Theologian's Almanac for Week of April 14, 2024
Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.
For the week of Sunday, April 14:
April 15 is the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci, born in Vinci, Italy, in 1452. A man of multiple interests and talents, he’s best known for his mural, The Last Supper (worth recalling this week in particular, since that supper itself was commemorated just two weeks ago), and of course the enigmatic Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa hangs today in the Louvre in Paris, typically surrounded by a throng of cell-phone-toting tourists — but just a few feet away is another Leonardo masterpiece that often goes relatively unnoticed: his haunting portrait of John the Baptizer, emerging from the shadows, pointing toward the cross.
April 15 is also traditionally tax day in the United States — not often understood as a theological event! But taxes, after all, are a primary means by which we, the people, pool and allocate our collective resources for the sake of the community as a whole: bridges and roads, Medicare and the military, food security and public education. The earliest Christian communities also organized themselves with this basic underlying choreography: pooling and allocating (Acts 4:34-35). Exactly how we pool and allocate remains a subject of intense debate, of course — but in any case, while it’s common to grumble about “paying taxes to the government,” in fact our taxes are one of the most concrete, consequential ways we chip in to support one another and the vibrancy of the wider community.
April 15 is also the feast day of St. Ruadan (“ruadan” means “red-haired”), considered one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, born in Leinster in the sixth century CE. According to the Book of Leinster (a medieval Irish manuscript), St. Ruadan’s day is when the birds are released from the thrall of winter.
April 17 is the birthday of Isak Dinesen, born Karen Dinesen near Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885. Growing up, she loved listening to stories from Danish mythology, and became a writer at an early age. After a failed effort at running a coffee plantation in Kenya, she returned to writing — choosing “Isak” as a pen name, the Danish version of “Isaac” from the Bible, which means, “laughter.” Her breakthrough book was Seven Gothic Tales, full of magical realism and wild adventures, and she went on to one of the most celebrated literary careers of the twentieth century, including her short story, “Babette’s Feast” (the film version is now considered a classic) and her memoir, Out of Africa.
Like her life and writing, her theology is shot through with adventurous wit. “Truth is for tailors and shoemakers,” she wrote. “I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant for masquerades.” And again: “God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
April 17 is also the birthday of the American novelist and playwright, Thornton Wilder. Wilder won Pulitzer prizes both for his novel, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” and his beloved play, “Our Town,” one of the most-produced plays in American history. Each work shimmers with theological themes. The novel is the story of a bridge that collapses in 18th-century Lima, Peru, killing the five people crossing it — and a Franciscan friar who, after witnessing the tragedy, tries to figure out why those five people had to die. And “Our Town” is what Wilder called “a little play with all the big subjects in it; and it’s a big play with all the little things of life lovingly impressed into it... an immersion into a New Hampshire town.” One of its principal characters, Emily, famously says, “O Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”
April 19 is the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in United States history. What was Timothy McVeigh’s motive? He sought revenge against the government for the raid — exactly two years earlier, on April 19, 1993 — of the compound near Waco, Texas, occupied by the armed, extremist Christian sect led by David Koresh. The connection between these two events, and their origin in a distorted, violent form of Christianity, is worth remembering today, especially in light of the recent surge in hate groups and domestic terrorism in the United States.