Somehow the Church has forgotten to walk in the Way, forgotten to speak the Truth of an alternative way to a world that spins in violence, barely blinks now at the daily death count, and shrinks in fear of what might happen next. We’ve forgotten that our faith brings us Life … abundant Life! Brueggemann calls the Church to leave its silence, its “cocoon of anxiety” and to “be out and alive in the world.”
Brueggemann tells us that Jesus and his feeding narratives “attest that the generosity of God is assured wherever Jesus rules in this earth.” But does that not mean that “our common practices of greed, our frantic effort to acquire more are both inappropriate and unnecessary?” “Our hunger for more is a sure sign that we do not trust the goodness of God … the generous rule of Jesus.”
Brueggemann goes on to comment: “There is an ideology at work among us that wants to make the world very small, in order to make it safe for us, and to exclude and eliminate everyone who is not like us. That attraction to hate and resentment spins off in policies concerning immigrants and capital punishment, so that our hate of the other turns to violent vengeance and all in the name of religious piety. Such a practice of hurt that is among us is a contradiction to the father of mercy who loves all the children and protects all the weak ones.”
” … [I]n a society that is given over to exclusion, to hate and to vengeance,” Brueggemann reminds us to read again I John 4: 19-21:
Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and their sisters.
Brueggemann invites us instead to be the congregation that “signs on with the Lord of the Dance,” living in the abundance of a gracious God, a God “who is directly at work among us.”
When it comes to the quarreling among the saints in today’s Church, Brueggemann suggests that none of us has all the answers, that all of us live in ambivalence about this alternative script.
“The good news,” Brueggemann judges, “is that our ambivalence as we stand between scripts is precisely the primal venue for the work of God’s spirit.” “One of the great and crucial tasks of ministry is to name and exposit the deep ambiguity that besets us, and to create a venue for waiting for God’s newness among us.” He adds that the hallmark of the Church is not certitude but openness to the Spirit.
When all is said and done, Brueggemann asks, What is it we have on the table? Bread … that which gives us life. Brueggemann bids us follow Jesus, the Bread of Life, follow and wait for the newness that Life will give this Church.
Oh, what a difference the reading of this book could make for the whole Church! What a treasure from this poet prophet, or as I suspect, this prophet poet!
Ann Weems is a PC(USA) elder, poet, writer, speaker, and conference leader from St. Louis, Mo.
