WALTER BRUEGGEMANN, THE much-beloved biblical scholar and author, died at the age of 92 on June 5. As one speaker at his July 19 memorial service noted, since his death there have been thousands of words written in tribute to Brueggeman in publications (including by Sojourners president Adam Russell Taylor on sojo.net) and on social media. We are adding to that word count because of how important Brueggemann has been to us at Sojourners — he has been one of our guiding lights and became a contributing editor in 1989. He was one of several people who helped Sojourners sustain and refine our founding belief that to follow Jesus and live lives shaped by scripture and prayer was intertwined with a commitment to social justice and concrete works of mercy. He indirectly mentored many of us in how to keep the Bible as a living, provocative force shaping our personal integrity, our spiritual growth, and our public witness.
Brueggemann’s official area of study and research was the Hebrew Bible and among the more than 120 books he wrote were several academic volumes, including the nearly 800-page Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, published in 1997. He was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1958, but scripture was not just a professional interest for him. The son of a pastor of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (an antecedent of the UCC), Brueggemann was also raised in German pietistic beliefs that emphasized an active personal faith. As Clover Reuter Beal preached at his memorial service at Central United Methodist Church in Traverse City, Mich., “Walter gave praise to the God of liberation because he himself had received the liberating forgiveness of God.”
Through his decades as a seminary professor (at Eden Theological Seminary and Columbia Theological Seminary), writer, and speaker, Brueggemann mentored an untold number of pastors and pastors-to-be in the ministry of the Word: the study and preaching of it, yes, but also the role of scripture in pastoral care and formation, and its ongoing relevance in illuminating and guiding Christian faith in the light of contemporary culture. Brueggemann nurtured the proclamation of Christ incarnate and an understanding that the seeking of social justice and shalom here on earth was holy work.
But the audience for Brueggemann’s insights extended beyond the academy and clergy; he published books of sermons, prayers, and deep but accessible biblical exposition. His most well-known book, The Prophetic Imagination, published in 1978, introduced many lay people to the countercultural power of the biblical prophets and how they offered a word of life to an American church “so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.” (This quote was from the second paragraph of the first chapter: Brueggemann did not waste time on pleasantries.) Christians who are activists, writers, artists, teachers, and in any number of other roles continue to find in The Prophetic Imagination an invitation to shape their faith and vocations to proclaim and build alternative communities and consciousness to counter all the forces that pull people away from God.
polter2.png
The Prophetic Imagination is just one iteration of the core teachings that carried through Brueggemann’s life work: God is real and present in the world, even if the pain and destruction caused by human sin and hunger for domination can sometimes cause us to doubt. Lament is a natural and holy response to the oppression, violence, and brokenness of the world — and lament is also inextricably linked to the ability to proclaim a hopeful vision based not on current limitations and circumstances, but on God’s freedom and promises.
As Brueggemann wrote in a study of the prophet Jeremiah in a 1985 Sojourners article, “Is There No Balm in Gilead?”: “I submit a liberating juxtaposition for radicals who can move in and through and beyond despair to a new buoyancy. On the one hand, there is need for concrete, public acts of hope, public risks for newness, and public assault on conventional hopelessness. ... On the other hand, and prerequisite to the concrete public act of hope, is the pathos-filled expression of despair. Both Jeremiah and God engaged in that despair.”
In this, he connected efforts by Christians for political or social change with our psychology, spirituality, and worship, not just intellect, strategy, and creative action. He continued, “Would-be radicals, who are sobered by the human prospect, must fully grieve and lament the emptiness of the human prospect. Only then is the new word of hope given or received. ... It is the grief of Jeremiah that is the ground of hope. It is the pained word that precedes the anticipatory word. It is liturgy that grounds public action.”
Some might be put off by such a call to take time for grief, confession, liturgy, and grounding in God. Buffeted by the daily news, and our own weariness, rage, and sense of complicity, it’s understandable that Brueggemann’s approach might sometimes seem naive or insufficient for times of crisis. But befitting a scholar of ancient texts, he took a long view.
Davis Hankins, associate professor of religious studies at Appalachian State University, a friend and former student of Brueggemann, framed it this way in remarks at the memorial service: “On this side of history, on our end of modern colonialism, slavery, and the Holocaust, Walter never denied, discounted, or distorted the role played by Christians and Christianity in any of those horrors, even as there were of course always Christians and Christianity on the underside of all those struggles. And that is where Walter encouraged us to discover and join God at work in history, in the struggle, face to face with the pain, the difficulty, and the darkness.”
This all said, Brueggemann wasn’t a dour prophet. He was known for his sense of humor — the audio of the interview that accompanies this essay was punctuated by his warm laughter. He was a ravenous and broad reader, and almost without fail, in our experience, included a note of encouragement in even the most mundane work correspondence.
With deep gratitude, we trust that he now knows in a new and profound way the God he described in a prayer from Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann:
You are the only Lord of the Future ... / you promise like the stars for number / while we count according to the old math. / You are out beyond us. / We are staggered, stunned, awed. / We did not know you had such futures in you / and now we know ... You do indeed!
Amen and amen.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!
