The trouble is, we can’t have just spent the season of Advent talking about, urging, setting up repentance as an expected and holy expression of faith, and then revile those who actually have an Epiphany and up and repent.

That’s the thought banging around in my head on this day when the Church marks the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and our nation marks the January 6 insurrection, and meanwhile, everyone is marking MAGA’s cracks in its base.

It’s a fair bet that lots of even lifelong Christians aren’t quite sure of what the purpose of the season of Epiphany is, but we might know that it has something to do with the Magi.

And if we know that it has something to do with the Magi, we might know that it has something to do with them “going home by another way,” which might be as much thanks to balladeers like James Taylor and Bruce Cockburn as it is brother Matthew.

If you remember, Matthew tells us that Herod had heard that the Magi were on the loose in his land, because they’d heard news of a new king of the Jews in his land, and they wanted to give him, this baby, their honor.

Weak, petty, and greedy kings do not approve of rising counter powers, even if in swaddling clothes, so facetiously, Herod invited the Magi to return to his lair following their discovery of the young king, “so that I may also go and pay this new king homage.” Thankfully, after they honored the baby Jesus, and just in the nick of time, the Magi were warned to go home by another way: as Bruce Cockburn sings in his majestic song, “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” they’d “Come to pay their respects to the fragile little king/Get pretty close to wrecking everything/Cause the governing body of the Holy Land/Is that of Herod, a paranoid man.”

Epiphany, you see, marks their epiphany, one which led them home and away from aiding and abetting a corrupt ruler.

It still leads us into a season of our own epiphanies, a word which literally means, “to make manifest,” or “to be shown.”

The season of Epiphany is a time to be open to new ways, new patterns, new realizations.

It’s an inherently vulnerable time, then, because if something new is made manifest, it means that what you had thought to be true isn’t now, maybe never was, isn’t quite as fully understood as you’d assumed, or something simply hadn’t ever dawned on you before, so to speak.

So there’s some engaged risk, then, involved both with encountering that truth, and with identifying a new way forward.

It’s a period where you may need to admit that you were wrong, misguided, and need to change.

Insofar as any of that is true, Epiphany is a season, then, that takes both mindfulness and courage.

The part of this Jesus/Magi/Herod story, the catchy part that catches people, is this phrase, “The Magi went home by another way.”

People are drawn to “by another way,” because it “makes manifest” the Magi’s clear rebellion to the authoritarian orders.

These wise ones up and subverted, what was, for all intents and purposes, the law, and well done Magi, I’m here to say, and well done anyone else who does the same against cruel orders!

But today, what is catching my attention, is less that notion than the word ‘home.’

Funny how we breeze right by “home,” taking for granted that they must have actually had a home to which they could return.

~~~~~

So it appears that there are breaks, right now, growing fractures, beginning in MAGA world.

The most obvious example is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s very public defection, but those Trump tariffs are doing a number on even his most conservative ag and manufacturing supporters; health insurance spikes, traceable to Trump’s bill, are kicking in and hitting at Trump voters—perhaps most of all, if you look at red states, generally lower income states, who will be terribly affected by the increases; friends and family, even citizens and non-criminals, are being plucked off the streets by nameless faceless people; and this Venezuela (and Cuba? and Greenland?) number seems definitely not America First.

Oil Execs First, maybe, but not America First.

And, to the point of this reflection, there one can detect, some embarrassment, some rueing, some regretting, some what-was-I-thinking of those who voted for Trump, defended Trump, or been silently complicit as Trump and his administration have codified hate, racism, bigotry, misogyny, cruelty, and autocracy.

Now, some explain MAGA by saying that it has had such appeal because it’s been a community, a club, and family of sorts. It’s tapped into a tribal yearning, Us not Them, Us vs. Them, that exploits a hard-wired human tendency.

It’s been, therefore, a home.

But…what if it is no longer a home?

What if once-MAGA adherents don’t find MAGA to be a place where they feel at home anymore?

And here’s the epiphanic quandary.

Those of us who have long objected to Trump’s agenda, those of us who knew of the destruction and hardship it would bring, who couldn’t believe that others couldn’t see it because it was spelled out for all to know, those of us who see now unfolding exactly what we foresaw, we are heartbroken about the fear and trauma in immigrant communities, disabilities communities, queer communities, poor communities; about the threats to education, art, history, public lands, public services, water; about our national reputation in the global sphere…I mean, where do I stop, there’s so much dismay.

And anger.

There’s so much anger.

Many of us are ourselves victims of the MAGA agenda, and feel very little compunction to easily trust, let alone forgive, those who once supported it.

Our anger is legit, let me be clear, and worthy of vent.

But also true, though, is that those who would be tempted to leave MAGA are aware of the fury of that anger directed toward them.

It is hot and they feel the heat.

They might even know that they have earned the singe.

So some parallel binds, then:

Those on the left have legit disdain for Trump and MAGA, and, also desire to welcome more people to the resistance movement.

Those on the right are increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s agenda and their part in it, but do not feel any sense of welcome to the resistance movement, and so have no where to go.

They’d like to go home another way, can see another way, but have no home.

These people desperately need a new home.

And those in the resistance need more people in our camp.

It’s not only MAGA which needs to admit that they need to change.

It’s time for those of us on the left to tap into mindfulness and courage to welcome them home.

~~~~~

In my research for my last book, Joyful Defiance: Death Does Not Have The Last Word, I noticed that across references, the theme of home kept recurring.

When one felt Joy, repeatedly authors made the analogy that was that one was at home.

The more that I fussed with that observation, the more it dawned on me that likewise, when someone despairs, it’s as if one is home-less. Without a home, you might feel like you have no reliable safe place.

Now, if you are merely away from home, for whatever reason you just can’t get back to it as quickly as you might like, you feel unsettled, and perhaps home-sick. Nevertheless, there is some confidence that you will walk up its path again.

I think those in MAGA and it’s Mar-A-Lago home are beginning to feel restless, maybe somewhere between feeling homeless—there’s no where for them to go—and homesick—they have a hunch that there is someplace which could hold them and their newfound, refound, values, and maybe even a community to boot.

Many of us just were ‘home for the holidays.’

We know that sometimes being home isn’t the romanticized image of holiday perfection that seasonal coffee commercials and Hallmark movies might project.

But people come ‘home’ anyway, because there is something there that unites them, and makes them feel safe enough to come back anyway, bringing their quirks, idiosyncrasies, grudges, memories of infractions and hurt, regrets and their hopes right along with them.

I wonder if this Epiphany season, then, marked both by the Magi who went home by another way, and the insurrectionists who stormed the People’s Home, perhaps both people in MAGA and in the Resistance Movement can have an Epiphany of their own.

Perhaps followers of Donald Trump can recognize that they have been co-opted by a despot, a dictator, one who cares nothing for them or anyone unless they are a tool to his own objectives.

And perhaps people in the resistance can start rolling out the carpets, brewing the coffee, and, in this season of light, flipping on the porch light, so that those who have been part of MAGA, and are beginning to have an epiphany that maybe that wasn’t the best decision ever, can, even if by a long and winding other way, pull up a chair, a protest sign, a pen during our next letter writing campaign, and come on home.

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