Theologian's Almanac for Week of April 13, 2025
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 13:
April 13 is Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus’ jubilant entry into Jerusalem. It’s essentially a piece of street theater dramatizing Zechariah’s ancient prophecy: the long-awaited divine monarch arrives on a humble donkey, announcing “peace to the nations” (Zech 9:9-10). Shout hosanna! The new era, the Great Jubilee, has begun! Check out SALT’s commentary on Palm (and Passion) Sunday here.
April 13 is also the day in 1964 that Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in “Lilies of the Field,” a film about a group of nuns who come to believe an African-American itinerant worker has been sent to them by God to help them build a chapel.
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 will be commemorated two days from now), 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 steps 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 and important debate, of course, especially today — 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 beloved 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 Maundy Thursday, “maundy” from the Latin mandatum, “command” or “mandate,” a reference to the “new commandment” Jesus gives his disciples on the eve of his death: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). Not an abstract or generic “love,” then, but a love “just as I have loved you”: compassionate and tangible, as simple and tender and strong as kneeling to wash someone’s feet and dry them with a towel (John 13:1-15).
April 17 is also 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, Dinesen’s 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.”
Since this year her birthday falls on Maundy Thursday, it’s intriguing to contemplate how the Last Supper is, in its own way, a meal that “Babette’s Feast” can help us understand, and vice versa…
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 exclaims, “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?” Read her soliloquy here.
April 18 is Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. All four Gospels link the crucifixion to Passover, a clear signal that we should understand his death (like the death of the Passover lamb) first and foremost as a sign that God is once again liberating God’s people, inaugurating a New Exodus in the tradition of the exalted exodus from Egypt.
April 19 is Holy Saturday, for Christians a day of silence and waiting, and also the day, it is said, when Jesus “descended into Hell” to free those held captive there. It is a day of shadows and ambiguity, mourning and hope-against-hope. Holy Saturday’s silence is broken by the “Alleluia” of the late-night Easter Vigil or the dawn of Easter morning.
April 19 is also the 30th 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.