Breaking Through on January 6

For centuries, Christians have observed January 6 as the Feast of the Epiphany. As told in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 2:1-12). God sent a star to guide wise men from the East to the place where Jesus had been born, who, for the three travelers, was a newborn king. Throughout the season of Epiphany (which lasts until the beginning of Lent), there are numerous stories in scripture of God breaking through what is expected, what is considered to be normal and understandable, in order to manifest God’s glory. These manifestations were disorienting to those who beheld them, in that they were not able to unsee what they had seen — and in most cases, and certainly for the Magi, their lives were unalterably changed as a result. In all cases, then as now, we need to choose to see God breaking through; it can’t be forced on us. We choose to see God breaking through —in the dramatic and in the mundane, and then try and make sense of it all.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of Americans, calling themselves patriots, broke through security barriers, windows and locked doors to invade the US Capitol Building, which for over two hundred years has been the citadel of American Democracy. The images of the break-in have been disorienting to the millions who witnessed it as it was happening. It was beyond what was expected, even though it was clear that they had been riled up and goaded — by many forces and voices, to break through decorum and civility and threaten not only the lives of the congresspeople who were at work there, but democracy itself.

A year later the January 6 incident is still disorienting, and as a country we are trying to make sense of it all.

There are some obvious differences between God breaking through the veil between heaven and earth in order to manifest divine glory, and a group of insurgents breaking through the US Capitol. The former invokes blessing; the latter resorts to revenge. God breaking through is a peaceful vision; the rioters were surging with violence. For me, the most important difference between the two ‘break-throughs’ is that the insurrectionists were infected with the virus of certainty. Many were carrying or wearing Christian slogans, scripture passages or symbols — all of which reinforced their mission of certainty. They were convinced they were right, and that inflated sense of rightness, which was fed by certainty, served to justify whatever they did.

Which is more than troubling. Somewhere along the line, most of us have been taught that the opposite of faith is doubt. It isn’t. The opposite of faith is certainty. Certainty leads to rigidity, and certainty fuels the temptation to thwart, dismiss or even destroy those who don’t share the same certainty. Listening gets lost, any notion of reconciliation is dismissed as abject weakness — and certainty leads people to seeing only what they want to see.

The rioters on January 6 were agents of certainty. Their presence in the Capitol was scary then, and the ongoing debate about what to do about it all is scary now.

And yet, if we are truly honest with ourselves, at some level we want certainty. We all carry that virus. Maybe not to the degree that we storm the Capitol, but we desire to have the certainty to know what we should do next and how to do it. To have the certainty to break down complex issues to reveal what is absolutely right, and incontrovertibly wrong.

And God breaks through our desire for certainty — and invites us to listen more deeply, to see more broadly and to live more vulnerably. We arrive at faith not through deduction, but daring to see God breaking through — a vision that can’t be proven by calculus or physics, an aspiration for a hope that is beyond our reach. Faith can be fierce, but it is also fragile. We always need to be opening ourselves up to it. Certainty shuts it down.

More than two centuries ago, John Newton was a wealthy English ship owner. He made his wealth by transporting “cargo” from one continent to another on one of his many ocean-going vessels. One night, as he was looking out over the sea on one of his ships, he had a vision — an epiphany, which he wrote down:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

God broke through to John Newton. He could have dismissed his epiphany as an hallucination, but he didn’t. From the moment of that vision, of seeing God breaking through, his eyes were opened to the evil of his participating in the slave trade, and he shut down his business and became an ardent abolitionist. Visions, which are manifestations of God breaking through, can lead us to commitment and away from certainty. God breaking through guides us to faith, and away from ideology. There is something ephemeral about all of this, which is exactly the point. We have to choose to see it, and risk to embrace it as real — as a vaccination of hope and love from the destructive and disturbing virus of certainty.

And if we miss seeing God breaking through, not to worry. It will happen again.

The Bombings We Are Not Paying Attention To

In the last few days the country, if not the world, has had a crash course in bunker buster bombs, ever since three of them literally crashed down on a nuclear weapons development facility in Fordow, Iran.  Delivered by a stealth B2 bomber, the pretext, subtext and...

No Permanent Allies? No Permanent Enemies?

No permanent allies. No permanent enemies. That was a foundational mantra of a ten day community organizing training that I received nearly 40 years ago.  It was a new idea for me, and I struggled with it. Growing up during the height of the cold war, I had been...

Love More. Resist More

  I have recently engaged my mind in a paradox that both strengthens my resolve and soothes my soul.  Love more.  Resist more.  Normally it is thought that loving and resisting need to be kept separate from one another:  you can’t love someone or something you...

A Spiritual Antidote to Fear

In 2008, toward the end of a three-day retreat in Canterbury Cathedral for about 700 Episcopal and Anglican bishops from around the world, Archbishop Rowan Williams finished his brilliant presentation on love and grace, and then asked us to reach out to another. Find...

Preferential Option for the Poor: A Needed Edit

“A preferential option for the poor” became a foundational component of Catholic Social teaching when the term was first issued by Latin American Catholic leaders and theologians in the mid-1960s. The phrase echoed the many admonitions from Jesus as recorded in the...

Emerging Moral Obscenity

It is a moral obscenity.  It is said by some that white Afrikaners in South Africa are the victims of genocide, but there is no data to support the claim. It is said that the cohort of Afrikaners coming to America are refugees, but there are indications that they are...

The Ordering of Love: a New Debate in the Culture Wars

Several decades ago, a national debate raged over a question that helped launch America’s ongoing culture war:  who can you love? One side was insistent that love – which would involve intimate sexual expression – should be confined to a man and a woman. A popular...

Make America Great Again: A Clamping Down on Paradigm Shift

In April of 1970 the United States decided to invade Cambodia, thus expanding the Vietnam War. I was nearing the end of my freshman year in college. Campuses around the country rose up in angry indignation. Protests were planned, strikes were proposed, marches were...

Teach Us to Care and Not to Care: T.S. Eliot

It is becoming harder and harder to achieve emotional, spiritual and in some cases physical distance from what is happening in this country.  I hear more and more people saying that they are reluctant to buy, sell or make changes to their home because the economy is...

Ep 22 – “The Greatest Unifier” with Rick Joyner

In this episode, I welcome Rick Joyner, a prominent Evangelical leader, author, public speaker, and founder of Morningstar Ministries. We explore how to respectfully build mutual understanding and work together across differences. Rick shares about his life-changing conversion, his strong support for President Trump, his belief in God as the greatest unifier, and the challenges and hopes that he sees for the country. We also discuss finding unity in diversity and the ongoing pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join my mailing list to receive the latest blog updates.

You have Successfully Subscribed!