{"id":2110,"date":"2022-11-04T16:24:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T20:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2022-11-04T16:24:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T20:24:33","slug":"guys-big-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/04\/guys-big-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Guy’s Big Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
\u00a0
Imagine a national holiday named for a convicted criminal \u2013 a guy whose big moment was actually a big failure.
\u00a0
His name was Guido Fawkes.\u00a0 His alias was John Johnson.\u00a0 But he\u2019s better known by his nickname, Guy.\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
Every year on November 5, Britain celebrates Guy Fawkes Day with bonfires, parades, and fireworks.\u00a0 The explosions that will be heard across England tomorrow will commemorate a big blast that never happened.\u00a0
\u00a0
Fawkes and 12 co-conspirators, hoping to return a Catholic monarch to the British throne on the opening day of Parliament in 1605, had placed 36 barrels of gunpowder in a storage room under the House of Lords.\u00a0 The blast, it was hoped, would bring down the government and obliterate King James I (the Catholic-intolerant monarch who is nowadays associated with the 1611 King James Bible).\u00a0
\u00a0
It can be argued that November 5 should actually be called Robert Catesby Day.\u00a0 He was the mastermind of the gunpowder plot.\u00a0 Fawkes was just a flunky whose job was to light the fuse and then get out of town.\u00a0 One of the plotters (whose identity has never been established) was apparently afraid that some Catholics would die in the explosion along with the Lords, and tried to warn them off with an anonymous note.\u00a0 That led the authorities to the storage room, where Guy was found huddled next to the gunpowder on the evening of November 4, his pockets crammed with matches.\u00a0
\u00a0
Since that awkward moment, Fawkes\u2019 name has always been front and center in the recollection of the regicide plot.\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
He was taken to the Tower of London, where after two days of \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d he revealed the names of his fellow conspirators.\u00a0 Within a short time, all of them \u2013 including Fawkes \u2013 either died resisting arrest or were publicly executed.\u00a0
\u00a0
In a tradition that is now over four centuries old, whenever a new session of Parliament convenes there is a ceremonial \u201csearch\u201d for explosives.\u00a0 November 5 itself has become a national day of thanksgiving.\u00a0 Some children create their own \u201cGuy\u201d with old clothes, rags, and newspapers, and carry it from house to house hoping to receive a penny \u2013 a kind of post-Halloween trick-or-treat.\u00a0 Most of the Guys end up in bonfires.\u00a0 In recent years, effigies of political figures like Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson have also gone to the flames.\u00a0
\u00a0
Celebrants may recite poems, like this one that\u2019s more than 200 years old:\u00a0 \u201cRemember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot.\u00a0 We see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0
Interestingly, the legacy of Guy Fawkes currently rests on two things \u2013 a word and a symbol.\u00a0
\u00a0
The word is \u201cguy,\u201d which has come to identity any ordinary person.\u00a0 Whenever you greet a group of your friends (males and females alike) and say, \u201cHey, you guys!\u201d you\u2019re remembering Guy Fawkes. \u00a0Members of the criminal underground on the East coast are Wise Guys.\u00a0 Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles are finally starting to believe that quarterback Jalen Hurts is really The Guy.\u00a0 And all of us are grateful that one of the world\u2019s greatest hamburger joints isn\u2019t named Five Guidos.\u00a0
\u00a0
The symbol is a smiling white mask with a sweeping Elizabethan mustache, as seen in the picture above.\u00a0
\u00a0
The mask, which is a caricature of Guy Fawkes, achieved international recognition through the 2005 movie V for Vendetta<\/em>.\u00a0 According to the plot, which is based on a 1980s graphic novel of the same name, protesters resist a futuristic authoritarian government in Britain.\u00a0 The leader holds up Fawkes as a symbol of righteous rebellion and declares, \u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be afraid of their governments.\u00a0 Governments should be afraid of their people.\u201d
\u00a0
Guy Fawkes has thus been redeemed.\u00a0 He\u2019s not so much a convicted criminal as an action hero.\u00a0 One pundit has said, tongue-in-cheek, that he\u2019s \u201cthe last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.\u201d
\u00a0
Protesters around the world are wearing Guy Fawkes masks.\u00a0 In our own nation, the distinction between words like \u201cpatriot\u201d and \u201cterrorist\u201d are beginning to be blurred.\u00a0 If people are dissatisfied with the ruling status quo, violence is increasingly understood by some as a legitimate option.
\u00a0
But this must never be true for those who represent the name of Jesus.\u00a0
\u00a0
When Jesus was confronted by his enemies in the Garden of Gethsemane, some of his disciples resisted.\u00a0 Peter struck with a sword.\u00a0 \u201cNo more of this!\u201d Jesus said.\u00a0 \u201cThose who draw the sword will die by the sword\u201d (Matthew 26:52, Luke 22:51).\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
In one of the most famous \u201cwhat would you do if you were in his place\u201d moments in church history, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer supported a plot to blow up Adolph Hitler.\u00a0 He reasoned that assassination was a lesser sin than failing to prevent who knew how many from going to the gas chambers. \u00a0
\u00a0
But here we come up against a major dilemma.\u00a0 How do we reconcile our personal conclusions about what constitutes greater or lesser sins with Jesus\u2019 clear prohibition of resorting to violence?
\u00a0
To put it simply, we can\u2019t.\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
Thus a number of pastors, priests, and protesters are going a different way.\u00a0 They\u2019re recasting Jesus as a Warrior Savior \u2013 a revolutionary who from time to time calls us to use force (if necessary) to overthrow leaders who violate our most cherished values.
\u00a0
The orthodox Christian response has always been straightforward:\u00a0 Our most cherished value must be doing what Jesus has always told us to do<\/em>.\u00a0
\u00a0
And that does not mean wearing a mask that suggests violence can ever be a viable option.\u00a0
\u00a0
That\u2019s the word from the guy who is actually The Guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0Imagine a national holiday named for a convicted criminal \u2013 a guy whose big moment was actually a big failure.\u00a0His name was Guido Fawkes.\u00a0 His alias was John Johnson.\u00a0 But he\u2019s better known by his nickname, Guy.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Every year on November 5, Britain celebrates Guy Fawkes Day with bonfires, parades, and fireworks.\u00a0… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[527,425],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-non-retaliation","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}