Turn, Turn, Turn - July 25, 2021
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 & Isaiah 2:4-5
Deborah Laforet
Turn, Turn, Turn
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by the Spirit and be words of wisdom for this today. Amen.
What song contains the oldest written lyrics and was a #1 Billboard hit in the U.S.? Maybe you’ve guessed because of the scripture passage Kate just read for us. Almost word for word, the song, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” repeats the words from chapter three of Ecclesiastes from the King James Bible. This was and is a popular tune, made famous by a band called The Byrds in 1965. It was written by Pete Seeger who put the words to music and added only seven additional words: “I swear it’s not too late,” and the repeated word, “turn.”
Pete Seeger, who died in 2014 in his 95th year, was an American folk singer and social activist. He was actually blacklisted during the McCarthy Era and in the 1960’s, was a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, worker’s rights, and environmental causes (according to Wikipedia). For the lyrics of this song, Turn, Turn, Turn, he only received 5% of the royalties. The rest was donated, because, he said,
“All around the world, songs are being written that use old public domain material, and I think it's only fair that some of the money from the songs go to the country or place of origin, even though the composer may be long dead or unknown…I was going to send it to London, where I am sure the committee that oversees the use of the King James version exists, and they probably could use a little cash. But then I realized, why not send it to where the words were originally written?” (From a 2002 interview with Acoustic Guitar magazine)
So these royalties go to the Israeli Committee Against Demolitions. Pete Seeger was a man who longed for a world of peace and did his part towards making it so.
The original words come from a book in our bible called, “Ecclesiastes.” This word is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word, Qohelet. The author of this book writes that these are the words of Qohelet, son of David, king of Jerusalem. Some believe these are the words of King Solomon, who was son of David, or that they were written later and attributed to him.
But whoever penned these words had a cynical mind. The author writes, “What do people gain from all their toil, at which they toil under the sun?” (1:3) “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.” (9, 11) The author writes that whether wise or foolish, rich or poor, happy or sad, everyone lives and everyone dies. The author struggles with trying to find the meaning and purpose behind life and whether there is any meaning or purpose in life.
The bible is filled with people struggling to find meaning, grappling with juxtapositions like the very rich and the very poor, the lost and the found, war and peace, oppression and justice, life and death. In the second passage Kate read, from Isaiah, we hear about a world where people come together under one God, where they will “beat their swords into plowshares,” weapons of pain into tools that feed people, and their “spears into pruning hooks,” weapons of death into tools that clear land and brush to make way for more life.
Never again, says Isaiah, will one nation raise a sword against another and never again will they train for war. No weapons, no armies. It doesn’t say no conflict. There will always be conflict, but maybe there will be healthy ways of resolving conflict, and weapons and violence won’t be the answer.
Pete Seeger used this song, this passage from the bible, to promote his message of peace. Verse eight of this passage reads, “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” Seeger skips the phrase about war, and ends the song with, “a time to love, a time to hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”
The person who suggested this song said, “I’ve always enjoyed this song, probably because the passage in Ecclesiastes is one of my favourites in Bible. This pandemic has been a season of ups and downs…” She mentions that she lost of couple of loved ones this year and that she finds comfort in this tune. “Now,” she writes, “with vaccines, a new season has begun as we can get together with our family and friends……it’s great! Hopefully we can ‘Turn’ to a season without hate, and peace for all.”
This passage that Kate read for us and that we hear in the song, Turn, Turn, Turn, is often a source of comfort and assurance. It’s often suggested for funerals where people have lost people they love. This passage could be read with cynicism, but most choose to read it with hope. It’s about the reality of our world in which everyone lives and dies, weeps and laughs, loves and hates, where people are killed and healed, and go to war or make peace. It’s a hopeful song for those who are crying, knowing that laughter will come again, for those who mourn, knowing they will dance again someday, for those who are left behind after a death, knowing that everyone dies one day, but, right now, we can also celebrate birth and new life.
Lots in our lives are cyclical. In this region of the world, we experience four seasons as we cycle around the sun. We love, we lose love, and we love again. There is life, death, and new life. We dance, we mourn, and we somehow find those steps to dance again. Like Pete Seeger, I believe the one thing in this passage that does not have to be cyclical is war and peace. In the play, “Rent,” we hear, “The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.” War is about destruction, the destruction of lives and our earth. Imagine a world where people solve their conflict without destruction. Imagine a world where everyone instead experiences creation and the natural cycles of that creation: turn, turn, turn.
To every thing, turn, turn, tun,
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
May it be so. Amen.