Week 2: Advent & Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black

Week 2—December 6, 2020

 Lectionary Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-11; Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15; Mark 1: 1-8

Esau McCaulley Chs. 3 & 4

“Repent” 

A word can just sound old-fashioned; it falls out of circulation due to linguistic evolution or lack of usefulness for our current circumstances. “Repent” is just such a word. Even though church folk still employ it, the broader populace has little use for a word that sounds better suited to be swept away with the sawdust of big tent revivals. 

This week’s lectionary readings name the reality of sin. Repentance is often the penultimate movement in a cycle that culminates in forgiveness. Thus, John the Baptist’s deployment to Israel, with his message of repentance, was an act of grace. McCaulley brilliantly explains how John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, are “Israel writ small,” for they have wondered, “Where is God?” Luke situates the story of Jesus “in the middle of the pain of Israel,” as McCaulley puts it. John, echoing Isaiah 40:3, has come to “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight the paths for him” (Mk. 1:3), meaning his audience must be ready to receive a word that calls for repentance. 

Part of repentance is preparing for a divine encounter. We do not repent simply to “get right” with God but to acknowledge that we are ready for our king who brings comfort to those who have been waiting. In this year of waiting, of hoping for a return to some semblance of normalcy, we also know what it means to mourn. 

Drawing upon Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, McCaulley says, “To mourn involves being saddened by the state of the world. To mourn is to care. It is an act of rebellion against one’s own sins and the sins of the world.” He continues, “Mourning is not enough. We must have a vision for something different. Justice is that difference. Jesus, then, calls for a reconfiguration of the imagination in which we realize that the options presented to us by the world are not all that there is. There remains a better way and that better way is the kingdom of God.” 

One area of our broken world, a sign that the kingdom is not yet fulfilled, is that of increasingly tense racial relations, even among Christians. McCaulley rightly calls us to look inward: “Mourning calls on all of us to recognize our complicity in the sufferings of others. We do not simply mourn the sins of the world. We mourn our own greed, lusts, and desires that allow us to exploit others.” If we are a people who understand our capacity to sin, and in understanding that fallenness the necessity of our own repentance, then surely we know that we fail to love our neighbor. 

The call then to repent is not just saying “I’m sorry” to The Lord (though it is about that!) but also recognizing our trespasses and working to make them right. For as our brother Esau rightly notes, God hears the cries of the oppressed and meets them with “the advent of God.”

Questions and Ponderings 

• What hurts right now for you and your family? What needs are unmet? What cries seem to be unheard? What do you mourn? Consider naming those things either through prayer, writing, or conversations with others.  

• If you have trouble waiting (like most of us do), what do you learn from Elizabeth and Zechariah? What does their story tell you about God’s involvement with his people? Probe the depths of their waiting and how they are “Israel writ small.”

• Advent involves preparation for our king. One such preparation calls for examining our actions and motivations, repenting, and then doing the work justice requires for God’s Kingdom. Pray for and actively work toward the “reconfiguration of imagination” that Esau McCaulley suggests.