Epiphany also asks us to remember the darkness into which the light of Jesus dawned. Herod’s response to the Wise Men’s revelation of Jesus was the opposite of theirs — greeting even the rumor of a rival king with arrogance & fear, turning to deception & violence to preserve his own kingdom. Amidst the ongoing global revival of toxic authoritarian reactionary Christian populism (a.k.a., Christian nationalism, Christofascism, etc.), the January 6 insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump following his loss in the U.S. 2020 Presidential election shows us that that old authoritarian pattern still tempts us today, opposing the Kingdom of God even from within Christian religious communities.

Diana Butler Bass’ new book, A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance, is a wonderful introduction to the Christian liturgical calendar, a “cycle of sacred stories that compose a larger narrative of love, hospitality, mercy, justice, and gratitude.” The author was interviewed about the book for the excellent NPR show 1A, and I appreciated, in that secular forum, her gentle evangelistic witness, unapologetically Biblical teaching on the character of the Kingdom of God, and clear naming of the temptation to authoritarianism that clings so closely to U.S. history.

I wanted to share with you this reflection on Magi’s story from Rev. Danny Cortez (who we met at a parents’ conference a couple years ago), responding to the question, “What piece of scripture or characteristic of God is anchoring you in this season?” 

Danny’s last paragraph resonates with me. What anchors me is my long-time-dawning understanding of the gentleness & patience of God revealing that the Kingdom of God is at hand in unexpected people & places & voices — that God really is present and at work amidst the Powers & Principalities here in my own lifetime today, and we are called to attend! It is the reminder of this Scripture to attend to God’s faithful promise that, even if it is from a new direction and unfamiliar paths, we will be able to return home.

1. READ a passage of Scripture (preferably out loud, but silently will do as well). Read the passage again with each step that follows.
2. LISTEN: You are invited to simply listen to the reading. Hear the words & receive them. Hold them lightly, loosely in your mind. Begin to wait patiently for the Spirit to reveal the Word, Jesus Christ, to you through the words you are hearing…
3. REFLECT: Meditate on the words of the passage. Turn them over and over in your mouth, mind, and heart. Notice what word or phrase stands out for you. Hold that word in front of you in the presence of the Lord…
4. SEE: Return to your word or phrase, and turn your heart to the presence of Jesus within these words. Give your consent to the Holy Spirit’s presence & action within you. Let God give you eyes to behold what God has for you here. As you return again to your word or phrase, note what thoughts, impressions, memories, or feelings come to mind. Hold them up before the Lord…
5. PRAY: Respond to God with the prayer of your heart. Offer up your response to the words and images you have heard and seen…
6. REST in the presence of God who is with you & knows you & loves you…

Nicole & I had the privilege of leading our tiny congregation through these steps with Isaiah 2:2-5 (We read Robert Alter’s version!) last Sunday, with a congregational response after the almost-a-minute long silence following each step. This is about a “liturgical” as our church ever gets!

But many churches follow a lectionary that, working in a three-year cycle, assigns four separate Scripture readings to every Sunday! For the First Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the church year, the other three lectionary texts after Isaiah 2:2-5 are:

• Psalm 122 (I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord…” — one of the Songs of Ascents),
• Romans 13:11-14 (Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep…), and
• Matthew 24:36-44 (But about that day and hour no one knows…Keep awake therefore…).

You can find these along with the other Revised Common Lectionary readings for all four Sundays of Advent (with accompanying artwork & prayers) at https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/lections.php?year=A&season=Advent

Author, preacher, & scholar Diana Butler Bass weaves three of these Advent 1 passages together with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time to meditate on how Scripture doesn’t let us be trapped in any one moment or circumstance of history, triumphal or tragic, but invites us to see God’s arrival in all times:

“The readings for the first Sunday of Advent all place us in time: “In days to come,” “You know what time it is,” and “that day and hour no one knows.” On the face of it, that sounds simple. But it isn’t.…

“Advent, of course, reenacts a past event as if it is new each year. And every week, in liturgical churches, we are reminded that “Christ will come again.” That’s the other Advent — the future one that hasn’t happened yet. Advent is about both of those times: the first coming of Jesus’ birth and the second coming of Jesus’ return. It is also true that Jesus comes to our hearts, a kind of personal Advent for every Christian. We’re waiting for Jesus — a memory, an experience, and a hope.

“Christians have struggled to understand this. Entire New Testament books try to make sense of God and human time, of the various comings of Jesus, and of the tension between This Age and the expectation of The Age to Come. Christian theology speaks of already and not yet, of creation and re-creation, of memory and anticipation. In a warring world, we await swords to be turned into plowshares. While governments slumber to injustice, we awake to liberation. As we toil in ordinary work, we are aware of God’s impending approach.”

Read her whole post here: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-advent-1

Only six months in (now five months ago), it already seemed as if the whole world had been turned upside down, all our plans and structures shaken, everything confused. Charlie had been documenting the pandemic, interviewing, through the crackle & difficulty of remote connections, candidates for political office, civil servants, community leaders, university administrators, etc.; filming empty, locked down roads & landscapes, and – after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis – filming the continuing street protests against police brutality. I recorded the Bible passage she requested, and Charlie used that (plus music by Philip Glass) to frame the words & images from this year’s apocalyptic landscape.

Here’s the final product, not a documentary, but a “new media” artifact for contemplation:

Now after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as the light. And behold, they saw Moses and Elijah, talking with him.  And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking, when lo! a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, filled with fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and fear not!” And looking up, they saw no one, but Jesus only. And coming down the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
(Matthew 17:1-9)

Jesus takes only his closest friends up on Mount Tabor and comes out to them; Jesus shows them openly what dwells at his deepest heart – it’s the Law & the Prophets & the Shekhina Glory of God calling him Beloved! And of course it’s overwhelming & ungraspable, especially that last part, and all their plans for sturdy structures are bowled over; they’re terrified and undone by fear. But Jesus lifts them up, and he’s still there, their close friend. Jesus tells them to hold on to the vision they’ve seen in secret (like Mary treasuring shepherd’s tales of angels in her heart), as they head down the mountain together and back into the world.

As he comes down the mountain in Matthew 17, Jesus is setting his face toward Jerusalem, to walk out his identity as the Beloved in the midst of powers & principalities, counting the cost, knowing it will lead him into death. Just a little earlier (Matthew 16), Jesus had told his disciples of all the horrific things he would have to suffer – and Peter contradicted him! It’s just too horrible! But after this vision (the cloud! the voice!), his closest friends have seen who Jesus is, and they will have to trust and grapple with that knowledge through all the triumph, sorrow, controversy, and betrayals of his final days. What could it mean for the Beloved Son of God to walk through such trials, laden with such love & glory?

One thing for certain, it’s not what they wanted, and definitely not what they expected. As on that mountain, as in this year, all our plans are overthrown, and following Jesus doesn’t look the way it did before. But Jesus lifts us up and says, Fear not. Know you are beloved. Keep an eye out for glory. Walk with me. Hold on to the vision until everything is accomplished.

I was in Lexington, KY, in May of 1977 with my 2 younger brothers, David & Steve (we were 10, 8, and 5 years old), visiting our grandparents without Mom & Dad. Grandpa (whose study shelves were full of Thurber, Sturgeon, & Asimov) took us, with a neighbor girl about David’s age to go see what he told us (and Grandma) was a “Winnie-the-Pooh” movie. He dropped us off at the theater to see the movie by ourselves – this was the Seventies, after all, and while Grandpa had a trickster streak a mile wide, I could never have imagined him ever sitting through a kids’ movie.

Anyway, when we got there, & Grandpa drove off in his immense beige car, we realized that the ticket booth people were all wearing makeup from the glam-rock band Kiss!! And there didn’t seem to be any Pooh-bear movie option. Instead, there were these crazy posters with fire-swords, space ships, and this black robot face.

At this point, I got very excited – I’d seen that robot face weeks ago on a Saturday morning TV commercial that had got cut off halfway through, as if it had been released by mistake. I’d rushed into the kitchen shouting, “MOMMOM!! WEHAVETOSEETHISMOVIE!!” …but I had no idea what it was called.

Ten year old me gave the same persuasive argument to the other kids, but the neighbor girl was unconvinced. This movie was PG — we couldn’t possibly go see that! And they’re wearing Kiss makeup!! We found a payphone, she called her mom to come get her – and we boys went in past the scary ticket-takers, alone & completely unprepared, to see Star Wars for the first time.

(And when Grandpa showed up to drive us home, he wore the biggest smirk…)

This was a challenge, since one of the things we’ve learned in studying history is that the brief story as told by Linus, and the traditional vision of Pilgrims & Indians sharing in plenty and simple harmony, is more a rose-tinted 19th Century nationalistic origin myth than a faithful picture of what was going on in 1621. It is true that a widespread American tradition of proclaiming occasional public days of thanksgiving (or of fasting & repentance) goes back at least to the Pilgrims; but we owe the establishment of a national Thanksgiving Day holiday to the lobbying of semi-historical romance novelist and magazine publisher Sarah Josepha Hale and the need in 1863, following the Battle of Gettysburg, to find some story, some ritual communion, that could help unify and heal the wounds of a nation (again, still) torn by violence. For that purpose, we’ve idolized the Pilgrims.

And it is true that Wampanoag Native Americans and English Separatists from Scrooby, Nottinghamshire  (via Leiden, Holland) shared a peaceable harvest time meal in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621; but that peace was short-lived, shaped before and after by history too complex and brutal to be done justice in a single fable. And it is true that those Pilgrims held an idealistic Christian vision of being free to build their own righteous community; but that does not mean that they were as like us as we wish them to be, or that they succeeded in separating themselves from the sins and atrocities of their day, which they themselves lamented. Not for nothing is this history commemorated by some with a National Day of Mourning.

Given all this, how can we tell this story in order to celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday, to rest in contemplation of the day and its meaning? As Robert Tracy McKenzie asks in  The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God & Learning from History, how can we receive the gifts history offers and use them to practice moral reflection, rather than judgement? Here’s the story we read, having learned the history from McKenzie and other sources, and with the understanding that this is not the whole story, but only a part of the whole, a small piece of a holiday celebration in the midst of a grand sweep of history. As part of our celebration of an American Thanksgiving with church family and strangers from other shores, I hope that this piece, for all it’s small scope & focus, reflects the story truly.

In Massachusetts, in the hills by the bay, there were the Wampanoag peoples: the Nauset, Pawtuxet, Pokanoket, Pennacook, Nantuckett, and others, who lived and died, made war and peace, and grew corn & squash & beans in the land of their ancestors. When the strangers came from Europe, sickness also came, and many Wampanoag died. Where ten lived together, parents, children, husbands, wives, only one survived.

In Leiden, in Holland, there were the Separatist Bretheren, who came out from the Church of England, refugees from corruption, persecution, rumors of war, and a world so tangled up in sin. Leaving everything behind, they sailed for Massachusetts, Pilgrims seeking to build a pure and faithful people, a New Jerusalem in a new land. They landed at Plymouth, having nothing, and found fields already plowed for corn, and a village empty.

The Wampanoag land was a land of plenty, but winter was hard: where two Pilgrims lived together, parents, children, husbands, wives, only one survived. But Squanto of the Patuxet, last of his village, showed them how to grow corn, and they brought a harvest in.

That season, Chief Massasoit of the Pokanoket Wampanoag came with 90 of his people, and hunted deer to give as gifts. The Pilgrims hunted fowl, and for three days in the Fall of 1621, they feasted & celebrated with strangers in a new world. They were thankful for peace and plenty, despite their loss.

And in future years, when winters were hard, when drought withered their corn, when want & war & greed & sin still stalked them in this land, they humbled themselves and prayed to God, who provides the rain. Then they would call for a solemn day of giving thanks to God for all His mercy and His providence. We today strive to remember and do the same.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality…

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

— Ursala K. LeGuin, on receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 2014 National Book Awards. Full transcript here, courtesy of Parker Higgins.

I’m not so sure about that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oartIE7rKuM

“If only you saw what I can see, you’d understand why I need your modesty.”

So… virtue = being careful to stay out of the way of the sinfulness of young men. “That’s what makes you beautiful.” Got it.

I know that’s not the only message here;¹ but it is here, and there’s not much else here (for instance, praising the beauty of feminine courage, endurance, practical intelligence, etc. — all Biblical virtues) to re-focus the discussion away from the degrading stereotypes of young men as helpless lust machines & women as potential sex bombs. It’s still a lust-centered world view (MUCH more so than the original song!), with a narrow, distorted picture of virtue. Because of this, it fails to be an adequate Christian witness against the sexual brokenness of our society.

Instead, this video just plays along with sexual brokenness, hoping to stay on the good side of the devil’s rules. There’s a name for this particular set of devil’s rules: rape culture. (You can read about it here: this post by Diana Anderson, part of a larger series on sexual abuse in the church.) It’s the idea that rape or abuse is inevitable, acceptable, tolerable, or somehow excusable, and not primarily a sin on the part of the attacker. When the rapist or abuser we trusted from our own community, says that my daughter or your daughter dressed immodestly, in his opinion, so it must be her fault — and when he really believes it himself — this kind of teaching is not what we want ringing in her ears.

As a husband, as a son, and as a father of two girls, here’s what I want to teach: I want my sons to know that they don’t need HER to have integrity, but that they are responsible for their own integrity, and for seeking out the dignity in others. I want my daughters (and my sons) to know that their inherent, God-given, grace-affirmed worth & beauty is expressed in MANY virtues, both physical & spiritual, developed in the practices of everyday life. I want them to understand how being both attractive & praiseworthy can make married love live long, and how contempt can kill it quick. I want them to ask, as Alma Cook asks, “What’s your why when it comes to getting dressed?” and I want them to know that in getting dressed or undressed, their first responsibility is toward their own hearts before the LORD.

When was the last time you poured yourself a cup of tea, snuggled into an easy chair, picked up that history book you’d been longing to devour, eagerly turned to the first page and said to yourself, Oh, I do hope this is meticulously researched?

Tracy McKenzie organizes his book, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God & Learning from History around eight key principles that help us think well as readers of history. A rollicking good yarn can be historically true, and might make history “come alive” as if you were really there, as if we were seeing history directly, face to face. But that’s an illusion. The first step in learning to think historically, then, is to admit that:

1. The past itself is gone forever. Historians tell stories built on — and limited by — the evidence that remains, McKenzie reminds us; interpretation of historical evidence is at the very core of the historian’s task.

Sometimes that evidence is thin indeed. We have various documents that can tell us about the Pilgrims in general; but in the case of the first (American Christian Protestant) Thanksgiving (north of Virginia & south of Maine), our direct evidence is just 115 words written at the time, part of a cover letter written by Edward Winslow to accompany reports of the Pilgrims’ activities to their investors in London. That’s it!

Historical evidence — diaries, letters, newspapers, legal records, passenger lists, investor reports, archeological remains — is often hard to find, fragmentary, and ambiguous. Putting together a coherent story from evidence is hard work. No wonder we reach for story first and evidence after, unless the discipline of History can teach us better habits!

Reaching for evidence is a good first step — and how many other areas of life would benefit if we really made that a habit? — but it’s not the only thing we need to think historically. McKenzie makes the case for seven more principles for sound historical thinking:

2. Everything is interrelated; historical facts are meaningless without their proper context.
3. Pursue and expect authentic education, listening to the voices of the past and letting them challenge us.
4. By all means, seek heroes in the past — but not idols!
5. Never underestimate the strangeness of a familiar looking past.
6. Be willing to discard false memories, however dear and familiar.
7. Understand & resist revisionism — the temptation to shape history to our own ends.
8. Receive the gifts history offers; use them to practice moral reflection, rather than judgement.

We’ll take a look at each of these, and the real story of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving in the weeks ahead.

You can purchase the book directly from me,¹ if you like, here, or at your local independent bookseller here.

The First Thanksgiving takes a look at the history of Thanksgiving and the craft of studying history, with special attention to what the practice of history has to teach Christian disciples today. McKenzie crafts an engaging narrative of our forbears’ “first (American Protestant Christian) Thanksgiving (north of Virginia & south of Maine),” and frames each chapter with a key concept or principle essential to sound historical thinking, beyond just this single holiday.

This is a book for beginning history readers, for Christians & non-Christians who desire the study of the past to be a “life-changing dialogue with the ages, in which we confront enduring questions and seek a heart of wisdom.” The book has just been published by InterVarsity Press, and you can purchase it directly from me,¹ if you like, here, or at your local independent bookseller here.

Ozeki’s footnoted epigraph from the Shobogenzo sets the stage in Buddhist impermanence. Nao writes her story in a diary bound inside the covers of a copy of A la recherche du temps perdu, proposing to tell her Buddhist nun grandmother’s story before she “drops out of time,” and another character, Ruth, finds the diary apparently washed up in from the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami. Pretty straightforward so far — but then the footnotes start playing games.

Grandmother Jiko advises Nao to “Start where you are” in writing, so she describes the now out-of-fashion French maid themed cafe where she’s sitting:

It didn’t used to be this way. Back when maid cafes were ninki #1!¹⁴ Babette told me that the customers used to line up and wait for hours just to get a table, and the maids were all the prettiest girls in Tokyo, and you could hear them over the noise of Electricity Town calling out, Okaerinasaimase dannasama!,¹⁵ which makes men feel rich and important. But now the fad is over and the maids are no longer it, and the only customers are tourists from abroad, and otaku¹⁶ from the countryside, or sad hentai with out-of-date fetishes for maids. And the maids, too, are not so pretty or cute anymore, since you can make a lot more money being a nurse at a medical cafe or a fuzzy plushy in Bedtown.¹⁷ French maids are downward trending for sure …

Most of those footnotes are straightforward translation and explanation, but that last one, #17, does something new:

17. Can’t find references to medical cafes or Bedtown. Is she making this up?

When I read this I felt the ground shift beneath me. What had been the voice of the Author, Ruth Ozeki, creator of the story and authority on Japanese language, culture, and religion was now the voice of the character Ruth, reading Nao’s diary and puzzling it out right along with me. “All meaning is created through relationship…” says Ozeki, “There is only the exchange, the meaning that you and I, in any given moment, make together…” The relations between author, character, and reader are “a crucial collaboration.”

It’s just one of many moments of transition, where distinctions collapse to reveal connections. The whole novel is full of surprising, suddenly revealed entanglements, binding together not only readers, authors, & characters; but Sliammon mythology & the Many Worlds of quantum mechanics; World War II & Silicon Valley; fears, heroism, weakness; family misunderstandings & family connections; meditations & storms. And somewhere in all that, we find one another.

First sixteen pages
Seventeen footnotes ask, “Is
She making this up?”

Yes, she is; and us³ too.