There is a dangerous habit that hides in the heart of the human imagination — the habit of waiting. Waiting for the hero. Waiting for the genius. Waiting for the exceptional one to rise, to shine, to rescue. We long for saviors dressed in brilliance, wrapped in charisma, endowed with uncommon gifts. We want superheroes — mystical and mysterious beings designed to deliver us from struggle and suffering while we remain safely seated in the audience.
And if we are honest, this habit shows up in Black communal life in ways both subtle and sacredly troubling. It becomes the myth of the Exceptional Negro — the belief that transformation will come through the rare figure whose talent lifts us all, whose courage carries us all, whose visibility redeems us all. Even our celebrations can sometimes echo this rhythm.
Black History Month — holy and necessary — can occasionally feel like an honor roll of the extraordinary. A parade of brilliance. A gallery of giants. And if we are not careful, admiration becomes abdication. Celebration becomes spectatorship.
But remembrance was never meant to excuse responsibility.
“But remembrance was never meant to excuse responsibility.“
Zora Neale Hurston warned us plainly, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Silence is not neutral. Silence is surrender. Silence is complicity disguised as comfort.
Scripture offers us a counter-witness — not through a celebrity saint, but through a nearly forgotten servant. Judges 3:31 declares, “After him was Shamgar son of Anath, who killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; and he too delivered Israel.”
One verse. no spotlight. no swelling soundtrack. Just testimony.
Shamgar was not exceptional by the standards we celebrate. He was not introduced with pedigree or prestige. He appears to have been a laborer — dirt under his nails, sweat on his brow — holding an oxgoad, a farming stick used to guide stubborn animals forward. Not a sword. Not a shield. Not a platform. Just a tool already resting in his hands.
And yet the text proclaims deliverance.
Because power is not always found in exceptional people. Sometimes power is found in people who refuse paralysis.
Shamgar started where he was.
He did not wait for perfect conditions. He did not wait for recognition or permission. He stepped into action in the middle of ordinary circumstance. And hear me — history never begins in ideal environments. Liberation is born in inconvenient spaces, uncomfortable moments, unfinished conditions.
Shamgar used what he had.
No polished resources. No institutional backing. No ornamental weapons of prestige. Just what was available. We spend too much time lamenting what we lack instead of leveraging what we hold. But God has always specialized in sanctifying the insufficient — rods in Moses’ hands, stones in David’s hands, loaves in a boy’s hands, and oxgoads in Shamgar’s hands.
Shamgar did what he could.
Not everything. Not everywhere. But something. And that something mattered. This is where the myth of the Exceptional Negro must fall. Because when we wait for heroes, we excuse ourselves from holiness. When we wait for saviors, we pass the buck on participation. When we wait for Superman, we abandon stewardship of our own agency.
“History has never moved only through monuments — it has moved through multitudes.”
History has never moved only through monuments — it has moved through multitudes. Through teenagers like Claudette Colvin who refused compliance. Through teachers like Septima Clark who turned classrooms into catalysts. Through organizers like Ella Baker who built movements rather than celebrity. Through sharecroppers like Fannie Lou Hamer who spoke with trembling conviction. Shamgars all of them — ordinary people refusing ordinary resignation.
Derrick Bell reminds us that justice is not gifted through sentimental hope but wrestled through persistent struggle. Systems do not yield because exceptional individuals appear; they shift when communities engage relentlessly. And James Cone presses the theological claim further — that God stands with the oppressed — not as distant observer but as active participant. Faith is not performance in the balcony. Faith is marching in the streets of history.
So, the question before us is burning and immediate:
What oxgoad rests in your hands?
What gift have you dismissed as insignificant?
What calling have you postponed because you assumed history belonged to someone else?
Receive now this charge.
Do not wait to be exceptional.
Do not wait to be affirmed.
Do not wait for ideal timing or perfect tools.
Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
Because the Spirit has never depended solely on superheroes. The arc of justice bends through ordinary people set ablaze with sacred courage. And maybe — just maybe — the deliverance we are praying for will not descend from extraordinary figures soaring above us, but will rise from communities daring, like Shamgar, to step forward and wield the gifts already entrusted to them.
Rev. Dr. Winterbourne Harrison-Jones is the pastor of Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, one of the oldest African American Presbyterian churches in the U.S.
