Two days ago was the Feast of the Epiphany. It was also the day the United States Capitol was stormed by those I will politely call the harbingers of authoritarianism; I prefer the term fascists. Perhaps age has in some ways made me a cynic; there were no surprises for me in what happened nor in the reactions to it; all very predictable.
In his column Prayer and Politics, which I received on Jan 5th, Ken Sehested seemed to have a premonition of what was to come the next day. He said: "Tomorrow is a dangerous day in the life of our republic. An extraordinary alarm has been sounded in the form of a letter signed by all 10 of the living former secretaries of defense, warming our president against using the military to maintain political power. Two different groups of corporate executives have warned Congress against attempting to change Electoral College votes."
Little did he know!! Yet if we read further, he says that Epiphany is viewed through three lens by Christians: Jesus' baptism, his birth, and/or the arrival of the Magi. It is also the time where we would read about the flight to Egypt to escape Herod.
On this Epiphany we had the flight of Congress to escape the Trumpian storm troopers. At least the death toll was less than when Herod killed all the infants in his attempt to maintain his throne and power. Despots often are like Herod: they will destroy, literally or politically, anyone who they feel is in their way. Herod killed two of his own sons. But in the end Herod died, as did every Roman emperor. As do we all. That is what puzzles me about the intense passions we feel around so many things that involve power. In the end we all die and someone else will take what we left behind.
It is why I think community matters more, or even better, most of all. Communal life does not really have an beginning or an end. We enter and exit and we leave our mark, but the community is something bigger than any one of us. That is the vision I keep seeing: if one of the meanings of Jesus' baptism was to be in solidarity with all of us, that says a great deal about the importance God places in community and our common lives. In Hebrew scripture, which tells the story of God and how God dwells among us, the life of the community takes precedence over the individual. The life of the nation take precedence over my desires (not my needs) as does my life as a Christian.
This is why I do not like Donald Trump and why I believe what he tried to do was stage a coup d'etat. He places his wants, which are extreme, above anything else. He then uses all the tools of a despot to divide and conquer (not hard in a nation where the sin of racism is still ignored, like a cancer is ignored until it is too late.) I am guessing those who follow him do so for a variety of reasons: power and ideology likely the guiding light of so many.
I am not sure how many of those storming the capitol would self identify as Christian and, for those that do, just what that means. I see in the Epiphany, in all of the life and work of Jesus, a revealing of the nature of God, which is to show us that God is love and that God is in solidarity with our suffering and humans and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with us. It is not about belief. For God, love is an action verb and not an emotion. If we want to call ourselves a Christian nation, it is not about making sure everyone follows a certain brand of Christianity. It is not about anyone's choice of a religion, or not. We could be a Christian nation if everyone were of any other faith as long as we showed love for one another. To the (now ex) chair of the Republican party of Henry County Iowa, who spoke of election fraud and a socialist takeover under Biden and the need to stay loaded and locked down and prepare for the revolution, I say you have self destroyed with hate. We will be a democracy, a nation of, by, and for the people, when we live by the preamble of the Constitution "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That is our declaration of intent for this nation and, in many ways, is not dissimilar to the idea that the reign of God is all about justice and welfare.
That means we need to unite to fight the demons of racism, poverty, disease, income disparity and favoritism of the wealthy (God favors the poor you know) and start to care for this fragile earth, our only home.
I in so many ways love this nation; it has been the home of my family for 400 years. As a nation, great promises were made, promises that to me seem very much in keeping with what my faith tells me is the roll of good earthly government: justice and welfare first and foremost for those to whom it has been denied and for all of us.
We could see Epiphany for what it literally means: 3a(1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking. (3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.
I want to see and walk in that illumination, which for me was given in the life and death of Jesus.
Amen
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