Today we’re bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley, from the Lenten season of 2023. Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom, passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms—but as a contemporary reality, Lent is a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture. He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how it’s a guided season of pursuing the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be. In his classic text, *Great Lent*, Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann calls this season one of “bright sadness”—an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope. Lent is not about gloom, self-loathing, performative penitence, or despair. Instead it brings us face to face with our human condition, reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being and someday we will die, sober about the reality and banality of evil, and sorrowful in a way that leads back to joy. Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation. About Esau McCaulley Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Learn more at https://esaumccaulley.com/. Show Notes - Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — https://esaumccaulley.com/books/lent-book/ - Commodifying our rebellion—the agency on offer is a thin, weakened agency. - Repentance, grace, and finding (or returning to) yourself - Examination of conscience - The Great Litany: “For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord.” - The beauty of Christianity - “Liturgical spirituality is not safe. God can jump out and get you at any moment in the service.” - “The great thing about the, the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation.” - Lent is bookended by death. Black death, Coronavirus death, War death. - Jesus defeated death as our great enemy. - “Everybody that I know and I care about are gonna die. Everybody.” - “I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. our lives are of infinite value and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in the one who overcame death.” - Two realities: We’re going to die and Jesus defeated death. - Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday. - Silent processional in black; Good Friday celebrates no eucharist. - “I'm, like, the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all of the time.” - Good Friday’s closing prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.” - “You end Lent with: Something has to come between God’s judgement and our souls. And that thing is Jesus.” - “Lent is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, but not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than that.” Production Notes - This podcast featured Esau McCaulley - Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa - Hosted by Evan Rosa - Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylen Yun. - A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about - Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give Acknowledgements - This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit http://blueprint1543.org/.
Today we’re bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley, from the Lenten season of 2023. Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom, passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms—but as a contemporary reality, Lent is a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture.
He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how it’s a guided season of pursuing the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be.
In his classic text, Great Lent, Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann calls this season one of “bright sadness”—an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope.
Lent is not about gloom, self-loathing, performative penitence, or despair. Instead it brings us face to face with our human condition, reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being and someday we will die, sober about the reality and banality of evil, and sorrowful in a way that leads back to joy.
Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South.
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.
About Esau McCaulley
Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Learn more at https://esaumccaulley.com/.
Show Notes
Production Notes
Acknowledgements
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
From the Yale Center For Faith and Culture, this is for the life of the world. A podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
Welcome friends. Today we're bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley. It's from the Lent. In season of 2023, Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms, but as a contemporary reality, Esau sees Lent as a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture.
In the classic text, great Lent Orthodox. Priest and theologian Alexander Sch Mayman calls this season one of a bright sadness, an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope. Let's not about gloom, self-loathing, flagellation, performative penitence, or despair. Instead, it brings us face-to-face.
With our human condition reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being, and someday we will die sober about the reality and banality of evil, and it cultivates a sorrow. That leads us back to Joy. Esau McCauley is the Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Whedon College.
He's a contributing writer for the New York Times, and he's the author of many books Notables Are Reading While Black, the. Lent and his latest, how far to the promised land, one black family's story of hope and survival in the American South. Next week we'll be back with a brand new episode featuring David Dot on the ways that we've turned the Bible into an accessory.
Thanks for listening today.
Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I thought we'd begin with a little bit of context about where you approach lent from what, what kind of spiritual background, what kind of sensibilities, theological, more spiritual, where are you coming from as you. A season of Lent?
Well, I guess I would say my formative years comes from the Black Baptist tradition. That's the one that I was raised in my grandfather's on both sides with Black Baptist pastors, and I have a host of aunties and uncles who are a black Baptist clergy. And so for the first 21 years of my life, I came from a completely non liturgical context.
For the last 20 years I've been in spaces that celebrated Lent, so I'm kind of like half and half. So part of my, my understanding of Lent is informed by that Black Baptist background. And the other part is informed by my long experience in, in liturgical settings where l was just something that we did.
And so I guess I'm like, I guess middle aged when it comes to, uh, my observance. I have, I had my al. Oh, this is great. I never heard of this before. Let's do this right and be perfect about it. And then I'm now in my just ordinary, I'm trying to figure out. Every year how to make it fresh and still as transformative as it was when I first encountered it.
What is the Black Baptist perspective on Lent if, I mean, how did you receive that the first time? I mean, so this is my perception, so this is not a scholarly take, so I'd never heard of Lent and the Black Baptist tradition, what I say, our liturgical calendar is Christmas. Good Friday, Palm Sunday and Easter anniversary.
So that's, that's, that's, we celebrated and so we never, I never heard the word epiphany. Or lent until I came into the more liturgical Anglican Episcopal world. And so I had never heard of it and I was like, wow, there's all of this stuff that's going on from the early church that I'd never heard of. And so I was really, really excited.
Now I do feel like things have shifted and I, so I, I currently attend a Black Baptist church now, and pastor, yeah, man, we gonna book for lit. I grew up, you know, in the eighties and the nineties, and they were still kind of an end. Anything that sounded Catholic. Right. And I would say that now Baptist Traditions, you do see things like they'll preach a sermon series on Advent or you'll see them engaging with things like Lent.
And so now I would say the younger generation of African American Baptist are, are much more comfortable with kind of, not liturgy, but kind of sacred time in a way that at least what they, what we were doing in Alabama when I was growing up, we just didn't have it. You talk about sacred time. Yeah. Yeah.
You start the book Mark one 15, the time has come, the Kingdom of God has come near repent and believe the good news. And we'll get to repentance in a moment, but I still wanna kind of find our way into the context that I brought you to Lent so that Anglican Episcopal context where.
Is more in your face. Yes. It's more like the, like there is sacrament in the Black Baptist tradition. Yes. There is liturgy, yes. There's like in whatever variety of Christianity, or, I mean like even more broadly, religion is a liturgical practice. Humanity is kind of a liturgical practice. We just, we just.
Come to be more or less aware of it. Yes. And it's kind of turned the, the volume's turned up or down depending on your situation. Yeah. Yeah. So when did, how did the volume get turned up for you on the sacramental and sacred nature of time and like your approach to liturgy? So, I mean, I can talk about what happened and then I could talk about my later theological reflection on what happened.
Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah. So that I don't feel like I was wiser than I was at the time. I was attending the University of the South, which is an Episcopal university, and I started attending the Episcopal Chapel on campus at Swanee, and I remember they had a lessons in Carol's service. Mm-hmm. Near Christmas time.
And if you know anything about Lessons and Carols, they kind of read redemptive history climaxing in John one, and they had actually invited me to be one of the readers. I was not from the tradition at all, but I was just there. They said when you read. And so I remember sitting in the service and moving through all of the readings during lessons in Carols.
And then, I didn't realize this at the time, but I had John one. It was one of the climactic. And, and one of the versions, and so I was so moved by the, the sweep of redemptive history, climaxing in John. I never felt, I never understood John. As a climax in the way that I did, in the context of hearing the music and the prayers and the readings, and I literally, this, this might say, this might seem lame, but I took my shoes off right before I, I, I send it into the pulpit to read because I felt like I was on sacred ground.
And so then I came back and I didn't know anything about liturgical calendars. I came back in the second semester and all of a sudden it was actually, that led me to being. Really addicted to this tradition. And they said, oh, we're about to have this thing, you know, epiphany happens, Christmas break, you come back and you know, February Lynn's about to start.
And they said, oh, we're gonna have this thing called Lynn. Well what is it? And they told me about the fast and the prayer. I said, oh, that sounds great. And then they had things like stations of the cross at Swanee. Yeah, they have stations of lacrosse. They don't, you know, this is Episcopal school. They do, they would do anything small.
They had an actual cross. That they carried down University Avenue and they stopped endeared readings. I was like, wow, this is, this is really intense. And so I just remember seeing like inhabiting the story. Yeah. So I'd always read about the story. I, you have an imagination, but it was something about the way in which the liturgy put me inside the narrative and I felt like a pilgrim.
The service that really, that really stole my heart and it's still my favorite service of the year was Monday, Thursday, and on Monday, Thursday. If you know anything about that service in the Episcopal tradition is there isn't, I didn't know what was gonna happen, so you gotta think this is like a Baptist who's never been to one of these services before.
So I go there, they do the readings, they do the washing of the of the feet, they do communion. And then they start like stripping the altars. And I didn't know what this was. I had never seen it before. No one warned me and I was like, wow, this is real. Like it's something about the slow removal of all of the flowers and the, and, and, and the thing that was really, really interesting about it, I didn't know that they didn't tell you when to go home.
So normally if you ever, if you ever been to a service, they kind of, the service is the miss going in peace, love, and serve the Lord. So they didn't do that. So I'm just sitting there. I've been waiting for them to tell me to go home. I would find out later that the traum, that it doesn't end, it goes from.
Thursday to Friday through the each individual. So I just started, I just, I just sat down and said, well, I guess I'm just gonna wait for them to eventually let us go home. So I just started praying and I closed my eyes. And then when I opened them, like most everybody had left the building. I like, oh, I feel like the disciples.
Who's supposed to keep VI with Jesus, but who failed, and I felt more like I was inside the story. What I discovered was the liturgy, the liturgical calendar helped me get inside the narrative of Jesus. Not as an outsider, but as a pilgrim. And so that that shaped that, that got captured me. Now, what I began to realize later is what you said is that everybody's shaped by time.
In other words, I realized that like I had a liturgical calendar. I could just, I, I, I, I, I cited the Baptist calendar for you just a minute ago. But then I started thinking like, there's also a secular calendar, you know, there, and I, we have, we have this game that I do with my students every year when we get to talk.
You know, I, I mean, we in college and, and God bless them, sometimes they're afraid of liturgy too, right? They had that natural instinct of fear of any kind of structure, and so I said to them, okay. Let's put together the American secular, the surgical calendar. Yeah. And we could talk about what's, what to do on that day, what you're supposed to buy, and how you celebrate.
And we start with New Year's Eve. We go through Valenti Sunday, super Bowl Sunday. The food, the I said, I said so. Okay. You actually have a rhythm that, that, that, that shapes how you spend your money. Yeah, feast. Like we don't have any fast in American cold. It's all feasting. But I told you something, right?
Yeah. So I said, so all they tell you what to eat, what to buy, and even what s to give, right? And what they start, right? There's love, there's, you know, militarism on certain days. This is the calendar. And I said, if you don't think this shapes you, then you, you then they've won. And I said, then the most radical thing that the church can actually do is tell you what important for.
And so I began to see the liturgical calendar as a spiritual rebellion against the way the society forms us. And so not only then is sacred time shaping me to be like, to be like Jesus. It's also helping me to break out, uh, the, the ways and the rhythms of our calendar. And the interesting thing, and forgive me for rambling on about this, is there are points where these sacred calendars, where these two calendars conflict with each other at the same time.
So for example. Right. When we're trying to celebrate Christmas and we're trying to talk about, you know, the birth of this child and you know, the people who were at his birth and you know, you know, Jesus has the hope for the downtrodden. We're awashed with materialists and these, these fight with each other, right?
Yeah. At the same moment, we're trying to celebrate Easter. Easter. We're doing some silly stuff. I mean, and my kids love Easter. I'm not anti Easter money, right. But what I'm saying is like at the same time, right? Yeah. And even when you talk about how we, we discuss love, right? There's one understanding of romantic love that you see at in February, and then there's the way the Christians talk about love and the sacrificial manifestation.
And so we talk about how the ERs aren't friends. And I would say to me, it's not just people say a lot, you can tell by your pocketbook what you value, what you spend your money on. Well, that's true. You can also tell by your calendar. And so for me, the liturgical calendar is a manifestation of my own spiritual rebellion against how American culture wants to shape me.
Yeah, that.
And it's variations as you kind of look at it, I mean, there's no one way to observe it. It's not as if God has even directed the practice of Lent. Yeah. Because it's grown outta a human practice of worship. But what I wanna get to is the kind of norming or normative nature of Lent, because you also say that when it, it does tell you what to do.
Like the lit, the liturgy is a set of instructions. Yes. And, and, and those instructions are based on a tradition that is deeply knit into various practices and ways of being Yeah. And, and beliefs, of course. But, but I wanna talk about the sense in which that it, it tells you what to do because it's good for you.
So like that kind, like that. And that.
Dissonance, the cognitive dissonance between the American culture and, and, and liturgical Christianity in this sense. Yeah. As being at odds, like Yeah. Telling you what to do is gonna be at odds. So I guess what I want to say is that's probably my Baptist side and my liturgical side fighting with one another.
And I think this is the, the danger of liturgical Christianity in his Catholic, Orthodox Lutheran hang manifestation is the potential for snobbery. And what I mean by that is we begin to think that this is how God intended us to do it. Because once that happens, you have to do it right. And once you have to do it right, you, you slide into legalism.
And I see sometimes how liturgical Christians can look what kind of, look at these low church people who only see that Jesus and, and you know, read their, so I wanted to say something like. I don't believe the god's looking down from, from, from glory and saying, this is the liturgy that I prefer and I've been, and anyone who doesn't worship me in this way, it's just on a lower level.
In that sense, I don't think the God, this is my perception. I do believe that there is something called to collective with some of the church and people have done this before you, and we have some sense of responsibility. Who have said not.
In different ways. Ways. How can we best give honor to this God who means so much to us? And what has become Lent, mm-hmm. Is the collected wisdom of that tradition. And those things should not be so easily set aside because it has the proven record of producing saints. Now you might have a good idea that grows your church for a couple of years.
But that's, no one's produced it. Right? There's tons of things that worked in the eighties and the nineties. They were just not reproducible. Culture shifted and it just kind of went away. So there's no collected wisdom. And so I would say that the, the, the, the advantage of the liturgical tradition is that it has worked across time and across culture to form people.
Mm-hmm. And therefore, when we're saying to you not in a sense of this is what God, this is what God. Wants you to do? Yeah, we're saying as best as we can discern the church Catholic has come to see these practices as spiritually helpful. Here is the list of saints across time and culture who have been faithful believers through engaging in these practices.
Mm-hmm. So why don't you try to do the same and see what it produces in you. I believe that we live in an anti-institutional age, that we distrust systems. And trust me, I'm an African American who kind of seen what is happening in America. So I know that distrust for systems, but I think that that cynicism can reach a point where it's destructive and that we, we can refuse to learn from anyone.
Mm-hmm. And I wanna say something like the, the liturgical tradition. Is in a sense the collective wisdom of the church across time and across culture. And they've said, we've formed saints in this way and we're responsible for taking that advice seriously. And I wanna say, I wanna say, I use this analogy with my kids all of the time.
I said, if you wanna kind of go through your rebellion, there's actually a store at the mall. They don't go to malls anymore, but there used to be a store at the mall. You can go, you kind of go and you buy your goth clothes there. If you wanna go through a preppy phase, here's your preppy phase. Yeah. Even if you, even if you wanna get a tattoo, I mean, I mean a particularly rebellious tattoo, there's the tattoo that you have in mind that people sell you.
If you wanna get a mohawk, I tell them the Mohawk is. Often right down the middle, not to the left or to the right. No one gets a side, right? And so in other words, even our rebellion is commodified. Right. There's an economic, cultural place for you to rebel. Yeah. So even when you think that you're rebelling against the system, your rebelling against the system, in the way the system is prescribed for you, yeah.
You're always being layer down this path. And so what the liturgical tradition is, it's not submitting to the man or trusting the system. It's at least saying he is one received way of following Jesus. That has been fruitful across culture. One of the things that, that, that, that, that, that I say in particular is early African spirituality was deeply liturgical.
These are just, these are just the historical record. You talk about the Ethiopian and the, and, and the Coptic Orthodox tradition. These are all, you know, deep and deter of people. You know, the, the two, two of the larger traditions in in Africa, in, in the Christian context are obviously alongside Pentecostalism, but the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican.
And so it's not this idea that by participating in a liturgical life as an African American, I'm some somehow internalizing colonialization from adopting white culture. I think that I'm adopting the tradition that has spanned the C that have formed, that have formed black and brown Christians in particular across the millennia.
Our rebellion. Yeah. I mean, the way that you expressed that really was evocative for me, especially in the context of Lent, which starts with a message of death. Yeah. So I wanna talk about agency and death. In the kind of liturgical context because yeah, I think that that feeling of that rebellious nature, you know, America and its foundation is a kind of rebellion against, against against England, but then there's all sorts of other systems that it creates and it creates.
Systems for every individual that, at least the story that is being told and sold is that you have all of these resources before you to express who you truly are. Yeah. And to, and to kind of be your full self. Yeah. And to wield control of your life. Yeah. And you have this kind of. Limitless control over that life.
Yeah. And as you so wonderfully point out when you commodify it and when you make it a store in the mall to help you express it, I think that is one of those incredible insightful ways that we can see how the agency that's being offered is a sort of thin agency. Yeah. It's a commodified agency and it's, and it's, and it's weakened.
And it's interesting to me that that lin in particular, but you know, I think you can make an argument that the whole liturgical calendar, whatever practice, you know, whatever level of liturgy that's there. But, but I think particularly in these very robust and detailed liturgical versions, the guidance there.
Yes, it's telling you what to do, but it's, it's to open up. For agency in an interesting way, and I wanna hear you talk about like, what, what do you think about that? Well, I think that when I talk about telling you what to do, it's to, it's to create a space where you might encounter God. And the way that I think about repentance in particular, that, that relates to this in the season of, of, of Lent, that we can often, we can often present this as God.
Kind of being grumpy or the church being grumpy and you spend 40 days thinking about how horrible you are as a person, and then you can Easter at the end of it as the prize at the end. Yeah. But I think that all of us understand intuitively we can sometimes be our own worst critics. And so maybe the inner perfectionist in me is that we're mo we're most hard on ourselves when we fail.
When, when, when we have a certain standard we set for ourselves and we say, why can't I do it? Why can't I get to this place? And I think that one of the good things about Lens and the repentance is that it bakes failure in, so it bakes grace in, in other words, lit presumes that none of us are becoming that which we're created to be.
And so the practices of blin are, are there to help you discern how in the past year, five years, however, I've, I've lost track of that, which God created me to be. And so when we engage in these practices, it's so that we might once again hear the voice of God. And then begin again to pursue that which he made for us.
And so I, I, I wanna say that gives you the opportunity to ask yourself, what are the ways in which I've lost myself over, over the last year? Mm-hmm. And how can I find myself? But the finding of myself isn't like I'm going to finally achieve some kind of moral perfection. I'm gonna finally, mm. We sitting now or authenticity even, like, I'm finally gonna become fully authentic.
Yeah, and and the other thing is that like we recognize that one of the things that LIT might even show us is that which I thought I was pursuing wasn't what God called me to be. And that love itself makes demands upon us. You know, I can't be fully everything that I wanna be because I mean, or that I might be tempted to be, because I have a wife, I have four children, I have students and we in college, I have colleagues who all make demands upon us.
I have other members of my congregation, I have friends, I have all these people. And so love limits us. Yeah. And sometimes our, our own selfishness makes us bad friends and neighbors because we're only concerned with who we're, and if loving your neighbors part of your Christian vocation, then it's going to make some kind of demands upon you.
Love always makes a demand of you. Yeah. And so I wanna say something like Lit gives us the opportunity to both find ourselves and find ourselves in the wider context of the greater human community, which we're a part. And that's the reason there's the whole chapter I talked about the justice practices of Lent.
Yeah. Because Lent helps you re Remi like what we, what we wanna do. And you could live in a neighborhood where you can't see poverty. Hmm. You can, you can kind of so construct your life where you rarely ever actually directly encounter the suffering peoples of the world. Mm-hmm. And Lent says to you, there are people you've forgotten.
Yeah, so you've not just, it's not just then, like I don't, in other words, what I wanna say is when you open yourself up to these practices, what God might tell you is a mystery. He might tell you something about your own personal place where you might need to find yourself better, but he might say that you've lost your community.
One of the things I say to my lack students who come through this process, because if you go through I through theological education, yeah. 90% of theological education has to go through majority white context. There's seven historically black seminaries left in the country, and even if every black person went there, you couldn't, we, we we're, we're dispersed.
And that means that you are going to find yourself if you grew up in a black context, in a majority white context. And there's a bunch of questions and issues and things you have to deal with as as, as a result of being a part of those communities. And I say to my students all of the time, it doesn't matter who you are.
You're gonna lose and find yourself a thousand times during the course of your theological education, but you must keep returning to yourself. And Lent is an opportunity for us to return to ourselves. Like I, I, anyone who. Has 40 years of life of a, a consistent focus where they're, where they're just chasing down whatever it is God called them to be.
And they're never, they're never, they never get lost. And so, but what you can lose is either yourself or your community or your responsibility to the wider society and let gives you the chance to stop. One of the things, if you're getting ready to talk about this. Yeah. It's called the examination of conscience.
Yes. One of the things that I talked about in the book ask about that book is the, the examination of conscience is something we never did in the Latin tradition. Mm-hmm. So in my, in my context, and this is not to sha anybody, like I would just sit back and think, well, what kind of sin could I have done?
Or God show me and we didn't say, Esau, stop, you know? Yeah. With doing whatever. I wouldn't think about it. But one of the great things about the liturgical tradition is what they call the examination of conscience. Mm-hmm. Well, there's a list of things. Then once again, it developed over time that the churches have put together where they ask you questions.
And there's one that I quote in the book where I, where it says, have I taken undue pride in my education on my, I was like, wow. And so, in other words, lit gives you the opportunity through the collective wisdom of the church to ask yourself hard spiritual questions. The other thing I talked about during, at least in the Anglican tradition, is what I call the great what?
What's called the great litany. And the thing about the Great litany that is so amazing, and I talk about it all of the time because I'm in both conservative and more progressive spaces, like I don't think we could write the great litany today because some people will call half of it woke. Right?
Because it talks about oppression and injustice instructions in society. Yeah. I mean it's for, I'm gonna quote it for you, for our blindness. To human need and suffering and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord. Yeah. So it's just like we, we basically say we have not cared about the suffering peoples of the world.
It just says it and we know it. In other words, in the great litany, it, it comes to us and says, you are not only responsible for yourself, you're responsible for how, how you live in, in a wider community. But the other thing about this, what I mean when I said it, it precedes our modern kind of Christian, Christian divisions.
It also talks about our own holiness of life. Like for our own cruelty and madness and dishonesty. And I feel like too often in our spiritualities there's either a spirituality of we really care about injustice and liberation, which I clearly care about, but also there is a, a, a actual Christian life.
That we are called to live, and the balance is to keep these two things, both before the congregation and individuals without it turning into legalism. You know, because you could just come to church every Sunday and hear here 15 ways with you as an individual, aren't being the kind of Christian you should be.
Or you can hear here are 15 problems in the world that Christians don't care about. There's no, I guess I wanna say is between listing things. That people don't do and making them feel guilty versus saying, this is the possibility of life before God. It's like a vision that you chase. And the reason I'm a Christian is that I find that particular vision of life, the vision of life in which.
There is the pursuit of a relationship with God, the pursuit of justice in society, and pursuit of holiness that actually demands something of me. You know, I, I, I realized unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, sainthood isn't for me. Right. Like I've seen, and I've read the histories of the saints, and I'm not one of them, but I see that life as something that is beautiful and I don't see anything more beautiful.
I'm not a Christian merely because I'm convinced of all of its arguments in some kind of rationalistic sense. I'm convinced of the beauty of Christianity in addition to his rationality and Lent gives me a chance to say. Where have you lost vision of that beauty? Yeah. And how can you recover it again so you can run after it?
And so that's, that's the part that I wanna say is that lit gives you the, the opportunity to take up the race again. Yeah, yeah. The kind of integrative work that you're talking about. And what I'm thinking here is the integration of the person, the individual, and the system or society, and drawing it into that relationship with God and, and finding a wholeness.
There. Yeah. And then you just go through those, those instructions you can choose in the moment to let those instructions just kind of wash over you. Yeah, and I've heard James K. Smith talk about, you know, at times you just let others in in that service kind of. Carry you through the liturgy for you, you know?
Yeah. Everyone finds themselves in a different spot and these, you know, as you recently pointed out on Twitter, it's not, you know, not, not been an easy few years for a lot of us. No, I, I would say like some, one of these habits that I have in church. It's to sometimes, especially when we're reading Dec Creed, I'll just stop talking and maybe this is bad, so forgive me.
I'm not a priest. I'm not currently serving in the parish, so this is not me. This is me in the congregation. So I, I would just sit and listen. 'cause I want to hear like literally the entire congregation say, I believe in God the father creative the earth. I just wanna hear the voices of other people.
That's right. Saying these things. It's not that I don't believe it, it's that like I need their encouragement. And I, like, I, I, I seriously, at every point in the service, at some point I stop talking or, and I love it. And I love it, and I've tried to avoid this most of the time, but I'll have to slide into the inevitable Anglican snobbery here.
And, and I'll say the following there, there is something that I love about congregational singing when I can hear the congregation. Yeah, and I, I, I actually, I don't, I don't actually understand what goes on musically now in some churches where it's just the people up front and you can't hear it, but it's something, and, and it's so like when I'm in a place where there's congregation of singing, I like to sit in the middle because you sit in the middle there, people behind you, and people in the front of me surround sound, and you're the surround sound.
I don't sing well enough because if I'm in the back, I need somebody. I'm like, if I can hear me, this congregation isn't bigger. It's not even about the size. It's not about the size people. There not enough people singing, but so like when you're in a, when you're in a space Yeah. Where the entire congregation is singing once again, and this is one of these like old powerful hymns.
And so it just, I feel, and, and, and the great thing about, forgive me to talk about this, you and may be nerdy. The great thing about spirituality.
God can jump out and get you at any mo moment in the surface. And, and, because in other words, you could be doing the colic for, in the aim of the tradition, the opening prayer, you could be doing the confession, you could be doing the creed, you could be doing the Eucharist, you could be going, doing something minor ritual.
So for me, for example, it was a strip on the altars. That was a transformative kind of experience for me. And, and so the thing that I like about what, what, what, what James K Swift thing. It's like you're floating along. And there are these particular moments where God might jump out and reach you. And, and, and I'm not, I'm not criticizing, I'm not, I'm talking about the distinctives in different traditions and, and like some unstructured places, you know where the spirit is supposed to get you.
It's supposed to get you on the third song, right? So the opening song and then the middle song, and then here's the really good song. Or here's the sermon and then here's the response. And so we, we we're conditioned to say, this is where God might show up. Now, obviously God can do it anywhere, but the thing I like about the liturgical like lens is like, is it the fast thing?
Is it the works of charity? Is it particular liturgical practices? The great thing about the the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is that it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation. I wanna make sure that we can address death. Okay? And, and lint is sort of bookended by death, right?
We begin with remember that you are dust and to dust, we shall return because you can't talk about death right now and not think of. Death. Yeah. I would, you can't think about about death and not think of coronavirus. Yeah. You can't think about death and not think about the war in Ukraine. Yeah. And so can help us contextualize death and lent.
Yeah, so I, I talked about this a lot, is that we die in a thousand different ways. I say some die heroically, some die tragically, some die peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, but we all die. And one of the things that it's, it's important for us to, to come to grips with as Christians. It's one of the central claims of the Christian tradition, which that Jesus defeated death.
As our great enemy. So it's important as it is for us to battle against injustice. People die unjustly. Right? That's actually true. And so the question is, what does it mean to really come to face to face with our death? I talked about when I, I didn't really. Face this myself until I was functioning as, as, as a priest in Japan.
And two of my children came up with my, with my wife. We had two kids at the time and I was putting ashes on their foreheads. And I did it again later when they were, when all four of them had made their debut. But this was the one that I remember in particular is that I told them, remember that you're dust and to dust, you're gonna return.
And my kids didn't believe me and they thought it was a joke, and I realized. Everybody that I know and I care about and I love are gonna die. Yeah. Everybody. Yeah. And what does it mean to live in light of that fact? And so for some people, the idea is, well, because we're all gonna die, you get all the stuff that you can before you go.
But I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. Our lives are of infinite value, and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in one who overcame death. And so whatever else.
And one of the things, just like I've been thinking about this a lot, whatever disagreements Christians have. We have a lot of them. I mean, a lot of them we do, we, we, we agree on the resurrection of the dead, and that's a big line, right? You can't say, I believe dead
resurrection. Yes. Resurrection line is really, really large, right? And so, you know what I mean? I'm like, no, you know, like this. It's true. One, sorry, this is, this might be a tangent, but it's important and I'll give you a pop. So one of the interesting things about what I do, one of my other jobs is I'm a writer, and so when I write.
People like what people get excited about me writing is really interesting. In other words, if I write a piece in the Times for the Atlantic where I say something like, Jesus Rose from the dead. People don't really see that as being like. A big deal, like, no, no, no, no. That's when I'm actually being my most Christian people think, okay, it's really important that you talk about race.
It, it's actually true. Like I can't say something about race, and that's an important part of my Christian witness. But what I wanna say is, well, what I say about race makes sense because I believe that the dead guy got up. And so understanding what does it actually mean to entrust your life into the hands of Jesus?
Could only have any coherence. If you face two realities. The first one is that you're gonna die. It doesn't matter how much you exercise, how well you eat, you're gonna die. And we believe that he defeated death. And if he defeated death, it like runs backwards through his life. So his resurrection runs backwards through his life, given the entirety of his life, meaning.
And that means that the way that Jesus lived before God is a way of being human at leads to life. And so for me, if I recognize that I'm gonna die and I recognize that Jesus shows me the path of life, then those two realities, that book in Lent. You're going to die. What are you gonna do about it? Jesus Christ has risen, right?
Therefore, his life shows you the way to get from your inevitable death to life. It's one of the central things that a, that a book ended in that narrative. And so I, I, I wanna say something like, if you can go all the way back to what I said earlier. About why the stripping of the altars are so important, and for those of you who don't have never been to liturgical churches, most of them are really decked out.
There's flowers, there's altar coverings, there's candles, there's all of these things around the altar, the beautif, and that's there through most of the year changes according to liturgical seasons. But when you get to Monday, Thursday, the day before, good Friday call after. Installation of the last supper.
There is the, the congregation all receives the Eucharist, then they return to their seats and sometimes the psalms is ed in the background. While the altar is, everything gets removed, so by the time you get to the altar, you get to the end of the stripping of the altar. There's nothing on the altar but the cross.
Sometimes that crosses veil at the end. Yeah. One of the things that, that, that I really like is if you, you have those, if you have one of those big stone alters that we had at, in, in, at Suwanee and other places, the, the clergy would sometimes even take a think a and wipe it down. And they, and, and not that it's actually clean, but I want to prepare it for burial.
Right. And then, then at the end, there's just a cross at the middle, like a, a, a small image of the cross. And the, the reason that's so important near the climax of Lent to me, is that when you strip it all away. When all of the, all of the, the, the circumstance and the pump and all of the celebratory stuff of Christianity, it's really moving away.
And you're saying, what is it that Christianity offers to the world? It's the guy who was crucified and then was risen and by, and, and the thing that makes the tripping of altar so important is that it, it, it. To me, Monday, Thursday, more than any other embodies our failure because the altar tripped away.
There's nothing before Jesus, but the cross in like the disciples, we flee into the night, and the truth is we can't do anything about our death. It's up to him. And so the stripping of the alters means we have come as far as we come. And now it's time for Jesus to take center, center stage. Started to go knee deep.
One more step into nerdy them. So when, when you get there on Good Friday, and forgive me if y'all are not doing it right in your church, can you talk about doing it right? There we go. I fall into it, but good. Friday the next Do this, do this. Good. Good. Friday, the next morning, it's the only time that I, when, when I was functioning that you came in an all black ca and there's what they call a silent processional.
Right. The The clergy. The clergy, yeah. Come before the, the, the congregation robed in close a morning and they go and they kneel before, before the, the front of the altar. And it's a solemn cox. It's the one time, oftentimes it's the one time during the year in liturgical traditions where you don't celebrate the Eucharist.
Yeah. You don't celebrate the Eucharist because the, the thing to which the Eucharist points is actually. Yeah, and so I, I wanna say something like the, the, the, the If, if Lent begins with this wide ranging question about who we are and how we're living our life before Jesus. It concludes with a supreme focus.
On who Jesus actually is and what he accomplished. My, my, and I think this is, this is in the book. There's I, and I'm, I'm, I'm supposedly a Pauline Scholar, but I'm like the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all the time. It just doesn't, don't get me going. Sorry, don't get going.
There are other things. There are the things, and so like, I just don't do atonement theology a lot. I just don't write about, it's not my thing. I believe in atonement. I'm saying it's not what I write about. You. Okay. But I wanna say, I don't like say that people say Esau doesn't believe in the atonement.
It's not what I said, but, but what I will say is if anyone ever asks me about my atonement theology, or my theology of the cross, I say to them, y'all should look at the final prayer for Good Friday. Where he says something along the lines of, set the cross between your judgment in our souls. If anyone ever wants to know how Esau thinks, how I think about the death of Jesus, how I make sense of it, I haven't found, it's like when I, when I was sitting in the Good Friday service and the priests were kneeling before the the altar and he read this prayer, I was like, this is it.
And this is one of the great things about the liturgy. It says, sometimes they bring the mind and put into order things that you were thinking that you couldn't quite say. So if it's okay, I'm just gonna read not my own words, but the words of this, this collect, and it says, Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.
That's it. So when, when, when I, when I, when I, when I come to the end. Somehow what Jesus did comes between God's judgment and me, and when I talk about how you end Lent, you end lent on that you don't end lent with, well, you kept it fast and so therefore God is pleased with you. You end lent with something has to come between God's judgment and our souls, and that thing is Jesus, which means that even if I made a mess.
Or made a mess of my life. There is grace. That's what I mean that Lent is, is Lent. Is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourselves? For not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than it? That happens when I came and atonement, I evangel.
And it was kind of like the standard gospel presentation, which is they convince you that you, people convince you that you're horrible, that you're a horrible sinner, and then that you need Jesus, and then you accept Jesus, and then you're center forgiven and you go from there. I'm not saying that that's like a, that's a horrible thing to say to people.
What I'm saying is when you're in oppressed person. Right. When you're an oppressed person and you live in a society where they always, they already tell you that you're horrible, they already tell you that you're worse than nothing. When I was a Christian, it was when, when I was a Christian, when I was growing up, it wasn't that my pastor boy talking about sin.
He, he didn't, he didn't refuse to tell us that we're sinners, but he said to us that we could be more than what people say that we're. In other words, he spoke about a gospel did not. Pushed you down to lift you up, but that because you were already down, you could be more than that. In other words, there's like the story of the woman called an adultery where Jesus doesn't condemn her, but he says, go, and you can be, you can be more than that go and no more.
And so what, what I wanna say is that version of Lent as not, you're horrible, but you don't have to be that way. That you can, you can be more, that God loves the poor and the oppressed enough to give them agency to change and to be more is the vision of length that I have, and that I hope that I captured in the book that, that I gave people permission to pursue this, not out of an attempt to, to earn some kind of spiritual brownie points, but an attempt to once again, pick up their lives from wherever they, they, they set them aside and pursue God again.
And that's really hard to do because we live in a society where people are just giving yet another thing to do.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls. Now under the hour by death, give mercy and grace to the living. Pardon and rest to the dead. To your holy church, peace and concord, and to our sinners, everlasting life and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
You live and reign one God now and forever. Amen.
I I really can't recommend your book enough to our listeners, and I'm, I'm excited to approach Lent this year. With your book, guiding The Way, thank You
for The Life of the World is the production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured biblical scholar and author, Esau McCauley. Special thanks to the Dale Foundation. I'm Evan Rosa and I edited and produced the show Production Assistants. By Macy Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylyn Young.
For more information, visit us online at faith dot Yale dot edu where you can find past episodes, articles, books, and other educational resources that help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity. And if you're new to the show, remember to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode.
And to our loyal supporters and faithful listeners, we have a humble request. Would you tell a friend today and share the episode? Here's just a few ideas. First, hit the share button for this episode and send a text or email to a friend or share it to your social feed. Second, you could give us an honest rating in Apple Podcasts.
How are we actually doing? And finally, write a short review of the show in Apple podcasts reviews are cool because it'll help like mind people get an idea for what we're all about. In your own words. And what's most meaningful to you, our listeners.