Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
Walter Brueggemann
1989, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis
Preaching as an act of interpretation is in our time demanding, daring, and dangerous. (ix)
The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. (1)
Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. (1)
When we embrace ideology uncritically, it is assumed that the Bible squares easily with capitalist ideology, or narcissistic psychology, or revolutionary politics, or conformist morality, or romantic liberalism. There is no danger, no energy, no possibility, no opening for newness! (2)
Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism, the only proclamation, I submit, that is worthy of the name preaching. Such preaching is not moral instruction or problem solving or doctrinal clarification. It is not good advice, nor is it romantic caressing, nor is it a soothing god humor. It is, rather, the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not one made available by the rulers of this age.(3)
The poet/prophet is a voice that shatters settled reality and evokes new possibility in the listening assembly. (4)
Walter Brueggemann
1989, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis
Preaching as an act of interpretation is in our time demanding, daring, and dangerous. (ix)
The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. (1)
Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. (1)
When we embrace ideology uncritically, it is assumed that the Bible squares easily with capitalist ideology, or narcissistic psychology, or revolutionary politics, or conformist morality, or romantic liberalism. There is no danger, no energy, no possibility, no opening for newness! (2)
Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism, the only proclamation, I submit, that is worthy of the name preaching. Such preaching is not moral instruction or problem solving or doctrinal clarification. It is not good advice, nor is it romantic caressing, nor is it a soothing god humor. It is, rather, the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not one made available by the rulers of this age.(3)
The poet/prophet is a voice that shatters settled reality and evokes new possibility in the listening assembly. (4)
....
I can testify that this approach can be hazardous. However, I think it makes the gathering of believers on a Sunday morning worth the trouble. We live in a culture that seeks mastery. If we could boil things down to the simplist form, then we can remember or own it. We can stop thinking about it, or being troubled by it. In church (or somehwere, in some relationship) we need not to reduce, but dig and think. We need to have hearts that are open to being stunned.
