In early June, the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery spurred a group of high schoolers to plan a Black Lives Matter march. They didn't know if anyone would show up. 10,000 people took to the streets that day and lifted their voices in peaceful protest.

Peaceful.

It’s an interesting word in the context of 10,000 people pulsing through downtown Nashville. That show of righteous anger does not really paint the picture of peace. I guess you could split hairs to say that it was non-violent and that is somehow different than peaceful. But the mandate from those young women beforehand was that this would be a peaceful protest. And so it was.

Yet the chant that still rings in my ears six months later is No justice! No peace! Again and again it would ring out; its staccato cadence bouncing off the buildings. No justice! No peace! Each syllable like a punch; a fierce passion jabbed into speech. No justice! No peace!

The second Sunday of Advent is about peace and it’s keeping me up at night. I grew up in a context where the stuff of Christianity was almost all personal. The primary concern was to make sure that your individual relationship with God was in the right alignment. If that personal relationship was right then you could personally experience hope, joy, love. And peace.

I was six years old when Hurricane Hugo tore through South Carolina. We lived in Columbia at the time and so we were spared the storm’s full wrath. My brother, newborn sister, and I all slept in my parents’ room that night. Even as they taped up all the windows in our house, Mom and Dad had exuded a calm that we would be okay and we were. But I remember the howling winds through the night; the sound was like a gash being ripped in creation itself.

I felt vulnerable and small and scared. The world could have come undone.

The tricky thing about Advent is there is more than a little about this time of year that is about the world coming undone. There is an untamed ferocity to the season that we often bury under twinkling lights, sleigh bells, and children’s choirs. The first Sunday—the beginning of a new year in the church—is about hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. A time-displaced hope for the coming Christ child. A future hope for when all things will be made right. But it is all hope with a jagged edge.

Where do we go from here? That question seems to follow us around. After all, each morning presents new forks in the road. What kind of people are we going to be? Empathetic or hateful? Full of hope or cynicism? Looking our for others or only for ourselves? Those choices profoundly direct the trajectories of our lives and those around us. And each day provides a new opportunity for that.

But the question of where we go from here always seems weightier in moments of great transition. The road seems to bend in dramatically divergent directions. When Joshua was at the end of his days leading the people of Israel, he gathered them together with directions on which road they ought to take.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Choose this day whom you will serve.

October turns over to November with two significant days that often get buried under a pile of Halloween candy. The 31st is Reformation Day, which remembers Martin Luther nailing 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door protesting the shortcomings he saw in the church of his day. This action is considered the symbolic catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, a movement that dramatically transformed not just the Christian church, but all of Western Civilization.

Then today is All Saints Day. If you want to get into the weeds concerning a church holiday (and I always do), some celebrate All Saints Day as a memory of all the faithful who have gone before us. Others celebrate solely the canonized saints and then remember the rest on All Souls Day the next day. Because of my priesthood-of-all-believers-confessing Baptist roots, I tend towards remembering everyone on the same day. The way I see it, the lessons I learn from St. Francis of Assisi and my Grandma are equally profound and important.

Reformation Day and All Saints Day hold together our past, present, and future. The animating force behind the Reformation is that the church should always be moving forward to God’s calling of us. Since we are all flawed individuals, the Christian institutions are always stumbling in the vocation of loving God and neighbor. Thus we always need to take sober stock of the church’s actions and reform for a more Christlike tomorrow. All Saints celebrates the hope, courage, conviction, and failures of past Christians who can illuminate that way forward.

I make up TV shows in my head all the time. I had this idea for one called God Cops. It would be a normal police procedural, but the crimes investigated were violations of the Ten Commandments.

Just imagine the “Good Cop, Bad Cop” interrogation of a man who allegedly did some work on the Sabbath. Or the precinct’s frustration when someone who used God’s name in vain is back on the street because the judge rules that commandment is more about misrepresenting God than an exclamation. Or a cool, aviator glasses-wearing, mustache-sporting detective sliding across the hood of the car to take down a perp looking covetously at his neighbor’s cow all while a funky guitar riff is punctuated by a blast of horns.

It would have been glorious and would have made so, so many people angry. The inspiration behind this satiric ridiculousness was that people often seem really eager to police religious adherence. It is as if their whole conception at the root of following God is a notion of crime and punishment. You obey the commandments so the Almighty doesn’t throw the book at you and there are scores of people who believe they are deputized to carry that out.

Jonah is a children’s Bible story staple because of its big fish. Someone decided long ago that if an animal is in a tale then it must be a great story to tell to kids. This is a terrible idea and Noah’s Ark is at the top of the list why. But Jonah has a large sea creature and he learns a lesson so we make that exclusive content of children’s church and don’t really pay it any heed as adults.

That’s a mistake because Jonah is a fascinating little story with a nasty little protagonist who learns a lesson yet not the lesson and a God who is filled to the brim with mercy.

When I was told this story in church as a kid, it was said that Jonah ran because he was scared. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he was afraid to deliver the message. This isn’t true; at least not how it was framed to me. Jonah says so himself. He ran because he was afraid that God would forgive the people of Nineveh and Jonah did not want to see that happen. This prophet would rather disobey God—risking his life and the life of some unwitting sailors at sea—than see people he considered his enemies receive grace and restoration.

This is a story we should read regularly as adults.