Sheila Dougal

A book review of Lent-The Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley; Fullness of Time Series from InterVarsity Press

I grew up in a non-liturgical church. We did have a liturgy, we just didn’t call it that. 

Every Sunday we were formed by a service that included announcements about the sick and in need in our church from one of the deacons, two hymns sung acapella, a scripture reading, another hymn, the sermon from the minister (who we never called a pastor or preacher even… that was too liturgical), partaking of the Lord’s Supper, the passing of the plate for the offering, the invitation to come forward and be baptized as the congregation sang Just As I Am or I Surrender All, followed by a prayer of dismissal. 

At Christmastime we got a special sermon about the birth of Jesus and at Eastertime about the dying and rising of Jesus, with special hymns like, Oh Come All Ye Faithful and Up From The Grave He Arose. 

In my thirties I learned about Lent and Advent.

Since then I’ve incorporated some practice or reading the historic Church has used in each of these seasons. Every year I read a book with themes from Lent and Advent to stay in season rather than letting the seasonal department at Walmart dictate what I should be celebrating. Esau McCaulley’s Lent- The Season of Repentance and Renewal is the book I picked up to read this year. 

I resonated with McCaulley’s own history of not growing up in a liturgical church and his love for the practices of the Anglican Church that helped form him. Maybe it’s in part my unstructured childhood, where inconsistency and a lack of rhythms or habits left me craving structure and dreading the feeling of being ineffective, bumbling my way through life like a tumbleweed. Maybe it’s my childhood non-liturgical church’s liturgy of acapella hymns, scripture reading, the Lord’s table and invitation. I don’t know, but I do know I am drawn to the traditional Church calendar and I will be gobbling up all the books in the Fullness of Time series this little book is part of.

Esau McCaughley goes through each Sunday in Lent providing an engaging reflection on the week’s traditional readings in Lent and Holy Week. You don’t have to know anything about the liturgical calendar to benefit from this book. 

I have several post-it notes marking the pages where something McCaulley wrote struck a chord. But if I had to pick one quote to sum up the theme this book impressed on me it would be this, “Eventually, we all come to this place of waiting. We run out of room for human action. God will act or we are lost.”

Much like Advent, Lent is a season of waiting. During Lent we get honest before God and sit with the fact that we are unable to undo the damage of sin that separates us from God and destroys our lives. We need God to do what we cannot. 

I need a marked season to sit with life’s loss. I need a time to wait on the Lord amidst the damage my sin and the sin of others has caused. I need to be honest before God with my complaints and questions. So much of my life is spent pushing down and to the side the discomfort of facing my sin and the sins of my people, my generation, my country. But the rumblings of its impending destruction run underneath the surface of my hardened life like hot lava. 

God sees. Am I willing to see? Am I willing to face the end of my human ability and wait on the goodness and mercy of God?

This book has helped me take my complaints and disillusionment and poverty of spirit to the Lord like the ancient prophet Habakkuk: