The Rev. Canon Esau McCaulley, PhD

The Flames of Pentecost, a World on Fire, and the Hope of the Kingdom

Today we are supposed to talk about the miraculous birth of the church in the flames of Pentecost when tongues of fire descended upon those gathered and the gospel was heard in the varied languages of the world. Pentecost is the miracle that follows on from the miracle that occurs in the aftermath of a wonder. Jesus, Israel’s king and Messiah, was crucified and raised from the dead. He then ascended into heaven so that in the words of St. Paul God might fulfill his promise “to put all things under the feet” of our king.

Paul also says that God made Christ the head over all things “for the church.” Christ rules over all things for our good. In a world that is burning this is indeed gospel.

If the first Pentecost is the miracle that follows the miracle that occurs in the aftermath of the wonder, this Pentecost finds the American church in a much different place. It feels like this Pentecost occurs in the aftermath of a woe, following a trauma, in the context of a tragedy. We gather virtually to talk about the flames of Pentecost while Minneapolis and so many other cities burn. The protests and riots of Minneapolis follow the death of George Floyd who was choked to death while handcuffed and pleading for his life. For nine minutes a police officer kept his knee on a man’s neck while he called for his mother.

This occurs in the wake of the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. All this takes place within the wider context of a country in which 100k people have died from a deadly virus and the church is physically scattered. It feels more like we are in the middle of an extended Lent rather than the end of Eastertide.

Some will hear me talk of these events and assume that I am bringing ‘politics’ into the church. They will wonder why I am not upset about black on black crime or the black family or abortion or looting or whatever topic that avoids looking at the thing itself. The thing itself is the 400 year history of racial trauma and oppression that stalks black life in this country.

Some might wonder what riots and a black man dying at the hand of the police have to do with Pentecost and the actual passage in Acts 2:1–21. Don’t we understand, brothers and sisters, this is the question! Does the gospel, the death and resurrection of the Messiah for our sins, have anything to do with how approach the flames of Minneapolis? Does the church have something to say or will we be discipled by Fox News on the one hand and MSNBC on the other? Cities are burning and a country is divided, what do the words of the gospel mean in this context. There is no other world to talk about Jesus than a world in which black men have their necks steps on for nine minutes.

The only way to answer that question is to look at the thing itself, the words of Scripture. I want to make three points from our reading today: (1) The gospel brings us together (2) The Spirit moves us toward people very different from ourselves; (3) our hope is the gospel of the Kingdom

The Gospel brings us together

Acts 2:1–21 opens with the followers of Jesus gathered in one place. It is amazing to think that at point in history all the Christians in the world could fit into one room. Despite what the history books will tell you, Christianity is not some state sponsored religion of terror created by Constantine to keep the populous in check. It began humbly with a rag tag group of a 120 mostly regular folks who had encountered the living God. Among them were women like Mary who came from rural peasant stock and people like Matthew, the former tax collector. The two of them could not be more different. Matthew collaborated with the oppressors of Israel and extorted money from the people to line his pockets. Folks like Mary were the victims of such atrocities. What kind of church has room for both the oppressed and former oppressors? What united them? What unites us as a church now? What united them was their shared convictions about Jesus. They were together and that is what the gospel does. It unites us around the lordship of Christ

What would this unity look like today for the family of George Floyd? What would it mean for us to be together with them? What would it mean to be with the Black community in the United States who have experienced kidnapping, middle passage, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Litany of suffering that marks our life here? Would it not mean, as an act of love, to say it should not have to be this way, and I will spend my life beside yours to testify to the value the Christian tradition places on your black life?

The same Spirit falls upon all in the room. There is not one holy Spirit enabling women to declare the word of God and another for men. There is not one Spirit that gives words to the rich and another for the poor. There is not one Holy Spirit that enables us to speak to African peoples and another that allows us to speak to Asians or Europeans. The one Spirit send the one Gospel to varied peoples of the earth. The same Spirit is able to minister to all people because it reaches our common humanity. The Holy Spirit didn’t have to work extra hard to convince African peoples of the gospel because there is some flaw in us that makes us hard to reach. The singularity of the gospel’s work through the Spirit arising from our common status as image bearers speaks to our common humanity. We are all fallen and in need of God’s grace. Any ideology that functionally or verbally denies that common status is a heresy. Anyone who denies that the heresy of racism infects this country and many Christians in it does so in the face of facts that would make the soldiers at the empty tomb seem like reliable witnesses.

The Gospel moves us out

The gospel drew them outside their own culture to speak and eventually do life together with people very different from themselves. Everyone at Pentecost was Jewish, but that Judaism had been moved into the varied languages and communities of the Roman Empire. The first thing that the gospel did was bring people together under the Lordship of Christ. If the gospel draws us together to hear the mighty works of God has it lost its power to do so among us? Why aren’t we together anymore? And what would it mean for the watching world to see a Christianity that was together spiritually and practically?

Black Christians can deal with the people who have no reason support us. We can deal with secular racists. What is heartbreaking and exhausting is to find ourselves fighting for our very right to exist and find that the enemy we see is someone who is our brother. What is that passage in the Psalter? “It is not enemies who taunt me— I could bear that; But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God”(Psa. 55:12–14 NRSV). Our life together, if we are to be together, can’t be at the expense of my freedom. I shouldn’t have to fight my brother to obtain it.

The nations are being drawn to together and there two responses: (1) They are just drunk; (2) What does this mean? One response refuses to acknowledge the facts of what is going on and draws upon their know experience to dismiss the work of God. It’s just alcohol. The second asks a deeper question: what is God up to in their midst?

I will get back to Pentecost. Let me say this about the world that is on fire all around us. Some look at the black demands of justice and can only reach for some political explanation. They are just democrats trying to ruin the church or they are really theological liberals beholden to Marxism. But maybe those are ways to avoid looking at the thing itself. What are Black, Latino, and Asian brothers and sisters really saying? What does it mean? What is God up to?

Peter dismisses the first question with a sentence or two, but addresses the question of meaning more deeply. He tells them that they are experiencing the Spirit promised in Joel. Joel says that when God acted to redeem his people it would universal – men and women, young and old, rich and poor. The universal gift of the Spirit that manifested itself in the shared public ministry of the whole church (women, men, rich, poor) is a testimony to the universal saving power of the gospel. In other words, the form of Pentecost supports the theology of Pentecost- the gospel of for everyone.

The hope of the Kingdom

I am convinced that the hope for this country is not in any election or political party. Votes matter, but neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party is our savior. What we need is a Spirit filled Christianity big enough to draw the varied peoples together.

This involves two things. The first is to recognize that the problem is not just out there. It’s in our hearts. The problem isn’t just that there are racists in the world. The problem is that we all in various ways live in rebellion against God and his will for us. The gospel demands a decision from each of us about our own sins. If Jesus had a theme for his ministry it is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent personally for your sins. Why? Because (secondly) the Kingdom is coming. This kingdom is depicted in Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth where he proclaimed good news to the poor and liberty to the captives. It is the kingdom articulated in the Psalter rooted in justice and righteousness. Jesus came to save sinners, but those saved sinners now bear witness in their lives to God’s kingdom vision. We know that this kingdom is coming because Christ is risen. Peter says it this way. This Jesus you crucified God has made him Lord and Messiah. Who controls the future? Who unfurls history according to his purpose? The one who is the Lion and the lamb at the same time. The one who is both God’s justice and his mercy.

We do have a message for a city and a world on fire. There is a God who loves you and died that you might know him. This love is sufficient to gather the divided peoples of the world when all the politicians and philosophers fail. There is a God of justice who sees and acts on behalf of the beleaguered peoples of the world, people like George Floyd. There is a king and kingdom. He has given us his Spirit to make him known to the ends of the earth.

A Sermon on preached on Pentecost 2020

Holy Saturday: The Earth Holds its Breath

There is a lot going on during Holy Week. On what we call Maundy Thursday we remember the installation of the Eucharist and Jesus’ command that we love one another as seen in his washing of the disciple’s feet. The Maundy Thursday does not service does not end. Jesus’s ministry does not stop, but like the disciples we flee into the night. Good Friday picks up where Thursday left off. Jesus has been arrested, and we walk with him through his trial and passion. Most Anglican churches will move along to the Easter vigil in which we tell whole of God’s redemptive story from beginning to end climaxing with the acclamation that Christ is risen.

Sadly many churches have lost sight of a little service nestled between Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. It is called Holy Saturday. It is a gem of a service that reflects on the time between Jesus’ death and his resurrection. The prayer for Holy Saturday reminds us that Jesus’ body was laid in the tomb and took its rest on the Sabbath.

O God, creator of Heaven and Earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the Tomb and rested on this Holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In this prayer we are called to wait with Jesus for the coming of the third day. It asks us to trust Jesus in the darkest trials to know that something good awaits us. But if we reflect for a moment about the radical difference between how Jesus experienced Holy Saturday and how the disciples experienced it, we begin to realize how staggering the prayer is and the supreme challenge that it poses.

At this point in the gospel story there is nothing left for the disciples to do. There are no more acts of faith to perform. All that remains is the waiting. Holy Saturday reminds us, as the sabbath itself does, that for all our activity our hope is not in the things that we do. Our hope in the God who created all and instituted the day of rest to remind us of our limits.

The last month has been a world wind. Churches have gone online and found a thousand different ways to minister. But the church will not endure because we listened to all the podcasts and online Zoom sessions about how to pastor during a pandemic. The church will survive because God will sustain it when we have reached the end of our ropes. Holy Saturday reminds the church to pause.

The readings from Holy Saturday are filled with questions about death. Job 14:1–14, the Old Testament reading, asks this question, “If someone dies, will they live again?” Psalm 88, also appointed on this morning, ponders “Do you show wonders to the dead or shall the dead rise up and praise you? Is your loving-kindness declared in the grave, your faithfulness in destruction?” The answer to these questions is yes, but the psalmist is not so confident.

The readings reveal our anxieties about the limits of God’s power. In times of trauma we are tempted to wonder if the problem is too big for God. The disciples must have asked this question on Holy Saturday. Was the crucifixion of Jesus a tragedy so all encompassing that there was no future? Holy Saturday is our pause to remember the depth of the problem so that we might celebrate the extent of God’s victory. Death is no small thing; it the monster that eats everything. Everyone who survives COVID19 will die of something else. The question posed in the readings of Holy Saturday is what will God do about it.

The good news of Holy Saturday is not that the disciples waited with faith. They did not and we do not. There are moments when the traumas in our lives are too much and we are overcome with despair. Sometimes all of this is just too much for us. The good news of Holy Saturday is that Son of God was never in doubt about what followed his Sabbath. Jesus was not in the grave hoping that things would turn out okay. Jesus reigned even when we was at rest. Whether we wait in hope or despair what matters is that we wait and then wonder of God’s victory.

Come Let us Read Together: A (hopefully warm) Invitation to Think the Best of Each Other in the Women’s Ordination Discussion

“Roots at St Ebbes Church, Oxford” by readephotography is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

We live in a church that is attempting to discern the kinds of disagreement that are tolerable and those that are not. Paul allowed Christians to agree to disagree about things such as food sacrificed to idols or which days one considered sacred (1 Cor. 8:1–15; Rom 14:15). Paul did not extend this “agree to disagree” attitude to all areas of the church’s life. The pursuit of Spirit empowered holiness was not up for debate (Gal 5:16–25).

The ACNA has agreed in its constitutions and canons to allow each diocese to decide its own policy on women’s ordination. Thus, we do not believe that it is impossible for us to live together, and our bishops have modeled this charity by continuing in fellowship with one another. While the majority of ACNA dioceses do not ordain women, a slight majority of the membership of the ACNA resides in dioceses where ordained women can minister. These statistics do not speak to the beliefs of individual churches, but we are episcopally led. Given this reality, we cannot continue to carry on this discussion as if those who support women’s ordination are a beleaguered minority with second class status. We are not.

I am at peace with living in a church that is discerning the mind of Christ. I am persuaded by arguments in favor of the ordination of women, but I understand that some of my brothers and sisters are not. Since I believe that truth can be known, a consensus in the God’s own time is possible. This means that I must, as a matter of course, be willing to listen to arguments pro and con that help me read the Scriptures and understand the church’s tradition better. I am fine with that process, but what is wearying is caricature. It is in the spirit of discerning the Scriptures together that I offer a reflection on the article written by a fellow Anglican clergy person and theologian entitled “God is not Fair.”

The title does not appear to assume the best of proponents of women’s ordination. It seems to argue that we believe that God’s fairness requires women’s ordination. After setting this up as the basis for his argument, he then goes on to counter this notion.

Now it is undoubtedly true that one might be able to locate some who advocate for women’s ordination based purely on a modern notion of fairness, but to think that this is the primary argument for proponents of women’s ordination in the ACNA is to fail to take seriously our engagement with the relevant Old and New Testament texts.^[1] When many of our clergy women (and others) see arguments such as this put forward it is deeply discouraging.

The article cites in succession Ephesians 5:21–22, 1 Cor. 11:10, and 1 Tim. 3:2; 2:12; Titus 1:6. Speaking of Ephesian 5:21–22 the author says, “Sure, he told the members of the Ephesian church to submit to one another (Eph. 5:21). But then his very next word was for wives to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22). At that point, we expect him to follow that up with a word to husbands to submit to their wives, but he does not.”

As a point of fact, Ephesians 5:22 does not include the word submit in the Greek text. Rev. Dr. McDermott rightly assumes that Paul intends to refer to submission because he has mentioned submission in 5:21. Nonetheless Eph 5:22 says, and wives to your husbands…” Now it is more than fair to bring the submission language from 5:21 to 5:22, but that also means that section Eph 5:21–33 must be read as a commentary on what mutual submission looks like in a Christian marriage. Therefore, we cannot wall off 5:21 as a discussion of the congregation and not an instruction that husbands and wives submit to one another. This does not in itself prove anything about women’s ordination or the proper ordering of Christian marriage. It does show that we can sometimes read our assumptions into a text instead arguing from them even when citing them.

Black and Anglican: A Maundy Thursday Conversion Story

architecture-blur-christianity-1533907 — Photo by Michael Morse from Pexels

The question that follows me as I move through the world as an African American Anglican priest, who identifies deeply with Black culture, is how did such an anomaly occur? How did I move from the Black Baptist tradition of my childhood to a form of ancient Christianity as mediated initially through the Church of England, but which has been given fresh vigor through the revivals of East Africa and other parts of the Global South? Was I disgruntled with my upbringing? Was there some fatal flaw in the heritage that formed me? God forbid. I remain convinced that the Black Church is the glory of American Christianity, a light that shines in a history too often darkened by compromises of the gospel for the sake of greed and power. The Black church is not perfect, but it is a modern miracle.

Any telling of my story will eventually climax with the events of this night (Maundy Thursday) over 15 years ago. I tell this story now to remind us of the importance of what we do this night and to testify to the power of the liturgy to do gospel work if we trust the wisdom bequeathed to us.

This story begins in college. College, for me, was largely an experience of disorientation and separation from what I knew. the University of the South (my college of choice) took me far from the Black Baptist tradition. The school and the surrounding town were largely white with no real opportunity to experience the kind of worship that could speak to my soul like the gospel choirs I knew. In addition, it is much easier to ignore God in college than to seek him out. Therefore, I did what most college students foolishly do. I let a few religion courses and my own desires create insurmountable theological problems. Apparently, these theological problems could only be solved by adopting a moderate form of religion that neither inspired a transformation of life nor provided comfort in times of trial. It never ceases to amaze me how modern biblical and theological scholarship managed to construct a form of Christianity perfectly suited to the modern temperament. I speak of a Christianity in which we can know very little about God and what we do know is that God doesn’t want us to take any of this too seriously. Put simply, I drifted with the current of the culture replacing the received wisdom of the church with fleeting opinions of an increasingly decadent and confused society.

Continue reading “Black and Anglican: A Maundy Thursday Conversion Story”

Esau McCaulley Sr., A Son’s Eulogy for His Father

I came home from a conference and my son met me at the door. He was upset because the kids at his school had laughed at him. I asked him what happened. He said that the teacher caught him scribbling on a sheet of paper and asked him what he was doing. He told her that he had planned on writing letters to send to our family for Thanksgiving and he realized that he couldn’t send one to my father because he was dead. Then he thought if he wrote a letter my father would see it in heaven because people see everything in heaven He said that in the letter that he wished my father a happy thanksgiving. Then I asked him whether he had been thinking about my father a lot. He said that he had. I said that I had too and I get sad sometimes. Then he told me that he keeps thinking about the Eulogy that I gave for my father. Luke said that it is sad at the beginning, but the ending is happy. That makes him feel better. The Eulogy is below.

The Villain, the Victim, and the Victor,

The Gospel of John records a conversation that Jesus had with Pilate in the days leading up to his death. During this conversation, Jesus tells Pilate that “I have come into the world to testify to the truth.” Pilate responds by asking what is truth? Stated differently, Pilate says that it is fine to speak about truth and falsehood, good and evil, but what does it matter in the face of your impending death? Does not the reality of death, then, render all truth meaningless leaving only the question of who has power? Pilate’s question, raises the question of the meaning of all our lives. Does it matter who and what we were if death can simply wash it away? Does my black father matter if his story ended on the side of some road in California far from those who knew and loved him?

The question of who Jesus Christ is, then, cannot be separated from the question of who we are. My father is dead. Who was he? What does his life mean? Tolstoy the russian novelist, (can I quote a russian novelist at a black funeral) put it this way:

My question –was the simplest of questions, It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

Has death destroyed my father such that all that remains of him are the bits and pieces of a man that we can cobble together to keep out the darkness?

This is why the empty tomb matters. Not because that one man by some miracle defeated death. No, we believe that this particular man defeated death. His life and loves and actions mattered. The kingdom he spoke about was vindicated by the resurrection. If Jesus’s life matters than all lives matter, even my father’s black life that ended some two weeks ago. Therefore, it matters who my father was, how he lived and how he died and what hope we have for him in the future. It is of vital importance for all of us who come to remember him that we tell the truth.

Apart from Jesus, I have probably spoken more about my father in sermons than any other human being. My whole life I have been trying to come to grips with who he was. So, I am going walk you through the three stages of preaching about my father over the last twenty years of my preaching. I would like to use the framing device of the biblical story of the tax collector and the Pharisee. I am going I am going to speak about my father as villian, then as victim, and finally my father as victorious. The first two parts may be a bit difficult, but like the story of the tax collector we end with hope.

Continue reading “Esau McCaulley Sr., A Son’s Eulogy for His Father”

Graduation: Black PhDs and the Title that Endures

O55vovr

I ain’t in the clan, but I brought my hood with me – Kanye West

It’s beautiful to change; it’s beautiful to grow into my name – Taelor Gray

Glory to God, whose power working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine – Book of Common Prayer Benediction (paraphrase of Eph 3:20–21)

There were times when I thought that I would not make it from one end of the PhD process to the other. The work was too hard. I was far from home, and everything about Scotland was alien to me. There were no black people and very few clergy in the New Testament program. But there I was a former pastor lost in a sea of folks who seemed to be professional academics. I felt every bit the outsider. It didn’t help that my work got sent to the drawing board so many times that I thought that I might as well transform myself into a stick man and climb into the board. “This is fine work, but I think it can be better consider revising the following… (rinse and repeat for 3 ½ years).” Even when you are utterly wrong, the British are unfailingly polite.

So how did I survive? I prayed very hard. I fasted a lot. I had the unwavering support of my wife and my children. But that is a story I will tell another time. Today, as I get ready for my defense tomorrow, my mind drifts towards a particular vision that has returned to me consistently.

Continue reading “Graduation: Black PhDs and the Title that Endures”

The Slave, the Foreigner, and the Compassion of Israel

18-lens-refugees-slide-8as8-superjumbo

photo credit

In the providence of God, he allowed his people to experience an extended period of slavery. This slavery was no passing trial to be endured and forgotten. It marked them and undergirded their ethical reasoning. God called upon his people to remember:

Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exod 23:9)

Thus the instinct of Israel, born of the experience, was compassion. Compassion on those who had nothing to appeal to other than Israel’s good will. The foreigners who resided in Israel would not have shared Israel’s religion or many of their values. Foreigners were in Israel, but not of them, a people apart. Nonetheless, God called upon the Israelites to show them the compassion that Israel had longed for in Egypt.

During Israel’s long period of slavery, I am sure that some Egyptians may have been personally opposed to Israelite slavery. Maybe in polite company, they lamented the excessive abuses meted out on those poor foreigners. But we lack a record of an Egyptian abolitionist society. It was much easier for Egyptians to focus on worshipping their gods and raising their families. After all, those pyramids weren’t going to build themselves. God, however, called his people to a higher standard. He told them to have compassion and to remember the whip and the chain.

Judaism and later Christianity, then, is not the religion of the powerful (like the poor the powerful are welcome at the foot of the cross). It is the religion that tells the broken and the weak that they too are children of God.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1Cor1:26–29)

Therefore, the church is made up of those who have known suffering and our ethics are forever marked by that truth.

But what of the Christian who is not bound by the Law? Should the compassion of the Israelites inform public policy in a country that formally is neither Christian nor Jewish? One response might be let the nihilist vote on the basis of his nihilism and let the Christian contend for her beliefs in the public square. But the answer requires more reflection.

The Christian has always believed that humans, despite our brokenness, bear the image of God. At times (not always) when we contend for Christian convictions in the public square the truth that God has implanted within all people comes to the fore. People, who do not share our worldview, say,“Yes, those Christians have some funny ideas, but on this they are correct.” The Christian, then, who argues for a compassion first attitude towards the foreigner is actually saying that people can be more than their basic instinct for self-preservation. Skeptics, who heed this call, might even begin to ask why this Christian was able to find this compassion within herself so quickly when for me it was a battle? What is this gospel that they believe that calls me to be the person that I somehow know that I was created to be? What is broken in me that my first response was hate or fear? Stated differently, Christian values proclaimed winsomely in the public square can be a preparation for and a partial embodiment of the gospel

But the inverse is also true. If the Christian forever stands on the side of power, if our first instinct is always fear, then how can we proclaim with integrity the good news of the one who did not save himself, but gave himself for the sins of the world? The words of the angels are still relevant: Do not be afraid.

The question of danger cannot be a part of the Christian calculus because we believe that Jesus has overcome death. Instead of danger, we see the refugee as God’s gift to us, a new arena opened for evangelism and mercy. What the tyrant of Syria (or anywhere else) meant for evil God can use for good. So for the Christian whose sole unqualified allegiance is to the Messiah, whose heart beats for the evangelization of the nations, how do we do anything but open wide our hearts and say come?

Longer Still (Post Election Reflections of a Black Man amongst the Evangelicals)

5750780740b75-image_

The Scriptures that contain the stories of Israel, the Messiah Jesus, and the early church have long shaped how I viewed the world. It was the bible that affirmed black personhood in the face of an Alabama that did so much to stamp it out. It was Jesus who taught me to love the poor and oppressed. It was Jesus who told me that his coming was good news for people like me, people easier to ignore than to love. The Bible lifted up the vision of a great society consisting of every tribe, tongue, and nation. And I believed every word of it. I have dedicated my life to seeing that vision become a reality.

I thought that my bible loving Evangelical Christians would look into the bible and see the same vision (and be willing to give everything to see it happen in their lifetime). I thought that maybe they just didn’t know how black folks suffered. I thought that if I told them they would listen. I thought maybe that nobody commended Revelation 7:9 to them as the hope for the church and the world. I argued with my black friends who said that white Christians did not care about black people. I said that they were woke Evangelicals who wept and marched alongside us when Tamir Rice was taken from us. I presented the multi-ethnic church as the hope for the world.

Then Donald Trump happened. Let me be clear, I am not saying that everyone who voted for Trump was motivated by racism. That would be silly. I know Christians for whom the pro-life cause was so important that all other issues could be pushed aside in order to secure Supreme Court Justices. I disagree, but I understand. I also understand that some believed that Hillary Clinton was so corrupt that voting for her was unthinkable.

But can we at least admit that the health and well being of people of color did not seem factor into the calculus of the scores of Evangelicals who swept Trump into the White House. For most black folk, there was never a robust embrace of Hillary (I did not support her). Instead we feared Trump because we found his statements about Women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims deeply disturbing. This was not the result of media spin. We heard it and we were afraid. We were afraid because every time he spoke about black people, he displayed at best a deep and abiding misunderstanding of the black experience. We were afraid because we thought that his election would mean that our call for better treatment at the hands of some (not all) police would go unheard. We were afraid that the racial animosity that undergirded some (not all) elements of his campaign would rise. We were worried because we thought that when the chips were down the whole church would support us. Now we are afraid that we are alone. I hope that those fears prove to be unfounded. We shall see.

Continue reading “Longer Still (Post Election Reflections of a Black Man amongst the Evangelicals)”

The Gospel, Black Spaceships, and Kanye West

unknown

I’ve been working this grave shift and I ain’t made it, I wish I could I buy me a spaceship and fly past the sky – Kanye West (slightly edited)

Spaceships don’t come equipped with rearview mirrors; they dip as quick as they can – Andre3000

And the word became flesh and lived amongst us – John 1:14

When Kanye West’s The College Dropout debuted in 2004, I was in the middle of seminary; and I was not, myself, a college dropout. I had graduated with a bachelor’s degree some two years earlier. Nonetheless, as much as the musings of an emerging rap star can speak to the experiences, hopes, and dreams of a future pastor, Kanye tapped into something that I felt very deeply. I listened to this record repeatedly (and no my favorite song was not Jesus Walks).

At the time, I could not put my finger on what I liked about early Kanye (pre Yeezus). Now I see that I was drawn to how he described his struggle to escape his circumstances through music. This narrative comes out most clearly in the song spaceships where Kanye tells the story of working a dead end job at the mall all the while making beats in the hope that his music will be the spaceship that takes him from where he is to where he feels he ought to be.

Continue reading “The Gospel, Black Spaceships, and Kanye West”

Black Movers, White Neighborhoods

13718646_10153841471057426_106393498071096122_n

Yesterday, four movers arrived at our new home to deliver items I had not seen since we placed them in storage some three years ago. Two of these delivery men were African American brothers. When one of them walked in he said, “I remember this house! I moved the people out of here a few weeks ago.” Then he gave me that subtle nod that black people exchange. Next he asked me what I did for a living. I told him that I was starting a new job as a professor of New Testament at one of the schools near here. Soon after this, his brother walked in and he told him that I was a professor and that I moved here to start a new job with my wife and kids. His brother then started to educate me on the glories of my new neighborhood and the local attractions within walking distance. They both said your kids are to love this place.

There were two conversations happening at once. One was the normal small talk that all strangers share, but beneath that I could tell that there was some black pride on display. I did not know exactly how to take that. I have always believed that all honest work was good work. I did not consider myself to be very different from them. I did not come from money and NT professors are not rich. But they seemed to see things differently.

As they began to move my stuff in, the younger brother complained, “these small boxes are heavy!” The other brother responded, “those boxes are full of books.The man is professor, fool! he needs those books!” I think that all older brothers talk recklessly to younger brothers.

Around midmorning, I brought them some coke and chips. They took a break and we sat down to talk. They asked me how old I was. It turns out that we were all about the same age. I was 36, He was 41, and his brother was 38. Then asked me how I had managed to become a professor at such a young age. I responded, that I was not that young. Most folks in my Ph.D. program were younger than me. I wanted to say more. I wanted to say that I grew up just like they did. I wanted to say that I knew about drugs, gangs, and rough high schools.

I wanted to shrink distance that they wanted to create between the three of us. But I sat there sipping Coke and listening to them talk about their kids. One of them told me that he had two good kids who had moved to the suburbs so that they could get away from the city schools. They were on vacation with their mom. This was the longest he had ever gone without seeing them, but he texted his son every day. It almost felt like he was trying to prove to me that he was a good father. He missed them. I said I missed my kids too. My kids were vacationing with their mom as well. In that moment, we were two dads talking about our kids and our hopes for their future. Then they went back to work and I went back to checking things off the list as they came out of the truck.

At one point, during a lull in the work, one of them came up and said, “It is good to see a young black man living in a place like this and working as a college professor.”

Continue reading “Black Movers, White Neighborhoods”