Living Wittily

Re-Reading Brueggemann 1. When, if ever, is the Church Not the Church?

I'm re-reading my loose leaf paperback of Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation. The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. It's 20 years old, I've read it twice before, the glue has dried and it's now bound with a rubber band. The past week I've spoken with a number of folk for whom the church is a problem, or an irrelevance, or a menace. When the church becomes obsessed with ethical arguments about sexuality, or fails to speak with any authoritative, joined up and consistent voice about the genocide in Gaza, or appears so timid and morale poor in the face of its own declining clout in a culture that's moved on without a backward look, then it;s time for Christians to ask the question: 'What on earth is the church for?' Ecclesiology draws its coherence from an adequate Christology - of all communities with a voice in our culture, the church should at least be clear about who Jesus is, why Jesus matters, and the difference Jesus makes when as living presence of God a community embodies the redeeming, reconciling , renewing and pervasively subverting presence of the resurrected Lord. 

At least, that's what I think, and I'm heartened when I read a book I first read 20 years ago to find that underlined passages retain their power to encourage such thinking, strengthen such hoping, and give impetus to those desires and prayers that long for the church to be the church Jesus calls it to be, and stop trying to be the church Christians say it should be, or others expect it to be. So here is Walter's ecclesiologically clued up comment, as relevant now as then:

The church as an alternative community in the world is not a "voluntary association", an accident of human preference. The church as a wedge of newness, as a foretaste of what is coming, as a home for the odd ones, is the work of God's originary mercy. For all its distortedness, the church peculiarly hosts God's power of life.

The church in a quite special way is the place where large dreams are entertained, songs are sung, boundaries are crossed, hurt is noticed, and the weak are honored. The church has no monopoly on these matters. Its oddity, however, is that it takes this agenda as its peculiar and primary business. In all sorts of unnoticed places, it is the church that raises the human questions."

I wish I could have said this about the church, knowing it to be evident and true, to the three people sitting next to us at the Sand Dollar on the Aberdeen front, delightfully and courteously questioning why I was a minister; and to the couple I spoke with at the interval at Pitmedden Garden the other night about the horrors of Gaza; and to my friend for whom the church, not the Gospel, is a scandal.

As it is, Brueggemann's hopeful imagination enables me to look at the church, and persist in believing that what he says is true.

 

Walter Brueggemann - still subverting cosy Christian worldviews

You know how enthusiasts for one author or another say that each publication by their favoured writer is an "event"?

And you know how we all nod sceptically, roll the metaphorical eyes and forgive the enthusiasm but wish for some balanced realism?

Well it wouldn't be true to say every book Walter Brueggemann publishes is an "event". Some are slim, some are derivative of earlier work, and maybe he just publishes too much.

Or maybe not.

In any case this collection of essays and lectures does, at least for enthusiasts of Brueggemann's theological adventurousness, deserve "event" status. It is a hardback at £12.99 which is the least significant reason for buying it. It touches major areas of theological importance for Christian thinkers grappling with the implications for a fixed shape church, of a liquid world, and the cost and consequences of ignoring a culture that is rapidly transforming and transformative of human behaviours, perceptions and life goals. It is written with the usual startling originality of verbal juxtaposition - I use the clumsy term deliberately because there are few writers who so cleverly and persuasively write to undermine familiarity and subvert cosy worldviews long held in the cherished corners of our allegedly Christian pieties. 

The book comes at the right time. Lent is nearly upon us - and rather than grovel around in the scary recesses of our own guilty and self-pre-occupied souls, here's a book that will dare us to look out, not in; to think of the other, not me; to listen for the strange voice of God rather than the familiar voice of our favourite devotional writers; to sing new and upsetting songs rather than the songs of our imagined Zion to which we are blithely marching; and to pay attention to the pain and hopes of the oppressed and vulnerable rather than worry about the prospects for the church in a postmodern culture which long ago stopped taking the church seriously as a cultural, intellectual or spiritual rival worth taking on. 

And if all that sounds like a rant, it probably is. But I am no longer persuaded by the strident calls to do this and that; nor attracted to emotional, personal, individual apprehensions of spirituality, even when communally pursued and practiced. I am much more persuaded by, attracted to, a spirituality that is astringent, alert to the church's self-concern, critical of the cultural status quo (Brueggemann  calls it the capitalist, consuymerist hegemony of empire!), and ready to listen to new ways of serving and following faithfully after Jesus come hell or high water. And the gates of hell shall not prevail - you will notice that I decline to capitalise hell - it has no ultimacy.

The Body of Christ in the world is a subversive community daring to embody a Gospel of reconciliation. We are people gathered beneath the cross but with our faces turned towards the dawn and that displaced stone, discarded shroud and defeated grave, - these are the realities for the church, by which we live, and by which we take on both the hell and the high water. And the last people who should be afraid of high water are baptised Christians, who through immersion declare the resurrection; and the last peopel to fear hell are those who have the nerve to call Jesus Lord, and in doing so hold their nerve in the face of whatever. I've no idea where the church is now going - how and in what shape it will survive in such a messy, mashed up, scintillatingly unpredictable world with its polarities and similarities, its paradoxes and possibilities. But wherever it's going - John 3.16 remains a defining statement of its destiny - it is a God-loved world, and the business of the church is to go on arguing that - by the way we live in faithfully following  Jesus. 

The table where love bids us welcome - and as guests we sit, and eat.

"At the table as nowhere else, we are the Lord's, not ours. We are not ours and he is not ours. We need not worry there about our destiny. We do not have to justify our existence there.  I don't know about you but I find that freedom and gift nowhere else completely. Probably we have not been enough amazed at that incredible gift God has granted us in the mystery of the table. There we need only yield our lives over to God. That is all! As such, the table stands in contrast to, if not in protest against, all the ways we have to make it the rest of the time. Now I want you not to miss the polemical point I am suggesting by starting our discussion of shalom at the table. I have the impression that most of us, and perhaps we cannot do otherwise, want to talk about shalom as task, or as discipleship, or (perish the thought) as "works", as more we have to do. And if we start there, we not only betray the mystery of the table, but also we doom our shaloming to failure, either in pride or despair, before we ever begin.

But it does begin at the table, it always does. And the promise to us is that the church that lets the historic mystery fashion its life can hear the word and be empowered to live in and toward the new age of shalom."

Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision, page 143-4.

Now, if you've a mind to, read the Brueggemann extracts from the last three posts one after the other, and feel the cumulative passion, harnessed to biblical conviction, and made the more persuasive by the pastoral plausibility of the implausible mystery he is urging the church to cherish and live within.

I guess Brueggemann publishes too much, and that there is repetition and quality variation in the volumes that occupy at least a metre of bookshelf space in my studies (yes, one at home and one at College - a situation that has its own logistic challenges). But this early book on Shalom is still amongst the most pastorally engaged, and 30 years on speaks in its revised form with a voice that has learned much from the Hebrew prophetic literature he has spent a lifetime teaching. This book is for those who believe Christian existence is about being a witnessing community, embodying and practising our convictions in the lived realities of the Gospel, our lives both surrendered gift and flawed amateur performance of the way of Jesus. Here Brueggemann has the wisdom to underplay our urges towards controlled and managed discipleship, and to dare challenge our less than subtle belief in, dependence upon, our self-generated "works" based approach to church life. And nowhere more than in these several pages on the mystery of the table, where he restores the essential connection between the life of shalom and our recognition of our status - humble guests at the table where Love bids us welcome and bids us sit and eat. 

At the Table is where we encounter the Real.

"At the table as nowhere else we are made aware that true life is in mystery and not in management. At the table there is now worry about members or budget, but only the reminder of meaning given  that we don't have to explain or manufacture.  It is overpowering, when we reflect on it, that all the key verbs  in that drama have him as subject and not us.  We are the subject of no important active verbs at the table. He took, and he blessed and he broke and he gave to us again. It is his table; we are welcome guests and we don't fix the menu or pay the bill."

Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision, page 143

It's such concise theological guidance that makes this book one of the very best things Brueggemann has written - and it's amongst his first publications. His words come as such an effective antidote to the veiled selfishness that passes for our ecclesial activism, programmatic evangelism and missional (miss)-management. I wonder when evangelical activists will recover the real drama of God's mission, really and truly embodied and proclaimed in the broken bread and poured wine shared around a table that is not ours? In a digitally experienced and ICT expert culture, the simple enactment of breaking bread and passing a shared cup becomes a proclaimed Gospel, a gift of grace so framed in mystery and profundity it is scandalously enigmatic to minds used to more sophisticated encounters with virtual reality and impatient with the gift and demand of a Real Presence.

 

Good News for Babylon - Brueggemann as Old Testament Prophet

Two new books coming by Walter Brueggemann. I've been reading this Old Testament prophet for 30 years, and he is as stimulating, infuriating, rewarding and necessary as ever for those called to preach beyond the horizons of their own vision, and who therefore want their Old Testament theology "thickly textured". The phrase is Brueggemann's, and refers to the complexity of both the text and the lived experience of those of us who come to the Old Testament world millenia later, to discern and live towards the vision of God and the worldd that lies at the heart of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament gospel.

Out of Babylon (coming in November from Abingdon - see here) is the kind of book the church, emergent or submergent, now needs to read, consider and then do the hard work of asking what is the good news for Babylon today. Here's the publisher's description of what Brueggemann is about:

It was the center of learning, commerce, wealth, and religion. Devoted to materialism, extravagance, luxury, and the pursuit of sensual pleasure, it was a privileged society. But, there was also injustice, poverty, and oppression. It was the great and ancient Babylon—the center of the universe. And now we find Babylon redux today in Western society. Consumer capitalism, a never-ending cycle of working and buying, a sea of choices produced with little regard to life or resources, societal violence, marginalized and excluded people, a world headed toward climactic calamity. Where are the prophets—the Jeremiahs—to lead the way out of the gated communities of overindulgence, the high rises of environmental disaster, and the darkness at the core of an apostate consumer society? 

It costs money to read Brueggemann! His production rate means at least a couple of volumes a year. Much of his work is gathered essays, addresses and other occasional papers. But there are very few repetitions, and I've never read a Brueggemann chapter, commentary or essay without being as stated above, stimulated, infuriated or rewarded! So Disruptive Grace, a major collection of his recent pieces due in January from Fortress will be a straightforward click on the pre-order button. Here's the blurb

Walter Brueggemann has been one of the leading voices in Hebrew Bible interpretation for decades; his landmark works in Old Testament theology have inspired and informed a generation of students, scholars, and preachers. These chapters gather his recent addresses and essays, never published before, drawn from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible—Torah, prophets, and writings—and addressing the role of the Hebrew canon in the life of the church.

Brueggemann turns his critical erudition to those practices—prophecy, lament, prayer, faithful imagination, and a holy economics—that alone may usher in a humane and peaceful future for our cities and our world, in defiance of the most ruthless aspects of capitalism, the arrogance of militarism, and the disciplines of the national security state.

"Holy economics" seems like a recent theme triggered by recent events in global markets. Not so. The first two books of Brueggemann I read were The Land, and Living toward a Vision. They are both over 30 years old. Both are to do with just practices, critique of status quo, analysis of power - its use and abuse, and a searching exegesis of texts that call in question the prejudiced fundamentalism of consumer capitalism and the imperial pretensions of economy, business and global ambition. Reading Brueggemann is a cultural and moral interrogation of the way things are in the world, and the interrogator's questions are formulated in conversation with that most disruptive of texts - the Bible. 

Walter Brueggemann - Bible teacher, man of prayer, spiritual upstart.

Walter Brueggemann is amongst the most important voices in biblical theology and church reflection on mission and ministry. I can learn as much about how to let the Bible speak its truth from one page of Brueggemann, as from whole chapters, even books, of those who recycle  received and safe but tired ideas that end up domesticating and subduing the restless,demanding urgency of Scripture text.

In recent years some of Brueggemann's prayers have been published - they too have a startling freshness, a disturbing originality to ears more used to extempore carelessness and informality oblivious of required reverence. The faith of an Old Testament scholar and biblical interpreter inevitably informs and fuels their scholarship, and reading Brueggemann's prayers makes me inexcusably jealous of those who over 40 years have sat in his classes and felt the Bible go red hot in their hands!

Here is one of Brueggemann's prayers at the start of his Old Testament Theology class:

With you it is never "more or less"

We will be your faithful people -

                                   more or less

We will love you with all our hearts -

                                   perhaps

We will love our neighbour as ourselves -

                                   maybe.

We are grateful that with you it is

                                  never "more or less"

                                  "perhaps" or

                                  "maybe."

With you it is never "yes and no,"

                  but always "yes" - clear, direct,

                  unambiguous, trustworthy.

We thank you for your "yes"

                 come flesh among us. Amen

From Awed to heaven - Rooted to Earth, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 139.

Walter Brueggemann: "Decrease / Increase" as a rule of life

"He must increase, and I must decrease."

Any excuse to post this Caravaggio painting of a young Jesus daring ageing Peter and Andrew to follow into an unknown future. Discipleship is risk and trust, and following becomes a way of life in which self fulfilment might mean giving ourselves away for the sake of something bigger than our selves.

Walter Brueggemann turns John the Baptist's ambitious lack of personal ambition into such a way of living, relating, reconciling and healing.

Decrease / Increase as a rule of life triggers deeply subversive responses to the life around us, and within us.

• Decrease what is greedy, what is frantic consumerism, for the increase of simple, life-giving sharing.
• Decrease what is fearful and defnsive, for the increase of life-giving compassion and generosity.
• Decrease what is fraudulent and pretense, for the increase of life-giving truth-telling in your life, truth-telling about you and your neighbour, about the sickness of our society and our enmeshment in that sickness.
• Decrease what is hateful and alienating, for the increase of healing and forgiveness, which finally are the only source of life

Walter Brueggemann, The Threat of Life. Sermons on pain, Power and Weakness (Fortress, 1996), page 68

Walter Brueggemann on "interesting but confining questions".

Not a poem. A paragraph from Brueggemann's Living Toward a Vision. I've broken it down into smaller thought units, to allow the flow of the prose to slow down, allowing our own thought to catch up with his. 

If we are going to talk about peace,
we have to make a fundamental decision
about ourselves.

How we make that decision
will determine in large measure
how we shall speak about theology.

Narrowly preoccupied citizens can do theology
around questions of sin, guilt and salvation.
That is an important task.

But people charged with resisting chaos
and making peace,
must not be preoccupied
with those interesting but confining questions.

Rather, theology must be done
around the issues of freedom and power,
authority and responsibility.

And when those issues are faced squarely,
we shall be speaking about peace.
And when those questions are resolved,
we shall be on the way to authentic shalom.

Walter Brueggemann: "So the hassle goes on"

Living Toward a Vision.

Biblical Reflections on Shalom,
Walter Brueggemann.
One of my favourite Brueggemann books, which made me glad to change my ,mind about some things when I first read it in 1982! Reprinted and revised recently it is available from United Church Press. New books still come from Brueggemann with the regularity of quarterly periodicals. The last couple of years two on Jeremiah, one an Introduction to OT Theology. Another on the Bible and Redescribing Reality. And the intriguing An Unsettling God due in August this year. There is a consistency of faithful subversion in his writing that is simply too important for followers of Jesus and members of the Church community to ignore. So here's some more samples.

"The God of the Bible is contrasted with all other gods. The pagan gods are generally friends of the kings, who are their patrons, and the gods legitimate and support whatever order happens to be in effect. by contrast, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not friend to order but insists on justice and is ready to intervene in decisive ways, against legitimated order if necessary, to establish Justice. If God must choose between order and justice, God characteristically chooses justice." (page 106)

"The world does not believe in newness. it believes that things must remain as they are. And for those of us well off, it is a deep hope that things will remain as they are. Every new emergent is quickly domesticated; and if it cannot be domesticated, it is outlawed or crushed.
That is the bite in our faith and the crunch in our ministry. We are bearers of newness. But we address, and, in part, ourselves constitute a world which has a low tolerance level for newness. But the faith community, synagogoue and church, exists precisely to announce the new, to affirm that we do not live by what is, but by what is promised. So the hassle goes on...." (page 123)

"So the hassle goes on..." The other day I posted on risk assessment and discipleship. Now I want to think about the hassle factor. Jesus didn't say, "Come unto me and I will add to your hassles" - well, not in so many words. But there are plenty warnings about discomfort, rejection, cost and a general sense that Kingdom living will destabilise our comfort zones. So I think it's an interesting further missional question for a local church, or for me as an individual follower of Jesus: how far is hassle a key performance indicator of the faithfulness of our discipleship? I mean, where has my choice for justice over order created hassle for me? And where have I tried to bring newness of hope, of possibility, of vision, of energy, and found that trying to do this has created for me, hassle - and made me a hassle to the upholders of the status quo? Hmmmm?

The painting is by Daniel Bonnell, a contemporary american artist. It's called The Shadow in the Middle, and is based on the story of the adulteress. The play of light and shadow, of the woman's fear and the upright stance of Jesus facing the danger, and with his hand on her head, the pointed shadows cast by the stones on the ground and the surrounding shadows of the waiting upholders of the judicial status quo, give the picture a pervasive encroaching menace. Except for the shadow in the middle. So, the hassle goes on....

Texts Under Negotiation: Brueggemann and Exegetical Confidence

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
     his understanding is unsearchable.
he gives power to the faint,
     and strengthens the powerless. (Isaiah 40 28-29)

I've read various commentaries on this passage, and learned much. Westermann, Childs, Seitz, Goldingay, and Brueggemann's own commentary. But just to prove that the best comment on Scripture text isn't always found in commentaries, here's Brueggemann in his book with the disconcerting title Text under Negotiation. The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) It is replete with theological insight expressed in pastorally alert terms, and earthed in text, church and world. My copy is split, and the loose pages make it more like a loose-leaf folder - but I don't want to buy another because this one is annotated. But it's still in print and it remains a significant and persuasive example of exegetical confidence in the capacities of biblical text to help us reconceive our world in the light of the Gospel. So here's his comment on that famous Isaiah 40 text, found on pages 35-6.

Creation not only works for the powerful, the mighty, and the knowledgeable. It works as well for the faint, the powerless, the hopeless and the worthless. It works by giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. It works so that strength is renewed. It is creation that precludes wearniness and faintness, and invites walking, running and flying.

Evangelical concern may derivatively raise the issue of our terrible disorderedness that issues in unseemly anxiety and in inescapable fatigue. It is a good question to raise in a local parish; Why so driven, so insatiable, so restless? The answer, in this doxological tradition, is that our lives are driven because we are seriously at variance from God's gracious food-giving program.

And where there is a variance and a refusal to trust:
youth are faint and weary,
     the young are exhausted,
     and there is little liberated flying or exhilarated running. (Isaiah 40.30)