it all, we are nevertheless called to vote. For those who might suggest that somebody like I who is an ordained pastor in the church ought to stay out of politics, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms says otherwise. For Luther, there is the ultimate call and claim on our lives of the gospel and its hope and promises that must guide us, but there is also a penultimate call to participate in civil society. One of the ways we do that is by voting.

A Binary Choice

Given the binary choice before us, the choice for me could not be more clear. Being a follower of Jesus compels me to vote for Joe Biden. With this declaration, I am not in any way suggesting the Democratic Party as being aligned with the Reign of God. It and the Republican Party are temporal organizations. My allegiance is not to a party or even a candidate. My allegiance is to Jesus, the One whom they crucified and who would not stay dead because he loves us.

An Ethic of Love

The ethic that drives my vote for Joe Biden is love. Followers of Jesus are called to love God and all that God has created above everything else. When a religious lawyer stands up and asks Jesus to name the greatest commandment, he responds with the mandate of loving God with all we are and have. He then says that loving others is commensurate with loving God (Luke 10:27). To be a follower of Jesus, then, is to love what and whom God loves and to so be aligned with the heart of God that our hearts break with the things that break God’s heart. When I view the two persons running for President of the United States, their positions on issues, and the things their parties support, Joe Biden and his party, as flawed as they are, better align with the love to which God calls us.

Love the Earth 

At the top of the list of things we are called to love is the earth itself. In the great unfolding saga of human existence as beings created in the image of God, the very first job we are given is to take care of the earth and its creatures (cf. Genesis 1 & 2). But here we are facing a true existential climate crisis created by human activity, a crisis we have denied, deflected, and postponed for too long. My goodness, conversation about climate change was in the air on our university campus when I was an engineering student over 50 years ago.

Just a little over a year ago, my wife and I were in a zodiac with a naturalist 400 yards from the face of Dawe’s Glacier. Dawe’s glacier is reached by going up the Endicott Arm of Alaska’s Inside Passage. As we viewed this glacier, huge amounts of ice would calve off, often creating large waves in the fjord. We learned that the ice is melting at an exponentially increasing rate per year. In 2019 the icy monolith lost 300 yards. We returned from that excursion to 90+ degree temperatures near Juneau. With the massive wildfires in our west, the increase in intensity of tropical storms, and the hundreds of millions of refugees around the world trying to escape the ravages of climate change, is not the earth crying out to God? Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning” (Romans 8:22). We cannot spend one more year denying the science and succumbing to the power of the fossil fuel industry. Greed cannot drive what we do. It must be a vision of a new birth of the earth because we love the earth as God does.   

Love Welcomes the Stranger

Then, there is the matter of refugees and immigrants. Jesus calls us to love the stranger and to welcome the downtrodden. Over and over in his sermons and teachings, he tells us that fundamental to being his follower is to love and welcome the poor, the powerless, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised. Under the current president the quota for admitting refugees is being set at 15,000 for the year. This is down from 110,000 under Obama. Wonder what the quota would be if Jesus were to set it? Would we even have a quota? We certainly would not build walls, separate families, and put kids in cages. We certainly would not prey on powerless women by forcing sterilizations. That we treat the “least of these” among us in these ways must cause God’s heart to anguish in biblical proportions.     

Just What Does the Lord Require of Us?

Then there is the matter of justice. What does the Lord require of us asked the prophet? “But to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). I believe the Jesus who marched into Jerusalem and protested the corruption of the temple and religious leaders would be right in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is unconscionable and a form of malignant Christianity that somehow whiteness and protecting whiteness is reckoned as the will of God. Remember. Our messiah has brown skin.

Love and America’s Gun Culture  

Then there is the matter of guns and gun control. My jaw dropped the first time I heard someone speak of “My God-given right to own a gun.” How absurd is that? Would anyone who has ever read the New Testament remotely imagine a Jesus endorsing the American idolatry of guns? For more on this refer to my 2018 blog series on The Church and America’s Gun Culture.  

Love and Roe v. Wade

I could say more, but before I end this blog, I do want to name the elephant in the room: Roe v. Wade. Frankly, the matter is more complicated than the binary options of pro-life versus pro-choice. I fundamentally value, as Jesus does, all of life – from the yet-to-be born child to desperately poor children in Haiti to children who are trafficked and to all those denied basic health care in our country of plenty. On the issue of abortion, I resonate with the theologically faithful Social Statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can google it and download it easily. It too is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Quoting from the document itself, “Its fundamental judgment about abortion is that: ‘Abortion ought to be an option only of last resort.’” Stacking a Supreme Court with justices who may overturn Roe v. Wade will not put a stop to abortions in the U.S. Except for the privileged who will work the system, it would put a stop to safe abortions.

No to Hate and Division

As a follower of Jesus, I long for culture who chooses love over hate, tolerance over exclusion, justice over inequity, and unity over division. We are all God’s children. Therefore, in this political season, I am voting for Joe Biden, while knowing that real hope and faith come not from politics but from the One who assures us that life and love always and will finally win.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,