Walter Brueggemann
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Walter Brueggemann (born March 11, 1933) is an American Protestant Old Testament scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. He is an important figure in modern progressive Christianity whose work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism. Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He has been a highly sought-after speaker.
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Quotes
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“I have tried to say that prophetic ministry does not consist in spectacular acts of social crusading or of abrasive measure of indignation...The issues of God’s freedom and his will for justice are not always and need not be expressed primarily in the big issues of the day. They can be discerned wherever people try to live together and worry about their future and their identity”
-Walter Brueggmann “The people we later recognize as prophets, are also poets. They reframe what is at stake in chaotic times.” -Walter Brueggemann “The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that make it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “It is there within and among us, for we are ordained of God to be people of hope. It is there by virtue of our being in the image of the promissory God. It is sealed there in the sacrament of baptism. It is dramatized in the Eucharist—“until he come.” It is the structure of every creed that ends by trusting in God’s promises. Hope is the decision to which God invites Israel, a decision against despair, against permanent consignment to chaos (Isa 45:18), oppression, barrenness, and exile.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal consciousness. He has, in fact, dismantled the dominant culture and nullified its claims. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God’s imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: (a) that weeping must be real because endings are real; and (b) that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come. Such weeping is a radical criticism, a fearful dismantling because it means the end of all machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones. Yet the loss of thrones is precisely what is called for in radical criticism.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination “Jesus had understands Jeremiah. Ecclesiastes said only that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh; but Jesus sees that only those who mourn will be comforted (Matt 5:4). Only those who embrace the reality of death will receive the new life. Implicit in his statement is that those who do not mourn will not be comforted and those who do not face the endings will not receive the beginnings. The alternative community knows it need not engage in deception. It can stand in solidarity with the dying, for those are the ones who hope. Jeremiah, faithful to Moses, understood what numb people will never know, that only grievers can experience their experiences and move on.” -Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination "We pray because our life comes from God and we yield it back in prayer. Prayer is a great antidote to the illusion that we are self-made." -Walter Brueggemann “In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget….But Sabbath is not only resistance it is alternative. It is an alternative to the demanding, chattering, pervasive presence of advertising and its great liturgical claim of professional sports that devour all our “rest time.” The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end end of the gifts of God.” -Walter Brueggemann. Source: Sabbath as Resistance “Sabbath is not simply a pause. It is an occasion for reimagining all of social life away from coercion and competition to compassionate solidarity. Such solidarity is imaginable and capable of performance only when the drivenness of of acquisitiveness is broken. Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms. Whereas Israelites are always tempted to acquisitiveness, Sabbath is an invitation to receptivity, an acknowledgement that what is needed is given and need not be seized.” -Walter Brueggemann Source: Sabbath as Resistance The great crisis among us is the crisis of “the common good,” the sense of community solidarity that binds all in a common destiny – haves and have nots, the rich and the poor. We face a crisis about the common good because there are powerful forces at work among us to resist the common good, to violate community solidarity, and to deny a common destiny. Mature people, at their best, are people who are committed to the common good that reaches beyond private interest, transcends sectarian commitments and offers human solidarity -Walter Brueggemann Source: Journey to the Common Good “We carry old secrets too painful to utter, too shameful to acknowledge, to burdensome to bear, of failures we cannot undo, of alienations we regret but cannot fix, of grandiose exhibits we cannot curb. And you know them. You know them all. And so we take a deep sigh in your presence, no longer needing to pretend and cover up and deny. We mostly do not have big sins to confess, only modest shames that do not fit our hoped-for selves. And then we find that your knowing is more powerful than our secrets. You know and do not turn away, and our secrets that seemed too powerful are emptied of strength, secrets that seemed too burdensome are now less severe. We marvel that when you find us out you stay with us, taking us seriously, taking our secrets soberly, but not ultimately, overpowering our little failure with your massive love and abiding patience. We long to be fully, honestly exposed to your gaze of gentleness. In the moment of your knowing we are eased and lightened, and we feel the surge of joy move in our bodies, because we are not ours in cringing but yours in communion. We are yours and find the truth before you makes us free for wonder, love, and praise—and new life.” -Walter Brueggeman Prayers You are the giver of all good things. All good things are sent from heaven above, rain and sun, day and night, justice and righteousness, bread to the eater and seed to the sower, peace to the old, energy to the young, joy to the babes. We are takers, who take from you, day by day, daily bread, taking all we need as you supply, taking in gratitude and wonder and joy. And then taking more, taking more than we need, taking more than you give us, taking from our sisters and brothers, taking from the poor and the weak, taking because we are frightened, and so greedy, taking because we are anxious, and so fearful, taking because we are driven, and so uncaring. Give us peace beyond our fear, and so end our greed. Turn our taking into giving, since we are in your giving image: Make us giving like you, giving in joy, not taking, giving as he gave himself up for us all, giving, never taking. Amen. -Walter Brueggemann In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your church and its pastors in this season of hope which runs so quickly to fatigue and this season of yearning which becomes so easily quarrelsome. Give us the grace and the impatience to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes, to the edge of our finger tips. We do not want our several worlds to end. Come in your power and come in your weakness in any case and make all things new. Amen. -Walter Brueggemann “Save us, Lord, from a religion that ignores the cries of the exploited and oppressed. Lead us into a deeper faith that challenges injustice and makes the sacrifices that must be made to build a society that is ever more truly human. Amen.” -Walter Brueggemann |
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