OUR BEST HOPE

A blessed Holy Week to you all. May you emerge from this week as more determined and hopeful than ever for a changed world.

 GK Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” May we consider doing the difficult? For the sake of the world?

Something’s Gotta Give

We look to Easter aware that our world is terribly divided and broken. That’s not new to human existence. It’s just that the headlines underscoring the age-old stubborn human dilemma tell of these particularly perilous days in which we live. Another mass shooting and then another. Jim Crow renewal in Georgia and elsewhere. More dire warnings about unmitigated climate change. A divided, contentious, and gridlocked congress. News and lies. Hate crimes. Refugees at our borders and displacements around the world. The widening wealth gap. White supremacy and whiteness as a defining cultural ideology. And, of course, COVID-19 and its carnage, and vaccinations notwithstanding, the questions of whether we will ever return to normalcy. In the words of Jack Nicholson in his 2003 film, Something’s Gotta Give.  

Our Best Hope

In the stance of a good Old Testament prophet who knows that the present order cannot stand, I appeal to that community I know best – the church. Without fully retelling my own personal story of call, a great awakening happened in me when I left a business world of global engagement and entered seminary. From the time of that decision and through 32 years of ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I continue to cling to the notion that the church is the community which offers our best (and only?) hope for the world. It is the only vision I know for a restored world.

A Church in Its Own Way 

Yet, to be totally frank, I do not wear rose colored glasses when viewing the church. You who know me are aware that I have had a lifetime of a lover’s quarrel with the church. I have seen how the sausage is made. I have not seen a lack of theology, thoughtful and inspiring sermons, or good faithful service to the church being done by good people. What I do see is a church that struggles to get out of its own way, mainly because it is still confused about its identity and calling. That confusion is the biggest symptom of the church’s hangover from the deal it made with the devil when Emperor Constantine (4th Century) thought, for reasons of self-preservation, the marriage of the church and the empire was a good idea.

 

From Top-Down Command-and-Control to a Grassroots Movement

My pre-seminary life of witnessing an imperialistic approach to foreign aid and my 25 years of grassroots efforts in Haiti have confirmed to me what persons more informed than I have already said. Top-down approaches have never worked to bring about transformation. (For example, see Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo, or Toxic Charity by Robert D. Lupton, or The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly.) It is the same with the church. Because of its marriage with empire the church has in its DNA an inherent top-down orientation, complete with command-and-control approaches to its life, as well as a number of programs that are to both help people and garner people’s attention, cementing its authority. When the empire influence became especially insidious, it spawned a tragic result that I called “Malignant Christianity.” For more on this and how we can be saved from it, see my June 2020 blog - https://www.rightspirit.org/blog/2020/6/9/being-saved-from-malignant-christianity.

When the women first ran from the tomb and declared it empty, the very first sermon was quite simple, “He is not here. He is risen.” From that proclamation a new community was formed. It was a grassroots community that was the continuation and embodiment of Jesus in the world. Jesus, in the Gospel of John, called the church his “branches.” As an arborist knows, the vine and the branch have the same DNA. Paul used the term, “The Body of Christ,” to describe the church. This new community in its very essence was to be counter-cultural to the status quo. Its life as a contrast society – in the world and not of it – was its witness. Its life together was to be an imitator of the crucified and risen Jesus. Caesar was not Lord. Jesus was.

Making the World Right

I do not want to overly romanticize the early church, but its call to be the light of the world and to be salt and leaven is a corporate call. Yes, Jesus does make the individual call of denying self and following him (Mark 8:34 et al). However, the call to find life rather than losing it is a call to the common good everyone must discern. That is, to live out in a community and participate in its life together for the sake of the world that God so richly loves. And for the church to be the body it is baptized to be, the most important fundamental shift it needs to make is from individualism to corporate witness.  The fullest corporate expression is the same as that of the courageous, death-defeating, sinner-embracing, radical and extravagant-loving Jesus. As his body, the church bears Jesus’ focus – the poor, the powerless, the disenfranchised, the broken-hearted, all captured in the call to “do justice” (Micah 6:8). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus proclaims at his baptism his coming to “fulfill all righteousness” (Mt. 3:15), and at his signature Sermon on the Mount announces blessings to those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Mt. 5:6).  Righteousness is about justice, making things “right.” And folks, things are not right.

From American Individualism to a Mission for the Common Good

Perhaps the most stubborn aberration of American Christianity is the unchecked individualism that it not only fails to fully challenge but that it also reinforces. Protecting “my personal rights” and “my person freedom” is central to the American creed. Never mind that individual rights are not a biblical theme. How in the world does American Individualism square with this early Christian hymn?

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

- Philippians 2:4-8

To fully appreciate this startling passage, the original Greek is helpful. First there is an individual appeal to each member of the body. Do not look after your own interests. What?!?! But rather look to the common good of all. Then the hymn switches to a corporate exhortation. Let the same mind, church, be in you (plural) that was in Christ Jesus.

 Five Moves Towards Repairing the World

For the church to become a grassroots effort that changes the world in this time of great crises, I suggest some starts here. There are five:

1)      Start recovering the essential marks of fidelity to Jesus and his gospel as being community spirituality, the collective life and witness of a community. This includes not only what the community stands for, but how it is that they live their lives and in whom they place their ultimate trust. Virtually every promise and call in the New Testament is in the plural, not the singular. Even the call of the disciples is a call to a community. When Jesus proclaims that we are to be the salt, leaven, and light of the world, it is a communal calling.

 This would mean reimaging how we approach the whole idea of discipleship. It is almost universally true that every congregation who has a Minister for Discipleship also has a number of programs to help individuals become disciples. The focus needs to be placed on the body itself being a corporate witness and being a force for the common good in all aspects of the crises we face – white supremacy, climate, gun violence, poverty, refugees, etc. Alluding to the words of GK Chesterton, let’s do the “difficult” as a body.

 2)      Start challenging and debunking the notion of substitutionary atonement as what happened on Good Friday. The fallacy that there is a punishment-seeking, angry God that transforms Jesus into a scapegoat only fuels the individual decision salvation theology that infects American Christianity. I recently learned of a young man in one of my previous youth groups who made the tragic decision to take his own life. His distraught mother went searching around the community looking for some words that could speak to her deep pain. When she asked a Roman Catholic priest if her son “was in heaven,” the priest said that was up to God to decide. The priest left it at that. What the priest and every minister of the gospel should have said is, “Yes, that decision is God’s, and God has already decided. That is why Jesus went to the cross and would not stay dead. And besides, Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’” For every religious huckster who tries to turn the cross into some sort of individual salvation deal the authentic church needs to declare what the Spirit revealed to the new church on Pentecost. God has already decided. God has already overcome whatever would crush us, fragment us, or cheapen us. The only decision with which we are left is about how we will now reorder our lives and what we will do together now that God has already done it all for us. So, stop the salvation games.   

3)      Kill whatever “program” mentality the congregation may have. The church is not a collection of “programs.” God is not a program. The church is a body of people. Start focusing on what the congregation must do to shape the body into one that aspires to be the heart, hands, and feet of Jesus in the world.

4)      Stop the insanity with perpetuating the fallacy that the church is not supposed to be political. Jesus was highly political. Jesus’ march into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a protest march.  Jesus took on the powers at be, whether it was the corrupt religious establishment of the day or the civil leaders. Our pastors and leaders face a dilemma. In this highly contentious climate in which we try to be church, pastors are often under siege. If they do speak to the real sins of our society in specific forms (i.e., racism, white supremacy, gun violence, voting rights et al), they put themselves and their families at risk, often great risk. Their bishops get calls from angry parishioners. The angry withhold their support or even leave. Too often the pastor is forced to resign. I am more convinced than ever that the main cause for mental health issues among our precious leaders is their own awareness of the stakes of being forthright and the fears that hold them back. I do not have easy answers for this, except to say that pastors who find themselves under siege and attack know that they serve the One who himself was attacked and crucified (cf. Philippians 2 above). When threatened, it is good to remember the most frequent command in the New Testament? Do not be afraid.

 5)      Be intentional about living proleptically. Prolepsis means to live in the midst of our own lives and in the midst of history while already knowing the outcome. Love and life do win. If that day is surely coming, where there are no more tears, no more hunger, no more exclusion, no more violence, suffering, and death; if one day this broken, fragmented, hurting world is fully restored; if because death has been defeated, we no longer need to resort to self-preservation; and, if the ultimate promises of God are true; then, let’s get on with it! Let’s do the difficult! It’s our best hope.

 I beg you (church) to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

- Ephesians 4:1

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

To Those in the Club to Which You Never Wanted to Belong

This blog is addressed to those of you in a club to which you never wanted to belong. The Big C Club – not COVID-19 but CANCER. But, first let’s talk about COVID-19. Then we’ll talk about “the club.”

600,000 deaths. That is the number of COVID-19 deaths the U.S. will probably reach sometime in June. Since the first death in February 2020 and through the cultural and political processes of denial, bargaining, blaming, grief, and perhaps one day of acceptance, it has been a miserable fourteen months of cancelled travel, a wrecked economy for many and a boom for a few, social distancing, stay-at-home, schoolchildren losing in big ways, no in-person worship, culture wars, political strife, Zoom fatigue, COVID-fatigue, family strife, and death. Everyone in this country has been affected in some way. But it is the deaths that have been the most devastating – deaths in the ICU with only a nurse in PPE holding one’s hand, deaths with no accustomed way of public grieving, deaths where bodies are warehoused awaiting some sort of burial, deaths where too many suffered, both the deceased and their loved ones, alone. Deaths, their recognition, and the public permission to grieve were overshadowed by a politics of deflection and distortion. Imagine the loneliness and isolation of those who have lost loved ones. Studies, doctoral dissertations, books, and documentaries will surely be part of the outcome and reflection on this miserable time and what we might collectively learn from it.

 Another 600,000 Deaths

But there are another 600,000 deaths. And another. And another. 600,000 deaths are not only the expected U.S. carnage from COVID-19 by June, but it is also the shocking number of people in this country who die each year from cancer. To be precise, 2020 brought 1.8 million diagnoses and 606,520 deaths. There is no vaccine to prevent cancer. When COVID-19 is long gone, the 600,000 deaths per year from cancer continue, and to put that number in perspective, the total US lives lost in combat from all wars, from 1775 until now, is just under 670,000. Let that sink in. It not only speaks of the horrible grief and carnage from COVID-19, it should also open the eyes to the annual cancer toll. So, it is to you who are fighting cancer to whom this blog is addressed.     

Just the word, “cancer,” whether spoken by a doctor as a confirmed diagnosis or as something to be investigated, is a shock to the system. Almost all people who hear that word for the first time as a diagnosis never thought it would ever be said to them. Back in 2007 when my sister-in-law, Sherry, was diagnosed with cancer, among her first words after the diagnosis and the impeding treatments of radical surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation were these: “I am now a member of a club to which I never wanted to belong.” My sister-in-law was a valiant fighter. Deep in the Jesus faith as an executive secretary in a large church and part of a family that finds to be biblical the words of the one and only Jimmy V, “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up!” she seemingly beat it. But then because cancer has no conscience, it revisited her. She succumbed on January 31, 2016. I was in San Antonio on seminary business when I got the call. It was just a few days earlier when I sat in her home Hospice room with other members of the family and friends. With guitar in hand we sang Bob Marley’s reggae song, Three Little Birds. The chorus goes like this:

 This is my message for you ou!

Don’t worry ‘bout a thing,

Cause every ‘lil thing gonna be alright.

Singing don’t worry ‘bout a thing,

Cause every ‘lil thing gonna be alright.

The worst thing that could ever happen to you will not be the last. 

So confident in the hope and promises of the empty tomb, it was Sherry who first said, The worst thing that could ever happen to me will not be the last. It was Sherry Barger whom I called while a pastor in Colorado when a horrible undiscovered final-stage brain tumor took away the 32-year-old mother of two small girls. The girls begged in the ICU unit, “Mommy, please don’t die.” It was Sherry who told me to tell them, Remember. The first person to cry is God.

Somehow growing up and in my early life I had almost no experience with cancer. That changed in the summer of 1986, when as a seminarian I was taking my obligatory unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I was assigned as chaplain to the east wing on the 5th floor. It was the hematology/oncology unit. For a summer I was immersed in the suffering, fear, trauma, and dancing with death of children with cancers, as well as the shock and numbness of their parents. It was there where I learned a diagnosis of AML (acute myeloid leukemia) meant certain death and a diagnosis of ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) was beatable.

 It was that summer when I also learned about the life cycle of support for children and their families with cancer. When a teenage child would be newly admitted to the hospital with a cancer diagnosis, there would be an immediate outpouring of support. Balloons, cards, well wishes, clever teddy bears, and other positive-messaging paraphernalia would fill their rooms. Visitors would come and go like the room had a revolving door. There would be bold statements. “We are going to beat this thing!” But as time wore on, as chemotherapy and radiation ravaged their little bodies, and when you did not know what was worse, the cancer or the treatment, people’s ability to sustain intense concern waned.

The life of a cancer patient with the cycle of treatments and then tests to determine the efficacy of the treatments and then decisions about the next steps while all the time watching lab reports and scans that report things like tumor size, or blast counts, or the size of swollen lymph nodes can be a tortuous grind. I learned that a family with a child dealing with cancer is a lonely life. The child would come into the hospital for 3 days on in-patient treatment, go home and then return two weeks later for another round. The entire 5th floor was like a congregation of sorts. You developed relationships with the kids, their parents, and families and especially the medical staff. It was hard on the medical staff to watch kids suffer and their parents suffer with them. Deaths on the floor were devastating, but rarely did death happen there. It happened at home, usually under Hospice care, when the family had heard and absorbed the words, “There is nothing more we can do.”     

 Cancer has no conscience

As a pastor I walked with countless persons and their families through a cancer diagnosis and the subsequent journey. Many beat it. Many did not. One lady who was diagnosed with stage 4 and told to get her affairs in order went through Hell and back at MD Anderson in Houston with experimental treatments that miraculously cleared her of cancer. She threw a party for over a hundred people to say, “Thank you,” to all who had a hand in her survival. But some years later the cancer came back. No heroics. No reprieve. Death.

In 1995, Harriet’s mother died after a heroic bout with lymphoma. As we had driven deep into the night to her dad’s house, he stood in the front driveway the next morning and wept. Lt. Colonel Harry Hall Hart had led the first battalion of tank destroyers to successfully land at Normandy and took them all the way to Berlin, while losing many of the men under his command. While standing in the driveway and speaking of his wife’s death he said, “Even from my experiences in the war, I have never seen anything as ugly as that.”  

I am in the club.

In 2018 I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. There once was a time when it was an automatic death sentence. One of the toughest parishioners I ever had, a former NCAA wrestler, gallantly fought CML. In his early 40s with three young children, he tried to beat it, but even the heroics of MD Anderson could not hold off the Grim Reaper. In 2001, after decades of development, the FDA approved a drug, Gleevec, that mitigated against CML. Time Magazine declared it a miracle cancer drug. Every night at 9 pm, I take the generic, Imatinib Mesylate, at a cost of $14,000 per month. Thank God for health insurance because I only pay $9.60.  As I near the end of a third year fighting this disease, I feel blessed in many ways. The side effects of taking a daily pill that kills cancer are many, but I have deep gratitude for many things – my wonderful wife, children, grandchildren, family, faith, and the will and capacity to still try to save the world. While on this journey, I was also diagnosed with another cancer, underwent proton beam radiation. Late last year my radiology oncologist declared me, with respect to this second cancer, NED, meaning no evidence of disease. I am grateful beyond words. Like the great Jimmy V also would say, Survive and Advance.

The Wider Club

During the wretched year of 2020, if all of the COVID crisis was not enough, our son was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. A clinical trial treatment worked to kick the cancer down the road for hopefully five years before he needs any further treatment. When he was first diagnosed, I was asked if I would join the program of Patient Family Advisors at Winship Cancer Institute. My role means, among other things, that I advise Winship on their practices from the perspective of being a cancer patient, and I get to advise and support others on their cancer journey. My journey has been helpful in walking with one of my very best lifelong friends who is dealing with a wicked brain tumor and horrible lifestyle compromises from the treatments. We speak by phone at least once a week, and Harriet and I pray with him and his wife. He knows the promises of God. He knows the tomb of the crucified Jesus is empty. He knows that there is no situation in life so painful or devoid of hope that God has not already joined him there. He knows that love and life win.  

Finding Light

Last week, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and said, “Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do.” I am not going to disrespect the President by challenging this statement, but what I do know for sure is that those who have been grasped by the hope and promise of the empty tomb, whether American or not, can find light in any darkness. Cancer can do many things to us, but there are things it cannot do. Last week I wrote to my friend and shared this light with him. It is a light I share to all of you in our club to which you never wanted to belong:

Cancer cannot cripple your love for others.

It cannot shatter hope.

It cannot corrode faith.

 It cannot destroy peace.

It cannot kill friendships.

 It cannot suppress memories.

It cannot silence courage.

It cannot invade the soul.

It cannot steal eternal life.

It cannot conquer your spirit.

Those things will live forever.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

Radical!

Here in Georgia, the word, radical, can be heard from the TV or from the airwaves several times each hour, sometimes several times a minute. While Advent is the Season where we watch for the coming of the Lord, here in Georgia we are consumed by the coming of another election, runoffs for Georgia’s two US Senate seats. Lord, may it please end soon! Think of all the TV spots, ads, obscene amount of money raised and spent, and the countless lies and spin spewed by all sides that led up to the November 3rd election. Think of the continued campaign to “Stop the Steal” that has raised another $200 million for Donald Trump, the nonstop lawsuits, the Proud Boys in DC, and over half the GOP in the US. House and 17 state AGs signing onto the Texas lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court that was summarily dismissed. Think of all the noise, name calling, and conspiracy theories being amplified while at the same time our nation passed the tragic milestone of 300,000 deaths from COVID-19. Maybe the Electoral College vote yesterday will stop most of the noise, but not here in Georgia. It is still full political game on. God, help us!

 Fear the Radical!

Dominating the political ads is radical. Kelly Loeffler constantly refers to the Reverend Raphael Warnock as a radical liberal. In my ecclesial circles I am familiar with the ordained being referred to as “The Very Reverend” or “The Most Reverend” or “The Highly Reverend.” Only in the one televised debate between the two did I hear over and over again from the lips of Senator Loeffler, a new title – The “Radical Liberal Reverend.” Of course, the ads against “Radical Liberal Reverend Raphael Warnock” have images of him doctored to have him look very menacing and are meant to draw the same fearful response former President George Herbert Walker Bush elicited years ago in infamous racist Willie Horton ads. Loeffler’s message is clear. If you elect Radical Liberal Reverend Raphael Warnock, the radical liberals will cancel culture and destroy America.

It is the same with the Senator David Perdue ads that attack Jon Ossoff as a radical liberal. Somehow Perdue is banking on his television ads, texting, and social media to so scare people of radical liberal end-America-as-we-know-it Jon Ossoff that he is hoping voters will forget his refusal to debate his opponent after being taken behind the rhetorical woodshed in their only televised debate.

Lest you think that this blog is headed in a highly partisan political direction, the use of the term, radical, is also being used by the Dems to slam the Republican candidates. With the attempt to overthrow the election, fire the Georgia Secretary of State, it is open season on the Republicans to paint them as anti-democracy, autocracy-embracing, right-wing extreme radicals.  

Now, in order to be fully transparent, I do have a progressive bent when it comes to politics, and I am a citizen of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, the district of the late John Lewis. Our neighborhood is clearly deep blue, and my lovely bride and I do fit the profile. But this blog is not really about the January 5th runoff election. Besides, the overwhelming majority of readers of this blog are not residents of Georgia and can’t vote for a dog in this hunt anyhow. Moreover, I am under no illusion that an Ossoff and Warnock victory and Democratic control of the US Senate will somehow usher in the Kingdom of God. 

Making Sense of the Reason for the Season

What I do believe is that radical can be redemptively used to make sense out of “the reason for the season” and what God is actually up to. To fit the true definition of radical, something or someone has to be so far-reaching that he or she not only affects the fundamental nature of things but also overturns the current stasis. When we throw the word, radical, around to smear a political opponent, we mean it in its utmost negative sense. It is meant to evoke fear. The other person is going to rob you of something of utmost importance to you. So, you had better watch out!

The proclamation of the coming of Jesus and his birth is a radical promise. God gives this promise not as a threat but as good news. The sermon by the angel to the shepherds (Luke 2:10) is clear:

Do not be afraid – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.                

ALL the people. This is truly radical because for Jesus to be good news for all the people today, as the short sermon goes, then the current stasis must surely be coming to an end. The pronouncements that preceded Jesus’ birth speak to the disruption. The mighty get brought down from their thrones. The humble get lifted up. The hungry get fed. The rich become empty. And then Jesus comes preaching the same radical vision.

The Radical Jesus

It is important to know that we only pay attention to the birth of Jesus and celebrate Christmas because of Easter. Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah because God raised him from the dead. But to be raised, Jesus had to die. It was inevitable. The proclaimed disruption of the status quo did not sit well with the powers at be. Table fellowship with sinners, prostitutes, criminals, and outcasts offended them. Grace – God’s favor for those the powers despised – was an afront. A Jesus speaking truth to power needed to be silenced. The only outcome was to execute him in the most hideous and shocking way possible in order to send an ominous message to anybody else thinking about identifying with or trying to replicate the radical Jesus.

But God raised him from the dead. You want to know what God is up to? Radical righteousness. Look at Jesus. It is a theme that runs through the scriptures, but Matthew’s Gospel is most explicit in saying that Jesus came to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15). Jesus even blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6) and blesses those who are injured, marginalized, belittled, and silenced because they pursued righteousness (Matthew 5:10).

Radical Righteousness - Making Things Right 

To be clear, righteousness, is not some sort of inner-spiritual experience. Righteousness has to do with making things right. It is not right that over 300,000 have died from COVID-19 when concern for the common good by all the people – i.e. wearing masks – could have changed the math. It is not right that millions live on the edge right now while the comfortable have watched their stock portfolios reach record values. It is not right that the very people who work hard to protect us – health care workers, grocery store clerks, delivery people and the like – put their lives at risk while the comfortable can work safely behind a computer screen. It is not right that a 90-minute flight from Miami lands one in Port-au-Prince, Haiti where the misery index is off the charts. It is not right that we are too soft and do not have the personal discipline nor economic imagination to pay attention to and mitigate the impending catastrophic climate crisis. It is also not right to have an America first attitude when it comes to the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, though such a strategy would have political benefits. I could say more, but you should be getting the drift. So much is simply not right.

A Radical Movement as God’s Social Strategy

But God created the church and breathed life into those who claim to be followers of Jesus not to be the first ones to get into or have the best suites in heaven but rather to make things right – right here and right now. Jesus calls people to follow him and imitate him as God’s social strategy for making things right, for taking a broken world and bringing it to healing and restoration. After all, if Jesus is risen and God really holds the final word then we no longer need to make self-preservation our goal. We are free for live life that works for the common good.

Writer and theologian G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936) once wrote the following:

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.

It has been found difficult; and left untried.

Maybe this go round, we try to actually follow Jesus and become true radicals for the kingdom. And as we ponder the radical promise, maybe we listen more closely to the words of this familiar hymn we sing:

 Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the sun of righteousness!

Light and life to all he brings, ris’n with healing in his wings.

Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die,

Born to raise each child of earth, born to give us second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn king!”

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

Turn, Turn, Turn!

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,

A Necessary Advent

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,

This Follower of Jesus is Voting for Joe Biden

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,