“Make America Great Again.”
Are you familiar with the phrase? Not “Make America Great,” but “Make America Great Again.” The campaign slogan taps into feelings of loss, feelings of grief for a past glory that is gone. It taps into a longing to go back, to recapture the former days that were better than today.
Is that what you believe? Regardless of the politics that accompany the slogan, is that how you feel? That your best days are behind you? That our best days are behind us? Are you confused, distressed, frightened by what this nation, this world, your life are becoming? Do you worry about the world your children and your grandchildren will inherit?
I do. I understand the distress, the confusion, the fear, the melancholy, the wistfulness for days that were less troubled, for a nation that was less divided, for a morality that was clear and universally acknowledged. I understand that sense of loss and longing that makes us want to go back.
But we can’t. We can’t go back. But even if we could, I don’t believe the premise. I don’t believe that the past was better.
Yes, our planet is certainly in worse shape and more threatened than at any time before, but for much of humanity life is better than it has ever been. We live longer and healthier and wealthier and freer. Long entrenched inequalities and injustices are being challenged and, in some cases, even overturned. We have access to a richness and diversity of culture as never before.
Now I know that this is true only for some and not for all, and I know that our globe is still racked by hunger and disease and poverty, by hatred and discrimination and war, but no more and no less than it has ever been. We face the same challenges, the same temptations, the same threats that our ancestors have always faced.
Were days past really less troubled? With world wars, the Great Depression, public lynchings, riots in our cities’ streets?
Was our nation less divided? With hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by fellow Americans in a civil war, with the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society, the ACLU and the Communist Party USA, with rampant anti-semitism and anti-Catholicism?
Was there before a more faithful adherence to a widely accepted moral code? Do you think so? Or is it merely that in our day immorality is on public display instead of hidden?
Regardless, God does not call us to rue the present and pine for the past. God does not call us to long for what was, but in the midst of trouble and confusion and distress to hold fast to hope, to live fully today and to wait eagerly for tomorrow with hope.
The splendor of Jerusalem is a thing of the past.
The author of the collection of poems that make up the book of Lamentations knows about distress. He knows about trouble: empty houses and empty streets and an empty Temple. He knows about the loss of family and community and culture and national pride. He knows about the loss of a way of life that once was and is now gone.
The Lamentations poet writes in the aftermath of the invasion of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. Their holy Temple was ransacked and their city walls razed and much of the city’s population forcibly relocated to Babylon to live for three generations far from home, exiles in a foreign land. It was like Russia invading Ukraine, only Jerusalem lost. The people of Jerusalem lost everything, everything that was dear to them. They were left homeless, powerless, destitute, depressed.
The poet is depressed, too. He says so, but he does not succumb to despair. He does not shout “Make Jerusalem Great Again!” He does not dwell on the past, but points to the future, a future that is not tenuous and uncertain, but a future that is sure, because the Lord is here, because the Lord’s love and mercy continue.
The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue. Not resuming after a pause, but continuing. Not again, but still. Because God has never left us. God’s love has never faltered. God has not been absent in the midst of our distress, but God has been present, always and ever present.
So the poet urges the people of Jerusalem to wait. Not despair, but wait. Not long to go back, but wait. Not denigrate this present day, but wait. Wait patiently. Wait patiently for the sunrise. Wait patiently for the Lord who will surely save.
Wait.
Will you wait? It takes courage to wait. It takes strength to wait. It takes faith to wait. But this is our calling as people of God. This is our calling as Christians. To wait.
Waiting does not mean giving up or giving in. Waiting does not mean ceasing to care. Waiting is not merely passive.
We lament our distress, but we wait.
We lament the divisiveness, the envy and greed, the selfishness and licentiousness, yes, the sins of this generation and our own sins, that keep our world from being what God wills it to be, but we wait.
We pray “Thy will be done” and we do all we can to do God’s will. We do justice, we make peace, we love our neighbors and our enemies, but we do not put our hope in what we can do. We put our hope in the Lord and we wait.
As much as anything, I am distressed in these days about that state of the Christian church in America, about the failure of our Christian witness, about Christians who seem bent on seizing power for themselves and bending the world to their own will, instead of humbly seeking God’s will and putting hope and trust where it belongs, in the Lord. Every day I read stories in the national media that make me cringe, supposed Christians saying and doing horrible things in the name of Christ.
A Facebook group calls itself “Christians against the Little Mermaid.” Against the Little Mermaid! Against the actress portraying her, because she is black and certainly Christians cannot tolerate a black mermaid!
A former Senate candidate, also a self-professed Christian, praises Vladimir Putin, saying she “support[s] Putin’s right to protect his people and always put his people first, but also protect their Christian values.” Putin’s war in Ukraine is Christian? Can any war be Christian?
A Christian Senate candidate in Georgia isn’t sure that Jesus will recognize transgender children.
And any number of serving legislators openly espouse Christian nationalism: Christian nationalism, which is, in fact, an oxymoron, and more than that, is blasphemy and idolatry because it puts loyalty to nation on a par with loyalty to God. Shame!
Christians, especially Evangelicals, (which in the public mind are usually one and the same) have earned a bad name in our day, sadly all too often well-deserved. We have lost our way. I say we because Evangelicals are our Christian brothers and sisters, too. I was raised an Evangelical. I am still an Evangelical. Evangelical comes from the word evangel, which means good news, and being evangelical means being marked by “ardent or zealous enthusiasm.” Or would we rather be lukewarm and “meh” about our faith?
We have been seduced by power, thinking we can establish God’s kingdom by imposing our values on others, instead of doing what Jesus told us to do — bring God’s kingdom by serving others. We have become preoccupied with defending our own supposed religious freedoms (which no human being can take from us anyway!) instead of defending the freedom of those who are denied it.
As Evangelicals and progressives alike, we trumpet our Christian faith as a pretext for pursuing our own political agendas. We have looked into the darkness and decided morning will never come unless we bring it. We act as if we do not really believe God that will act … and maybe we don’t. And that’s the problem: not too much faith, but too little.
That’s what our critics get wrong about us. They think that faith itself is the problem, that devotion to God puts us out of touch with the real world and blinds us to the needs of our neighbors. We just need to back off, tone it down, not fill our minds with too much God stuff.
But the truth is just the opposite. It is too little faith, too little filling our minds and hearts with God stuff, that leads to a religiosity that is self-serving and judgmental, unsympathetic and bigoted. Real faith, real Christianity, faithfully following Jesus, shows itself in humility, in kindness, in empathy, in compassion, in love … in love of our neighbors, all our neighbors, and in love of God, with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength! It is a passionate love for God, above all else, that empowers our love for each other, and frees us to live, not to protect ourselves, but to live for the sake of the future God has promised. Real faith trusts God … and waits.
Wait.
Waiting makes room. Room for God and room for each other. Room enough to pay attention to the wonders, as well as the distresses, of this one day. Room enough to remember …
the Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue,
fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.
Dawn is surely coming! Morning is breaking! The Lord will bring it.
Will you wait?