Walter Brueggemann - Preaching from the Old Testament

For Ellen Davis

There has been no greater Old Testament theologian in the last half century than Walter Brueggemann. A few have his equal, but none has eclipsed his contributions to the field. No Old Testament theologian has produced scholarship exceeding either the quality or the quantity that has flowed from his pen (literally, from his pen). Walter has so enriched and inspired the preaching of the church.

At Working Preacher, we believe that biblical preaching changes lives. This is true for many reasons, but primarily, biblical preaching changes lives because God meets and changes people when the Bible is preached as a living word, through which the living God acts. Walter shares those commitments. His servant scholarship has helped multitudes of preachers engage with the Old Testament in ways that have encouraged faithful and fresh proclamation of the ancient word in the modern and now postmodern world. For all of those reasons, it is an honor to have Walter Brueggemann as the author of the inaugural volume in the new series Working Preacher Books. Thank you, Walter.

Forty years ago, in what may be Walter Brueggemanns most significant book, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 1978), he opened with an incredible rhetorical salvo: The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act (p. 11). Stop for a moment and reflect on that breathtaking diagnosis. Because the church was syncretized to American consumerism, it had little power to believe or act!

He continued, Our consciousness has been claimed by false fields of perception and idolatrous systems of language and rhetoric. That enculturation had resulted in a loss of identify through the abandonment of the faith tradition... [resulting in] a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope (p. 11).

In response to that diagnosis, Brueggemann prescribed an urgent recovery of the faith tradition via a prophetic ministry. This prophetic ministry was to avoid the fundamentalisms of both the right and the leftor, better, to gather the wisdom and insights of both the right and the leftlike those scribes of the kingdom who bring out what is both old and new from the treasure house. The task of prophetic ministry, he asserted, is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us (p. 13). This alternative consciousness was to address the crisis of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated while at the same time living in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.

The prophetic ministry that Brueggemann prescribed can be understood as a ministry of rhetorica particular type of preaching and witnessing that speak a prophetic imagination into existence. This rhetoric takes many different forms:

• Israels groans and laments that began to dismantle oppressive structures.
• The doxologies of the new community that imagined a different consciousness.
• Jeremiahs conjured funeral and bringing the grief of dying Israel to public expression.
• Second Isaiah practiced radical energizing [of hope] against the royal consciousness.
• Jesus practiced criticism of the deathly world around him through his parables, controversies, and in his crucifixion and resurrection.

To this we could add the lamentation of Amos, the marriage and childrens names of Hosea and Gomer, the wedding song of Isaiah of Jerusalem, the courtroom indictment of Micah, the song of hope of Habakkuk, the wisdom of Proverbs and Qohelet, the prayer and praises of the psalm, and more. This prophetic rhetoric in all of its diversity and creativity was to evoke an alternative community of the evangelical imagination (see pp. 10911).

Fast-forward forty yearsa biblical number. Now crack the cover of Brueggemanns latest booka book on preaching from the Old Testamentand we find our venerable, trusted teacher essentially equipping and encouraging us in the same defiant and hopeful rhetoric of evangelical imagination. He has stayed up-to-date on current hermeneutical and historiographical conversations (such as empire studies and the like). He has continued to track the ideology of the marketplace, which exerts an even more seductive influence than it did forty years ago. This new volume is not repacking or merely updating his older workit is more of a capstone, crowning his long career of serving preachers as they seek to preach from the Old Testament.

In this new volume, Brueggemann explores and equips the reader to preach from Genesis (chapter 1), from the long tale of Moses (chapter 2), from the prophets (chapter 3), from the psalms (chapter 4), and from the Old Testament wisdom traditions (chapter 5). In these chapters, Brueggemann acknowledges that each of the different genres and theologies of the Old Testament requires different homiletical approaches. He expertly leads his readers into the theologies, genres, and histories of the various genres, while also equipping them to emerge from those ancient texts ready to engage in what he calls the hard, glorious work of preaching.

WalterFor this new project and for all you have done to teach and inspire, we give thanks. On behalf of all your readers and students, please accept our heartfelt gratitude.

Thank you.

And thank God for you.

Rolf A. Jacobson
Advent 2018

The Old Testament is perennially, at the same time, a rich resource and a complex challenge for the Christian preacher. In this book I have refused grand theological schemes in response to that complex challenge and have focused instead on what is in front of us in the text. This means I have not been drawn to a law gospel articulation or to a promise fulfillment scheme, the two structures that have most often occupied interpreters. I believe, moreover, that a Christian sermon based on an Old Testament text does not need finally to make a direct Christological connection. I make that judgment on two counts. First, the Christian liturgy in which the sermon is embedded assures a context for the sermon of Trinitarian affirmation. Second, the God attested in the Old Testament is indeed the God of the gospel so that it is sufficient to let the good news take the form of witness to the God of the text.

I seek to show Christian preachers that the faith witnessed in these several traditions provide connections to our contemporary faith challenges that are myriad, rich, and suggestive. I also assume that a wholesale sustained engagement with the Old Testament is worth the effort for the preacher. I recognize the sorry fate of Old Testament texts in the Revised Common Lectionary that constitutes a major disservice for the church and its preachers. The lectionary variously bowdlerizes and gerrymanders the Old Testament to make it serve other claims, most of the time not allowing it to have its own evangelical say. It is my hope that my exposition here might evoke and energize fresh homiletical attention to the Old Testament, precisely because I believe the urgent work of the gospel in our society requires attentive listening to these ancient voices of bold insistent faith.