Tag: 06 OT
Spluttering up the beach to Nineveh . . . fleeing from the word (Alison, 2001)
Thank heaven for Jonah’s flight! Think how much more damage is caused by those who are not vulnerable to their own shame, who really do manage to fool themselves that their righteousness and God’s are cut from the same cloth. Something in Jonah’s being was vulnerable to the suspicion that the word of the living God would wreak havoc with his own carefully covered hatred and fear — the suspicion that that hatred of others and fear of himself were aspects of the same as yet unredeemed dimension of his own life. In that vulnerability was his flight, and through it, ultimately, he was reached so as to be taught how to be a bearer of God’s word.
The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity (Brueggemann, 1999)
In the middle of the mess, an amazing poet invites his depressed, discouraged contemporaries to look up, to hope and to expect everything to change.
Truth-Telling & Peacemaking: A Reflection on Ezekiel (Brueggemann, 1998)
Ezekiel, the one who hallucinated, did not challenge the common notion that you need technology, muscle and power for security. He never even commented on that assumption. He did not think efforts at defense and security were important, but he did not argue about it. When he saw death coming, he interrupted the planning and deployment with a different agenda. You cannot have peace if you lie to each other, he said. You cannot have well-being if you do not speak the truth to each other. All the weapons in the world will not save you from your lies.
Conversations Among Exiles (Brueggemann, 1997)
Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile; the established governmental, educational, judicial and medical institutions seem less and less able to deliver what we need and have come to expect; the old social fabrics are fraying under the assault of selfishness, fear, anger and greed.
Covenant As A Subversive Paradigm (Brueggemann, 1980)
Covenant as a recharacterization of God, church and world is not simply a restatement of conventional Western assumptions; it requires drastically new affirmations. Attention to the theme exposes the failure of a remote God who has not triumphed, a church that has not known so much, and a culture that has not kept its promises.
Entitled Neighbours: A Biblical Perspective On Living Wage (Brueggemann, 2002)
The central and defining narrative memory of biblical faith is the story of the Exodus. While popular religion is preoccupied with the great divide of water in the Exodus story, in fact this defining memory is not about water; it is about rescue from unbearable poverty and abuse in debt slavery.
Listening To The Text, Review of Alter, The David Story (Brueggemann, 1999)
Alter’s book is important because it shows a keen listener in the act of listening. It demonstrates how one who already knows a great deal about the text is again surprised and led elsewhere by its detail. Alter invites his readers to listen with him, to hear more and other than already has been heard. Listening is a countercultural activity, an activity that leads to freedom, as Alter demonstrates.
Unmasking the Inevitable (Brueggemann, 2001)
From biblical times, those in authority have claimed that their hold on power is legitimate and rational. The claim is hard to counter, especially in “good times.” But the Bible directs that we look behind the slogans and the shibboleths to see whether the way things are is the way they ought to be. A single conviction fuses all forms of protest: It could be otherwise. From slavery in ancient Egypt to genocide in Nazi Germany, from segregation in the United States to exploitation in Asian sweatshops, people have stood up and said: It could be otherwise. The message still echoes in the streets of Seattle, Paris, Washington, and Quebec–proclaimed by voices, feet, signs, bodies. Those with a vested interest in “how it is” do not want to hear this message. They point to the social givens of age-old institutions (“the way we’ve always done it”), of current ideologies (“the demands of the market economy”), of future developments (“in an age of globalization”), and insist that all is inevitable. Those who benefit from the status quo are content to agree. Those who do not benefit are too busy surviving in spite of the social givens to have time for dreaming of a different way. But faith has never been about sluggish contentment or bare-bones survival.