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Church and Main is a podcast at the intersection of faith and modern life. Join Pastor Dennis Sanders as he shares the stories of faith interacting with the ever-changing world of the 21st century.
Music.
Welcome to Church and Main. This is the podcast that's at the intersection of
faith and modern life, and I'm Dennis Sanders, your host.
Church and Main is a podcast that looks for God in the midst of issues affecting
the church and the larger society.
You can learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes,
and donate by checking us out at churchandmain.org or churchandmain.substack.com.
While you're there, consider subscribing to the podcast. And you can do that
on your favorite podcast app or at the Substack page.
And while you're there, leave a review. That helps others find the podcast.
So this is another repeat episode. I'm doing this one because this is the three-year
anniversary of January 6th.
And because this is an election year, everyone is focusing on this.
Especially, of course, because it looks very likely that Donald Trump,
who was president on January 6th, 2021,
will be the GOP nominee again.
The episode that is in question was a repeat from 2022 on the one year anniversary
of the January 6th insurrection of the U.S.
Capitol. And it was reflecting on that one year anniversary.
And it was a episode that I did in three acts.
It included material that is now actually three years old.
It was a recording I did on the very day of January 6th, 2021.
And then it also includes an interview I had with my friend and colleague and fellow podcaster,
Andrew Donaldson, as we talked about what was then the upcoming January 6th hearings.
And it's interesting looking back. I actually listened to this episode this
afternoon because I was thinking about reposting it, but I wanted to make sure
it would still hold up. And, um, it does.
And, um, it's interesting listening to that interview with Andrew that I think
since then I have moved closer to his viewpoint.
Um, and I will let you listen to the interview, um, to hear that and see where he was coming from.
But I think that I definitely was, I am much closer to that viewpoint,
uh, than I was, uh, in 2022.
I was, uh, the final part is a reflection that I had, um, um,
We're just kind of talking about all of that was going on, the concerns about 2024,
and also a little bit of the fact that, of course, January 6th is not just the
anniversary of the insurrection,
but since this is church and main,
January 6th is also Epiphany.
And so I wanted to talk about that connection in that.
I thought about adding a fourth act, kind of talking about what's been going
on, especially now in the run up to 2024,
some of my concerns, both on with the kind of the Trump campaign,
but also with some of the more anti-Trump forces as well.
But I decided not to do that.
There is more than enough time to talk about that.
And I think that I wanted to let this episode from 2022 speak for itself.
And it is still, I think, a very current episode. So, um, if you haven't heard
it before, I hope you will, um, give it a listen.
If this is a, if you, uh, this is second time listening to it,
listen again, because you might have missed something the first time around.
Uh, so I'm not going to say much more. I'm just going to go and let you listen
to this interview. I think, again, it's an important one.
Um, and I think it's important for this coming year because 2024 is going to
be a momentous election. Um,
Yeah, it's just going to be a very big election. So please listen.
And I'm just going to get out of the way and let this episode run.
Before I, one thing of clarification. This was, when I did this episode,
the name of the podcast was still En Route.
That was the old name before I changed to Church in Maine. So if you hear that,
know that's where that's coming from.
So without me more continuing to blab. Here is this episode of January 6th in three acts.
Music.
Hello and welcome to the first podcast episode of 2022 for EnRoute,
the podcast where we talk about the journey of faith in modern life.
I am Dennis Sanders, your host.
I have a few interview episodes coming up, but this one's sort of a hybrid.
And I figured that with the year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection
was happening, that it was important to share a few things concerning that day.
So this is, as the title of this podcast says, it's looking at January 6th in
three acts. And what we're going to be doing is talking about it in the three ways.
The first is actually going back a year ago. I recorded something then for,
as many of you know, I'm a pastor and I usually do some type of a,
I was at that time doing a prayer thing online.
And I did one for that on that day and talked about what was going on.
And so I thought it was good to hear that again.
And looking back at that time. The second part is going to be an interview I
did just a few days before Christmas with Andrew Donaldson.
Many of you know, he does the Heard Tell podcast, and he is also the editor at Ordinary Times.
We talked a little bit about January 6th, and he gave his viewpoint.
He is not one to hold back.
And I hope that you will listen to it. It may not be the view you are expecting
to hear, but I think it is an important viewpoint.
It is something that he does see the event as important, but I think it's important
to hear how he, his spin on it, his viewpoint.
And so that's going to be about maybe 10, 15 minutes long. And then we will
conclude with my own thoughts about January 6th today and what.
Kind of where we're headed. And so that is the three acts.
So before we go into our first act, just again, consider subscribing if you
haven't subscribed to whatever podcast platform you listen to.
Also, just want to let you know that I have started a new kind of a different system for donations.
If anyone's ever interested, the links are in the show notes and you can make
a one-time donation or you can also join a membership.
I probably will be starting to do some, you know, membership only episodes or
things extras for people who want to become members.
So that is just to let you know about that. So, with all of that,
let's go back to January 6th, 2021.
And these are my thoughts. And I believe I did this maybe around 5.30 or so.
So it was a few hours after some of the kind of most intense parts of the insurrection.
So let's hear from me back on January 6th, last year.
Music.
Hello. My name is Dennis Sanders, and this is Midweek Vespers.
I wasn't actually planning on having that this evening. I've just had other things that I need to do.
But in light of today's events, I feel that it's important that we come in prayer. prayer.
What I'm going to do is actually just share with all of you the note that I
sent to people from my congregation about today's event and a short prayer,
and then we'll conclude with the Lord's Prayer.
So, let's begin.
So dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it has been a hard, hard time to do
work this afternoon, and I say that truthfully.
By now most of you know what happened at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
It had been, it was stormed, breached by people that were coming from a rally
to support President Trump.
The reports of the vice president being rushed from the Senate chambers,
the news of the lawmakers being held up in their offices,
the storming of both chambers by these people, the shots fired and the people
injured and now dead, make me sick to my stomach.
I am furious for what has happened.
And how politicians and so many others have enabled this sentiment to happen
that allowed Congress to be breached.
But right now I'm also fearful for all of us as a nation.
We have learned too well how to otherize people people, who have a different
politics than we do, or who have different ideas from us, who come from a different
racial or ethnic background.
Right now we do not seem to be living up to the ideals of e purpus unum, out of many.
It is in this time of uncertainty, fear, and anger that we turn to God,
who is described in the 121st Psalm as our help.
So let us come together now to pray to the one who is a protector and who never sleeps or rests.
Let us pray.
God of peace, God of justice, be with us today in this dangerous time for our nation.
Give us ears to listen to each other, hearts to love one another,
eyes to see everyone, friend or foe, as a child of God.
May your presence calm the crowds, and may we learn how to live with each other
in spite of our differences.
We ask this in your Son's name, Jesus Christ, and in the name of your Spirit
of peace, who taught us to pray.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, now and forever. Amen.
Good night, and may God be with the United States of America.
Music.
Thank you.
First off, I kind of wanted to talk about, because it's getting close to the
year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, there's been some updates on the...
Kind of the investigation we've all heard about the the
text with mark uh with mark meadows um who
both cooperated and didn't
cooperate with the one six committee where do
you think how do you think that that committee is going so far um where do you
think it's headed um i have very low expectations of this committee i've wrote
about this and commented on it publicly uh a congressional A congressional committee
is not where you go to find truth.
A congressional committee is where you go to further a truth you've already figured out.
Let's preface this with a couple of things here. We know what happened on January 6th.
What we're doing is we want some detail.
We know the beginning and the end. We know what the story arc of January 6th
is, but folks want some detail.
And some folks want possibly charges based on those details as they come out.
I don't think we're going to get any of that out of this committee.
I don't think the committee was the appropriate venue for this for a lot of reasons.
One is half the committee is involved in it, and I don't mean that in a bad way.
I just mean you don't let crime victims sit on juries for a reason.
You don't let crime victims be witnesses.
It's just not going to go well on a lot of levels. Plus, Congress is just a
silly thing. We already know that the Republican Party, with two very notable
exceptions, is just not participating at all. So let me preface it with that.
I'm not a big fan of special prosecutors and things like that.
But if there was ever going to be a situation for a special prosecutor, this be it.
You need somebody outside of the system to deal with this.
But that's just my rant on it. It's here. It is what it is. Are we going to
get any truth out of it? Well, yeah, we're going to get truth because we're
going to find. But again.
Perspective we're just getting details of things we already knew
okay so uh i was
very critical when they did some things that i
think are very unhelpful like subpoena roger stone and alex jones
that's silliness you're wasting everybody's time don't do that mark meadows
that you referenced that's that's the key to this whole thing meadows is the
one who has vulnerabilities uh he has some executive privilege protection but
not all of it like a president trump would have meadows knows knows everything
because he was the gatekeeper to the president.
Uh, we know he has some untoward untowards things in his past.
Um, he didn't decide to not be a Congressman anymore and go beat you up for
staff for no reason. There was other issues involved in that.
Uh, Meadows is the key to that whole thing because he's the one guy that really
could tell you everything that really happened because he's the one guy that
really does know it and has enough vulnerability. You could probably squeeze him a little bit.
Are you going to get that out of him? I doubt it. Uh, remember even if he,
we're going through the theater of the subpoenas right now and they're They're
fighting the subpoenas.
And remember, even if they subpoena him, he can sit there and just take the
fifth and there's not a darn thing they can do about it.
Now, Meadows needs to fundraise and make a statement and show his loyalty and
fealty to the cause. So he's going to fight it before he gets to that point.
But these are all the multiple levels of mess that this committee is fighting
and why I'm pessimistic that we're going to get to a lot of truth.
However, we have learned a few things. We do get the emails from Mark Meadows.
We've got the emails from the what some people call the greater MAGA unified
universe, you know, all the different characters, commentators,
people like that. So that stuff's all interesting.
But I'm just going to reiterate again, are we really learning anything new?
No, we're not. Did we not know that President Trump was MIA most of that day? We knew that.
Did we not know that, you know, that this thing, when it started on the mall,
that it was planned to be a march to the Capitol and it got out of hand? We knew that.
We know not so much from the committee, but from the criminal trials that are
going on now, and there's 700 some of them, different charges.
Charges, there's a database. You can go pull the database and look.
We now know what that mob was made up of because of the criminal charges.
We now know that you called it an insurrection.
I still call it a riot, and here's why. Let me just get this out of the way real quick.
I think the charges have brought this out. You have different groups of people involved in this.
You had, yes, there was the people that just walked through the Capitol and
walked out, and they were kind of the tag-alongs. Yes, there was that group.
There was a large group of people that was there to to cause trouble.
They just wanted to smash and destroy things and make a nuisance of themselves and all that.
That's another large group of people. Hold on one sec.
Sorry about that. There was another smaller group inside of that group that
really did think they were going to affect an election, overturn the election, whatever.
Now, those people you could probably call insurrectionists, but they were a smaller group number.
And we're seeing now in the criminal cases, just like this, the more severe
sentences are going to people who actually attacked police officers,
who actually did violence to police officers.
They're getting the more severe three, four, five-year sentences.
Most of these other people are getting what you you call nuisance complaints,
public nuisance complaints, trespassing, things like this.
They're pleading out for time
served. They're getting 90 days a year or whatever, these sorts of things.
The buried lead on all of this, the system's working.
I know we don't want to talk about this aspect of it because it makes for bad
copy and we don't get a lot of reads saying it.
The system's working. Remember, Congress reconvened that same night.
As horrible as it was, Congress was back in the chamber that night.
And the legal system is dealing with these people. So So we need to keep that
part of this perspective in it.
To bring all of that back to your question, the January 6th committee, what do I think?
I don't know that they're going to do much more than just put a little extra
color on what we already know. I think they're going to get stonewalled on the big things.
And then, of course, we understand the clock's ticking because it does not look
like the Democratic Party is going to hold Congress for the election.
So they really got about four or five months tops because you're not going to
get Congress to do a whole lot of stuff this summer in an election here.
My expectations are low, and they're meeting them. Do you think that things
would have been better served if we had had a commission sort of in the way of 9-11?
Look how good that did. I mean, we had a JFK commission. We had a 9-11 commission.
We've had a couple other commissions over the years.
Government committees don't solve things. I think a lot of people want a reckoning.
You are not getting a reckoning for January 6th. january 6th is something that
happened it was horrible i wrote some of the strongest language stuff i've ever
written about politics about january 6th i was horrified by it i hate it,
thing that happened and a lot of and time has passed since then we're almost
two years from it now um or a year from excuse me uh people want there to be
this massive reckoning on it and it's It's just not going to happen.
What's going to happen is people are going to adapt to it. They're going to
internalize it. They're going to compartmentalize it.
They're going to filter it through their normal priors for their politics going forward.
We're going to talk about it endlessly clearly. But.
No, there is not going to be this massive reckoning where the pro the people
who think this was the worst insurrection in the history of the country were
going to have this massive public trial and you're going to get full justice.
That's never going to happen, nor are you ever going to get,
you know, for the folks that think it was just tourists walking through the
Capitol, which is ridiculous, by the way. But we hear that.
Nor are you going to get an exoneration because the truth is very much in the
middle of that is you had some very bad people with very bad intentions.
You had a larger group of people that got caught up in it and went along for
the ride for various reasons.
And then there was a very small group of people who idiotically,
I would say, really, really thought they were going to overthrow the United
States government, which was never going to happen.
That's what you're dealing with. You're never going to get full closure on this,
but we better get right with what we individually think about it because there's
never going to be consensus on it.
Kind of related to that it's been a lot of the there's been a lot of discussion
especially lately but over the last year kind of about what i like to maybe i want to say is,
doom scrolling for democracy um several articles that have been written i think
that they're and i cannot remember the name of the author but the one that was
written in the atlantic actually Actually,
next month's Atlantic issue is pretty much devoted to the fate of American democracy.
People are concerned about 2024, what could happen.
Do you think that... I guess I'm always wondering, is this...
Are we hyperventilating about this issue, or is it something that we should be worried about?
Yes. The answer to all your questions is yes. Yes.
Here's the, not to, not to over-dramatize this. If you get a cancer diagnosis,
what's the first thing the doctor tells you?
You know, we're, we're going to work out a plan.
Okay. Well, everybody's jumping on the, the, the disease here,
which is there's people who don't respect our, our democratic government and
elective government. You know, that's, that's the problem.
We have people that don't respect our country, our government,
by extension, do not respect each each other, right? That's the problem.
The symptom was January 6th. That's how it, you know, demonstrated itself.
January 6th, we saw the worst, I don't want to say the worst possible outcome
because we should have had a whole lot worse outcome than what it was,
thankfully, but, you know, the bad outcome of it.
But what people, all everybody wants to do now is they want to just jump to
the cure and not understand that there's going to be a process involved here, okay?
You You have to treat a disease.
You have to doctor it. You have to handle it.
We just want to skip to the part where we're curing everything. There's no cure here.
This is generations of stuff built up. It's going to take generations to fix it.
I think we're doing ourselves a very bad disservice here.
Look, again, I want to reiterate this because I don't want what I'm going to
say taken out of context. I was horrified by it. I have very strong writing on it.
You can go check what I'm saying against what I've written and said.
I hated it. I watched a lot of that.
I was actually in the middle of all that. I had to get in the car with my teenager
and go to the thing that she does.
And I ended up watching about half of the worst of that with my kid in the car, my teenage daughter.
So I'm trying to explain that to my own kid. I hated what I was watching.
And I have to explain that to my child.
You know, I had visceral anger on that day watching that that I had not had since 9-11.
And I just mean that sincerely. Just love of my country. I'm righteously angry.
That's one of the few times in my life that I've been like that.
So understand where I'm coming from on this.
At the same time, it is not healthy for our politics to be completely centered
around that. I understand the implication.
You got to understand the factors that went into January 6th.
There was a bunch of stuff that lined up to make that happen.
We can correct a lot of what lined up to make that happen. We can elect better officials.
We can check ourselves on social media. We can better identify when things happen.
Let's take one little piece of this real quick because I think it goes to what
you're asking here. We talked about the January 6th committee or commission
or whatever we're calling them now.
What's the biggest piece of this that we've always known? It's right in front of us.
Well, the Capitol Police fighting the mob, right? That's the main image from
that day, the Capitol Police fighting the mob.
We just know through our own eyesight
why that was. The Capitol Police is controlled by Congress. Congress.
Every law enforcement and supported agency that was designed and controlled
by the executive branch was nowhere to be found.
I don't need a committee to figure that out. The one.
Thing they couldn't control was who was fighting the mob. Okay.
I don't need the committee for that. That is as plain as we can make it.
Somebody said something to keep them out of the way. Had to be.
Had to be. Just comment. Go to Congress right now and throw something across
the rotunda and watch what happens today.
The only way that you don't have
a massive coordinated response is because somebody told them not to do it.
That's it. That's just common sense. You can have your politics,
whatever. That's just facts.
Okay? If the congressional-controlled law enforcement was the only ones on the
line, for the most part, there's a few exceptions because people just jumped in.
That tells me what I need to know. I don't need a January 6th committee for
that. Now, the committee's going to find out the where, where, and how for some of that.
But people's politics get involved because as soon as I say executive,
what are they going to start thinking?
Oh, well, oh, so you're saying Trump told them not to...
Hold on. What am I saying? The evidence demands a verdict.
Our politics do not demand a verdict.
Our politics demand a continuation and narrative for what we want our politics
to be. So when the Atlantic, I think this is counterproductive.
I don't want to pick on the Atlantic because I like the Atlantic.
I'm sure the New York Times, every publication is going to run something about
January 6th on January 6th. They're all going to do this.
I don't think this is helpful, though, because we're going to relitigate it
based on the priors we had anyway, instead of relitigating it as a learning
lesson of what we should do differently.
And I know people are going to say, well, Trump this and Trump supporters that and the worst.
Even that i don't know how productive that is because again you had a specific
set of circumstances that set up this awful scene and we understand people got hurt and other things,
how does relitigating it do anything other than
just harden the bastions of people you know it just puts the ramparts up where
people are already at anyway so i get that we want to speak out for democracy
i do that as much as i can i just don't know that the constant relitigation
is going to because the people that aren't super investigated and relitigating
it are just going to start tuning that out.
And you can see it in the poll numbers. The population of the country has tuned
out the January 6th stuff. They just have.
They've got a pandemic to deal with. They've got an economy to deal with.
There's an election year coming up.
A lot of people have just tuned it out and moved on. You're not getting that reckoning.
And the people that are continuing to advocate for a reckoning that isn't coming,
I think you get to a point where you're actually doing more damage than good with it.
Music.
And now we come to Act 3. And this is, I'm kind of titling it,
Waking Up to a Nightmare.
And actually, it's part of something I'm writing that's dealing with a larger
theme, but I think it also suits to January 6th.
So i want to go back to uh 1983
and that was a big year for anyone
who was alive at that time i was uh 13 going on 14 that was the year the the
last of the original star war trilogy movies the return of jedi was released
i can actually remember standing in line um outside waiting to get into to the movie theater.
That was also the year of Michael Jackson's Thriller album that burned up the
chart. He released hit after hit all, went to top 10.
That was also the year I entered high school, the fall of 83.
I had become a teenager actually the year before, fall of October of 82,
but it felt like the adolescence really began when I entered the halls of my high school.
And I kind of realized that adulthood was not too far away.
1983 was a memorable year. And I think 1983 was also the year the world could have ended.
For anyone who can remember, 1983 was a time, I think, that the United States
and the Soviet Union were probably at their lowest relations.
They were not doing well. Their relations were at the lowest level since the
Cuban Missile Crisis 20 years earlier.
There have been a number of events that were happening around that time in the
early 80s that were in many ways putting the two superpowers down a dangerous path.
One of the first was that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died in the fall of
1982, and he was replaced by Yuri Andropov.
And Andropov, already by 1983, was ill himself.
In September of 83, the Soviets shot down Korean Air 007 as it was straying into Soviet airspace.
Everyone on board died.
The Politburo was really paranoid.
They were sure that America was planning a first strike on the Soviet Union.
And throughout that entire year, there were several flashpoints that could have
really begun the nuclear conflagration.
But the thing that brought us close to the brink was Abel Archer.
For those of you who are unaware, Abel Archer was a joint NATO exercise.
It was a simulated conflict with the Warsaw Pact, and it was a simulation of
a conflict that culminated with the release of nuclear weapons.
And there were a few components of this exercise that made the Soviets,
and of course they were listening in, think that this was going to be a pretext for war.
There was coded communication. There was everything. Everyone had to do it in radio silence.
There was actually something that actually ended up not happening,
but they wanted the heads of government to be part of this.
So people like President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl were supposed to take part, but at the end, no one did.
And that might have been a good thing.
The Soviets were so spooked by Abel Archer that they had forces on alert,
and the Soviet 4th Air Army was loading nukes on planes in anticipation of nuclear attack.
All the while, while the Soviets were basically thinking that World War III
and Armageddon was just around the corner, no one in the West realized that
we were basically stumbling towards what could have been the accidental start of the nuclear war.
But for whatever reason the soviets never pressed the nuclear button,
but even if we weren't here in the west in the
united states weren't aware of soviet paranoia it might
have been maybe because we were so fixated on the threat of nuclear war if you
talk to someone from my generation generation x you will learn how basically
we thought a lot about nuclear war and we wondered if we were going to make
it into adulthood And Hollywood provided us with,
quote-unquote, entertainment that reflected our atomic fears.
You could watch, in 1983, one of the biggest movies was actually War Games.
The one with the computer that might, unfortunately, could have launched a nuclear war.
And then, of course, there was the day after, the television movie,
which allowed Americans to see what a nuclear conflict with Russia would really look like.
Long story short, it wouldn't look good.
Looking back at 1983, I was basically nervous about nuclear war.
I mean, I freaked out. I did not watch the whole movie of the day after,
but I only watched a few snippets. That was enough for me to not be able to sleep for a few days.
All of this was building up and i find at some point i i had to tell myself,
what basically amounted to
a noble lie i said that god would not put christians through such a horror,
now that was totally untrue but it also put my mind at ease somewhat i was able
to get on on on with life and not basically sit in fear of being vaporized by a nuclear weapon.
But the thing is, is the lie is still a lie. Christians have died because of
persecution or from war.
They weren't spared just because they were believers.
And we're now really in another period where we are really worried about stuff.
And now we're not worried about a mushroom cloud but january 6th is in some
ways the image that is coming through our mind because it is such a visceral
event and if you skim through news sites they're filled with opinion writers
and they're all wondering how long will american democracy democracy survive.
There was one article in Vox that said, how does this end?
Where the crisis of American democracy might be headed.
And then in the Atlantic, Trump's next coup has already begun.
There is a lot of worry in the air. There's a lot of worry about what happened in 2021.
And we should not minimize what happened because, let's be honest,
the president of that time, the president of the United States,
basically, and along with people who were supporting him, had a plan to try
to stop and steal, basically,
an election from the American people.
They were trying to find ways to invalidate millions and millions of votes,
all so that then-President Trump could stay in office.
All of this was done because of one man who had a hard time understanding that he could lose.
And so we're all kind of running around, we're nervous,
and there are sometimes people who will say that maybe we're catastrophizing
things and things will not get this bad, get bad. bad.
But the fact is there is this palpable fear out there that we're headed for
some very rough times and, you know, we'll try to rationalize it,
but it really is hard to deny that things are not well in America.
My husband was born in Canada.
His parents were, his father was a preacher and And was in Canada as a kind
of had a call at a church in Saskatchewan.
So he was born while his parents were in Canada.
There have been times I've wanted to make sure that he applies for Canadian citizenship.
Now, part of that is that it just kind of makes sense. It makes it a lot easier
when we go to visit Canada, because people get confused when he says he was born in Saskatchewan.
But let's be honest, there's a part of me that wants to think that if we need
to escape to the great white north, he could make that escape a lot easier.
You know, it's easy and a temptation to rationalize and say that,
just like with nuclear war, that it won't happen.
Things will get better or we're overblowing things. things.
But the thing is, being a Christian or even just being an American doesn't mean
that you're exempt from bad things, from horrible things, from dangerous things.
Of course, in the Bible, we are introduced with a man named Job. He was a godly man.
He lived as good a life as you could get, but in a short amount of time,
he loses everything, including his children.
He wasn't protected from tragedy just because he feared God or whatever.
And just because we're Americans doesn't mean that we won't face something that could be a catastrophe.
January 6th, it's funny, we talk a lot when we use the date of January 6th about
what happened on that date.
But it is also the day of Epiphany for those of us who are Christians.
Epiphany is the time when we talk about the visit of the three wise men to visit
Jesus, who is still a baby, in Bethlehem.
It's an interesting tale and i think it has a lot
of connections with january 6th because it involves
um the story of king herod
he was the vassal king of israel placed there
by rome and he was a bad
dude bad enough that he even sometimes imprisoned and executed members of his
own family he was always afraid that someone was going to usurp his power and
when the three Three wise men come and they ask him about where is the king of the Jews?
In fact, the Bible says that he was troubled and so was all of Jerusalem.
He was troubled because he knew that he could lose power. He was worried that
he would lose everything. thing.
So after consulting some of the scribes and learning about the scripture,
he tells the wise men to go and find the king and let me know where he is so
that I can worship him. Of course, which was a bold-faced lie.
He didn't want to worship the king. He just wanted to find out where he was
because this guy, Jesus, was a threat.
When the wise men actually took another other route to go home.
They were supposed to visit the king, and they didn't.
And the king is so upset that he decides to call up the army.
And the army is called up with instructions, instructions to go and kill every
baby in Bethlehem, every baby boy in Bethlehem, under the age of two.
Which is exactly what happened.
It's a horrible event. It's a horrible thing to think about in the midst of
all the children, the Christmas story that we like to talk about.
The people who lived in Bethlehem had to face an incredible horror to see babies
being killed simply because of a leader who could not understand and who could
not deal with a threat to his power.
There are some strange parallels to what happened last January 6th.
But the thing is i think that it's important to be reminded of is that,
we will face hard times and i can't even tell you and know what's going to happen
in the next few years will america and democracy end or will it be damaged what
will happen to us as a people,
I think that we are on a dangerous road right now.
I don't know where we're headed, but it may not head somewhere good.
And the thing is, we are not spared from some of the worst things of happening.
So what do we do?
I think that instead of trying to rationalize things.
Or sitting in fear kind of like what I did when I was a kid back in 1983 I think
that we have to go and live our lives,
now as a person of faith, as a Christian I believe that we live in the way that
God intended us to live to care for others, especially the poor and to love one another.
I think we should know that things will happen. Terrible things will happen.
How do we live during those experiences?
How do we help each other? How do we not lose our souls in the process?
What happens, especially in the next two years, two and a half years,
as we prepare for the 2024 presidential election, As we prepare that Donald
Trump may yet run again for president.
As we face yet another election night where we have to deal with what could happen.
The thing that we have to put our trust in is not that we will be spared from horrible things.
But we can put our trust, at least as a person of faith in God,
and we can put trust knowing that we can get through things,
and we can trust in knowing that.
Evil doesn't win. Yes, it may have a few times when it will win and it will
look like it's winning, but ultimately in the end, evil will be defeated.
It may not feel like that right now, but I think it will.
That doesn't mean that none of us won't be worried and one of us won't be scared.
But instead of trying to deny that we won't face bad times maybe what we need
to do is to ask for strength as we go through bad times because they will happen
and we will yet we may yet have to deal with some,
constitutional crisis that this nation probably has never seen before for.
But we can get through that knowing that even if evil does its worst, it will not win.
It will ultimately lose.
That is what we put our trust in.
1983 could have been the year year the world ended.
Thankfully, it didn't.
2024 could be a year that will change America forever.
I pray that we have the strength to deal with whatever happens,
that we will remain, that that we will have and not lose our hearts,
not lose our trust in others,
and not lose our trust in God.
Hard times will happen.
We pray that God will see us through.
That is it for this episode of of En-Root Journeys of Faith and Modern Life.
My name is Dennis Sanders.
If you want to know more about the podcast, please visit our website at enrootpodcast.org.
I'm working on getting a different email address than the one I currently have,
but if you have any questions or even any comments, I would love to hear some
comments. Feel free to drop me a line.
You actually might hear me read your comment on the podcast.
That is it for this episode of EnRoute. Take care, everyone, and Godspeed.
Music.