Week 3: Advent & Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black
Week 3—December 13, 2020
Lectionary Readings: Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28
Esau McCaulley, Chs. 5 & 6
“Rage”
Advent, like this week’s lectionary texts, trains our vision to the Kingdom, particularly when it seems far from sight. Isaiah answers the Lord’s call to bring “good news to the poor” (Isaiah 61:1) and later proclaims “the year of the Lord’s favor” (v. 2), an expression would have conjured for Israel a memory of the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25), a moment of social and economic reparations.
This week’s psalm calls to mind a similar kind of restoration: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:1). Israel can hope for restoration, because it holds the memory of the Lord who has previously rescued them from desolation. Isaiah tells us that the Lord’s servant goes to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, prisoners, mourners—those who desperately need good news. This preview of the Kingdom foretells God’s reclamation of the world, even though we wait but a while longer for its full restoration.
The harsh reality of the not-yet-healed creation means that sometimes God’s Kingdom just doesn’t feel close at all. Perhaps we have been conditioned in our Christian cultures into compulsory happiness, but such play-acting is not the witness we receive from the Bible. God hears his people’s cries. On this point, Esau McCaulley’s title Reading While Black becomes abundantly clear: We bring our entire selves to the text when we read the Bible. Our gender, race, socioeconomic status, regional home shapes the manner in which we will read the Bible. How could it be otherwise?
As we read the scriptures it is perfectly normal to associate its visions of glory to times when we have felt unfettered joy. Likewise, the Word offers consolation when we remember those who suffered throughout the Bible and did not pretend like everything was okay. McCaulley claims, “Traumatized communities must be able to tell God the truth about what they feel. We must trust that God can handle those emotions…. It gives us permission to remember and feel.”
The traumatized must be allowed to tell God and us the truth. All of us know rage. How much more do we feel it when it is not acknowledged and addressed? McCaulley’s tradition teaches him that, “The beginning of the answer to Black anger is the knowledge that God hears and sees our pain.” Longing for restoration is an acknowledgement of brokenness. Raging at that brokenness expresses in the rawest ways possible that things are not how they should be, and as McCaulley says, “God in his mercy has allowed us to continue to voice our complaints.”
Thanks be to God who hears the rage.
For this reason, difficult as it may be, we give thanks “in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18)—finding ways to rejoice while never ceasing to pray (v. 17)—because we know the praise (or rage) that we strain out is prayer enough for a God who understands the brokenness of the world even better than we do.
Questions and Ponderings
What does restoration look like in God’s Kingdom?
What would restoration look like in your life right now and heading into a new year?
Examine the way you listen when individuals or communities cry out. Is your impulse to shut it out or to seek to understand their pain?
As you anticipate the coming Christ, practice gratitude even when it’s difficult. Practice giving thanks “in all circumstances.” This doesn’t mean you are ignoring the present pains. Rather it means you cling to the one so invested in his creation, which includes you, that he comes down to be near and close.